#854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More

**Tish Rabe** (0:12)
I'm a cybernetic organism living this year over a metal endoskeleton.

**Tim Ferriss** (0:24)
Tish, it is lovely to finally connect. I have really been looking forward to this, and thanks to my old friend and your new friend, Alon Lee.

**Tish Rabe** (0:33)
Here we are.

**Tim Ferriss** (0:34)
We made it happen. Thank you for making the time.

**Tish Rabe** (0:37)
Really excited to be meeting you.

**Tim Ferriss** (0:39)
And I don't even know where to start. We could start with the 200 children's books, more than 11 million copies sold. We could start with 300 children's songs. But maybe we can, I suppose, start the journey with what you studied in college. Were you always intending to end up where you are now? Or where did the story start in a sense?

**Tish Rabe** (1:04)
Where did the story start? As a matter of fact, I did not start out to be a children's book author. I started out to be an opera singer. I went to college to be an opera singer. So that was my plan. I had a great plan. In high school, I tell the kids I talk to a lot that I had two things I loved. I loved to sing and I loved to write. So all through high school, I was, are you going to be a singer or a writer, a writer or a singer? And finally, I had to apply to college and I really knew in my heart I wanted to be a singer. So I have a four-year degree in opera with a minor in jazz. And everyone always asks me, so how did you end up, you know, being a singer and ending up being an author? And the very short story is I came to New York and I was auditioning everywhere. And my high school music teacher got a job as assistant music director on Sesame Street, season two. And I went to meet him and told him I was auditioning and he asked me if I could type. And I said, yes, I can sing and I can type. So I got a job as music production assistant at Sesame Street.
And all I wanted to do was sing with Jim Henson's Muppets. And my first job was hiring the jingle singers in Manhattan to sing with Jim Henson's Muppets. So I sang all day. I sang when I typed and I sang when I filed, and I sang when I answered the phone. Sesame Street, may I help you? Well, after a year, everybody was so tired of listening to me sing all the time, that they said, would you like to sing on Sesame Street with the Muppets? And I was, yes. So I sang with the Muppets. I sang on the show. I sang on the albums and I sang on the specials. So I sang on everything and it was just so much fun. And my first big break was I sang with Oscar, I Love Trash, Everything Dirty and Tinty and Dusty, Anything Ragged and Rotten and Rusty. Oh, I love, I love, I love trash. And I don't know that my parents ever got over it.

**Tim Ferriss** (3:33)
The big break. Well, let me ask you, when you got the job on Sesame Street, when you first got that job, what did it feel like at that time for season two? And I'll tell you something that I haven't told many people, which is I have a season one staff jacket from Sesame Street because a friend of my family who lived nearby when I was growing up worked on Sesame Street in the early days. So I grew up going next door as a little kid, hearing her stories, looking at her Emmys, and my love affair with Sesame Street in a way began before I ever started watching it. So I have a long history. What did it feel like to be there in the earliest stages of Sesame Street? What was the vibe like, the environment?

**Tish Rabe** (4:29)
First of all, the most creative environment anyone could ever be in. Basically, the John Stone, who is executive producer, and Jim Henson, and all the puppeteers, and all the muppeteers, and everybody were so creative. They just made stuff up all day long. Another interesting thing to share is that they were very worried that this show was going to bomb. A six-foot yellow bird, a monster that only eats cookies, a grouch in a trash can, a multiracial cast. How do we think this is going to go in 1969?
Joan Ganz Cooney, who created the whole thing, just let them be creative. Whatever you guys want to do, go ahead. It was so much fun to be a part of it. I believe in my heart that my background on Sesame Street is how I can do what I do today because I was enveloped with this every single day. One of the interesting things that happened was Sesame Street, they needed books, they needed toys, they needed merchandise. Who knew this was going to be a massive hit? And they literally asked the staff if they had ideas for books. And I, you know, courage, you know, what the heck, I got nothing to lose, I'll go down and, you know, try. And I went down to the book department and I told them about when I was a little girl and I broke my great-grandmother's teapot and it shattered into a million pieces. And my mother came in and saw the broken glass and she said, I'm not mad or anything, I love you more than any teapot. And I went down and I pitched my idea to Sesame Street Books and it's your classic, right? You go, you pour your heart out on the story and there's dead silence. Nobody moved. So I'm standing there going, okay, that went well. And from the back of the room, the editor for Sesame Street Books said, could you make it a story for Burt? And my very first book, here it is, Burt and the Broken Teapot. It's out of print, but I have a few.