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Mythbusters: Wonder and failure
Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters teaches through wonder and failure, writes Jessica Lahey in The Atlantic. Hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman “have subjected nearly 1,000 cultural legends, historical...
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A Jewish parent’s guide to Christmas specials
Bizarro Dahlia Lithwick offers a Jewish parent’s guide to TV Christmas specials. In her generation, Jewish kids were permitted to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas and The...
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It’s OK for my kids to watch TV
Cragger the crocodile and Laval the lion in Lego’s Legends of Chima I Refuse to Feel Bad About Letting My Children Watch TV, writes Mike Petrilli in The Atlantic. And he’s not just talking about...
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TV seeks ‘Child Genius’
Lifetime is premiering a new “reality” show tonight called Child Genius. Twenty boys and girls ages 8 to 12 compete to answer questions in pursuit of a $100,000 college scholarship. In a preview, a...
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Murdering satire
Translation: “100 lashes if you don’t die laughing.” Masked gunmen claiming to “avenge” Mohammed killed 12 people at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a satire magazine that made fun of Islamic...
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Luck is for suckers!
Quvenzhane Wallis stars as Annie the 2014 remake. The new Annie has a “fantastic set of core values,” writes Greg Forster on Jay Greene’s blog. After the opening scene, Annie is racing out of school...
View ArticleMy Little Pony vs. equality
My Little Pony is showing children the dangers of “enforced equality,” writes Brandon Morse on The Federalist. In “The Cutie Map, Parts 1 and 2”, the main-character ponies visit a town where the...
View ArticleA Rolling Stone Gathers A Lawsuit
Last November, Rolling Stone magazine published an article about a brutal rape on the campus of the University of Virginia. One fraternity and seven male students in particular were identified, the...
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Big Bird vs. preschool
Watching Sesame Street appears to help disadvantaged children get off to a good start in school, according to a new study. In the program’s early years, when it wasn’t available in all areas, children...
View ArticleThe Muppets are back
Here’s the pitch for the new Muppet show that was a hit at Comic Con.
View ArticleTrite teacher
Craig Robinson stars as a bar-band singer hired to teach music at his old high school in an NBC summer series, Mr. Robinson. The actor once taught K-8 music in Chicago schools. “Think School of Rock,...
View Article‘Sesame Street’ cuts deal with H, B, O
Sesame Street episodes will debut on HBO, then air on PBS nine months later. The partnership will allow Sesame Workshop to produce 35 new episodes a year, up from 18, and fund a Muppets spinoff and a...
View ArticleWhen Cookie Met Sally
Sesame Street’s When Harry Met Sally parody is kid-friendly, and charming, writes Laura Bradley on Slate. Cookie learns to wait in line.
View ArticleThe kids are all zombies
Cooties “starts as an earnest-young-teacher movie,” till the kids eat very bad chicken nuggets for lunch and turn into hungry, homicidal zombies, notes an A.V. Club review. “There’s something...
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Autistic girl joins Sesame Street
A muppet with autism is joining the Sesame Street family, though she’s not scheduled to appear on TV yet. Unlike most children diagnoses with autism spectrum disorders, Julia is a girl, notes the LA...
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How ‘Friends’ led to the fall of civilization
Friends and its “tragic hero, Ross Geller,” triggered the downfall of Western Civilization, writes David Hopkins on Medium. Ross Geller was a nerdy paleontology professor on Friends. “Ross was the...
View ArticleRebel leader dies
Ole Miss dropped its Confederate mascot, Colonel Reb, in 2003 for obvious reasons. In 2010, there was a campaign to name Star Wars’ Admiral Ackbar, the piscine head of the Rebel Alliance, as the new...
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Teen birth rate hits new low
The teen birth rate has declined by 61 percent since its peak in 1991, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between 2006 and 2014, the teen birth rate for Hispanics fell by 51...
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Social media feuds become school fights
Teens are using social media to pick and plan school fights, writes Hechinger’s Katy Reckdahl, reporting from New Orleans. A “huge proportion” of fights have roots in social media, social worker Osha...
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