11/18/12

All Sorts of Mr. Rogers on YouTube



A screenshot of the auto-tuned version of Mr. Rogers, "Garden of your Mind" commissioned by PBS Digital.  Editor's Note: I updated this post 2/19/18 at 6:17 pm to include links to the TedX videos, which weren't posted yet when I wrote this post.

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John D. Boswell (emailaka Melodysheep on Youtube is the wit behind this video (Boswell also made one on Julia Child for PBS, among others). Symphony of Science, launched in 2009, is Boswell's project aiming to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the public, in a novel way, through the medium of music.  Fast Company has an article on Boswell's process here.  What I want to know is, who were the 136 curmudgeons (out of 1,877) who voted against this at the Boston Globe poll after the vid went viral, saying "it ruins the integrity of the original series."

I learned about the video when Jason Seiken, Senior Vice President of PBS Interactive, gave his talk at TEDx MidAtlantic the same day as photographer Antrim Caskey gave her presentation on mtr...

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According to Rogers, during his mother's lifetime, she knitted all the trademark zip-up cardigans he wore on tv.  She gave him one each Christmas, as she did the other members of her family (He recounts this in the first part  a series of nine videos of a four and a half hour long interview with Karen Herman (twitter)  in Pittsburgh, PA on July 22, 1999.  (h/t  Chris Higgins (twitter) of Mental Floss for his post  there.)