PostHole
Compose
Login
The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children’s Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More (#854)
Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Tish Rabe (@tishrabebooks) the New York Times bestselling author of more than 200 children’s books, with more than 11 million copies sold. She has written for Sesame Street, Disney, PBS Kids, Curious George, Clifford, and many more. In 1991, following the death of Dr. Seuss, she was […]
The post The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children’s Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More (#854) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
by
Tim Ferriss
February 19, 2026
The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children’s Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More (#854)
Topics: The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts
Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Tish Rabe (@tishrabebooks) the New York Times bestselling author of more than 200 children’s books, with more than 11 million copies sold. She has written for Sesame Street, Disney, PBS Kids, Curious George, Clifford, and many more. In 1991, following the death of Dr. Seuss, she was asked by Random House to write The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library, a series of science books for early readers that were the brainchild of Dr. Seuss, who died before he could finish the first one. Tish has written more than 50 Cat in the Hat books as well as books for the Grinch and the Lorax. She now heads her own children’s book publishing company, Tish Rabe Books.
Books, music, and people mentioned in the interview
Legal conditions/copyright information
Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More
Additional podcast platforms
**Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform.**
Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
Tim Ferriss: Tish, it is lovely to finally connect. I’ve really been looking forward to this, and thanks to my old friend and your new friend, Elan Lee, here we are. We made it happen.
Tish Rabe: We made it happen.
Tim Ferriss: So thank you for making the time.
Tish Rabe: I’m really excited to be meeting you.
Tim Ferriss: 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 the 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: 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 love to sing and I love to write. So all through high school, I was, are you going to be a singer or a writer? A writer or 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 the funny thing, everyone always asks me, “So how did you end up 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 dingy 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, to tell you the truth.
Tim Ferriss: The big break.
Tish Rabe: Oh, boy.
Tim Ferriss: 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.
Tish Rabe: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: What did it feel like to be there in the earliest stages of Sesame Street? What was the vibe like, the environment?
Tish Rabe: First of all, the most creative environment anyone could ever be in. Basically, Jon Stone, who was 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 and a trash can, a multiracial cast. How do we think this is going to go in 1969 or whatever? And Joan Ganz Cooney, who created the whole thing, just let them be creative. Whatever you guys want to do, go ahead. And it was so much fun to be a part of it. And 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.
[...]