This movie genuinely makes me so emotional like seeing how loved Georgia was for being nothing other than herself and how her kindness touched everyone 😭
Fred Rogers met with a child psychologist every week for 22 years to build his show. She shaped everything: every script, prop, and song. The whole point was to give a child's nervous system time to slow down. In 1984, a single regulatory decision ended all of it.
The psychologist was Dr. Margaret McFarland, who co-founded the Arsenal Family and Children's Center alongside Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson. She and Rogers understood that the prefrontal cortex in children, the part of the brain that controls impulse, emotion, and attention, takes decades to fully develop. At the start of every episode, Rogers tied his sneakers and changed his sweater while children settled in. Those pauses were intentional, designed to help a child's nervous system shift into a calmer, more focused state.
What ended it had nothing to do with child development science. In 1984, Reagan's FCC chairman Mark Fowler abolished the advertising limits that had protected children's programming from commercial pressure. Toy companies moved within months. Between 1984 and 1985, cartoons tied to toy lines increased by 300%, from a handful of shows to more than 40 animated series. In almost every case, the toy was designed first. The cartoon was built to sell it.
Researchers later put numbers to what parents were already noticing. A 2011 study in Pediatrics from the University of Virginia tested 60 four-year-olds across three groups: one watching SpongeBob, which cuts scene every 11 seconds; one watching a slow PBS show, which cuts scene every 34 seconds; and one drawing. Nine minutes later, all three took tests on attention, impulse control, short-term memory, and problem-solving. The SpongeBob group scored significantly worse across every measure.
In the 1970s, children began watching television around age 4. Research from pediatrician Dimitri Christakis found that by 2009, the average age of first screen exposure had dropped to 4 months, as the content got faster and the audience got younger. Researchers separately found that each additional hour of daily screen time at ages 1 or 3 raised the risk of attention problems at age 7 by 9%.
‘Code Lyoko’ is officially returning with a brand-new sequel series currently in production, set to serve as Season 5.
The project is currently in the writing stage, with the original creators and voice cast expected to return nearly 19 years after the show’s last season aired.
“To write for a Black family, you start asking yourself, ‘What am I doing?’ So we cast all Black actors for Gerald’s family — that helped with authenticity. Then we listened to Jamil, Gerald’s voice actor, loved his phrasing and pacing, and wrote more of what he brought. In the ’90s, we were doing our best just to show different ethnicities on screen, thinking it’d be cool for a kid to see Gerald and say, ‘Finally, a character that looks more like me.’ People tell me that now.”
Craig Bartlett, Creative Talent Network (2020)
Viola Fletcher, the last living witness of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, has passed away at 111. Her legacy of strength and survival will never be forgotten. 🕊️🙏🏾
If you’re DJing on Juneteenth, you better do your homework & put on a show. Black Americans created too many genres for yall to be playing mainstream Hip Hop and R&B all day. I better hear Gospel before I hear Afrobeats. Disco, Funk, House, Go-Go, Bounce, Hyphy. DO YOUR JOB, DJ!!