NYT Bestselling Author on Writing 200+ Children's Books — Tish Rabe

1. 0:00 – 0:40

   Preview

   1. TRTish Rabe0:00

      So I finally get my courage up and I call, and I finally get somebody on the phone in that division, and I say, tell them who I am and that. "Oh, oh," she said, "We were supposed to call you." I said, "Well, nobody called me."

   2. TFTim Ferriss0:12

      [laughs]

   3. TRTish Rabe0:13

      I said, "I'm sitting right here, but nobody called me." I'll never forget it. She said, "I have bad news and I have good news. What would you like to hear first?" And I said, "Well, I'll take the bad news." And she said, "We cannot publish Morris O'Hare's Brachiosaurus because we are the rhyming home of Dr. Seuss." However, she said, "How would you like to write a new series for Dr. Seuss?" Um, sure.

2. 0:40 – 3:29

   How an opera major became a bestselling children’s author and songwriter.

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:40

      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, Alon Lee, here we are. We made it happen.

   2. TRTish Rabe0:51

      We made it happen.

   3. TFTim Ferriss0:51

      So thank you for making the time. [laughs]

   4. TRTish Rabe0:53

      Really excited to be meeting you.

   5. TFTim Ferriss0:55

      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 [laughs]

   6. TRTish Rabe1:05

      [laughs]

   7. TFTim Ferriss1:05

      ... 300 children's songs.

   8. TRTish Rabe1:07

      [laughs]

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:07

      But maybe we can, I suppose, start the journey with what you studied in college.

   10. TRTish Rabe1:14

       Mm-hmm.

   11. TFTim Ferriss1:14

       Were you always intending to end up where you are now, or where did the story start, in a sense?

   12. TRTish Rabe1:20

       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.

   13. TFTim Ferriss1:31

       Oh.

   14. TRTish Rabe1:31

       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 gonna 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 the funny thing, everyone always asks me, "So how did you end up, you know, [laughs] 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. [laughs]

   15. TFTim Ferriss2:35

       [laughs]

   16. TRTish Rabe2:35

       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 [laughs]

   17. TFTim Ferriss3:05

       [laughs]

   18. TRTish Rabe3:06

       ... everybody was so tired of listening to me sing all the time that they said, "Would you like to sing on Sesame Street [laughs]

   19. TFTim Ferriss3:13

       [laughs]

   20. TRTish Rabe3:13

       ... with the, with the Muppets?" And I was s- 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

3. 3:29 – 3:53

   Tish’s trashy debut on television treasure Sesame Street.

   1. TRTish Rabe3:29

      fun, and my first big break was I sang with Oscar, "I love trash. Everything dirty [laughs] and dingy and dusty. Anything ragged and rotten and rusty. Oh, I love, I love, I love trash."

   2. TFTim Ferriss3:46

      [laughs]

   3. TRTish Rabe3:46

      And I don't know that my parents ever got over it, to tell you the truth. [laughs]

   4. TFTim Ferriss3:50

      [laughs]

   5. TRTish Rabe3:51

      Oh, boy.

   6. TFTim Ferriss3:52

      The big break.

4. 3:53 – 7:45

   Pitching a childhood memory to dead silence — and landing book number one.

   1. TFTim Ferriss3:53

      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-

   2. TRTish Rabe4:13

      [gasps]

   3. TFTim Ferriss4:13

      ... 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.

   4. TRTish Rabe4:30

      Ugh.

   5. TFTim Ferriss4:30

      And my love affair with Sesame Street in a, in a way began before I ever started watching it. So I have a long history.

   6. TRTish Rabe4:37

      Wow.

   7. TFTim Ferriss4:39

      What did it feel like to be there in the earliest stages of Sesame Street? What was the vibe like, the environment?

   8. TRTish Rabe4:48

      First of all, the most creative environment anyone could ever be in. Basically, the, 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 gonna bomb. The six-foot yellow bird, monster that only eats cookies, a grouch in a trash can, a multiracial cast. How do we think this is [laughs] gonna go in 1969? And Joan Ganz Cooney, who created the whole thing, just let them be creative. "Whatever you guys wanna do, you know, 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. And one of the interesting things that happened was Sesame Street, they needed books, they needed toys, they needed merchandi- They-- Who knew this was gonna be a massive hit? And they literally asked the staff if they had ideas for books. And I, courage, and I go, "What the heck? Well, 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 this story, and there's dead silence.

   9. TFTim Ferriss6:47

      [laughs]

   10. TRTish Rabe6:47

       I mean, 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 Bert?"

   11. TFTim Ferriss6:59

       [laughs]

   12. TRTish Rabe7:00

       And my very first book, here it is. Bert-

   13. TFTim Ferriss7:04

       Look at that

   14. TRTish Rabe7:04

       ... and the Broken Teapot. It's out of print, but I have a few. But [laughs] -

   15. TFTim Ferriss7:09

       [laughs]

   16. TRTish Rabe7:09

       And in this book, Bert breaks David's favorite teapot, spends the whole book trying to get it fixed, and in the end David says he's afraid David's not gonna be his friend anymore 'cause he broke his favorite teapot, and David says, "You'll always be my friend, and can you help me in my restaurant next week?"

   17. TFTim Ferriss7:27

       [laughs]

   18. TRTish Rabe7:29

       And at the time, it got, just create awards and letters because, you know, it, it's easy to have things be about stuff. And this, the message obviously was that their friendship meant more than this teapot. [laughs] But, but that was book one.

5. 7:45 – 10:04

   The value of writing a story’s ending first.

   1. TFTim Ferriss7:45

      So let me peel back the layers a little bit on what you mentioned, this, this wellspring of creativity just being steeped, I suppose, to [laughs] -

   2. TRTish Rabe7:55

      Mm

   3. TFTim Ferriss7:55

      ... borrow the tea, steeped in this creativity. What did that look like? Were people just ad-libbing all the time, like a Robin Williams times the number of staff? Were, were their meetings different? What did that actually look like in practice when you went to work?

   4. TRTish Rabe8:13

      It was one of the first TV shows that had educational research behind it. So we had topics we were gonna try to teach every single season. There was a notebook like this thick with what are the learning, what are we trying to teach kids? Obviously numbers and letters, but compassion and sorting things by shapes, and whatever it was. And then you would watch these -- uh, you would watch the writers just come up with stuff. It was absolutely fascinating. They just kind of made stuff up as they went along. But the big thing I learned from the Sesame Street writers, and it has saved me many, many, many times, is that they wrote the endings first. So they used to look at Abbott and Costello movies and Marx Brothers movies, and they looked at everything. And they used to tell me, "Okay, Abbott and Costello are pushing a piano across a bridge in the jungle with a gorilla coming across the bridge at them. How did they get there?" So as a children's book author, I always write my last page first. So in my I Believe Bunny books, my inspirational books, one of them ends with, "Just like the I Believe Bunny, you may get a surprise. You can make a difference, even a bunny your size." Then I wrote the whole book about how he helps his friend who can't swim and ba, ba, ba, ba, and then end at that page. It's a very important page in children's books 'cause it is the last page they hear before the book is shut, go to sleep, take a nap, go out to play, whatever, and I always write the last page first. Always. [laughs]

6. 10:04 – 11:17

   Jim Henson: The kind, gentle giant with a mind of steel.

   1. TFTim Ferriss10:04

      Did you have much interaction with Jim Henson?

   2. TRTish Rabe10:07

      Yes. I worked for Jim for years, and he was a, you know-- Somebody said once he was a gentle giant with a mind of steel.

   3. TFTim Ferriss10:16

      [laughs]

   4. TRTish Rabe10:16

      He's a great businessman, but so creative and so nice to all of us, 'cause we were low on the totem pole. I mean, we were the production assistants. And he just worked and worked and worked and worked. He would do a Sesame Street day and then fly to London and do The Muppet Show and then fly back. He just worked all the time.

   5. TFTim Ferriss10:35

      Mm-hmm.

   6. TRTish Rabe10:36

      But he was just a very, very nice to me always.

   7. TFTim Ferriss10:40

      Did you learn anything about him or how he managed? Anything that stands out that distinguishes him, aside from just being a man possessed with-

   8. TRTish Rabe10:51

      [laughs] With work

   9. TFTim Ferriss10:52

      ... with his work, which certainly doesn't surprise me.

   10. TRTish Rabe10:55

       Right. I think the thing was you could just watch his creative mind. Creative minds on Sesame Street when I was there, something would happen, and they would just make something else up. And the sense of humor and the lightness of what they were doing, it was almost like, "Oh, and by the way, we're teaching kids." You know what I mean?

   11. TFTim Ferriss11:15

       [laughs]

   12. TRTish Rabe11:16

       Oh, yeah. Okay.

7. 11:17 – 11:58

   Keeping kids and their parents entertained with double-level humor.

   1. TRTish Rabe11:17

      The other thing they did, which was really something, is they were one of the first to do double-level humor.

   2. TFTim Ferriss11:24

      Mm.

   3. TRTish Rabe11:24

      So they wrote stuff that was funny for kids but had all kinds of stuff in it for adults. Because all these studies had done if parents watched the show with their children, the kids learned more because the parents were there to help them and that kind of thing. And some of the early children's shows, you know, no parent would be caught dead sitting in front of.

   4. TFTim Ferriss11:47

      [laughs]

   5. TRTish Rabe11:48

      But Sesame Street was so nuts that everybody loved it.

   6. TFTim Ferriss11:52

      Mm-hmm.

   7. TRTish Rabe11:53

      And that really, really made a difference, big difference.

   8. TFTim Ferriss11:56

      Yeah, the double-level humor.

8. 11:58 – 15:33

   How Tish put her music training to work with Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.

   1. TFTim Ferriss11:58

      I remember first being struck by that, not to make my side of the story all about Robin Williams, but with Robin Williams and the songs in the first Disney animated feature of Aladdin.

   2. TRTish Rabe12:11

      Oh.

   3. TFTim Ferriss12:11

      And just how many levels there were [laughs]

   4. TRTish Rabe12:15

      Yep

   5. TFTim Ferriss12:15

      ... to that, and how effective it was, because parents would go back, take their kids to the theater multiple times in this case, right? Obviously watch the television show. How did your music training, if it did, help what you ended up doing not only at Sesame Street, but afterwards? A- and I suppose I'm just asking if, if some of the tools or sensitivities that you developed actually ended up being assets as you moved forward-

   6. TRTish Rabe12:46

      Mm-hmm

   7. TFTim Ferriss12:46

      ... with these other supposedly separate art forms.

   8. TRTish Rabe12:50

      Well, one thing that I used to do, the songs were all prerecorded, and so the Muppeteers, puppeteers would go in and record their songs in advance. So now you're Big Bird, and you're gonna sing a song on Sesame Street, but they are doing their dialogue, right? So how are they gonna know when the song starts? So I would stand next to one of the cameras and count them off. So measure one, two, three, four, and then they would sing.

   9. TFTim Ferriss13:24

      Mm-hmm.

   10. TRTish Rabe13:25

       So Caroll Spinney could see me enough to know that when I pointed to him, he had to sing the song, the prerecorded song. You know, move the costume, move the puppet so he was singing the song. And the first two times I did it, I was scared to death. [laughs] I was only 21.

   11. TFTim Ferriss13:41

       Uh-huh.

   12. TRTish Rabe13:41

       I think, "This is gonna be the one. I'm gonna go one, two, three, and start him, and it's gonna be the wrong place. You know? Oh, no."

   13. TFTim Ferriss13:47

       Mm-hmm.

   14. TRTish Rabe13:48

       But that's really where my musical training came in. And also, we used to sing, the jingle singers in New York in the '70s, literally you'd come into a session, to this day I'll never forget it, and literally they, they would sing it through once. We are the sound of the sound of the Count, Count, Count, Count's down. Four-part harmony, and they'd look at each other, say, "You take the root, I'll take the third. Tish, you take the fifth, and then somebody do the octave. One, two, three, go." [laughs]

   15. TFTim Ferriss14:22

       [laughs]

   16. TRTish Rabe14:22

       And I remember holding on with a thread to this thing. And the other thing that I love about those early days, back then we had orchestras. So the Christmas, I'll never forget this, the Christmas special, full orchestra. And Caroll Spinney was trying to sing I Hate Christmas. He's behind this microphone, and he's going, "I hate, I hate Chris- I, I hate..." Finally they said, "Let's take a break." [laughs]

   17. TFTim Ferriss14:51

       [laughs]

   18. TRTish Rabe14:51

       Everybody, all, the whole orchestra. "Let's take 10 minutes. Everybody just give him a minute." And I was standing next to him when he moved over and opened the case and took Oscar out of the case. I was standing right next to him. I had the music and everything. So everybody comes back, all these violins and cellos and clarinets and everything, and they started it again. And Caroll moved over, and Oscar sang, "I hate Christmas." Perfect.

   19. TFTim Ferriss15:22

       [laughs]

   20. TRTish Rabe15:23

       [laughs] I never, I never got over it. I was like, "Whoa." You know? [laughs]

   21. TFTim Ferriss15:28

       [laughs]

   22. TRTish Rabe15:29

       But this kind of stuff went on every single day, all day.

9. 15:33 – 19:39

   From nine-note auditions to signing on with Sesame Street‘s mission to level the kindergarten playing field.

   1. TFTim Ferriss15:33

      And when you were working on, on Sesame Street, what was the reaction from people at the time when they would ask you, "What do you do?" I don't know the magnitude of the success when you joined versus later on in your time there, but just to paint a picture for people.

   2. TRTish Rabe15:52

      Mm-hmm.

   3. TFTim Ferriss15:52

      Because there are, I'm sure, some older folks who listen to this podcast who maybe even had really, really early exposure, or maybe are, are much older and had really young kids who were exposed to Sesame Street. Then there are some in the middle who certainly remember watching it.

   4. TRTish Rabe16:10

      Mm-hmm.

   5. TFTim Ferriss16:10

      And then there are some who have probably never seen it.

   6. TRTish Rabe16:13

      Right.

   7. TFTim Ferriss16:13

      But what was the reaction that you would get from people when you told them what you did for a living?

   8. TRTish Rabe16:18

      Well, it's funny, when I tell the story that I got to New York and I was auditioning, and it was going okay. I would get a jingle here or a jingle there, but I couldn't support myself. And I am convinced, I went home one Thanksgiving to my hometown. I'm from Needham, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, and I got, literally got out of the car and my mother told me that she'd read that my high school music teacher had gotten this job. And she said, "You gotta get all dressed up and you gotta go see him, and he hasn't seen you since you left high school four years ago. You've been in college." And I have to say, it took a lot of guts for me to go and come see him again, and I was... You know, he'd buy me lunch once a week 'cause I wasn't eating. You know, the whole thing.

   9. TFTim Ferriss17:05

      [laughs]

   10. TRTish Rabe17:06

       And I think when I look back, it was timing and, and luck to a lot of extent. Because would I ever have walked into Sesame Workshop and said, you know, "Do you n- have a job for me?" No. I was convinced I was gonna be a star. It was just a matter of time, singing. And back then, I'm sure they still do this, you would audition and they would literally let you sing nine notes.

   11. TFTim Ferriss17:34

       [laughs]

   12. TRTish Rabe17:35

       So you go, "Oklahoma, where the wind goes." "Thank you."

   13. TFTim Ferriss17:39

       [laughs] Really?

   14. TRTish Rabe17:41

       I am dead serious. Anyone who auditioned in the s-

   15. TFTim Ferriss17:44

       [laughs]

   16. TRTish Rabe17:44

       That was it, and you, you were there and you had your music and everything. So the fact that I actually was able to get a job in music on a television series was just magic stuff.

   17. TFTim Ferriss17:57

       And was the public's reception at the time-- So you have this sort of confluence of factors and synchronicities-

   18. TRTish Rabe18:05

       Mm-hmm

   19. TFTim Ferriss18:05

       ... that get you in the door. You still have to prove your mettle.

   20. TRTish Rabe18:07

       Mm-hmm.

   21. TFTim Ferriss18:08

       So you get the job, and was it Just the, the belle of the ball at that point, Sesame Street? Or was it still in, in kinda growth mode, so some people knew it but not all people? Where, where was the public awareness of Sesame Street when you joined?

   22. TRTish Rabe18:27

       Well, I think when I started, it was just really t- taking off, you know, literally.

   23. TFTim Ferriss18:32

       Hmm.

   24. TRTish Rabe18:32

       And I don't think anyone recognized that it was... As I said, they weren't sure how it was gonna go. [laughs]

   25. TFTim Ferriss18:39

       [laughs]

   26. TRTish Rabe18:40

       And something a lot of people don't know about Sesame Street is it was originally created to help every child learn their alphabet and their numbers, because there was a disparity between kids who had came into kindergarten knowing their letters and their alphabet, and the kids who came in not knowing and started behind before they even got started. I don't think anyone really realized that this was gonna have such a huge impact, because kids then were going into school and singing the numbers song. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, a- a- [laughs] alligators went to the alligator picnic." Okay, yeah.

   27. TFTim Ferriss19:23

       [laughs]

   28. TRTish Rabe19:23

       That's, this went on all day long.

   29. TFTim Ferriss19:25

       [laughs]

   30. TRTish Rabe19:26

       So [laughs] the kids now, there was more of an even playing field when the kids all hit kindergarten, and that was-
10. 19:39 – 23:55

    Churning out children’s books and writing bangers about animal gestation periods and lumber measurement for 3-2-1 Contact.

    1. TFTim Ferriss19:39

       What happened that led you from Sesame Street to all that followed?

    2. TRTish Rabe19:44

       The followed. [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss19:45

       How did... Yes, exactly.

    4. TRTish Rabe19:46

       Well, among my other things that, that happened is I was at Sesame Street, and as soon as I started writing my Bert and the Broken Teapot book, I just kept writing and writing and writing and writing.

    5. TFTim Ferriss19:58

       And this is just on your own time, or was it all for the street?

    6. TRTish Rabe20:00

       Well, people started hiring me. I wrote for Scholastic and I wrote for f- you know, Houghton Mifflin and Random House and everybody.

    7. TFTim Ferriss20:08

       How did you make those contacts?

    8. TRTish Rabe20:10

       So I was working at Sesame Street, and then I produced Big Bird in China. I was part of the crew that went to China with Big Bird in China.

    9. TFTim Ferriss20:18

       1982, something like that, right?

    10. TRTish Rabe20:21

        1982, correct. And then I was senior producer for 3-2-1 Contact, which was another whole story. And then I just kept writing and writing and writing and writing, and I ended up at Random House as their director of video. This was back in the VHS days. And once I was in there d- directing all the videos, back in the day, they used to just take the artwork for the book and move the camera around. It was called animatics. And I produced all the music and all the voiceovers and all, everything for that. But now I'm in Random House, so I'm a author, proven author, and I happen to work there. [laughs]

    11. TFTim Ferriss21:07

        [laughs]

    12. TRTish Rabe21:08

        So in the hallway they'd say, "You know, could you write a book about butterflies?" I'd, "Sure. When do you need it?" You know? [laughs]

    13. TFTim Ferriss21:13

        [laughs]

    14. TRTish Rabe21:14

        So it was kind of a two-way thing. I was working as a producer, a television producer. I also, in, with 3-2-1 Contact, that's when I started writing songs, because 3-2-1 Contact was a science series, and it w- took more time for us to explain to other composers what we needed than just to write it in-house. So I wrote songs about electricity and mammals and, [laughs] you know, anything you needed. My favorite, my favorite was, the, the producers would come into my office, and I'd, they'd say, "We need a song." I said, "Okay, okay. What's it about?" Never forget this. And the guy, producer looks at me and says, "The gestation period of different animals." I said-

    15. TFTim Ferriss21:58

        [laughs]

    16. TRTish Rabe21:58

        ... "It's singing for me already, the gestation per-" [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss22:03

        [laughs]

    18. TRTish Rabe22:03

        So I wrote a song called I'm Waiting for My Baby.

    19. TFTim Ferriss22:05

        [laughs]

    20. TRTish Rabe22:06

        "I'm waiting for my baby. Feels like a long, long time." And we just took stock footage of chimpanzee and an elephant and chironed, that was back in the day we called it chironing-

    21. TFTim Ferriss22:18

        Mm-hmm

    22. TRTish Rabe22:18

        ... the amount of time. You know, elephant, two years, whatever it was to have a baby. Um, and then at the end it was, "And baby, you were worth the wait." You know. [laughs]

    23. TFTim Ferriss22:30

        [laughs]

    24. TRTish Rabe22:31

        So there. So we made stuff up. And of course, happily for me, I sang a lot of it, so that was fun.

    25. TFTim Ferriss22:36

        If we open the hood and look at the workings of making a song-

    26. TRTish Rabe22:41

        Mm-hmm. Yes

    27. TFTim Ferriss22:42

        ... what does that look like for you? When they are successful, do they have common patterns where you-

    28. TRTish Rabe22:49

        Mm-hmm

    29. TFTim Ferriss22:49

        ... start with something?

    30. TRTish Rabe22:51

        Yes.
11. 23:55 – 27:10

    The zero-rhyming genius of Joe Raposo’s “Bein’ Green” and why it works.

    1. TRTish Rabe23:55

       One quick thing to share, 'cause very few people know this, while I was at Sesame Street, the executive producer asked Joe Raposo, Joe Raposo wrote the theme and he wrote all the big songs, and he said, "I wonder how Kermit feels. Have you ever thought of how Kermit feels living on this crazy street with all these nutty people?" And Joe Raposo went home- And wrote Being Green.

    2. TFTim Ferriss24:25

       [laughs]

    3. TRTish Rabe24:26

       But the big thing about Being Green is all of us who write songs for kids have end rhyme. Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away. On my way to where the sweet... Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street? Everything rhymes at the end, right?

    4. TFTim Ferriss24:44

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TRTish Rabe24:45

       Being Green, there's not one rhyme. It's not easy being green. Having to spend each day the color of the leaves. When it would be nicer to be red or yellow or gold or something much more colorful like that. It's totally talking. There's not a rhyme in it. And he came into the office and sang it for the first time, and people were thunderstruck. And of course, it became a mega hit.

    6. TFTim Ferriss25:09

       Hmm.

    7. TRTish Rabe25:10

       So yeah, I just started writing songs about everything. [laughs]

    8. TFTim Ferriss25:14

       What possessed him to break the mold? Had that been done before, or was that something that struck him? I'm wondering if you know the backstory-

    9. TRTish Rabe25:26

       It's funny-

    10. TFTim Ferriss25:27

        ... of why

    11. TRTish Rabe25:27

        ... I always felt that, this is, uh, long time memories of these things, but I sort of felt like maybe one of the writers kind of challenged him, you know?

    12. TFTim Ferriss25:37

        [laughs]

    13. TRTish Rabe25:38

        There's only one other song any of us could find, and it's Moonlight in Vermont, also doesn't rhyme at all.

    14. TFTim Ferriss25:44

        [laughs]

    15. TRTish Rabe25:45

        But I don't know if someone said, "Yeah, why don't you write about how Kermit feels about living on this street, and let's not have end rhymes." I don't know. I don't know if anyone challenged him, or he just went home and said-- I mean, the man was a genius. Whether he went home and just said, "I have an idea. I got nothing else to do this afternoon. I'll try to write a song [laughs] that doesn't rhyme."

    16. TFTim Ferriss26:05

        [laughs]

    17. TRTish Rabe26:05

        I don't know. But I'll say one thing that was really amazing is basically Joan Ganz Cooney told them all, you know, she had faith in them, "Just do it. Just go." So it was so free-flowing that people just made stuff up. I have a favorite song, people always ask me my favorite song, that I did not write. It's called I Just Adore Four.

    18. TFTim Ferriss26:32

        [laughs]

    19. TRTish Rabe26:33

        I just adore four, the number for me. I just adore four, it's... Let's see. Less than five, more than three. [laughs]

    20. TFTim Ferriss26:44

        [laughs]

    21. TRTish Rabe26:44

        And the other thing is the lyrics were so grown up, right? I mean, that's hilarious. But-

    22. TFTim Ferriss26:52

        [laughs]

    23. TRTish Rabe26:53

        [laughs] But, but the kids, you know, just, just ate it up. They just understood it. They understood what that meant. So it was wonderful because every day you went into work, you had no idea what [laughs] ... Who's gonna come up with what today? But it's funny.

12. 27:10 – 29:34

    Curriculum is king: Focus groups, orange Oscar, and making sure the kids aren’t lost.

    1. TFTim Ferriss27:10

       How many drafts or versions made the cut? I'm, I'm wondering in such a free-flowing, creative environment where you're allowed to throw anything against the wall-

    2. TRTish Rabe27:23

       Mm-hmm. Yep

    3. TFTim Ferriss27:24

       ... and you're given permission and people say they believe in you, my assumption would be that you come up with a lot of ideas-

    4. TRTish Rabe27:32

       Mm-hmm

    5. TFTim Ferriss27:32

       ... and not all of them work.

    6. TRTish Rabe27:34

       That's right.

    7. TFTim Ferriss27:34

       So I'm wondering how many versions you might come up with before you end up with one that makes it to air.

    8. TRTish Rabe27:43

       The real challenge on that show was the curriculum was king. So yeah, you could go off and, you know, write a story about your lamp. But if it didn't, you know, whatever the curriculum of the day was, today it's seasons or cooperation or, I don't know, whatever they were, that was true. They had to get that by, that, that team, and it was a whole team. The other thing they did is a lot of focus groups. They played stuff for kids, and this was groundbreaking at the time. They tell stories about how Oscar was originally orange and the kids didn't really like it. You know, whatever it is, you know, they changed stuff. So although it looked easy, there was a lot of background on what they could do and not do, and that kind of stuff.

    9. TFTim Ferriss28:30

       The focus groups, I mean, that does sound really innovative for the day-

    10. TRTish Rabe28:35

        It was

    11. TFTim Ferriss28:35

        ... especially with kids.

    12. TRTish Rabe28:36

        Mm-hmm.

    13. TFTim Ferriss28:36

        But I imagine if you're trying to sell shampoo, and you've got Bob the adult in your focus group, you can be like, "Bob, would you spend-- how much would you spend to buy Hertz shampoo?" Or whatever.

    14. TRTish Rabe28:48

        [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss28:48

        And Bob can give you an answer. What types of reactions or feedback were they looking for?

    16. TRTish Rabe28:55

        Well, it was great. They wanted to know things like, did the kids walk away understanding that Abcdefgy is A-B-C-D-E-F, you know, A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I, whatever. Because they always wanted to pay attention to the fact that if they made it too sophisticated, the kids would be lost.

    17. TFTim Ferriss29:14

        Mm-hmm.

    18. TRTish Rabe29:14

        So they had to be... There's a very fine line because by doing the double-level humor, like I Just Adore Four.

    19. TFTim Ferriss29:21

        Mm-hmm.

    20. TRTish Rabe29:21

        Genius. Joe Bailey wrote that one. That they didn't leave the kids lost-

    21. TFTim Ferriss29:26

        Hmm

    22. TRTish Rabe29:26

        ... 'cause that's not the point. The point was to teach them and get them ready for school. [laughs]

    23. TFTim Ferriss29:31

        Curriculum.

    24. TRTish Rabe29:32

        Curriculum. Oh, boy. [laughs]

13. 29:34 – 34:43

    Random House rejected her book, but the late Dr. Seuss took a second look.

    1. TFTim Ferriss29:34

       There's a question that I could ask about songwriting, but I could also ask it about book writing.

    2. TRTish Rabe29:40

       Mm-hmm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss29:40

       So could you explain how Dr. Seuss enters the picture?

    4. TRTish Rabe29:46

       So as the years went by, I kept, as I said, writing for everybody. Never turned down, never turned down a book offer. Scholastic, "We need a book on butterflies in a week." And I'll go, "Okay, a week." You know? [laughs] It's like, how long is that gonna take me? You know, how much am I gonna earn an hour? Whatever it was. But wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. And in 1991, I always go by how old my kids were. I guess they were, like, three and four. I submitted a rhyming book to Random House. I was there. I was the senior producer for home video. I was singing on all their TV stuff. And I was singing on VHSs for them anyway. I was right there, and I sent in a manuscript [laughs] for a book. Morris O'Rorus was a Brachiosaurus who had the best voice in the dinosaur chorus. He liked to play tennis and swim in the sea, but mostly he liked to eat fresh broccoli.

    5. TFTim Ferriss30:45

       [laughs]

    6. TRTish Rabe30:47

       Okey-dokey. And the end of that one was, so his friends try to get him to eat something else, and he said, they've got... His friends go, "Broccoli's fine, it's got color and crunch, but you eat it for breakfast and dinner and lunch."

    7. TFTim Ferriss30:59

       [laughs]

    8. TRTish Rabe31:00

       So they talk him into eating something else, and the last line is, [laughs] "So one thing is true and you cannot deny it. Like it or not, you won't know till you try it." Fine. Type it up, walk down to the book department [laughs] at Random House, hand it to the book department, and hear nothing. This is... And I tell the kids, this is before texting-

    9. TFTim Ferriss31:23

       [laughs]

    10. TRTish Rabe31:24

        ... voicemail. You know, we're used to using payphones at this point. And I ge- hear a thanks. I go, "Well, that didn't really work, but okay." So I finally get my courage up and I call, and I finally get somebody on the phone in that division, and I say, tell them who I am and that. "Oh, oh," she said, "We were supposed to call you." I said, "Well, nobody called me." [laughs]

    11. TFTim Ferriss31:44

        [laughs]

    12. TRTish Rabe31:45

        I said, "I'm sitting right here, but nobody called me." And she said, "Okay." I'll never forget it. She said, "I have bad news and I have good news. What would you like to hear first?" And I said, "Well, I'll take the bad news." And she said, "We cannot publish Morris O'Rorus Brachiosaurus because we are the rhyming home of Dr. Seuss." Okay. All right. "However," [laughs] she said, "How would you like to write a new series for Dr. Seuss?" And I... It took me... I, um, sure. You know, you never say no. Never turn down a freelance job. And they literally handed me, Dr. Seuss, not me, Dr. Seuss wanted to write a series of books for kids about science in rhyme for early readers, four to seven-year-olds, and died before he could finish the first one. So they handed me a stack of research on mammals, a huge stack of research on birds. They said, "We are so far behind with this 'cause we've been trying to find someone who can write in his rhythm and his rhyme scheme." And Morris O'Rorus Brachiosaurus was both, thank goodness. And they said, "Can you have two books ready in four months?" And I carried all this stuff home, and I went, "Well, I... Okay." And I just started writing Is a Camel a Mammal and Fine Feathered Friends, and I never stopped after that.

    13. TFTim Ferriss33:18

        What an incredible opportunity.

    14. TRTish Rabe33:19

        Well-

    15. TFTim Ferriss33:19

        I mean, talk about just the right ingredients at the right time, and my brain will not let it go unless I ask. So, so with the, the Morris O'Rorus, still think, I mean, it sounds like a great book, but that couldn't fly because Dr. Seuss basically had exclusivity-

    16. TRTish Rabe33:40

        Mm-hmm

    17. TFTim Ferriss33:40

        ... on that nature of rhyming book.

    18. TRTish Rabe33:42

        For Random House, yes.

    19. TFTim Ferriss33:43

        For Random House.

    20. TRTish Rabe33:44

        Yes.

    21. TFTim Ferriss33:44

        For Random House.

    22. TRTish Rabe33:44

        And he, not only did he write exclusively for Random House, but he created the Beginner Book series, which other authors also wrote. So he was head of the whole thing.

    23. TFTim Ferriss33:56

        Mm-hmm.

    24. TRTish Rabe33:56

        And one thing to share about him, which is, and there are many authors that do this, but he was an author-illustrator, and I'm clear to tell everybody, I write the words, but I do not draw the pictures. And I had heard, I missed meeting him by one year.

    25. TFTim Ferriss34:17

        Oh.

    26. TRTish Rabe34:18

        They t- used to tell me that he would come in with a brand-new book, let's say Horton Hears a Who, and literally the art directors and the editors at Random House did not have to do anything.

    27. TFTim Ferriss34:29

        [laughs]

    28. TRTish Rabe34:30

        They didn't have to fix it. They didn't have to tell him to fix the elephant. They didn't have to do anything. They were so perfect when he showed up with them.

    29. TFTim Ferriss34:37

        [laughs]

    30. TRTish Rabe34:38

        So that was just amazing that he could do both.

14. 34:43 – 38:06

    Accepting the Widow Seuss’s challenge to write a book for babies in utero and ending up with a bestseller.

    1. TRTish Rabe34:43

       I actually never spoke to him, but I spoke to his widow, Audrey Geisel, and she called me because [laughs] at, to this day, I can never forget it. She called me up, like, on the phone. I couldn't believe I was actually talking to her. And she said, "Do you remember when years ago in the '50s they did the study where they had pregnant moms talk to their babies and sing to their babies? And when the babies were born, they recognized, and the dads too, they recognized the voices, and they waved their little hands, and their eyes linked and stuff." And what they used on the study was they all read The Cat in the Hat-

    2. TFTim Ferriss35:23

       [laughs]

    3. TRTish Rabe35:24

       ... the original Cat in the Hat book. So here we are. It's 2008, I think. Audrey Geisel called me and said could I read all 41 of Ted, Ted Geisel's Dr. Seuss books and write a book [laughs] with references to all of them.

    4. TFTim Ferriss35:47

       That's hard. [laughs]

    5. TRTish Rabe35:48

       And she wanted it called Oh, Baby, the Places You'll Go! to be read in utero. I'm sitting there going, "Okay. [laughs] Sure. Laugh." So I went and read all of them, Horton Hears a Who, If I Ran the Zoo, If I Ran the Circus, Yertle the Turtle, Thidwick the Moose. I read them all. And I wrote Oh, Baby, the Places You'll Go, and turned it in, and I love this story 'cause by then my kids were in middle school, I think, and I was going to pick them up from school, and I had my car keys in my hand. My phone rang. It's Random House. They said, "We are sending the files to the printer for Oh, Baby, the Places You'll Go!" We need a bio from you, really short, and it has to be funny, and we need it right now.

    6. TFTim Ferriss36:36

       [laughs]

    7. TRTish Rabe36:38

       So I just said, "I c- you gotta give me two minutes," and I hung up the phone. Never forget it. And all of a sudden I thought, "Oh, wow," and I called them right back. [laughs] And I said, "Tish Rabe's a mom who thinks that it's cool to be home rhyming rhymes while her kids are at school."

    8. TFTim Ferriss36:56

       [laughs]

    9. TRTish Rabe36:57

       And they went bananas. They're like, "Done!" I guess, okay. [laughs]

    10. TFTim Ferriss37:01

        [laughs]

    11. TRTish Rabe37:01

        Just make this stuff up. It's what I do all day. I don't... And Oh, Baby, the Places You'll Go! is a bestseller, flies off the shelf. So Oh, Baby, The Places You'll Go!

    12. TFTim Ferriss37:11

        Oh, Baby, The Places You'll Go!

    13. TRTish Rabe37:12

        Very sweet. And you know the other thing I, just real quick about that, I, I am very careful to say to everyone, you do not have to have kids to write for kids. Many, many, many fabulous authors did not. However, the last page of Oh, Baby, The Places You'll Go! Some, I don't even know who drew it, 'cause I don't think Ted drew it, but there's a little pregnant mom, Seussian little pregnant mom sitting there, you know. And I had two kids, I have a son and a daughter, and at the end I wrote, "It's a scrumptious world, and it's ready to greet you, and as for myself, well, I can't wait to meet you."

    14. TFTim Ferriss37:50

        [laughs]

    15. TRTish Rabe37:50

        And I really have to say, I think if I'd never had kids, I don't know that I would have come up with that. That's the last-

    16. TFTim Ferriss37:58

        Mm

    17. TRTish Rabe37:58

        ... page in this bestselling book. But it just was, flew off the shelves. [laughs] Still does.

15. 38:06 – 41:58

    The secret to perfect rhyme in Dr. Seuss’s paradigm.

    1. TFTim Ferriss38:06

       So when you got that first assignment, here you go, pile of research birds, pile of research on fill in the blank. Couple of questions related to that, so you can tackle whichever one you'd like to tackle.

    2. TRTish Rabe38:20

       Okay.

    3. TFTim Ferriss38:20

       So one question is, how on earth do you pick what to include [laughs] out of these many, many stacks? Because you have to be really selective. The other question is, what guardrails/rules do they give you-

    4. TRTish Rabe38:34

       Mm-hmm

    5. TFTim Ferriss38:37

       ... to keep you within the universe and tone and feel of Dr. Seuss?

    6. TRTish Rabe38:43

       Well, a couple of things. The first thing about what to put in the book, they did the research for me for the first two books, but for all the many, many books I wrote after that, I did my own research. And what I did that really saved me and surprises a lot of people is I went to the children's department in the local library and pulled everything they had on the topic, because already it's not in rhyme, fine, but it's already been simplified, right? So I would get a spiral notebook for every book and write and write and write and write the facts about space, the facts about insects, of which I knew nothing, and r- get 'em all written down, and then figure out if anything popped as a rhyming potential word. One of my very proudest was, "When birds want to go on a winter vacation, they all take a trip and they call it migration."

    7. TFTim Ferriss39:44

       [laughs] Great.

    8. TRTish Rabe39:46

       And because at one point I was writing down that birds migrate and migration, I thought, oh, vacation, you know what? So that was one thing. And as far as guardrails, there are two kinds of rhyming in children's books, and migration and vacation is perfect Seussian rhyme. Farm and barn is what they call a slant rhyme. It's close, but it's not a pure rhyme. Dr. Seuss insisted on two things. The rhythm had to be perfect. On the 15th of May in the jungle of Nool, Horton the Elephant sat in the pool. Doesn't vary, it never varies, and the end rhymes are pure. Right? Nool. Something Ted did, and I did as well, is if he was in trouble for a rhyme, he made up a word.

    9. TFTim Ferriss40:44

       [laughs]

    10. TRTish Rabe40:45

        So in The Sleep Book, one of my favorites is, "Have you met the Van Vlex?" Or something like that. "When they sleep, they yawn so wide you can see down their necks." You know, so he made up the Vlex to ma-

    11. TFTim Ferriss40:57

        [laughs]

    12. TRTish Rabe40:57

        So in my book, Oh, The Pets You Can Get, Oh, The Pets You Can Get takes place in Gerplets, where they know quite a bit about caring for pets.

    13. TFTim Ferriss41:06

        [laughs]

    14. TRTish Rabe41:07

        So I made up Gerplets to [laughs] in homage to Ted, because when you're in trouble, you know, make something, that's what he did.

    15. TFTim Ferriss41:15

        It's a clever fix, and that became his trademark-

    16. TRTish Rabe41:17

        It was

    17. TFTim Ferriss41:17

        ... on one of his big rhymes.

    18. TRTish Rabe41:18

        I mean, he was genius. I mean, he just made this stuff up all the time. So those were the two things. Uh, how to get what the facts were for the books, keep it simple, make stuff that rhymes the kids... And what, what really works well about rhyme is there are kids that would not have ever known what the word migration meant, but they loved the rhyme, and they remembered the rhyme. So it's a very, very successful... I mean, a- after that, every single one of my books rhymes, because of that, 'cause it works.

    19. TFTim Ferriss41:52

        It is their first exposure to a mnemonic device-

    20. TRTish Rabe41:56

        Mm-hmm

    21. TFTim Ferriss41:56

        ... right?

    22. TRTish Rabe41:57

        Always, yep.

    23. TFTim Ferriss41:57

        And,

16. 41:58 – 44:58

    Is rhyming a part of Tish’s DNA, or did she learn it along the way?

    1. TFTim Ferriss41:58

       you know, I've done, I mean, I think you would blow me out of the water. I have so many questions about, so many questions about how your mind works. But I did a bunch of cognitive testing recently with a pretty well-vetted, studied battery of, of different tests, and I'm 48, but I aged 20. Now the only reason I aged 20 is because I have these mnemonic devices.

    2. TRTish Rabe42:23

       Mm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss42:23

       I've trained myself to be able to do it.

    4. TRTish Rabe42:25

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss42:25

       And rhyme is a fantastic, in some ways instinctive example of that.

    6. TRTish Rabe42:31

       Mm-hmm.

    7. TFTim Ferriss42:31

       Have you always had a mind for- ... rhyming or is that a trained muscle? And also your recall.

    8. TRTish Rabe42:38

       Mm-hmm.

    9. TFTim Ferriss42:39

       I mean, good Lord.

    10. TRTish Rabe42:40

        [laughs]

    11. TFTim Ferriss42:40

        You have just incredible recall. Ha- have you always been that way? Are other people in your family like that?

    12. TRTish Rabe42:46

        I had a phenomenal English teacher in high school. So in, uh, high school for me, Needham High School, Needham, Massachusetts, not only did my music director end up getting me my first job in New York, but my, uh, Mr. Allen, my English teacher, was phenomenal, and what he used to have us do is write poems, sonnets. We wrote plays. We wrote, you know. And it, it helped me understand the format and also how to figure out end rhyme and limericks. I have a book that is still not published. I think I'm gonna end up publishing it myself. [laughs] But I sort of built on the Morris O'Rurous book, and I wrote a whole book for him, three actually, for Nickelodeon, that are in limerick rhyme. [laughs]

    13. TFTim Ferriss43:38

        Perfect.

    14. TRTish Rabe43:38

        You know, Have You Met Morris? He's... And I changed him to an Oopsosaurus, 'cause he's kinda clumsy. Got a 12-foot tail. But anyway, Have You Met Morris? He's an Oopsosaurus, a dinosaur, if you can't guess. But sometimes he bumps things, and sometimes he thumps things, and sometimes he makes a big mess. So the entire [laughs] the entire book's in limerick rhyme. But yes, that, that background, and I am sincere saying that I was really torn between majoring in English in college and being a writer or a singer. I'm very happy I decided to be a singer, 'cause now I can do both, but [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss44:16

        [laughs]

    16. TRTish Rabe44:17

        But yeah, crazy.

    17. TFTim Ferriss44:19

        So do you think the ability to construct rhyme came from that education and the practice in the English class, or do you just have the equivalent of some type of perfect pitch for-

    18. TRTish Rabe44:32

        [laughs] For rhyming

    19. TFTim Ferriss44:33

        ... rhyming out of the box? What do you think?

    20. TRTish Rabe44:34

        Well, I will tell you this is funny, because when I first started, my husband bought me a computer program that was called A Million Gazillion Rhymes. Seriously.

    21. TFTim Ferriss44:44

        Mm-hmm.

    22. TRTish Rabe44:44

        And I would sit there all day long and type the word in. What rhymes with antenna? [laughs]

    23. TFTim Ferriss44:51

        [laughs]

    24. TRTish Rabe44:51

        You know, anything? Hello? Then after, over the years, I have gotten to the point where now I just know what they rhyme.

17. 44:58 – 46:36

    The time Tish transformed a planet from pizza into nickels to make her deadline.

    1. TRTish Rabe44:58

       But speaking of mnemonics, I think you'll get a kick out of this. This is the page in my best-selling solar system book, Dr. Seuss, right?

    2. TFTim Ferriss45:08

       Mm-hmm. All About Our Solar System.

    3. TRTish Rabe45:09

       All About Our Solar System. So things are going fine, and I write this mnemonic, "You've seen all the planets. Now here is a trick to remember their names and remember them quick." And I write the whole thing, "Mallory, Valerie, Emily Meetzes just served up 999 pizzas." So, so far so good, except pizza stood for Pluto. And-

    4. TFTim Ferriss45:36

       [laughs]

    5. TRTish Rabe45:37

       So I get a call from Random House. Pluto has been demoted. [laughs]

    6. TFTim Ferriss45:42

       [laughs]

    7. TRTish Rabe45:42

       And I'm like, "What?" I'm on the phone. And they said, "Can you fix this? But we can't get the illustrator to change the art." So Emily here, Valerie, Emily, uh, what is her name? Mallory, Valerie, Emily Meetzes was holding pizzas. So I'm like, "Okay." So I changed it to, "Mallory, Valerie, Emily Mickels just showed us 999 nickels."

    8. TFTim Ferriss46:10

       [laughs]

    9. TRTish Rabe46:11

       And all the art g- [laughs] all the art guy had to do was change the pizza boxes to nickels. Saved. [laughs]

    10. TFTim Ferriss46:20

        [laughs]

    11. TRTish Rabe46:21

        But I'm like, what? What do you mean Pluto? Give me a break. I mean, seriously.

    12. TFTim Ferriss46:24

        Pluto's been demoted. Come on, guys.

    13. TRTish Rabe46:25

        We went from nine planets to eight? I'm not, I'm not prepared for this. [laughs]

    14. TFTim Ferriss46:30

        [laughs]

    15. TRTish Rabe46:30

        So this kind of stuff goes on all day. This is what I do for a living, but it is fun. I mean, you have to keep your sense of humor.

18. 46:36 – 51:59

    Has music as a mission preserved Tish’s cognition?

    1. TFTim Ferriss46:37

       I'm gonna move on to asking you more about the craft, but if you don't mind me asking-

    2. TRTish Rabe46:41

       Yes

    3. TFTim Ferriss46:41

       ... what is your age at present?

    4. TRTish Rabe46:43

       At the moment, I am 74. I'll be 75 in July, and I started my own company when I turned 71. [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss46:52

       71.

    6. TRTish Rabe46:52

       Yeah.

    7. TFTim Ferriss46:52

       And we're, we are definitely going to talk all about that.

    8. TRTish Rabe46:55

       [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss46:56

       Do you have siblings?

    10. TRTish Rabe46:57

        I do.

    11. TFTim Ferriss46:57

        And, like, e- everyone in your family as razor sharp as you are? I mean, that's a hard question. I don't want to throw your siblings under the bus, but-

    12. TRTish Rabe47:04

        [laughs]

    13. TFTim Ferriss47:05

        ... I'm so curious to what you attribute being... I mean, you're sharper than 99% of my friends-

    14. TRTish Rabe47:12

        [laughs] I appreciate that

    15. TFTim Ferriss47:13

        ... who are my age or younger.

    16. TRTish Rabe47:15

        Yep.

    17. TFTim Ferriss47:16

        And I'm wondering to what you attribute that.

    18. TRTish Rabe47:19

        My parents got married when the, as World War II was starting, and when my father came home, he was a prisoner of war, they wanted to start a family. And they had two little boys and a little girl, and the little girl was me. And my father used to come home and play piano for about a half hour after work, but I do not come from a musical family at all. My mom was an English major, so she loved to write, so she was a writer. But music was not a thing in our family, and my brothers didn't play much, and it was fine. They played sports. Well, supposedly [laughs] when I was seven, I was in first grade, my father was playing this song he played every single night. It was my mother's favorite, and I just stood up and started singing with him, and they still talk about it. It was c- a song called Tammy, from Tammy and the Bachelor movie. My mother loved it. "I hear the cottonwood whispering above. Tammy, Tammy, Tammy's my love." And the whole r- my brothers were doing their homework. They stopped. My mother was doing something in the kitchen. She stopped. My father stopped. Every- [laughs]

    19. TFTim Ferriss48:25

        [laughs]

    20. TRTish Rabe48:25

        It was like, I don't even know what just happened. And I was just encouraged from day one to pursue music and writing, and so it was a very receptive... And I, I'll be honest, when I went to college, I told my mother, "I'm gonna get a degree in singing." Well now you'd say, "Well, what are you gonna do to eat?" You know, that's nice, but if you don't make it on Broadway, right, what are you gonna do? I was the only one in my class, Ithaca College, class of '72, that did not take an education backup.

    21. TFTim Ferriss48:58

        Hmm.

    22. TRTish Rabe48:59

        I didn't want to teach music. I didn't want to teach kids do re mi fa so la ti do. I wanted to be a star on Broadway. [laughs] It's just like, are people missing this? You know? [laughs]

    23. TFTim Ferriss49:08

        [laughs]

    24. TRTish Rabe49:08

        What part of this are you guys missing? So I literally was convinced I would leave college and come to New York, and within a year, name in lights. Piece of cake.

    25. TFTim Ferriss49:21

        [laughs]

    26. TRTish Rabe49:21

        You know? [laughs] And, uh, only anybody as nuts as I am would think that, but hey. And, you know-

    27. TFTim Ferriss49:27

        Hmm

    28. TRTish Rabe49:27

        ... my parents never blinked. They, they said, "Sure, if you think this is gonna work, good luck." [laughs]

    29. TFTim Ferriss49:33

        [laughs]

    30. TRTish Rabe49:33

        So it just has always been a part of my life.
19. 51:59 – 58:10

    What does Tish aim to do with the company she started in her 70s?

    1. TFTim Ferriss51:59

       What made Sweet Dreams work, right? What makes it work, and maybe even more broadly, what makes lullabies work? What are the other ingredients? You mentioned the mapping to a public domain melody is really smart.

    2. TRTish Rabe52:15

       Mm-hmm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss52:15

       I mean, that makes so much sense at a lot of levels. What else makes that book work?

    4. TRTish Rabe52:20

       I started my own company right during COVID, 2020, right?

    5. TFTim Ferriss52:25

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TRTish Rabe52:25

       COVID's flying around, and what am I gonna do? And, you know, turned 70, what now what? And I was introduced to a program with... A friend of mine said, "You have to meet the people at Pajama Program." It's now called Beyond Bedtime, but then it was called Pajama Program. So I went in and I found out that they give free pajamas and storybooks to kids facing difficult adversity.

    7. TFTim Ferriss52:51

       Hmm.

    8. TRTish Rabe52:52

       Many kids don't, not having any pajamas, any storybooks. So I kind of went in to meet with them [laughs] thinking, "Well, maybe I could do a fundraiser or get my girlfriends to, you know, send in some pajamas or something." And they said, "What we really need is to help parents learn how to get their kids to go to sleep." And I said, "The best thing that works for this is to write a storybook they'll read to their kids, and then put the tips in the back and they'll read them too." And then I put them all in rhyme. So 30 to 60 minutes before you tuck them in is the perfect time for their bedtime routine to begin. And what's happening is parents read the book and they read the tips out loud to the kids. So the kids are going, [laughs] "Oh, 30 to 60 minutes. Mom, [laughs] you know, we're supposed to be in bed now." [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss53:45

       [laughs]

    10. TRTish Rabe53:45

        And then of course you sing a lullaby, 'cause singing is so restful. And the kids... And now it's been out for a couple years, everybody knows the songs. The kids know it, you know, the kids at school, they sing it in school, daycare. So it's very, very powerful. [laughs]

    11. TFTim Ferriss54:04

        I want to come to starting your company-

    12. TRTish Rabe54:07

        Mm-hmm

    13. TFTim Ferriss54:07

        ... and the reasons behind that. Why did you start a company at 70?

    14. TRTish Rabe54:12

        At 70. [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss54:13

        And there's nothing wrong with that.

    16. TRTish Rabe54:14

        Oh, I know. What do you mean? That's-

    17. TFTim Ferriss54:15

        I'm just curious what the reasons were behind that.

    18. TRTish Rabe54:17

        Well, it's funny, I ended up marrying a guy I met in high school. That high school, it shaped my whole life. [laughs]

    19. TFTim Ferriss54:23

        Produced so many crown jewels.

    20. TRTish Rabe54:25

        Produced everything.

    21. TFTim Ferriss54:25

        Yeah.

    22. TRTish Rabe54:26

        So many jewels. And, uh, my husband and I live in Mystic, Connecticut, and he's an avid fisherman. So during the fishing season he fishes three to four days a week. So I'm sitting there going, "Well, what am I gonna do? You know, let's think." And I really felt that I had some ideas for books that the other publishers weren't doing. One book I'm very proud of is called Love You, Hug You, Read To You. It was my very first book, and it's a board book. And I had begged all these publishers I work with to do a book with what they call dialogic reading. And dialogic reading has little questions. So you got the adorable mama cat reading to her little kittens, and the little thing below says, "What do you think the little kittens are thinking?" And that helps the child go, "I think they just love that their mom's reading to them." And it sets up a dialogue. That's why dialogic reading. I couldn't get anyone to let me write a book for them. So I finally said, "Well, then I'll just do it myself." So what I'm doing now with my books is I have the ability to do what I want to do and the, the messages I feel never got out there. It has been a huge learning curve or spike [laughs] because I always just turned the words in, and somebody magically, a year and a half later-

    23. TFTim Ferriss55:50

        [laughs]

    24. TRTish Rabe55:50

        ... sent me 10 copies of the book. [laughs] Now, I've got to find an illustrator and a, you know, a printer and a shipment thing and be on Amazon and sell books on my website and ah, you know. But I absolutely love every minute of it. It is so much fun.

    25. TFTim Ferriss56:10

        This is [laughs] gonna be, I suppose, maybe off-topic. My listeners are gonna be like, "What are you... What are... Why are you asking about fishing?"

    26. TRTish Rabe56:15

        [laughs]

    27. TFTim Ferriss56:15

        What does your husband love so much about fishing? I went on my first wilderness, like, outdoor survival training trip in Montana specifically, and the guide brought along something called tenkara rods, which are these very simple-

    28. TRTish Rabe56:31

        Mm

    29. TFTim Ferriss56:31

        ... rods with a Japanese design. They are simplicity itself, and we would just stop at random holes and give it a shot.

    30. TRTish Rabe56:40

        [laughs]
20. 58:10 – 1:02:28

    Sometimes Apart, Always in My Heart: A military kid’s book born from a POW father’s legacy and a high-five traced on paper.

    1. TFTim Ferriss58:10

       Well, let's talk about Alaska and-

    2. TRTish Rabe58:15

       [laughs] Yes

    3. TFTim Ferriss58:16

       ... Sometimes A Part, Always In My Heart.

    4. TRTish Rabe58:18

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss58:18

       What is the context of what I just mentioned? Can you tell the story?

    6. TRTish Rabe58:22

       The aegis of this book is interesting. As I think I told you, I am the child of a World War II hero.

    7. TFTim Ferriss58:29

       Mm-hmm.

    8. TRTish Rabe58:30

       My dad was in college when he enlisted, and he was in engineering. He's an engineer. So they m- made him a navigator, and a navigator in a B-17 sits in the front with the pilot and shows them the maps and stuff like that. And his plane was hit by enemy fire, burst into flames. He jumped out and was arrested and spent a little under two years in a German prison camp. That's when he came home, and they had my brothers, and they had me. Two boys and a little girl. The little girl was me. And all through the years writing children's books, I had wanted to write a book for military kids and military families in honor of my father but also 'cause I felt no one understands this life. No one understands the sacrifices they go through. And I'm the grandmother of two little girls who are five and three, and I s- got thinking about what it means to my granddaughter when my son is in, away on business for two days, and the military kids see their parents, their moms, and their dads go for a year. And I tried everything. I tried Department of Defense, [laughs] Department of Education, the naval bases. I'm like, "Oh, can somebody help me do this?" You know? Fast-forward, I'm starting my own company, and I got clearance to go on the base at the Groton Naval Base, which is right next to Mystic, Connecticut. I went into their library. I got permission to go into their library. I read every single book for military children in the library and didn't see anything that was helpful for this topic. And I was literally leaving, and the librarian said, "What are you here for?" And I said-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:00:20

       [laughs]

    10. TRTish Rabe1:00:20

        ... "I want to write a book for military kids." And she said, "Oh." And she l- smiled at me, and she said, "You just need to reach out to United Through Reading." And I looked at her, and I said, "United Through Reading? Okay." United Through Reading records deployed service members reading books to their kids. Hold it up. Read the book. Then they send the video recording home to the child with a free copy of the book so that they can all read together. And when I heard this story, I said, "Well, what I wanna do is write a book from the point of view, it's lovely that they're reading Cat in the Hat and There's No Place Like Space, and that's all nice, but I want them to have a book that reflects their story. This is where I am. I miss you, but I'm fine. You know, you're fine. I'm fine. It's fine." And the first thing I did was I interviewed service members, spouses, partners, and kids. It took me months. I have notebooks full of this stuff about what it's like to walk away from your three-year-old and hope you'll be back to see her someday, to serve our country and keep us safe. And I got inspired to write the book. The people I interviewed gave me tips to put in the book for young families facing this for the first time. And one of my favorites was an early interview. She said, "When my husband leaves, he traces his hand on paper, and I put it up next to the door so the kids can give him a high five every time they leave." I mean, really. [laughs]

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:02:05

        Mm.

    12. TRTish Rabe1:02:05

        So Sometimes a Part Always in My Heart: Helping Military Families Send Love From Far Away. I was honored to write it. I've received a lot of big awards for it. It's really a passion project for me because I cannot imagine my son walking away from my granddaughters for a year, but it happens every day.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:02:27

        Mm.

21. 1:02:28 – 1:10:04

    Alaska the stuffed dog, financial literacy bunnies, hallucinated seagulls, and 843 acres of Central Park in 24 pages.

    1. TRTish Rabe1:02:28

       And then the funny thing about Alaska, [laughs] this is really fun. Here's Alaska.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:02:33

       So Alaska is, is a little stuffed dog.

    3. TRTish Rabe1:02:35

       He's a little stuffed dog, and I went to buy my granddaughter a little present, and he literally fell in my bag. And I'm looking at him going, "Well, he's awful cute." And then I thought, wow, I was right in the middle of writing Sometimes a Part Always in My Heart, and a lot of service members have to leave their pets, it's horrible, because they get relocated and sometimes can't take them with them. So I said to myself, "Okay, I'm gonna have the bear family have a dog," here he is right there, "and have him adopted from a shelter." And then I thought, well, a lot of, there's a lot of training in Alaska, and I googled... One thing, all of you, if you ever wanna create a character, first thing you do is google the name. Because in, for me, if I find out that I was gonna name him, you know, Tony, and I put in Tony the dog and there already is one, I would name him something else.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:03:39

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TRTish Rabe1:03:39

       It's just not worth the hassle. And I put in Alaska, and the only thing that came up was Alaskan Huskies, but not the name Alaska, so I named him Alaska. But the cool thing was I sent one of these little dogs to my art director and my illustrator, and from the first minute, she was able to put him in the book the way he really looks. And one of the things that happens to service members, that's him getting adopted from the shelter.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:04:09

       [laughs]

    7. TRTish Rabe1:04:10

       One of the things that happens to service members is they miss, they all said to me that what the hardest thing is missing their families and missing the day-to-day little stuff. So in the bear family, Daddy Bear's on a location, and they adopt Alaska while he's gone. So in the [laughs] the last page of the book is Alaska jumping on him 'cause they just met. It's just like [laughs]

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:04:37

       [laughs]

    9. TRTish Rabe1:04:38

       And I also wanted to have this little dog so the kids reading the book, and they also have a little soft guy to go with him.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:04:45

        Mm.

    11. TRTish Rabe1:04:45

        So he's on my website. Right, Alaska? Yes.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:04:48

        [laughs]

    13. TRTish Rabe1:04:50

        So really inspired to write that one.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:04:53

        Is the best place for people to find the book and Alaska at tishrabeebooks.com? Where would you suggest they find the book?

    15. TRTish Rabe1:05:01

        Yes. The book and Alaska are on tishrabeebooks.com. We have e-commerce all set up, and you're just ready to go home, right, with anybody. [laughs]

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:05:10

        [laughs]

    17. TRTish Rabe1:05:10

        Um, that was another fun thing. Who'd ever made a plush dog before, you know? And the nice thing was-

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:05:15

        [laughs]

    19. TRTish Rabe1:05:16

        ... the only thing they had to do was put his little bandana on.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:05:19

        Mm-hmm.

    21. TRTish Rabe1:05:19

        'Cause this is the real dog I found, but all he just had, it says Alaska and the name of the book. They didn't have to build a whole new dog to just adapt.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:05:30

        The spelling, folks, I'll just remind you. Rabe is R-A-B-E, so T-I-S-H-R-A-B-E books.com. What else can people find on your website? What else will people find there?

    23. TRTish Rabe1:05:43

        [laughs] There's a lot going on on my website. I have a lot of books in development. One of [laughs] I just started my company, this is always makes me f- laugh. This one is called Days Can Be Sunny for Bunnies and Money.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:05:57

        [laughs]

    25. TRTish Rabe1:05:58

        I ha- [laughs] I got a call from a bank in Ohio. They wanted something for kids because financial literacy is a huge thing. You know, you've gotta start young.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:06:08

        Mm.

    27. TRTish Rabe1:06:09

        So I came up with these three bunnies, and they're triplets. And Honey Fern likes to earn, Sunny Dave likes to save, and Funny Ben likes to spend. Dun, dun, dun, dun.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:06:20

        [laughs]

    29. TRTish Rabe1:06:21

        So anyways, the thing goes on, and at the end, they also give some of their eggs to the library, and this is them-

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:06:29

        Mm
22. 1:10:04 – 1:11:09

    Tish’s campaign to get free books to kids in underserved neighborhoods.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:10:04

       exciting.

    2. TRTish Rabe1:10:04

       And I'm working on a big campaign, which is going very well, to get people to help me fund free copies of the Central Park book to kids in underserved neighborhoods in the five boroughs of-

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:10:18

       Mm

    4. TRTish Rabe1:10:18

       ... Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island, Queens, and Brooklyn. And again, when I met your friend Alon from this group in New York, this influencers group, I met a young woman who said, "I'll help you do this. It's on the landing page of my website," and we are absolutely crowdfunding enough money to give a book to every first grader in the underserved communities-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:10:44

       Wow

    6. TRTish Rabe1:10:44

       ... of the five boroughs in New York.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:10:45

       That's incredibly exciting.

    8. TRTish Rabe1:10:46

       Very exciting. [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:10:48

       Mm. I love that. I may have a group that could be also maybe of interest or could be interested in the book itself.

    10. TRTish Rabe1:10:55

        Sure.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:10:55

        But donorschoose.org, which I was involved with, and I, I suppose still am. I was involved with for ages.

    12. TRTish Rabe1:11:00

        Oh.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:11:01

        In any case-

    14. TRTish Rabe1:11:01

        Okay

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:11:02

        ... we'll link to the website-

    16. TRTish Rabe1:11:03

        Sure

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:11:03

        ... and link the crowdfunding separately for people who would like to

23. 1:11:09 – 1:12:57

    Advice for aspiring children’s book authors.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:11:09

       contribute to that. Is... You mentioned 24 pages. Is that the canonical length? That's probably not the right modifier, but is that the default length of most children's books?

    2. TRTish Rabe1:11:21

       They're kind of all over the place. The Dr. Seuss books are 42 pages.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:11:26

       Mm.

    4. TRTish Rabe1:11:27

       And what's happening is hopefully, we hope, hope, hope, hope, is that parents read to their kids when they're going to sleep or, you know, when they're home from school, and it's kind of tricky 'cause if they're too long, it gets too much. So starting my own company, I thought, "Well, let me start with 24 pages." The interesting thing also to share, we do other languages. Here's Sweet Dreams in Spanish.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:11:58

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TRTish Rabe1:11:59

       And also pace of, you know, not a million words on a page. Kids love to turn pages. There's a whole kind of part of this that's just how it works.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:12:11

       Adults like to turn pages too. [laughs]

    8. TRTish Rabe1:12:14

       Exactly. Exactly. They're, "Are we gonna turn? Are we gonna see more artwork here or what?" The other thing I urge people who want to write a children's book is to really think about the illustrator. I had worked with Jill Guile in London on a number of books. We did the Huff and Puff Train books, and I knew for this book, which is all about reading and snuggling and going to sleep, that she was the perfect illustrator. And a book like Bunnies and Money, it's supposed to be funny. It's this wacky group of kids. This is another kind of artwork. So it really depends on what your message is and what your style is of who you pick.

24. 1:12:57 – 1:14:40

    Tish doesn’t get derailed by writer’s block — she prepares for it.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:12:57

       If you're stuck on a book, if that ever happens-

    2. TRTish Rabe1:13:00

       Mm-hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:13:00

       ... but let's just say something's not working-

    4. TRTish Rabe1:13:03

       Yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:13:03

       ... what's your, your go-to move? Do you Change the idea, the meter, the sentence. How do you start to get unstuck if something isn't working?

    6. TRTish Rabe1:13:14

       I did a presentation to a group of writers called Girls Write, W-R-I-T-E Now, and I had young women in my, in the room with me, and then we had Zoom calls on across the country. It was the first time anyone has asked me if I get writer's block.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:13:35

       Mm-hmm.

    8. TRTish Rabe1:13:35

       No one has ever asked me that. This was a couple months ago. And I remember thinking, "Yes, I do." And what I do is if I get hired to write a book, and I still write for other people, I just finished another book for Harper Collins. If they say, "We have to have your first draft by April 1st," okay, April. I write in it's due February 15th because I know there's gonna be a day when I cannot do this. I can't figure it out. It's not going anywhere. I'm stuck. So when that happens, I stop. If I just say, "I cannot think one more minute about what Funny Ben spent his money on," [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:14:21

       [laughs]

    10. TRTish Rabe1:14:21

        ... for instance, just a for instance, I will let it go, work on something else, you know, work on another book, do something. Because you, it is true, you c- you get circled in like a self dissolve in.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:14:37

        Mm-hmm.

    12. TRTish Rabe1:14:37

        You're just so consumed by it.

25. 1:14:40 – 1:16:54

    When Michelle Obama added 16 pages to a book Tish thought would be boring.

    1. TRTish Rabe1:14:40

       This is a great example of that. This is interesting. This is the one that I wrote all about the things you can do that are good for you.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:14:48

       Mm-hmm.

    3. TRTish Rabe1:14:49

       And this was the only time that I got this assignment, and honestly, Tim, I thought, "That is the most boring idea I have ever [laughs] heard."

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:15:00

       [laughs]

    5. TRTish Rabe1:15:01

       They wanted a book, the American Academy of Pediatrics wanted a book about go to sleep, eat healthy, exercise. Da, da, da. I thought, "I can't. [laughs] This is..."

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:15:12

       [laughs]

    7. TRTish Rabe1:15:12

       Oh my God. First of all, you cannot write this stuff without sounding preachy. Do this, do that, do this, do that. Da, da. So I ca- I got my courage up and I called Random House and I said, "How would you feel if I created my own Dr. Seuss characters, like Zing Singing Zans Who Loves Washing Her Hands?" Right?

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:15:33

       Yeah.

    9. TRTish Rabe1:15:33

       And my editor at Random House said, "We cannot call Mrs. Geisel and say that you, mother of two living in Connecticut, are gonna start writing Dr. Seuss characters. All you can do is write the whole book, 42 pages, all rhyming, and we'll submit it to her, and if she turns it down, you gotta start over." And I, "Oh, great. Okay." So I write the whole book. Here's one. Here's the Zing Singing Zans Who Loves Washing Her Hands. "Squishily washly, washly wish. Squishily squashly, squashly squish. Wash your hands carefully, it's up to you. Use soap and warm water, it's easy to do. Rinse them, and while we all sing this refrain, germs from your hands will slide right down the drain." So fir- sure, fine. Okay. So I turn this in, [laughs]

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:16:22

        [laughs]

    11. TRTish Rabe1:16:22

        I turn this in and I go, "Oh, boy."

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:16:23

        [laughs]

    13. TRTish Rabe1:16:23

        I told my husband, "I got no B, plan B does not exist." I had the Sneek Sneeker Sneeth Who Loves Brushing Her Teeth. Anyway, they loved it. Thank you, Mrs. Geisel. And they put it out. And Michelle Obama funded 16 additional pages with exercises and all kinds of stuff she loves.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:16:43

        [laughs]

    15. TRTish Rabe1:16:44

        But that was a perfect example of what am I gonna do? I said, [laughs] "This is so boring." And it turned out to be a huge bestseller, but it is funny.

26. 1:16:54 – 1:21:02

    Big Bird in China, 1982: One hand-painted costume, 13 days of rain, zero coffee, and a five-year-old who memorized the wrong script.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:16:54

       We're gonna land the plane in just a few minutes. This has been so fun. But I wanted to also ask you, 1982, Big Bird in China, what was that like?

    2. TRTish Rabe1:17:02

       That was really an extraordinary situation. We were the first crew allowed into China, the first film crew. A couple news guys had been in, but it was the first time anybody walked into China with a six-foot yellow bird, among other things.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:17:18

       [laughs]

    4. TRTish Rabe1:17:18

       Right? So somehow we got permission to, to shoot this thing, and we walked in and they shipped one, one Big Bird costume. And I was production mana- wonder what I was, associate producer at that point, I guess. And they literally said to us, "You cannot shoot this bird in the rain." They're hand-painted. They're hand-dyed feathers. If it starts to rain, you've gotta pull Carroll out, Carroll Spinney out of it, and you've gotta get, put it somewhere dry. So I thought I really knew what I was doing. I scheduled 13 rain days. We were there a month in China.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:17:56

       [laughs]

    6. TRTish Rabe1:17:57

       It poured the first 13 days. I mean, poured. I mean, not just little, you know, little rain. You know, just pou- So we would literally push him out and have him do one line. [laughs]

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:18:08

       [laughs]

    8. TRTish Rabe1:18:08

       "I don't know. Should we go this way or that way?" Boom, pull him back in and, you know, change him or... It was nuts.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:18:14

       [laughs]

    10. TRTish Rabe1:18:15

        So okay. But it did win the Emmy for Best Special for NBC, and it was a 90-minute special. That was another thing that was crazy.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:18:24

        That is long.

    12. TRTish Rabe1:18:25

        Oh my God. We got back with all this footage. First thing NBC said, "You know, maybe it should just be an hour." And we're all looking at each other-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:18:32

        Hmm

    14. TRTish Rabe1:18:32

        ... 'cause it had had a really complicated plot. You know, he's looking to find the Phoenix, at the end he finds the Phoenix. How do you cut the middle out? You know, we got... So anyway.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:18:40

        [laughs]

    16. TRTish Rabe1:18:40

        But so we, it did air as, as 90 minutes, but f- for us it was just crazy. I mean, absolutely c- e- everything that possibly could've gone wrong went wrong.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:18:50

        [laughs]

    18. TRTish Rabe1:18:51

        But we came home with it somehow, but it was really something. [laughs]

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:18:55

        How long were you there in total?

    20. TRTish Rabe1:18:56

        We were there a month. And, you know, there's no coffee. You guys, you can't have a film crew with no coffee. You just can't.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:19:02

        [laughs]

    22. TRTish Rabe1:19:03

        So the first day everyone's looking at me and going, "Where's the coffee?" I'm like, "Coffee? We're in China. I mean, no. [laughs] Tea. It's tea." You know, cup of tea. They didn't want tea, they wanted coffee. I said, "Well, you guys are gonna have to get it together 'cause this, this is not gonna happen." [laughs] Oh, man

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:19:17

        [laughs] 1982.

    24. TRTish Rabe1:19:19

        It was crazy, 1982.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:19:21

        Wow.

    26. TRTish Rabe1:19:21

        And I sing a song on that one. I sang the Monkey King song on that show, but, ugh, anyway, but it was crazy.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:19:27

        How fun.

    28. TRTish Rabe1:19:27

        Crazy.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:19:28

        What an experience. What an experience.

    30. TRTish Rabe1:19:29

        The other thing real quick is there was a five-year-old little girl from China, and she has the lead, right? And she and Big Bird travel all around. She spoke no English. Zero. She didn't even know how to say hello, right? They taught this to this little girl by rote, right? So she finally understood what "I love you" meant, finally, by, like, the last day of the shoot, [laughs] whatever. But we would send them scripts, right? And then we would change the scripts. But then we met her, and she'd memorized the original ones. So you'd be out in this shooting outdoors, and all of a sudden she'd say, "I don't know, Big Bird. Let's find out." And we'd go, "We cut that. Didn't we cut that, like, a year ago? [laughs] Wait a minute. Wait a minute."
27. 1:21:02 – 1:22:05

    Tish’s billboard.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:21:02

       experience.

    2. TRTish Rabe1:21:03

       Wild.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:21:03

       Tish, let me ask you a question. This is a metaphorical question, but it's a question I like to ask guests.

    4. TRTish Rabe1:21:10

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:21:10

       And that is, if you could put a message, could be lyrics, could be a line, a quote, a mantra, anything at all, on a huge billboard for lots of people or lots of kids to see, does anything come to mind that you might put on that billboard?

    6. TRTish Rabe1:21:25

       Wow, I would say, right now, I would say, "Remember that children are our most precious gift."

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:21:35

       Mm-hmm.

    8. TRTish Rabe1:21:36

       I get concerned about the way the world is going, and I just want everybody to remember that they are the most precious part of our world. 'Cause they are-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:21:46

       Right

    10. TRTish Rabe1:21:46

        ... the future, they are the dreams of the future, and we must take good care of them.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:21:52

        Mm.

    12. TRTish Rabe1:21:53

        And read, read, read. [laughs]

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:21:55

        Read, read, read. Read, read, read.

    14. TRTish Rabe1:21:58

        [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:22:00

        And I hope you keep writing, writing, writing-

    16. TRTish Rabe1:22:01

        [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:22:02

        ... as well.

    18. TRTish Rabe1:22:02

        That is the plan, I have to say.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:22:04

        That is the

28. 1:22:05 – 1:24:51

    Kindness is Caring, Friendship is Sharing and other parting thoughts.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:22:05

       plan.

    2. TRTish Rabe1:22:05

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:22:05

       Tish, is there anything else you'd like to mention? Any closing comments, anything at all you'd like to cover-

    4. TRTish Rabe1:22:12

       Mm-hmm

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:22:12

       ... or point people to?

    6. TRTish Rabe1:22:13

       Well, one thing I would like to say, I have another big book coming out. It's called Kindness is Caring, Friendship is Sharing, and it is written with international Rotary Clubs. Rotary Clubs are all across the country, all around the world, and it comes out in three weeks, and it's a gentle story. It takes place in Africa, about a little zebra, and it's about just that: friendship-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:22:37

       Right

    8. TRTish Rabe1:22:38

       ... caring, sharing, and making the world a kinder place. And I think the world has never needed it more, and I'm very proud of it, and it'll be out in three weeks. I just think we all have to be kind to each other, and I'm doing the best I can to make that happen.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:22:55

       We do. Rotary Club, amazing, amazing organization also.

    10. TRTish Rabe1:22:59

        Yes. They are.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:23:00

        Um, have some very, very old friends who I met-

    12. TRTish Rabe1:23:03

        Yeah

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:23:03

        ... who came through Rotary Club.

    14. TRTish Rabe1:23:05

        Well, the other thing too that's fun about it is it's a book for kids, right? But when young parents read it, we're hoping that they see it, learn about Rotary, and say, "Well, oh, let me find a Rotary in my community."

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:23:17

        Mm-hmm.

    16. TRTish Rabe1:23:17

        So we can get some new members and keep going. So we'll see.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:23:21

        I love it. I love it. Tish, you are such a joy to spend time with.

    18. TRTish Rabe1:23:26

        [laughs] Thank you. You too.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:23:27

        Thank you.

    20. TRTish Rabe1:23:27

        It was fun.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:23:27

        Thank you so much. And everybody listening, we will link to all things in the show notes, but do not miss going to Tish Rabe Books. That's T-I-S-H-R-A-B-E books.com. Contribute to the crowdfunding, and buy a few books while you're at it, and we'll link to all of your social media and so on. But people, definitely check out tishrabebooks.com. We'll link to other things that have come up in this conversation at tim.blog/podcast. You'll be easy to find. You're the only Tish.

    22. TRTish Rabe1:24:01

        I know. [laughs] I know. There's only a few of us out there, I know.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:24:04

        [laughs]

    24. TRTish Rabe1:24:04

        It's a beautiful thing.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:24:05

        Yes, beautiful, so it makes it very easy to find you. And to everybody listening, as always, this is how I close my shows. Be just a bit kinder than is necessary when you stop listening and go on with your day, not just to others, but also to yourself.

    26. TRTish Rabe1:24:22

        That's lovely.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:24:23

        And Tish, what a wonderful, wonderful time. I really appreciate you making the time to have this conversation.

    28. TRTish Rabe1:24:33

        You're welcome.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:24:33

        And I hope we cross paths again soon.

    30. TRTish Rabe1:24:36

        Yeah. I'll end with what I say to the kids. << Reading and writing, both are so exciting. Read a book or write a story, start right now. >> [laughs]

Episode duration: 1:25:12