Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history and little known facts behind your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and more. We are two guys with too much free time on our hands. My name is Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan run Tog and on this episode, we're diving into Blues Clues, the beloved children's TV show of the late nineties and early two thousand's, which recently turned twenty five years old. Passage of time, yes, and this grim passage was highlighted recently when Steve, the host of the show Our Dear Old Friend and the Green Polo, checked in with us with a very sweet viral video and frankly, it reminded me how much I missed him. What did you think of that? Did you grow up with him at all? My sister did? I mean, like, my sister's four years younger than me, and we were of the age where, like you know, we're watching Nickelodeon together. So, but she was a Blues Clues fan. I don't remember too much of it other than and you made me, You're gonna make me do this? Is? That was pretty good. Wow, there's some there's some money in the Man of Many Talent title. Thank you, thank you so much God this I'm just remembering this viral video. Man, I'm so sorry. Why what it is? Is it too too real? Forest? I wanted to tell you that I really couldn't have done all that without your help. And in fact, all the help that you help me with when we were younger is still helping me today right now. Your voice just cray. I never forgot you ever, and I'm super glad we're still friends. That's so rough, Like, come on, Steve, why is it rough? Just because you get so little, uh, your sacred cows when you're a kid, don't always come back in the best way. And to just have him like parachute into your life and just yeah, that was really the other thing is just like during this period when everything else in my life was making me cry constantly, just to have him come in and give every we want to personalized message of encouragement, Like come on, what was it even paid to you? I think it was the anniversary. Did you appreciate it or not? I can't, I honestly can't read you right now. I did it? Was it was very affecting. I I you know, like anything Nickelodeon or Disney, there's a little bit of like, well, our benevolent corporate overruns are reaching into our chest to pluck our heart strings so they can sell more ad space or whatever. But yeah, heart strings and purse strings tend to go and to be wound together. But but still we're getting ahead of ourselves. We're getting ahead of I thought it was very sweet. I did enjoy it as well. Well, yes, we're gonna get into that. We're gonna get into at the other end of the spectrum, the Steve Death rumors, that time he crashed a kid's birthday party with a swimsuit model. I love that story. Why Malcolm Gladwell shouted out the show as an example of television excellence and so much more. Here's everything you didn't know about Blues Clues. I like that this show had the purest of intentions. H it really did. I mean it's tough to remember now, but Blues Clues was a fairly radical departure from most children's TV shows when it premiered in We touched on this a little in the Rugrats episode. But the time, most shows were fairly violent and basically designed as a vehicle to sell toys, and this didn't sit well with three young producers, Angela Santamaro, Todd Kellsler, and Tracy Page Johnson. Santamerow had a master's degree in child development psych from Colombia, and this really sets the tone for the really serious level of prep work they put into each of these episodes. They enlisted a team of educators and consultants the craft a format that they thought would be engaging for kids rather than more passive shows like Sesame Street, which was seen as kind of the show's foil, And they adopted a narrative format instead of the more traditional magazine format. Again, think of like Sesame Street, where it's all kind of a little very quick bursts of cartoons or skits or whatever. And this was meant to be an interactive narrative with the host talking directly to the camera, imposing questions, and then they'd reinforced topics through repetition. And I guess it was also the first cutout animation series for preschoolers in the US. Would have been that like South Park around the exactly, it's yeah, she's really interesting. The fact that she was influenced by this guy, Daniel R. Anderson, was a sense that Santamaro, Yeah, yeah, Santamaro. I guess he has a PhD. Should be doctor Daniel R. Anderson, but developmental site guy and directly involved with half of children's television like Alligala Island were in The Big Blue House. Dory Explorer was an advisor on Captain Kangaroo. Oh my God, way are the o g the Wabulous World of Dr Seuss, Sesame Street, Go, Diego Go. Like he's been on the board of Sesame Streets. I can't keep a job. Hey, wow, that is incredible quite the CV. Anyway, they what do they give them? Something like a hundred and fifty grand for the pilot what it was saying yeah, And consequently the original production team wound up being the voice actors. Nick Balaban, who had been doing uh, I think he's still in Brooklyn, but he'd been doing sound design for like the Nick Jr. Bumpers. He wound up playing the role of Mr. Salt, while his co composer Michael Rubin did the voice of the Sun and I guess they did a table read to figure out who would voice Blue just like went around the table pointing a different mark and h Tracy Page Johnson wound up on top with that thing you heard me do so well at the top of the episode give us one more Wow. That is very very impressed with that. Mr Salt known for his French accent, but originally had a Brooklyn accent um, which is just bizarre telling kids to go to hell. You know the default for somebody New York accents is just like I'm walking. Yeah, but like you know, like imagine like a gruff voice like firefighter berating children about not getting clues in the form of a Salt. Yea even stranger. Blue wasn't a dog and he wasn't even blue. She wasn't blue. Sorry, I didn't mean a miss gender blue. They wanted to do a cat, an orange cat named Mr Orange. Name name these work? Yeah, this is our rather bit of just imagining these executives like chopping on a cigar like feed up at their desk, like, ah, lose the orange cat, make it um dog, make it blue, putting the cigar out on like the poor children's psychologist's face. So they didn't like the color. They turned the cat blue named Mr Blue? And why did they Why did they change animals. Well, so there's like a reference drop somewhere in here that Nickelodeon had a different animated series in the works that featured a cat. So the network was like, it's got to be a different it's gotta be a different lose this cat. Uh so, yeah, but we don't know what it was, right, It might have been dogs ket Dog. No cat dog was Cartoon Network. No cat dog was was Nickelodeon, but it was later Yeah, okay, so maybe so maybe tweet at us using the using the hashtag cigar chomping Nickelodeon n exact and tell us what series it was. But they had the working title Blueprints, which is cute like that, and they landed on blues Clues because apparently the kids they were testing testing it on, the kids who were the test audiences. That's just what they started calling it, which is you know, kids meant yeah, kids came up. That's a good title though, Nice job kids. The producers originally wanted a female host interacting with the kids, but they decided to see both men and women during the casting call and over a thousand people auditioned for this role of the host of the show, and the producers ultimately settled on Steve Burns, who was a twenty two year old kid from rural Pennsylvania whose only previous credits included an episode of Law and Order and a Dunkin Donuts commercial. He said about the Law and Order thing, he was like, I was autistic and I got killed. Yep. Oh yeah, We'll get into that later because it plays a major role in the Steve death rumors. Okay, okay, my my cousin went to college with Steve. They I think they did drama together and and that was like a huge ragging rights thing for me, like elementary school, that I had this distinct connection to Steve. So I always have a special spot in my heart for Steve for more than the usual reasons. So yeah, he very very short CV, but despite his lack of experience, Nickelodeon gave him the gig because he tested strongest with the audiences, I mean, the little kids loved him. And this all came as a surprise to Steve, who was basically a rock and roller at heart. And there's this great Spin profile from two thousand four where he talks about his early days and rural p A playing guitar and writing songs and jamming on David Bowie and a friend's cow pasture is a quote that I love. And you're from You're from where he from? Uh, Burks County County. Yeah, yeah, it's that's not not close to me. Did you ever jam the David Bowie and a cup pastor? Or you were more? You would you would jam on Danzig in a cup past We did, Yeah, we did. Like d I y punk rock shows atmostis you just like drag a several extension cords from the house out into the middle of a field, cool mini wood stock? Yeah, yes, Jordan's that was the vibe. So, I mean that was more where this guy was coming from. And he was a one to be rock and roller guy, and he moved to New York. He gave a storytelling performance at The Moth in two thousand and ten, and he admitted that he came to New York to become Serpico, which I don't know if he means to become Alpaccino or to become a cop I would assume al Pacino. So well, you missed you glossed over what his band was called his Buddies band that he joined. What was it? Called Nine Pound Truck. That's a very Pennsylvania band name. That's extremely yeah. So I mean again, he's a gigging actor. This Blues Clues audition is probably just one of like a dozen things that you know, he tried out for in all acting hopeful to try out for in a given week. So he knew very little about this show and he mistakenly thought that it was a voiceover gig, and because of that, he didn't attempt to cultivate any kind of a child friendly appearance whatsoever. And he showed up to the audition in full nineties grunge mode. He had long hair, earrings and like Stubble and the Gloning executives were not fond of this at all, and I guess the show's creator, Tracy Page Johnson, told him, Hey, can you not look like you when you come back next time? But he did and in the end he ended up getting the gig. The voice of Blue told him, please don't look like you when you come And while we're on the topic of Steve style, Steve the real life guy hated Steve the character's outfits a great deal. He gave an interview with Entertainment Weekly and he said that his signature green polos were quote carefully handmade to be as uncomfortable as possible. And I love those kids, loved the outfit and like most kids, they wanted to be just like heroes and where green striped polos as well. But the snag was these kids refused to remove their shirts because on the show, Steve always wore the same shirt, so they wanted to always wear the same shirt. So parents work in front of with the problem of getting kids to take off these filthy green polos and washed them. So Steve Burns inadvertently gave rise to a generation of smelly Ralph Lauren wearing toddlers. I wonder how long it took Nickelodeon to to turn around and market Steve Steve shirts. Steve shirts, Oh, that's got to be baked in. He's He's talked a lot about how not fun this was to shoot for him, because it's just like him alone in the studio, working like ten hour days. It sounds like me. So yeah, this was like a real problem get kids to change out of these shirts. So for Steve's replacement, Joe ak A Donovan Patton, who will get two more of him in the moment, they decided to give him a much more varied wardrobe so they wouldn't have this problem. But Steve apparently kept two of his Steve shirts for years because he's a good guy and he wanted to use them for like make a wish events and stuff like that and uh. And he has indeed made a lot of very special memories for children through personal appearances and stuff as the character of Steve. But my all time favorite incident in the time that he crashed the Toddler's Blues Clues themed birthday party wall on a date with a swimsuit model. This is so great, So cast your mind back to the year two thousand for a moment. Please follow me that the Wayne's World thing you know is on the charts eyes to a new millennium. Yes, and Steve Burns is on the list of People Magazine's most eligible bachelors and as a result, he's getting a lot of requests for dates. And he said he received a lot of letters from and even nude photos actually from who he described as quote forward thinking soccer moms who were his most ardent fans. But one day he gets a request for a date from the swimsuit model who I guess send some an eight by ten glossy and his phone number and encourages him the call. So Steve does, and they arranged dinner, and he drives out to New Jersey to pick her up at her house. And she's beautiful, and he's very eager to make a very good impression. And as though, driving through her neighborhood in the suburbs of New Jersey like some weird child friendly through Springsteen song on the Last Chance Power Drive exactly, he spots at her neighbor's house a birthday sign for a Blues Clues themed birthday party. So here's Steve pass on a Blues Clues themed birthday party for a bunch of toddlers. He's got the green shirt and some toys in the back of the car. He goes for it. I mean, can you imagine it must have been like if Elvis showed up made all of those kids lives. And he told the story during his appearance at the Brooklyn Storytelling Slam the Moth In and it's on YouTube and it's really fantastic. He definitely listened to it, and according to him, the date didn't end well because it was all an elaborate attempt on the part of the Swim's model to pitch him on a kid show about giant balloon animals called the Ballooneys, which is rough. You can't be sure who your friends are when your children's basic cable TV show star. That's rough. That's a tough lesson. I'm sorry he had to learn that. I got a giant balloon animal for you. How did you come here? Sweetheart? Uh? I cut that. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Too much information and just a moment. This Ballooney show likely wouldn't have caught on even if it did get made, because it lacked the same fastidious preparation that they used for Blues Clues. Tell us more about how they would go about putting episodes the higher education degree. But yeah, I mean a lot of people have read Tipping Point, the Malcolm Gladwell's from two thousand about how ends tend to take root and stick and ideas spread, and he uses this term sticky to describe Blues Clues as the stickiest TV show ever, meaning the most irresistible and involving. And this has to do with what we talked about with the sort of child psychology aspect of the production, and Blues Clues was unique at the time, and that had its own dedicated research department, which it does seem sort of strange to have a you know, quote unquote R and D approach to making a child's television show. But they would write the script, the R and D team would test it on a classroom full of preschoolers, take notes on how the kids responded, and each of these episodes went through this three times and they would kind of refine and things went on depending on what the kids, how the kids reacted. And this is stunning to me. Each episode took nine to ten months to produce. That is baffling. But you know, we're gonna keep reaching to Sesame Street because Blues Clues tested its episodes three times, a show like Sesame Street tested one in three of its episodes. Wow. And you know, while we while we're on the topic Sesame Street, you know, they're obviously the big dog and children's televised entertainment, and they took note of the success of Blues Clues when it premiered to night Stealing Our Lunch. Yeah, the same exact works. It also sme Sesame Street, find this Blue? I want him dead? Uh? When when the show premiered, Sesame Street was this big competition which had been on the air for nearly three decades at this point and reversal of fortunes, Blues Clues Uh started beating them in the ratings, and PBS took note and retooled Sesame Street to have that interactive kind of back and forth aspect to it instead of being kind of more didactic. And you know magazine ee like you said, we also I guess at this stage, Blues Clues probably had better guests. Did you know that Ray Charles appeared in Blues Clues VHS special Blues Clues Big Musical Movie. It was his final film role prior to was death four years later in two thousand four. What a way to go out, Ray, I know, I want to know. I would love to find out how that came about. You wanna know who he played? I sure do. He played the character of g Cleft, which, according to the Blues Clues fandom, wicki is a quote singing dancing musical symbol used to indicate the pitch of written notes with a funky attitude. He lives inside of a sheet music book owned by Steve. You know what is so bizarre about this? Which which part well this movie. The only other guest stars in this are members of the Brooklyn acapella group The Persuasions. That's it on the guest blue cameo money digit, It's Ray Charles, and then it's the Persuasions. Get me to Persuasions. Wow, even I'm trying to come up with a well like Ray Charles career. Sure, sure, that's that's gonna be By transition for this, Blues Clues had an incredibly long run. In fact, it was the longest running Nick Jr. Series for many many years. Premiered in the US on September and the premier I Guess was the highest rated premiere of any Nickelodeon program, and by two thousand two, Blues Clues was attracting thirteen point seven million viewers a week, which for context is basically what like The Big Bang Theory was getting in its final season. What was Steve was making because weren't they all making like a mill five per episode at that point on Big Bang? Yeah? Something ungodly It was like them friends and Fraser who were like making the most money per episode by like their show's final season was something crazy like that, like three and a half Men too. I feel like, yeah, I wonder what Steve was making. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we'll get into more of this later. He bought an old wood shop garage in Williamsburg in like oh seven and renovated it and flipped it. So I guess he's doing okay. But um, yes, so it's incredibly successful. The longest running Nick Junior series into it was surpassed by Dora the Explorer in two thousand eleven. Steve, as we mentioned at the top of the episode, he had kind of an uneasy relationship with the whole you know, being a children's TV show star a thing. I mean, he wasn't really what he saw for himself in life and in the show. In I think his final episodes, he leaves in the year two thousand two. Um, I think they taped him a couple of years earlier, and the show he leaves and goes off to college. But in real life, Steve, who was only twenty nine when he left the show, he didn't go to college. He did whatever the hell he wanted, which we're getting more into in a moment. But the reason that he would usually give an interviews for why he left the show was because he was rapidly balding, and he said he refused to lose his hair on national television in front of a generation of young children. And and this is partially true. By the final episode, he's wearing a baseball cap the whole time to hide his bald spot. And after he filmed his last show, he dramatically shaved his head. I'm picturing like I don't know, she Jane or something. Um. And when he was asked if this was a rebellious statement, he replied, yes, And the statement is we have male pattern baldness. He has some truly great SoundBite. Yeah, No, he's he's a quote machine. He's actually now imagine because we just did the Royal tenan bombs thing of just like needle in the head, his head in the bathroom here. So but of course, you know, you don't walk away from a presumably very lucrative gig because you're balding, because I imagine his his hefty salary would buy a lot of baseball caps. And he admitted that the show's global success kind of freaked him out. You know, I mean, he'd been a gigging actor before all of this, and he really had no intention of making a lifetime career as a children's TV personality. And by the same token, it kind of exacerbated his like imposter syndrome because he would say during his Moth monologue, I began thinking, do they have the right guy here? Maybe they need a teacher or a child development specialist. I was very conflicted about it. I mean, as you say, these were like people had masters and child's ecology from Colombia and stuff and the research team, and he was this kid from Pennsylvania who just kind of fell into this role. And yeah, so it definitely played on him. And you mentioned this earlier. It's worth noting that this gig was actually pretty hard. He was basically acting alone in front of a blue screen that the animation was added to, and he said it was quote maddening and likened it to acting at the bottom of a swimming pool. So it could have been very fun. Yeah, and you know, we also talked about the new guy, Donovan Donovan Pavan Patton, and they, you know, always with an eye towards the children. They crafted a three episode transitional arc, so it wouldn't be too jarring. They didn't like Steve died on the way back to his home planet and just pulled the animation cell out of frame, or like you know in Cheers, when like they're just like a coach, that guy Coach. The actor who played Coach died in between seasons and was summarily replaced by Woody Harrelson doing much the exact same character, and Coaches never mentioned again. They say, oh, he's visiting his niece messed up, or like in mash when Henry Blake goes away and they and they make his helicopter crash and there were no survivors. So, yes, Steve, Steve was not killed in his exit. He went away to college, yes, exactly, And so Donovan Patton was introduced to Steve's brother Joe, and Tracy Page. Johnson told People Magazine in two thousand two they made it Joe because they were sticking with the monosyllabic thing because Donovan was too hard for kids to say. And I have to assume this guy was putting people on when he started saying this, because apparently he had never seen he was not familiar with blues clues. He had never seen it and perhaps most hilariously thought it was a show about blues music. I mean, I see both sides of it, because he was what twenty three or something when he auditioned for this, and I, you know, I'm trying to think of like how where I was granted, children's entertainment has become so much more diffuse nowadays as opposed to you know, someone like Steve being on People's Most Eligible Bachelors. But there's still like an aspect of the monoculture to this, like it was getting covered in the Times and People magazine. There's no weight. I don't know. Also, like what twenty three old in two thousand is, like I'm gonna go audition for this show about the blues. It was a big Stevie Ray Vaughan fan. Anyway, Steve was apparently very cool to Donovan. You know, he trained him to take over the host spot, and he said, try not to think of this as children's TV, but rather acting and telling the truth. Just such a it's a very heartwar genuine thing. Yeah. Burns later told People mag that at the audition they both did Christopher walkin impressions at Patton's audition like dueling walk in these exactly. And this is an interesting bit. Another thing that Steve apparently told Donovan was one of the keys to the performance was not blinking. Patton told The New York Times one that Burns told me the producers would love it if he never blinked. They and and that's that's yard. But then he's, yeah, that is weird. They did research that shows kids pay more attention the less you blink. I would like to know what that experiment was. Yeah, yeah, that's edging into the sinister But I believe that they did that research all these grad school people. And then he said that Steve also gave him a ball of don Perignon. Oh yeah, because he could afford it. Unfortunately, he popped the cork and hit a kid. Would you want to give a brief history on actors not blinking? Icle? Well, okay, So the other thing that when when when I read this not blinking quote, immediately thought of this famous apocryphal thing about Hannibal Lecter not blinking. Anthony Hopkins supposedly doesn't blink. That is manifestly untrue. He blinks many times in the film. But I found this on this site that debunked the whole history of this. Apparently it was a Barbara Walters interview where she's talking to Anthony Hopkins and she says, you never blink talking about this performance, and Anthony Hopkins goes no. He says, it's a trick I learned because if you don't blink, you can keep the audience mesmerized, which will get to in a minute. The screenwriter of Silence Lambs, guy named Ted Tally, was asked about whether or not he liked Anthony Hopkins, and he later says, I don't know if you would notice this, but he only blinks one time in the entire movie. This is all untrue. This is just like part of the Silence of the Lambs like press scrum that people were just lying about whether or not Anthony Hopkins blinks in these movies anyway, in that movie anyway, that's Michael Caine's trick too. Yeah. So then you were like, well, have you heard Michael Caine talk about acting? Yes, there's an incredible video on YouTube from like the mid eighties of Michael Caine giving a how to act to a film camera class, and it's amazing. It's like it's almost just like a how to. It's incredibly granular about how to act for a film camera. And his whole trick is that whenever you deliver a line, you do not blink because it weakens because it weekends. I never blink week me. That was a bit of Anthony Hopkins sou to any actors out there. Don't ever really ever, man, hard to think that all those elementary school staring contests were prepping me for a lifetime on the stage treading the boards. Anyway, now that we've done one of the most winding digressions in this show's history, well you know, Steve's career had a pretty winding digression too. In reality, Steve did not leave because he was balding or to go off to college, like they said in the show, but he left because he wanted to pursue other things, like music, his early love as a kid in Pennsylvania, and this passion was reignited when he was at a party and someone played him the Flaming Lips album The Soft Bulletin for the first time, and he gave an interview to Spin magazine later and he said that this album completely rearranged my head and it ultimately made him want to start writing music again, and before long he eat a few dozen songs ready to and he wanted to make a serious go of it, so he did something that you can really only do if you're on a hit children's basic cable show. He cold called one of his favorite producers, a guy by the name of David Friedman, who had already worked with The Flaming Lips, Sparkle Horse, Mercury Rev and a number of other cool indie groups that are so cool that I've never heard of him. Um and amazingly, Freedman had just had a Blues Clues themed birthday party for his kids, so he was probably just a star struck by Steve as Steve was over him and through Freedman, Steve connected with several other members of the Flaming Lips, including drummers Stephen Draws. I was gonna say, I don't know how to pronounce that either. I was waiting to see what you would do. We're gonna go with Draws there, and he arranged the tracks and I think he played on a number of them as well, uh drummed on them, and Flaming Lips basis Michael Ivan's engineered some of the sessions and Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne himself got involved with Steve, but unfortunately not in a musical sense. He cast Steve in a movie he was directing called Christmas on Mars, and he wanted Steve to be and this is I'm quoting a crazy man with a bottle rocket in his butt. I wonder if you've seen that jackass segment where they launched bottle rockets out there, but you know, you know where we'in coins from Pittsburgh, baby, really yeah, he just saw another good Pennsylvania boy and him told him to shove a bottle rocket and get on camera. I guess they toned that down for the final cut. And I have no idea what this movie. Yeah, no, I'm not all that familiar. But they did not get Steve to do that with a bottle rocket, unfortunately. So don't don't don't don't try that at home. Also, yeah, exactly as you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more. Too much information after these messages. But Steve got to work with his heroes, which was super cool, and he was signed to the highly esteemed indie label PUSS. It's short for Playing Against Sam. I know, I don't know how you pronounce it, but they had a lot of big names. The singer rose for a while my Morning Jacket, so it was, you know, kind of a big deal that he got signed to this label. And in two thousand three he released his debut songs for dust Mites, which was like seriously received him. He was saying earlier, he got these profiles and spin in an entertainment weekly and it was reviewed by Pitchfork and they gave it a seven point eight. That's astounding, which is extremely high. Uh, And they complimented Steve's quote lyrical insight and gift for writing and arranging endlessly listenable pop songs. Oh here's a connection. What's that? The song Mighty little Man, the opening track, the opening track, do you know what it is? Now? The theme song to the Young Sheldon, the Big Bang Theory prequel, Right that I knew I'd heard that before. Okay, that makes sense, Okay, your big Young Sheldon fan Jordan's I'm not but it's a amazing how I referenced the Big Bang Theory moment ago and now this beautiful mind Baby. We're just picking stuff out of midair, finding connections. But you know, this really leaves us to a much broader, more important question, which is what are dust mites? Go on, I'm glad you asked or should expand on that vague interest. Uh here's the answer, direct from Steve himself. Dust whites are these microscopic animals that live in your eyebrows and pillows and all kinds of places you don't want them to be. And they've had a very happy, peaceful life eating our dead skin cells for a long time. But we've now invented machines so small micro gears that they assume they're competing with them for food sources and attack them. I feel bad for the little guys, the man versus nature battle played out on a microscopic scale. That's weird. That's a weird quote. But you know, this wouldn't be a too much information episode about a beloved nineties children's TV property without a bone chilling fan theory. Right, how go think it's time to dive into the saga of Steve's death rumors. Yeah, this is actually one of the only other things that I remember from the show was by the mid two thousand's people being like, oh, you know what happened to Steve from Blues Clues, like he overdosed on heroin. That's the big one. The other somebody with like an open trench coat telling you that, hey kid, I want to buy a messed up story about it, but loved figure from your childhood. So that's the executive from the earlier big when he falls on hard times and now he's just selling stuff on the street. The lore the expanded universe of this show is getting very deep. Um. The other popular rumor was that he got hit by a car. Another one was that he was claims for arrested for heroin possession. And yet another one was that he became a porn star. I've never heard that one. This apparently started as early when he was the show was still on the air, So so we very clearly you know wasn't dead, yeah, or on heroin or in porn, I guess, but you know he as these how could be on TV and two of those three things, well, I guess that's true. As happens with these things, they gain critical mass and eventually the people with the heart of them were forced to disprove them. Not everybody does it the same way he did, which is by going on Rosie O'Donnell in December, but he and Angela Santamaro appeared on Today as well to talk talk how parents should address this with their kids, like if they're at, you know, on the playground and someone's like Steve's on Heroin or dead or dead, like, how do you tell your kid about that? And so Angela later said, it's very different from Paul McCartney, like the Paula's dead rumor. It's very different when these are two to five year old children you're talking about, and Steve has become someone they trust, someone they almost have a play date with and go on adventures with, and thinking he might not be there anymore is really upsetting to them. It's like losing a caregiver. So how does this get started? We mentioned Steve's uh, you know, very short cv A Duncan Donald's commercial and a Law and Order episode, and his appearance on Law and Order is probably the thing that planted the seed for this rumor. It was an episode called Cruel than Usual and it aired on April nineteenth, and the plot is pretty bonkers even he played a character named Kevin. He was a young man with autism who died in police custody after they attributed his behavior to drug use, which is I did. I don't know, God, I hope not um. And there's a theory that this spawned the rumor that Steve had died, which he did, although on a totally different TV show. And this would also explain why the death rumors usually involve a drug overdose because it fits into the whole law and Order plot line. But he was alive and well and living in Williamsburg. Yes, a fate far worse than death living in Brooklyn, well, I guess. Immediately after Blues Clues he lived in Aloft in Dumbo, and he had his famous thinking chair by his bed, and he reportedly rebuffed numerous requests from his dates to quote, do it in the chair? You know? I said earlier that Steve has not been tarnished or or like his age, well, but his horny nous is beginning to grade on me. He said, he turned them down. What I mean, just why does he have to talk about this so much? Fine? Let him let him live, let him What am I saying? What am I saying? What am I saying? Let's Steve be horny? His Blues Clues Bucks allowed him to purchase a former garage and wood shop in Williamsburg in two thousand seven for a very not unreasonable seven dred and seventy tho dollars. And this is like square foot place in Williamsburg. Where is It's not that it's on Power Street. I used to walk by it all the time, and you know how I would always know it was his? How is them? It's very distinctive. It's painted blue, very distinctive shade of blue. It's a cool place. He had to remodel. Is like industrial style. It's really interesting. Google w and check it out. And he sold it I think like a year or two ago. So it's it's you know, all sorts of like architectural websites and stuff. They have pictures of the inside and um. He did quite well for himself on a seven seventy thousand dollar house that he bought in two thousand seven. He sold it last year for three million, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Nice job, Steve. So what is he doing now, ohigo, when he's not flipping Brooklyn properties? Uh, he's still making music, you know. Yeah, he has an album just came out in twenty seventeen. Called four Everywhere with his old pal Stephen Draws just and he consulted on the casting for the Blues Clues revival Good, which is hosted by a Broadway trained singer, actor Joshua de la Cruz. And you know, he and Patton uh de Pats reprised their roles in the premiere episode to welcome their cousin, josh and uh Burns is uh and he wrote some of these, right, I think he did. He wrote and directed a few of whom I think. Oh, and he's working on a feature film. What's this feature film? It's for the Blues Clues reboot. They're making a feature film for this. I mean, I should have googled this. It's a film. I don't I don't know what a feature film is anymore, as opposed to just like a thing that's over an hour in twenty minutes. Yeah, I guess that's true. Untitled Blues Clues and you film. It's in post production, so maybe we'll get that. Good. God, I hope we do. Wellhig, I think we just figured out Blues Clues. I don't have anything to add to that other than don't blink. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan run Talk, Thanks so much for listening. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Hegel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows

Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history and little known facts behind your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and more. We are two guys with too much free time on our hands. My name is Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan run Tog and on this episode, we're diving into Blues Clues, the beloved children's TV show of the late nineties and early two thousand's, which recently turned twenty five years old. Passage of time, yes, and this grim passage was highlighted recently when Steve, the host of the show Our Dear Old Friend and the Green Polo, checked in with us with a very sweet viral video and frankly, it reminded me how much I missed him. What did you think of that? Did you grow up with him at all? My sister did? I mean, like, my sister's four years younger than me, and we were of the age where, like you know, we're watching Nickelodeon together. So, but she was a Blues Clues fan. I don't remember too much of it other than and you made me, You're gonna make me do this? Is? That was pretty good. Wow, there's some there's some money in the Man of Many Talent title. Thank you, thank you so much God this I'm just remembering this viral video. Man, I'm so sorry. Why what it is? Is it too too real? Forest? I wanted to tell you that I really couldn't have done all that without your help. And in fact, all the help that you help me with when we were younger is still helping me today right now. Your voice just cray. I never forgot you ever, and I'm super glad we're still friends. That's so rough, Like, come on, Steve, why is it rough? Just because you get so little, uh, your sacred cows when you're a kid, don't always come back in the best way. And to just have him like parachute into your life and just yeah, that was really the other thing is just like during this period when everything else in my life was making me cry constantly, just to have him come in and give every we want to personalized message of encouragement, Like come on, what was it even paid to you? I think it was the anniversary. Did you appreciate it or not? I can't, I honestly can't read you right now. I did it? Was it was very affecting. I I you know, like anything Nickelodeon or Disney, there's a little bit of like, well, our benevolent corporate overruns are reaching into our chest to pluck our heart strings so they can sell more ad space or whatever. But yeah, heart strings and purse strings tend to go and to be wound together. But but still we're getting ahead of ourselves. We're getting ahead of I thought it was very sweet. I did enjoy it as well. Well, yes, we're gonna get into that. We're gonna get into at the other end of the spectrum, the Steve Death rumors, that time he crashed a kid's birthday party with a swimsuit model. I love that story. Why Malcolm Gladwell shouted out the show as an example of television excellence and so much more. Here's everything you didn't know about Blues Clues. I like that this show had the purest of intentions. H it really did. I mean it's tough to remember now, but Blues Clues was a fairly radical departure from most children's TV shows when it premiered in We touched on this a little in the Rugrats episode. But the time, most shows were fairly violent and basically designed as a vehicle to sell toys, and this didn't sit well with three young producers, Angela Santamaro, Todd Kellsler, and Tracy Page Johnson. Santamerow had a master's degree in child development psych from Colombia, and this really sets the tone for the really serious level of prep work they put into each of these episodes. They enlisted a team of educators and consultants the craft a format that they thought would be engaging for kids rather than more passive shows like Sesame Street, which was seen as kind of the show's foil, And they adopted a narrative format instead of the more traditional magazine format. Again, think of like Sesame Street, where it's all kind of a little very quick bursts of cartoons or skits or whatever. And this was meant to be an interactive narrative with the host talking directly to the camera, imposing questions, and then they'd reinforced topics through repetition. And I guess it was also the first cutout animation series for preschoolers in the US. Would have been that like South Park around the exactly, it's yeah, she's really interesting. The fact that she was influenced by this guy, Daniel R. Anderson, was a sense that Santamaro, Yeah, yeah, Santamaro. I guess he has a PhD. Should be doctor Daniel R. Anderson, but developmental site guy and directly involved with half of children's television like Alligala Island were in The Big Blue House. Dory Explorer was an advisor on Captain Kangaroo. Oh my God, way are the o g the Wabulous World of Dr Seuss, Sesame Street, Go, Diego Go. Like he's been on the board of Sesame Streets. I can't keep a job. Hey, wow, that is incredible quite the CV. Anyway, they what do they give them? Something like a hundred and fifty grand for the pilot what it was saying yeah, And consequently the original production team wound up being the voice actors. Nick Balaban, who had been doing uh, I think he's still in Brooklyn, but he'd been doing sound design for like the Nick Jr. Bumpers. He wound up playing the role of Mr. Salt, while his co composer Michael Rubin did the voice of the Sun and I guess they did a table read to figure out who would voice Blue just like went around the table pointing a different mark and h Tracy Page Johnson wound up on top with that thing you heard me do so well at the top of the episode give us one more Wow. That is very very impressed with that. Mr Salt known for his French accent, but originally had a Brooklyn accent um, which is just bizarre telling kids to go to hell. You know the default for somebody New York accents is just like I'm walking. Yeah, but like you know, like imagine like a gruff voice like firefighter berating children about not getting clues in the form of a Salt. Yea even stranger. Blue wasn't a dog and he wasn't even blue. She wasn't blue. Sorry, I didn't mean a miss gender blue. They wanted to do a cat, an orange cat named Mr Orange. Name name these work? Yeah, this is our rather bit of just imagining these executives like chopping on a cigar like feed up at their desk, like, ah, lose the orange cat, make it um dog, make it blue, putting the cigar out on like the poor children's psychologist's face. So they didn't like the color. They turned the cat blue named Mr Blue? And why did they Why did they change animals. Well, so there's like a reference drop somewhere in here that Nickelodeon had a different animated series in the works that featured a cat. So the network was like, it's got to be a different it's gotta be a different lose this cat. Uh so, yeah, but we don't know what it was, right, It might have been dogs ket Dog. No cat dog was Cartoon Network. No cat dog was was Nickelodeon, but it was later Yeah, okay, so maybe so maybe tweet at us using the using the hashtag cigar chomping Nickelodeon n exact and tell us what series it was. But they had the working title Blueprints, which is cute like that, and they landed on blues Clues because apparently the kids they were testing testing it on, the kids who were the test audiences. That's just what they started calling it, which is you know, kids meant yeah, kids came up. That's a good title though, Nice job kids. The producers originally wanted a female host interacting with the kids, but they decided to see both men and women during the casting call and over a thousand people auditioned for this role of the host of the show, and the producers ultimately settled on Steve Burns, who was a twenty two year old kid from rural Pennsylvania whose only previous credits included an episode of Law and Order and a Dunkin Donuts commercial. He said about the Law and Order thing, he was like, I was autistic and I got killed. Yep. Oh yeah, We'll get into that later because it plays a major role in the Steve death rumors. Okay, okay, my my cousin went to college with Steve. They I think they did drama together and and that was like a huge ragging rights thing for me, like elementary school, that I had this distinct connection to Steve. So I always have a special spot in my heart for Steve for more than the usual reasons. So yeah, he very very short CV, but despite his lack of experience, Nickelodeon gave him the gig because he tested strongest with the audiences, I mean, the little kids loved him. And this all came as a surprise to Steve, who was basically a rock and roller at heart. And there's this great Spin profile from two thousand four where he talks about his early days and rural p A playing guitar and writing songs and jamming on David Bowie and a friend's cow pasture is a quote that I love. And you're from You're from where he from? Uh, Burks County County. Yeah, yeah, it's that's not not close to me. Did you ever jam the David Bowie and a cup pastor? Or you were more? You would you would jam on Danzig in a cup past We did, Yeah, we did. Like d I y punk rock shows atmostis you just like drag a several extension cords from the house out into the middle of a field, cool mini wood stock? Yeah, yes, Jordan's that was the vibe. So, I mean that was more where this guy was coming from. And he was a one to be rock and roller guy, and he moved to New York. He gave a storytelling performance at The Moth in two thousand and ten, and he admitted that he came to New York to become Serpico, which I don't know if he means to become Alpaccino or to become a cop I would assume al Pacino. So well, you missed you glossed over what his band was called his Buddies band that he joined. What was it? Called Nine Pound Truck. That's a very Pennsylvania band name. That's extremely yeah. So I mean again, he's a gigging actor. This Blues Clues audition is probably just one of like a dozen things that you know, he tried out for in all acting hopeful to try out for in a given week. So he knew very little about this show and he mistakenly thought that it was a voiceover gig, and because of that, he didn't attempt to cultivate any kind of a child friendly appearance whatsoever. And he showed up to the audition in full nineties grunge mode. He had long hair, earrings and like Stubble and the Gloning executives were not fond of this at all, and I guess the show's creator, Tracy Page Johnson, told him, Hey, can you not look like you when you come back next time? But he did and in the end he ended up getting the gig. The voice of Blue told him, please don't look like you when you come And while we're on the topic of Steve style, Steve the real life guy hated Steve the character's outfits a great deal. He gave an interview with Entertainment Weekly and he said that his signature green polos were quote carefully handmade to be as uncomfortable as possible. And I love those kids, loved the outfit and like most kids, they wanted to be just like heroes and where green striped polos as well. But the snag was these kids refused to remove their shirts because on the show, Steve always wore the same shirt, so they wanted to always wear the same shirt. So parents work in front of with the problem of getting kids to take off these filthy green polos and washed them. So Steve Burns inadvertently gave rise to a generation of smelly Ralph Lauren wearing toddlers. I wonder how long it took Nickelodeon to to turn around and market Steve Steve shirts. Steve shirts, Oh, that's got to be baked in. He's He's talked a lot about how not fun this was to shoot for him, because it's just like him alone in the studio, working like ten hour days. It sounds like me. So yeah, this was like a real problem get kids to change out of these shirts. So for Steve's replacement, Joe ak A Donovan Patton, who will get two more of him in the moment, they decided to give him a much more varied wardrobe so they wouldn't have this problem. But Steve apparently kept two of his Steve shirts for years because he's a good guy and he wanted to use them for like make a wish events and stuff like that and uh. And he has indeed made a lot of very special memories for children through personal appearances and stuff as the character of Steve. But my all time favorite incident in the time that he crashed the Toddler's Blues Clues themed birthday party wall on a date with a swimsuit model. This is so great, So cast your mind back to the year two thousand for a moment. Please follow me that the Wayne's World thing you know is on the charts eyes to a new millennium. Yes, and Steve Burns is on the list of People Magazine's most eligible bachelors and as a result, he's getting a lot of requests for dates. And he said he received a lot of letters from and even nude photos actually from who he described as quote forward thinking soccer moms who were his most ardent fans. But one day he gets a request for a date from the swimsuit model who I guess send some an eight by ten glossy and his phone number and encourages him the call. So Steve does, and they arranged dinner, and he drives out to New Jersey to pick her up at her house. And she's beautiful, and he's very eager to make a very good impression. And as though, driving through her neighborhood in the suburbs of New Jersey like some weird child friendly through Springsteen song on the Last Chance Power Drive exactly, he spots at her neighbor's house a birthday sign for a Blues Clues themed birthday party. So here's Steve pass on a Blues Clues themed birthday party for a bunch of toddlers. He's got the green shirt and some toys in the back of the car. He goes for it. I mean, can you imagine it must have been like if Elvis showed up made all of those kids lives. And he told the story during his appearance at the Brooklyn Storytelling Slam the Moth In and it's on YouTube and it's really fantastic. He definitely listened to it, and according to him, the date didn't end well because it was all an elaborate attempt on the part of the Swim's model to pitch him on a kid show about giant balloon animals called the Ballooneys, which is rough. You can't be sure who your friends are when your children's basic cable TV show star. That's rough. That's a tough lesson. I'm sorry he had to learn that. I got a giant balloon animal for you. How did you come here? Sweetheart? Uh? I cut that. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Too much information and just a moment. This Ballooney show likely wouldn't have caught on even if it did get made, because it lacked the same fastidious preparation that they used for Blues Clues. Tell us more about how they would go about putting episodes the higher education degree. But yeah, I mean a lot of people have read Tipping Point, the Malcolm Gladwell's from two thousand about how ends tend to take root and stick and ideas spread, and he uses this term sticky to describe Blues Clues as the stickiest TV show ever, meaning the most irresistible and involving. And this has to do with what we talked about with the sort of child psychology aspect of the production, and Blues Clues was unique at the time, and that had its own dedicated research department, which it does seem sort of strange to have a you know, quote unquote R and D approach to making a child's television show. But they would write the script, the R and D team would test it on a classroom full of preschoolers, take notes on how the kids responded, and each of these episodes went through this three times and they would kind of refine and things went on depending on what the kids, how the kids reacted. And this is stunning to me. Each episode took nine to ten months to produce. That is baffling. But you know, we're gonna keep reaching to Sesame Street because Blues Clues tested its episodes three times, a show like Sesame Street tested one in three of its episodes. Wow. And you know, while we while we're on the topic Sesame Street, you know, they're obviously the big dog and children's televised entertainment, and they took note of the success of Blues Clues when it premiered to night Stealing Our Lunch. Yeah, the same exact works. It also sme Sesame Street, find this Blue? I want him dead? Uh? When when the show premiered, Sesame Street was this big competition which had been on the air for nearly three decades at this point and reversal of fortunes, Blues Clues Uh started beating them in the ratings, and PBS took note and retooled Sesame Street to have that interactive kind of back and forth aspect to it instead of being kind of more didactic. And you know magazine ee like you said, we also I guess at this stage, Blues Clues probably had better guests. Did you know that Ray Charles appeared in Blues Clues VHS special Blues Clues Big Musical Movie. It was his final film role prior to was death four years later in two thousand four. What a way to go out, Ray, I know, I want to know. I would love to find out how that came about. You wanna know who he played? I sure do. He played the character of g Cleft, which, according to the Blues Clues fandom, wicki is a quote singing dancing musical symbol used to indicate the pitch of written notes with a funky attitude. He lives inside of a sheet music book owned by Steve. You know what is so bizarre about this? Which which part well this movie. The only other guest stars in this are members of the Brooklyn acapella group The Persuasions. That's it on the guest blue cameo money digit, It's Ray Charles, and then it's the Persuasions. Get me to Persuasions. Wow, even I'm trying to come up with a well like Ray Charles career. Sure, sure, that's that's gonna be By transition for this, Blues Clues had an incredibly long run. In fact, it was the longest running Nick Jr. Series for many many years. Premiered in the US on September and the premier I Guess was the highest rated premiere of any Nickelodeon program, and by two thousand two, Blues Clues was attracting thirteen point seven million viewers a week, which for context is basically what like The Big Bang Theory was getting in its final season. What was Steve was making because weren't they all making like a mill five per episode at that point on Big Bang? Yeah? Something ungodly It was like them friends and Fraser who were like making the most money per episode by like their show's final season was something crazy like that, like three and a half Men too. I feel like, yeah, I wonder what Steve was making. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we'll get into more of this later. He bought an old wood shop garage in Williamsburg in like oh seven and renovated it and flipped it. So I guess he's doing okay. But um, yes, so it's incredibly successful. The longest running Nick Junior series into it was surpassed by Dora the Explorer in two thousand eleven. Steve, as we mentioned at the top of the episode, he had kind of an uneasy relationship with the whole you know, being a children's TV show star a thing. I mean, he wasn't really what he saw for himself in life and in the show. In I think his final episodes, he leaves in the year two thousand two. Um, I think they taped him a couple of years earlier, and the show he leaves and goes off to college. But in real life, Steve, who was only twenty nine when he left the show, he didn't go to college. He did whatever the hell he wanted, which we're getting more into in a moment. But the reason that he would usually give an interviews for why he left the show was because he was rapidly balding, and he said he refused to lose his hair on national television in front of a generation of young children. And and this is partially true. By the final episode, he's wearing a baseball cap the whole time to hide his bald spot. And after he filmed his last show, he dramatically shaved his head. I'm picturing like I don't know, she Jane or something. Um. And when he was asked if this was a rebellious statement, he replied, yes, And the statement is we have male pattern baldness. He has some truly great SoundBite. Yeah, No, he's he's a quote machine. He's actually now imagine because we just did the Royal tenan bombs thing of just like needle in the head, his head in the bathroom here. So but of course, you know, you don't walk away from a presumably very lucrative gig because you're balding, because I imagine his his hefty salary would buy a lot of baseball caps. And he admitted that the show's global success kind of freaked him out. You know, I mean, he'd been a gigging actor before all of this, and he really had no intention of making a lifetime career as a children's TV personality. And by the same token, it kind of exacerbated his like imposter syndrome because he would say during his Moth monologue, I began thinking, do they have the right guy here? Maybe they need a teacher or a child development specialist. I was very conflicted about it. I mean, as you say, these were like people had masters and child's ecology from Colombia and stuff and the research team, and he was this kid from Pennsylvania who just kind of fell into this role. And yeah, so it definitely played on him. And you mentioned this earlier. It's worth noting that this gig was actually pretty hard. He was basically acting alone in front of a blue screen that the animation was added to, and he said it was quote maddening and likened it to acting at the bottom of a swimming pool. So it could have been very fun. Yeah, and you know, we also talked about the new guy, Donovan Donovan Pavan Patton, and they, you know, always with an eye towards the children. They crafted a three episode transitional arc, so it wouldn't be too jarring. They didn't like Steve died on the way back to his home planet and just pulled the animation cell out of frame, or like you know in Cheers, when like they're just like a coach, that guy Coach. The actor who played Coach died in between seasons and was summarily replaced by Woody Harrelson doing much the exact same character, and Coaches never mentioned again. They say, oh, he's visiting his niece messed up, or like in mash when Henry Blake goes away and they and they make his helicopter crash and there were no survivors. So, yes, Steve, Steve was not killed in his exit. He went away to college, yes, exactly, And so Donovan Patton was introduced to Steve's brother Joe, and Tracy Page. Johnson told People Magazine in two thousand two they made it Joe because they were sticking with the monosyllabic thing because Donovan was too hard for kids to say. And I have to assume this guy was putting people on when he started saying this, because apparently he had never seen he was not familiar with blues clues. He had never seen it and perhaps most hilariously thought it was a show about blues music. I mean, I see both sides of it, because he was what twenty three or something when he auditioned for this, and I, you know, I'm trying to think of like how where I was granted, children's entertainment has become so much more diffuse nowadays as opposed to you know, someone like Steve being on People's Most Eligible Bachelors. But there's still like an aspect of the monoculture to this, like it was getting covered in the Times and People magazine. There's no weight. I don't know. Also, like what twenty three old in two thousand is, like I'm gonna go audition for this show about the blues. It was a big Stevie Ray Vaughan fan. Anyway, Steve was apparently very cool to Donovan. You know, he trained him to take over the host spot, and he said, try not to think of this as children's TV, but rather acting and telling the truth. Just such a it's a very heartwar genuine thing. Yeah. Burns later told People mag that at the audition they both did Christopher walkin impressions at Patton's audition like dueling walk in these exactly. And this is an interesting bit. Another thing that Steve apparently told Donovan was one of the keys to the performance was not blinking. Patton told The New York Times one that Burns told me the producers would love it if he never blinked. They and and that's that's yard. But then he's, yeah, that is weird. They did research that shows kids pay more attention the less you blink. I would like to know what that experiment was. Yeah, yeah, that's edging into the sinister But I believe that they did that research all these grad school people. And then he said that Steve also gave him a ball of don Perignon. Oh yeah, because he could afford it. Unfortunately, he popped the cork and hit a kid. Would you want to give a brief history on actors not blinking? Icle? Well, okay, So the other thing that when when when I read this not blinking quote, immediately thought of this famous apocryphal thing about Hannibal Lecter not blinking. Anthony Hopkins supposedly doesn't blink. That is manifestly untrue. He blinks many times in the film. But I found this on this site that debunked the whole history of this. Apparently it was a Barbara Walters interview where she's talking to Anthony Hopkins and she says, you never blink talking about this performance, and Anthony Hopkins goes no. He says, it's a trick I learned because if you don't blink, you can keep the audience mesmerized, which will get to in a minute. The screenwriter of Silence Lambs, guy named Ted Tally, was asked about whether or not he liked Anthony Hopkins, and he later says, I don't know if you would notice this, but he only blinks one time in the entire movie. This is all untrue. This is just like part of the Silence of the Lambs like press scrum that people were just lying about whether or not Anthony Hopkins blinks in these movies anyway, in that movie anyway, that's Michael Caine's trick too. Yeah. So then you were like, well, have you heard Michael Caine talk about acting? Yes, there's an incredible video on YouTube from like the mid eighties of Michael Caine giving a how to act to a film camera class, and it's amazing. It's like it's almost just like a how to. It's incredibly granular about how to act for a film camera. And his whole trick is that whenever you deliver a line, you do not blink because it weakens because it weekends. I never blink week me. That was a bit of Anthony Hopkins sou to any actors out there. Don't ever really ever, man, hard to think that all those elementary school staring contests were prepping me for a lifetime on the stage treading the boards. Anyway, now that we've done one of the most winding digressions in this show's history, well you know, Steve's career had a pretty winding digression too. In reality, Steve did not leave because he was balding or to go off to college, like they said in the show, but he left because he wanted to pursue other things, like music, his early love as a kid in Pennsylvania, and this passion was reignited when he was at a party and someone played him the Flaming Lips album The Soft Bulletin for the first time, and he gave an interview to Spin magazine later and he said that this album completely rearranged my head and it ultimately made him want to start writing music again, and before long he eat a few dozen songs ready to and he wanted to make a serious go of it, so he did something that you can really only do if you're on a hit children's basic cable show. He cold called one of his favorite producers, a guy by the name of David Friedman, who had already worked with The Flaming Lips, Sparkle Horse, Mercury Rev and a number of other cool indie groups that are so cool that I've never heard of him. Um and amazingly, Freedman had just had a Blues Clues themed birthday party for his kids, so he was probably just a star struck by Steve as Steve was over him and through Freedman, Steve connected with several other members of the Flaming Lips, including drummers Stephen Draws. I was gonna say, I don't know how to pronounce that either. I was waiting to see what you would do. We're gonna go with Draws there, and he arranged the tracks and I think he played on a number of them as well, uh drummed on them, and Flaming Lips basis Michael Ivan's engineered some of the sessions and Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne himself got involved with Steve, but unfortunately not in a musical sense. He cast Steve in a movie he was directing called Christmas on Mars, and he wanted Steve to be and this is I'm quoting a crazy man with a bottle rocket in his butt. I wonder if you've seen that jackass segment where they launched bottle rockets out there, but you know, you know where we'in coins from Pittsburgh, baby, really yeah, he just saw another good Pennsylvania boy and him told him to shove a bottle rocket and get on camera. I guess they toned that down for the final cut. And I have no idea what this movie. Yeah, no, I'm not all that familiar. But they did not get Steve to do that with a bottle rocket, unfortunately. So don't don't don't don't try that at home. Also, yeah, exactly as you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more. Too much information after these messages. But Steve got to work with his heroes, which was super cool, and he was signed to the highly esteemed indie label PUSS. It's short for Playing Against Sam. I know, I don't know how you pronounce it, but they had a lot of big names. The singer rose for a while my Morning Jacket, so it was, you know, kind of a big deal that he got signed to this label. And in two thousand three he released his debut songs for dust Mites, which was like seriously received him. He was saying earlier, he got these profiles and spin in an entertainment weekly and it was reviewed by Pitchfork and they gave it a seven point eight. That's astounding, which is extremely high. Uh, And they complimented Steve's quote lyrical insight and gift for writing and arranging endlessly listenable pop songs. Oh here's a connection. What's that? The song Mighty little Man, the opening track, the opening track, do you know what it is? Now? The theme song to the Young Sheldon, the Big Bang Theory prequel, Right that I knew I'd heard that before. Okay, that makes sense, Okay, your big Young Sheldon fan Jordan's I'm not but it's a amazing how I referenced the Big Bang Theory moment ago and now this beautiful mind Baby. We're just picking stuff out of midair, finding connections. But you know, this really leaves us to a much broader, more important question, which is what are dust mites? Go on, I'm glad you asked or should expand on that vague interest. Uh here's the answer, direct from Steve himself. Dust whites are these microscopic animals that live in your eyebrows and pillows and all kinds of places you don't want them to be. And they've had a very happy, peaceful life eating our dead skin cells for a long time. But we've now invented machines so small micro gears that they assume they're competing with them for food sources and attack them. I feel bad for the little guys, the man versus nature battle played out on a microscopic scale. That's weird. That's a weird quote. But you know, this wouldn't be a too much information episode about a beloved nineties children's TV property without a bone chilling fan theory. Right, how go think it's time to dive into the saga of Steve's death rumors. Yeah, this is actually one of the only other things that I remember from the show was by the mid two thousand's people being like, oh, you know what happened to Steve from Blues Clues, like he overdosed on heroin. That's the big one. The other somebody with like an open trench coat telling you that, hey kid, I want to buy a messed up story about it, but loved figure from your childhood. So that's the executive from the earlier big when he falls on hard times and now he's just selling stuff on the street. The lore the expanded universe of this show is getting very deep. Um. The other popular rumor was that he got hit by a car. Another one was that he was claims for arrested for heroin possession. And yet another one was that he became a porn star. I've never heard that one. This apparently started as early when he was the show was still on the air, So so we very clearly you know wasn't dead, yeah, or on heroin or in porn, I guess, but you know he as these how could be on TV and two of those three things, well, I guess that's true. As happens with these things, they gain critical mass and eventually the people with the heart of them were forced to disprove them. Not everybody does it the same way he did, which is by going on Rosie O'Donnell in December, but he and Angela Santamaro appeared on Today as well to talk talk how parents should address this with their kids, like if they're at, you know, on the playground and someone's like Steve's on Heroin or dead or dead, like, how do you tell your kid about that? And so Angela later said, it's very different from Paul McCartney, like the Paula's dead rumor. It's very different when these are two to five year old children you're talking about, and Steve has become someone they trust, someone they almost have a play date with and go on adventures with, and thinking he might not be there anymore is really upsetting to them. It's like losing a caregiver. So how does this get started? We mentioned Steve's uh, you know, very short cv A Duncan Donald's commercial and a Law and Order episode, and his appearance on Law and Order is probably the thing that planted the seed for this rumor. It was an episode called Cruel than Usual and it aired on April nineteenth, and the plot is pretty bonkers even he played a character named Kevin. He was a young man with autism who died in police custody after they attributed his behavior to drug use, which is I did. I don't know, God, I hope not um. And there's a theory that this spawned the rumor that Steve had died, which he did, although on a totally different TV show. And this would also explain why the death rumors usually involve a drug overdose because it fits into the whole law and Order plot line. But he was alive and well and living in Williamsburg. Yes, a fate far worse than death living in Brooklyn, well, I guess. Immediately after Blues Clues he lived in Aloft in Dumbo, and he had his famous thinking chair by his bed, and he reportedly rebuffed numerous requests from his dates to quote, do it in the chair? You know? I said earlier that Steve has not been tarnished or or like his age, well, but his horny nous is beginning to grade on me. He said, he turned them down. What I mean, just why does he have to talk about this so much? Fine? Let him let him live, let him What am I saying? What am I saying? What am I saying? Let's Steve be horny? His Blues Clues Bucks allowed him to purchase a former garage and wood shop in Williamsburg in two thousand seven for a very not unreasonable seven dred and seventy tho dollars. And this is like square foot place in Williamsburg. Where is It's not that it's on Power Street. I used to walk by it all the time, and you know how I would always know it was his? How is them? It's very distinctive. It's painted blue, very distinctive shade of blue. It's a cool place. He had to remodel. Is like industrial style. It's really interesting. Google w and check it out. And he sold it I think like a year or two ago. So it's it's you know, all sorts of like architectural websites and stuff. They have pictures of the inside and um. He did quite well for himself on a seven seventy thousand dollar house that he bought in two thousand seven. He sold it last year for three million, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Nice job, Steve. So what is he doing now, ohigo, when he's not flipping Brooklyn properties? Uh, he's still making music, you know. Yeah, he has an album just came out in twenty seventeen. Called four Everywhere with his old pal Stephen Draws just and he consulted on the casting for the Blues Clues revival Good, which is hosted by a Broadway trained singer, actor Joshua de la Cruz. And you know, he and Patton uh de Pats reprised their roles in the premiere episode to welcome their cousin, josh and uh Burns is uh and he wrote some of these, right, I think he did. He wrote and directed a few of whom I think. Oh, and he's working on a feature film. What's this feature film? It's for the Blues Clues reboot. They're making a feature film for this. I mean, I should have googled this. It's a film. I don't I don't know what a feature film is anymore, as opposed to just like a thing that's over an hour in twenty minutes. Yeah, I guess that's true. Untitled Blues Clues and you film. It's in post production, so maybe we'll get that. Good. God, I hope we do. Wellhig, I think we just figured out Blues Clues. I don't have anything to add to that other than don't blink. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan run Talk, Thanks so much for listening. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Hegel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows