Now I personally haven't watched a lot of PBS.But I grew up in a place that has a strong public service tradition, and I feel this is appropriate as an general public service appreciation post 😊 We're already seeing the hollwing out of public service in Europe, but let's try not to grow up to become bad people 😁 @humor@fedigroups.social @humor@lemmy.world @aiop#PublicService #Yle #SVT #PBS #Meme #Meme #Funny #Woke #Comedy #Humour

Absofuckinglootly!

Mr Rogers introduced me to John Carroll Kirby the bastard

I grew up in a plains state where the population was 98% white. There were two things that helped me to see people who look different than me as people, my maternal grandpa farmer who served in WWII and brought home a strong interest in other cultures and PBS.

My grandpa didn't make a big deal of it, but he had one of those giant satellite dishes and loved watching shows from around the world despite not understanding any of the languages. He was perfectly happy with his remote and uneventful life but loved seeing variety.

PBS let me see things in other places like documentaries, shows that explored other cultures, and shows like Sesame Street where a diverse group of people juat did normal stuff together and it wasn't a big deal or anything. Sesame Street was the opposite of my local area and let me see other people as just people. Sadly this did not catch on with a lot of the people around me, who had racist views based on rumors because they personally had not interacted with anyone different than themselves either.

Being accepting of others mainly comes from exposure that lets someone see different people as people, and PBS did, and I assume still does, a great job of doing that.

mmmmh ... loot ... ( -_- )

Kirby wasn't ever on Mr Rogers, but jazzy stuff like him definitely was.

In the near 1000 episodes of the show, each had a unique intro played live in studio. Johnny Costa and Rogers himself were at the core of it, but there were a lot of jazz greats local to the area who played on the show.

Rogers wasn't just someone who was full of empathy, but he didn't talk down to kids and his complex music selection embodied that.

I had a very similar experience to yours.

There was a magic school bus episode where the kids used everything they learned on a trip to cheat at a dunk contest.
I refuse to forget this