Lewis Bernstein

In his one-hour interview, Dr. Lewis Bernstein talks about his early interest in teaching children and his education in the United States and Israel. He describes how he landed a job as a research fellow on Sesame Street in 1972, and chronicles the many stages of his career at the Sesame Workshop, from director of research to vice president of global television, to Sesame Street's executive producer. He describes the methods by which the series develops a yearly mission: utilizing the work of researchers and assigning writers and producers to create programming. Noting the importance of the cultural aspects of the series, he then speaks in great detail about episodes that were produced in response to 9/11. He talks about the mentoring of foreign producers to create their own series based on the Sesame Street model and describes the Israeli and Palestinian shows with which he was directly involved in developing— and the challenge in sharing material between the two versions. Other segments of Sesame Street that Bernstein comments on include: "Sesame English" (segments which were created to teach English around the world), "Elmo's World" (segments for infants that were created in response to the competitive market), and "Global Grover" (segments employing footage of children from around the world). Karen Herman conducted the interview on July 21, 2004 at the Sesame Workshop in New York, NY.