Can Steve From ‘Blue's Clues' be a ‘Counterweight' to the Manosphere?

New York Times

5 hours ago

Steve Burns, the former star of the beloved children's show 'Blue's Clues,' is inviting you back into his cozy home: Come in and take a seat. There isn't a blue dog this time around, but Mr. Burns will make you a cup of tea.
And then, he'll listen to you listening to him.
On Wednesday, Mr. Burns, 51, announced in a YouTube video — featuring the original thinking chair from the children's show and some of his signature expressive hand gestures — that he was launching a podcast called 'Alive,' which will be available in the fall.
'You and I have always been about this deep and curious investigation of our world,' he said in the video, addressing the audience. 'It used to be about shapes and colors and letters and numbers and vegetables and stuff. But now it could really be about death and sex and taxes.'
The name, Mr. Burns said in an interview, refers to the 'weird and wonderful things that go into being a human being on planet Earth' and also is a tacit nod to the fact that, for years after he left his role on the Nickelodeon show in 2002, he was presumed to be, well, not alive. This podcast was a reclamation, of sorts.
Pernicious rumors of Mr. Burns' being dead swirled while he was dealing with clinical depression, and were exacerbated by the internet — a combination so corrosive that 'I started to wonder if it was true,' he said, 'if everyone else was onto something.' It led him on a yearslong 'sloppy mess' of a journey dealing with his mental health concerns.
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