Dec 20, 2022
Matt Crawford speaks with Natasha Lance Rogoff about her book: Muppets in Moscow. Most of us have grown up watching Sesame Street and learning lessons through their gentle explanations and expert production by the Sesame Workshop. This is a whole other side of the Muppets as western ambassadors. Rogoff recounts her and her teams struggle to bring this beloved program to Russia in the early 1990's. The Berlin Wall had just fallen, and tensions were high, amidst bombings, assassinations and military takeovers of their production office, her and her team were risking everything to bring the Muppets to Moscow. A personal read that includes Rogoff's struggle to balance a new marriage and pregnancy while fighting for this show because she loved the Russian culture and people so. This book gives us valuable insight into diplomacy and how it worked in Russia and in my opinion how it should be used again. We need it now more than ever.