Original “Blue’s Clues” host Steve Burns, who abruptly left the Nickelodeon show in 2002 only to resurface in a viral video during the pandemic, has announced plans for a podcast.
In the series, the youthful-looking adult deftly broke the fourth wall as an animated puppy named Blue left a trail of clues for a preschool audience to figure out. Burns says his new podcast, “Alive,” will similarly invite listeners to take part.
“You know how there’s like a billion podcasts that you can listen to? What if we made one that listens back?” Burns, now a 51-year-old with glasses, salt-and-pepper beard stubble and a penchant for wearing baseball caps, said in a TikTok video this week. “It would be part podcast, part conversation — kind of like this.”
The podcast, from Lemonada Media, is expected to premiere in the fall. It’s billed as a continuation of the dialogue Burns began with his viewers way back in 1996 but with more mature topics that include mortality, loneliness, success and masculinity.
The umbrella descriptor for the show promises discussions about “what it means to stay human in a complicated world.”
If that sounds a little heavy, a wistful video Burns released in 2021 to mark the 25th anniversary of “Blue’s Clues” met with rave reviews. In the clip, the musician and actor explained how he left the show, which continued with a different host, to go to college.
“We started out with clues, and now it’s, what, student loans, jobs, and families,” Burns said then. “And some of it has been kind of hard, you know? I know you know.”
His podcast will join a stable of Lemonada offerings that includes “Fail Better with David Duchovny” and “Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.”
