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John Legend visits 'Sesame Street' to talk about kids with incarcerated parents.

Both Legend and "Sesame Street" have been doing work on this topic for years.

"Sesame Street" is at its best when it's tackling some of life's trickier issues, and their new video is no exception.

Singer John Legend sat down with the cast of "Sesame Street" to discuss the 2.7 million U.S. children with parents in jail or prison. The short segment featured a few of these kids telling some of the "Sesame Street" characters how they cope with not being able to see their parents on a regular basis. (A lot of them seem to enjoy drawing pictures.)

There's sadness in the kids' voices, but it's inspiring to see some of the creative ways they're dealing with the hand they've been given.


"We incarcerate so many people, and a lot of times we forget about their kids that are left behind and how it feels for them to be without parents," Legend told People magazine about his appearance. "The emotional effect that it has on them, the financial effect it has on their families as well — I think a lot of times we forget about that toll of incarcerating so many people."

Legend's "Sesame Street" appearance highlights some of the collateral damage caused by mass incarceration, including the damaging and lasting financial and social effects it has on an inmate's family and children. When you factor in the types of challenges a child might have going from a two-income household to a single-income household (or even a household without any income at all), it could result in that child being more likely to live below the poverty line or wind up incarcerated themselves.

This isn't the first time "Sesame Street" has centered the lives and stories of kids affected by parental incarceration.

Back in 2013, they introduced a new character named Alex, whose backstory included that his dad was in prison.

Alex's big episode also featured a really powerful animated short about what it's like for these kids to visit family in prison and how painful and sad it can be to be kept at such a distance from some of the people they love more than anything in the world.

The following year, Sesame Workshop teamed up with a group of young filmmakers who've had a parent in prison to make the Echoes of Incarceration Project, which seeks to address the very specific issues these kids have to deal with.

The finished product is a truly gut-wrenching watch where you see just how children have, in many cases, become collateral damage in our culture of mass incarceration.

Luckily, there are things that you (yes, you!) can do to help out — and that help is sorely needed, especially around the holidays.

"Sesame Street's" Little Children, Big Challenges project contains a lot of really great resources for families with children aged 3 to 8 to address some of the specific challenges they'll face as the result of their parents' incarceration.

Kids might have questions like, "Who will take me to school?" or "Is this my fault?" Some of the Little Children, Big Challenges resources help walk through some of those commonly-asked questions and struggles.

In 2015, Legend launched Free America, a campaign aimed at changing how we, as a country, discuss incarceration and the criminal justice system as a whole.

Organizations like New York's Children of Promise, In Arms Reach, and Hour Children; Prison Fellowship's Angel Tree Christmas present project; Alabama's SKIP, Inc.; Florida's Children of Inmates; Georgia's Foreverfamily; Rutgers University's National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated; and national group Rainbows For All Children all do work addressing this important issue and could use a little extra support. (Disclaimer: Be sure to check out their websites before donating to make sure you're comfortable with where your money is going.)

These kids deserve as much love and support as anyone else, and we can help give them the start in life that they're owed.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

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A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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