The podcast, Alive, is joining Lemonada Media's lineup.
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| Steve Burns in Hartford, Connecticut in 2023. Emily Assiran/Getty Images |
Original Blue’s Clues host Steve Burns is launching a podcast designed to continue teaching the adults who watched his show as children.
The podcast, titled Alive, billed as a “cozy and delightful weekly series,” will tackle the idea of “adulting” and “what it means to stay human in a complicated world.” The idea was sparked by the viral video Burns released around the 25th anniversary of the show, in which he apologized for leaving the show and praised his former viewers for now navigating the world as adults, including contending with student loans, jobs and families. It was a moment when Burns “found himself in conversation again with tens of millions of grown-up fans who still considered him a friend,” according to Lemonada Media, which is launching the podcast, slated to premiere this fall. .
Alive will feature Burns engaging in vulnerable conversations with guests, who have not yet been announced, as he “continues to connect with both the generation who grew up with him and new audiences alike.”
“There are a thousand podcasts you can listen to, this is one that listens back. I really want to continue what we started decades ago…. For us, it was all about curious investigation. It was about looking a little closer. About asking the right questions. About following the clues that helped lead us toward greater understanding. Alive is really just a continuation of that same conversation — only now we’re grown-ups, trying to make sense of a world that’s a whole lot more complicated. We’re still searching, still learning, still trying to connect. Still doing our best to lead deeply examined lives, together,” Burns shares. “And, you know, there’ll be less talking furniture, sure, but we’re still going to have a lot of fun along the way.”
Burns said his show will be different from many other podcasts. It’s not going to focus on creating something you merely listen to. He says Alive “will be a podcast that listens back,” which is what “Steve” on Blues’ Clues did. He “listened” to kids calling out answers to his questions.
Alive is a weekly show in which the actor, musician and writer and his guests will discuss “what it means to stay human in a complicated world.” The podcast will touch on themes including mortality, masculinity, loneliness — and success.
In a video announcing his new podcast, Burns said "It's basically a societal requirement at this point that everyone has a podcast, so why don’t we have one?," adding "It could basically be what we’ve always done. You and I have always been about this deep and curious investigation of our world in search of these little bits of information that lead to greater understanding," he continues.
“Adults need to be shepherded through life just as much as kids do, and Steve is the perfect person to do it,” said Jessica Cordova Kramer, CEO of Lemonada. “He taps right into your inner child, helping listeners feel delight, comfort and curiosity. From the moment we saw Steve’s videos on TikTok during the pandemic, we knew we had to work with him.”
Lemonada Media was founded in 2019 by Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs. The podcast network is home to popular shows from Meghan Markle, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Samantha Bee, David Duchovny and Sarah Silverman. Last month, Stockholm-based PodX Group acquired a majority stake in Lemonada.
The title joins its lineup of podcasts including Wiser Than Me With Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Fail Better With David Duchovny, The Pink House With Sam Smith and more. Lemonada was recently acquired by Sweden’s PodX Group.
“Adults need to be shepherded through life just as much as kids do, and Steve is the perfect person to do it. He taps right into your inner child, helping listeners feel delight, comfort and curiosity. From the moment we saw Steve’s videos on TikTok during the pandemic, we knew we had to work with him,” said Jessica Cordova Kramer, CEO of Lemonada.
Burns starred as a fictional version of himself on Nick Jr.’s Blue’s Clues in more than 100 episodes from 1996 to 2002. Since then, Burns has released indie rock albums, toured with The Flaming Lips, wrote the theme song for CBS’s Young Sheldon and appeared on The Moth storytelling program. His exit from Blue’s Clues spawned a persistent internet rumor that he had died, which he recently spoke about on Rainn Wilson’s Soul Bloom podcast.
On the educational children's show Blue's Clues, he played a fictional version of himself, also named Steve, who followed paw prints that served as clues left by an animated dog named Blue.
After he was replaced by Donovan Patton, who played Steve's "younger brother," Joe, Burns revealed in the 2006 Nick special Behind the Clues: 10 Years of Blue that he left the show because he felt he was growing out of the role. “I knew I wasn’t going to be doing children’s television all my life, mostly because I refused to lose my hair on a kid’s TV show. And it was happening fast,” he said at the time.
The revamped and retitled Blue’s Clues and You with new host Joshua Dela Cruz ("Josh") premiered on Nickelodeon in November 2019. Burns and Patton returned for multiple episodes, with Burns also serving as producer.
The host said during a 2024 commencement speech at SUNY Delhi in New York that he is regularly approached by adults who tell him how much the show mattered to them as children.
Steve invites you to join him on the journey as he prepares for the launch of his new video podcast this Fall. From the original host of Blue's Clues, Alive with Steve Burns will be a podcast that listens back.Season 1 will tackle issues near and dear to Steve’s fans. As millennials navigate an ever-changing world, Steve will host conversations on topics ranging from personal finance to spirituality and modern love. Made in partnership with Lemonada Media.Subscribe now to stay updated on our upcoming release!Follow Steve on Instagram: @SteveBurnsAliveContinue the conversation with Steve on TikTok: @hioutthereitsmesteve#steveburns#bluesclues#podcast
From People:
Blue's Clues Actor Steve Burns Announces New Podcast with Surprising Celebrity Guest (Exclusive)
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| Alive with Steve Burns podcast. Credit: Lemonada Media |
"It seems that there was an opportunity to just continue the conversation — to simply scale it up for adults, which was a revelation to me," Burns tells PEOPLE
NEED TO KNOW
- Blue's Clues host Steve Burns is launching a new podcast, Alive, which launches September 17 with Lemonada Media
- Speaking to PEOPLE in an exclusive interview, Burns says the podcast "feels very much like a public access cable show from the late '90s"
- The podcast, he adds, builds on the conversations sparked by Blue's Clues and his viral TikTok videos
Steve Burns is back — with a new podcast that the former Blue's Clues host tells PEOPLE builds on the "joy and wonder" so present in the iconic children's show.
Speaking to PEOPLE in an exclusive interview, 51-year-old Burns explains how the new podcast, called Alive, spun out of the viral TikTok videos he posted during the COVID-19 pandemic — videos in which he didn't speak much, but instead “checked in” on his followers.
"I had that viral video during the pandemic [and] I guess since then, I had been kind of thinking I should do something with this access that I did not know I still had with this generation that I have," he muses. "It seems that there was an opportunity to just continue the conversation — to simply scale it up for adults, which was a revelation to me."
Burns adds that the virality of his social media videos demonstrated that there was a way to break through in this modern era. The new podcast, he says, "feels very much like a public access cable show from the late 90s."
And while that descriptor might call to mind another iconic kids' show host — Fred Rogers — Burns is quick to draw the line at any comparisons
"To the degree that I think about Mr. Rogers and making this podcast, it's more about making sure people know that I am nothing like Mr. Rogers, right?" he says. "That is a weight that I do not wish to carry around, and that is a bar that I cannot possibly — no one could possibly — live up to."
He adds, "That dude should be on our money. Mad respect for Fred Rogers. But he really was like a bodhisattva, like that was his ministry, and he had wisdom to share. And I do believe that he will be remembered as much more than a children's television show host. I think he will be remembered as a great teacher of human beings, right? I'm just a neurotic bald guy who is sitting next to you, a fellow traveler on the struggle bus."
Burns' new podcast — which debuts September 17 from Lemonada Media — will see him connect with guests as diverse as hospice nurses, elected officials and celebrities (Jamie Lee Curtis is an upcoming guest, he tells PEOPLE). But much like Blue's Clues, it invites the audience itself to be part of the show.
"It really is kind of the same thing [as Blue's Clues]," he says. "I'm not gonna be speaking to furniture, and there are no magical, felt-puzzle-solving puppies to be found. But this is a podcast about you, and you are the celebrity guest on every episode. I am asking your opinion."
Burns adds that it took him "years" to recognize the significance of Blue's Clues and why it broke through the way it did.
"I didn't even realize how cool Blue's Clues was until I really started thinking about it in hindsight, all these years later, but it always was about running around with joy and wonder and making an attempt to lead an examined life," he says. "About looking around your universe for little bits of information that lead to greater understanding. And then you sit down in a chair with your homie and think about it and talk about it, and that is exactly what this podcast does. So in a way, it's just scaling."
Blue's Clues, he adds, was "always about the important stuff, and the important stuff used to be shapes and colors and letters and numbers and vegetables and graham crackers and stuff, and now it's student loans and, 'Oh my God, my parents are old and sick and I'm terrified' and 'Why does money freak me out?' and 'What is the future of truth?' and you know, all the stuff that we're all wrestling with all the time and don't always think critically about."
Burns tells PEOPLE that fans of Blue's Clues often say that he served as a formative part of their childhoods.
"They tell me that I raised them, which I didn't, but it's an interesting thing that they feel that way — we are relating to media, we are absorbing it into our DNA," he says. "And that's why I think it's imperative that we start showing up as people and we start remembering that there's a human person on the other side of the screen, always, and that person has a fragile human soul."
He continues: "And I personally believe that we have a certain responsibility to those fragile human souls. I think that this technology is about to swallow us whole. I can't imagine we'll just put it away, but we need to humanize it in some way."
The first two episodes of Alive will be available on Wednesday, September 17, with new episodes released weekly on all platforms and video available on YouTube.
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Originally published: June 26, 2025.
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