Some forty years after it first revolutionized children’s television programming, Sesame Workshop (the makers of public tv’s Sesame Street) has announced the launch of a video podcast series.

The short weekly episodes focus on a single “word on the street” (literally, a word chalked onto blacktop). The recent podcast about squid featured grown-ups and children talking about and dancing like squid, and included a newsroom feature about squid by NBC anchor Brian Williams.

‚ÄúIn previous research, Sesame Workshop has learned that parents are eager to have portable educational media content that they can use with their young children at any time and wherever they might be — helping to fill time on a car ride or while waiting in line at the grocery store while building children’s literacy skills at the same time,‚Äù said Glenda Revelle, vice president for research and creative development, digital media at Sesame Workshop, in a statement.

The only fault we found with the podcast was Elmo’s annoying manner of speech, but that’s just our personal taste. We miss the olden Sesame Street days with the original Gordon, our pal Grover, and Cookie Monster when he was still cookie-obsessed.

More information about the podcast is available at http://www.sesameworkshop.org/podcasts/ , and the feed is here.