Barney’s story starts in late 1987 in Allen, Texas. At the time, a former teacher named Sheryl Leach had a two-year old son, Patrick. She struggled to find videos that held his attention. “I was a ...

You know Larry Rifkin’s face from old CPTV pledge drives or from his appearances on the televised UConn women’s basketball games for years after they first began being broadcast in the mid-1990s.

Barney the purple dinosaur comes across as a big, helpful guy who loves kids and laughs a lot. But there is more to him than that; Barney has two sides. Side 1 is the kid-show character. Barney is a ...