Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings
you the secret history and little known facts behind your
favorite music, movies, TV shows and more. We are your
neighbors of Nerdery, your cardigan wearing caretakers of kids show Cannon,

(00:22):
welcome to you a board the trolley of trivia. Can
you say this bit is getting tired? Sure? I need
you to. My name is mister rontog. Come on, do
the bit, do the bit with me, and I'm ex
the owl. And today we are talking about the one

(00:44):
and only Fred Roger is better known by his affectionate
honorific mister Rogers. Where do you even begin with him?
He was a secular saint whose influence continues to spread
long after his death twenty years ago this February. He
was a radical on a cardigan, a man who saw
the possibilities for television as a means to not just educate,
but support emotional development. He harnessed the new medium to

(01:07):
carry out work that was for him deeply spiritual, communicating
directly with the hearts of each and every young viewer.
But Fred didn't just see the potential in television He
also saw the potential in everyone. He began his career
in a world the valued children not for what they were,
but for what they'd become, which was, in short, a consumer.
Fred met children where they were, and that was his genius.

(01:29):
He later said, I don't think anybody can grow unless
they're accepted for exactly who they are. His authentic and
intimate connection with children was so total that he changed
many lives without ever having met them in person. He
loved to tell the story about how one wide eyed
kid came up to him at some in person event
and said, mister Rogers, how did you get out meaning
out of the TV? And Fred patiently explained to him

(01:52):
out of television worked and the kids. You know, He's
processing it thoughtfully for a few minutes before responding the
genuine concern, but are you going to get back in?
I'm keeping things light because I can't start sobbing this
early in the episode, which I absolutely will. Higel, tell
me your deepest, innermost thoughts about mister Rogers. I mean,

(02:14):
it's like the only bit of children's entertainment from like
three to six that I've I don't think has like
aged poorly or failed me in retrospect. I mean, like
you know, when I think back on the stuff that
I remember, like on screens from this era, a lot
of it is Disney, which is all well and good

(02:34):
because Disney's great, but they're also at this point, like
you know, Amazon, and they create grace sludge for the
content troughs and so so that's ruined for me. And
then and then otherwise, I have mister Rogers, a nice
man from Pittsburgh who just never let anyone down. And
that's really the thing. I mean, it's like it's you know,

(02:56):
even with the Bob Browse episode, Like as much as
I love Bob Browse, like you still have all that
stuff with his business partners who screwed over his son,
And there's so much in this world that is corrupted
by the circumstances it exists. And except for mister Rogers,
somehow that man transcended every ugly part of existence and

(03:21):
you know, became a secular saint him and John Coltrane, Yeah,
I mean, you're absolutely right. Before we go any further, folks,
I'll spare you all the suspense. Fred Rogers exactly the
man you want him to be, which means that he
was exactly the man you saw on television, teaching honesty
and compassion, no forgotten scandals, no skeletons, and his cardigan

(03:42):
filled closet. I'm sorry to disappoint you all, he said
later in life, one of the greatest gifts you can
give anybody is the gift of your honest self. I
also believe that kids can spot a phony a mile away.
And you know, like you said, he was above all,
always himself. And you know, that's really the highest compliment
I can pay anybody being always yourself. But that goes

(04:02):
double if yourself happens to be mister Rogers, because that's
a pretty amazing self. He opened up each episode of
the show with the same question, won't you be my neighbor?
And this wasn't some corny TV catchphrase, but a genuine
invitation for closeness and connection. He would later say, television
has the chance of building a real community out of

(04:23):
an entire country, and I would argue he came the
closest to achieving that dream more than anyone else who
worked in that medium. He genuinely believed in the unity
of humanity and the universe. Bore this out in a
really funny way. Tom Hanks was cast to play Fred
Rogers in the twenty nineteen biopic A Beautiful Day in
the Neighborhood, and after filming, Tom was informed that he
and Fred Rogers were actually related in the literal sense.

(04:46):
Ancestral dot Com proved that they were six cousins. They
shared the same great great great great great grandfather who
emigrated from Germany to America in the eighteenth century. And
if you're the kind of person who doesn't believe in coincidences,
Fred definitely did not. There was always meaning behind everything
for him. Then this was just the most perfect way
for the universe to emphasize Fred's strongly held belief that

(05:09):
we are, in fact all one, all neighbors, all related,
all connected, and I think that's wonderful. Well, without further ado,
let's take a journey to the neighborhood of Too Much Information,
from his oddly beautiful obsession with his weight to the
horror icon, who got his start on his set, the
troubling childhood that sowed the seeds for TV excellence, and

(05:30):
his passion for Monty Python. Here is everything you didn't
know about mister Rogers and his neighborhood. Every superhero needs
an origin story, and Fred Rogers is a doozy pretty
unexpected I have to say. He was a child of privilege,
born in nineteen twenty eight to two of the wealthiest

(05:51):
citizens of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Also the birthplace of the Banana Split.
Did you know that? And Rolling Rock Beer really from
the glass line to tanks of old Latrobe. It says
on the it says on the bottle. Wow, this place,
this place has got to be a Taurus Mecca good
good the birthplace of Fred Rogers. Yeah, the Rolling Rockberry,

(06:13):
the birthplace of the banana Split. Come to Latrobe. We
got it all, baby, What a way to spend the day. Seriously,
One more thing you can punch in about Latrobe. The
birthplace of Arnold Palmer. Oh my god, So you can
get yourself banana split. Chase it up with a half
and half iced tea lemonade combo or do you mean

(06:34):
the golfer or the drink? I mean I guess it
goes both, right. Oh yeah. Fred rogers father was the
president of the mcpheely Brick Company, one of Latrobe's most
successful businesses, and his mother was a homemaker and a
well known philanthropist. In fact, she spent much of the
Second World War knitting sweaters for American gis serving in

(06:55):
the frigid European theater. And Fred grew up in an
enormous three story brick home summered in Florida and had
a nearby vacation home, I think, And he was even
taken to school in a chauffeured limo because this was
just a few years after the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, and
his parents were nervous about that happening to him. As
we'll see, this made him an easy target for childhood bullies. Yes. Unfortunately,

(07:18):
even though Fred Rogers helped make childhood enjoyable or at
least bearable for generations of kids, his own childhood was
not very pleasant. He was shy and overweighted as a child,
which led to his classmates, who had already marked him
as the sissy rich kid, to nickname him Fat Freddie,
which wore him very much, making matters worse. He was
also very sick as a boy. He later said, I

(07:40):
had every imaginable childhood disease, even scarlet fever. The industrial
smog of western Pennsylvania exacerbated Fred's asthma, so he spent
much of his time locked inside alone in his room,
and he later said, I used to cry to myself
when I was alone, and I would cry through my
fingers and make up songs on the piano. Oh, this

(08:00):
is too early in the episode for this, for this
lump in my throat. To alleviate his loneliness, young Fred
began playing with puppets, which became a hallmark throughout his life,
as we'll talk about later. Those who knew Fred later
said that the sweet, shy, innocent Daniel was striped tiger
puppet was basically an unvarnished glimpse of Fred's wounded inner child,

(08:21):
and in fact, the actor who played mister McFeeley the Mailman,
David Newell, later observed, if there hadn't been a fat Freddy,
there likely wouldn't have been a mister Rogers. And so
for Fred, when he wasn't escaping into his imagination with puppets,
he sought comfort from his maternal grandfather, Fred McFeeley, and
Fred for the rest of his life, who recall one
visit where his grandfather said to him, you know, you

(08:41):
made this day a really special day just by being yourself.
There's only one person in the world like you, and
I happen to like you just the way you are,
which I have to say, is an unexpectedly compassionate, emotionally
aware of sentiment from a guy who founded a brick
company at the turn of the century. You know me, no,

(09:04):
but just from yeah, coming from a lineage of presumably
stern German immigrants, Yeah, exactly, making that's a very sweet thing, um.
And Fred would always remember this. Obviously, that sentiment became
basically his sign off for his TV show, and he
would name the neighborhood mailman mister McFeely in his honor.

(09:25):
So you're starting to see it all come together. Puppets, sweaters, McFeeley,
well chosen words of encouragement. It's all there. And eventually
Fred overcame his shyness in high school, telling mprs Terry
Gross in nineteen eighty four, it was tough for me
at the beginning, and then I made a couple of
friends who found out that the core of me was okay.
And one of them was the head of the football team. Yes,

(09:47):
mister Rogers took the time honor attack to befriending the
jocks to survive high school. I love that Fred became
quite popular. He ultimately got elected class president of the
student council during his senior year, and also the editor
in chief of the yearbook. Neither of those things were
cool at my high school, but I assume they were
back in the forties. Times were different. Yes, Another big

(10:11):
part of Fred's youth was music. You know we mentioned
earlier he spent some time weeping at the piano, which
is just weaving through his fingers that you you have
in common with him? Sorry, does that really mean? No?
Also really accurate. So Fred spent his first year of

(10:32):
college at Dartmouth, but he really wanted to pursue a
musical education and he you know, I guess spoiler alert
for seventy five years shade against Dartmouth. He founded Dartmouth's
music career track music education track lacking, so he transferred
to Rawlins College, where he completed his degree in music
and graduated magna cum laude in nineteen fifty one. It

(10:55):
was there that he met his future wife, Joanne, who
he proposed to in a letter a short time later.
Given all of the puppets and positive reinforcement and sweaters,
it's easy to overlook the role that music played on
the Mister Rogers television show, and all of that came
from Fred. He wrote all of the music for the program,
including the main theme, which is based in part on

(11:18):
Beethoven's Sonata in C major Opus two number three. Shout
out to Beethoven, friend of the pod. I listened to
it a bunch and I couldn't find how quote. No.
I was gonna try to punch it them, but I
can't find it. But didn't He also inspire one of
his sonatas, also inspired the Flintstones theme. I believe that's

(11:39):
another team cut. Yeah, you know, we used to have
music education in this country. People, people would have heard
that stuff. Fred was something of a child prodigy. Growing
up at just five years of age, he could hear
songs in the radio and then play them back on
the piano by ear. His grandmother was very encouraging of
this habit. She persuaded him to learn box minuet in

(12:02):
g so that he could audition for a local respected
piano teacher, and he learned the piece in just a
few days, and he was accepted by the teacher, even
though he was younger by far than many of his
other students, and as a reward for his studies, Fred's
grandmother offered to buy him his own piano for his
tenth birthday, and Fred chose well tell him what he won.

(12:28):
He chose a nine foot Steinway concert Grand, which was
a three thousand dollar purchase in nineteen thirty six, the
height of the Great Depression, and about sixty five grand today.
Fred Rogers the only good rich person. He treasured the
instrument for the rest of his life. It was around

(12:49):
this time that he began writing original songs that he
said described how he was feeling. He would talk about
growing up in this household where it was being angry,
didn't feel like an option was available, and music became
his outlet for the feelings that he felt that he
wasn't able to express. He said, at one point, music
was my first language. I was scared to use worse.

(13:11):
I didn't want to be a bad boy. I didn't
want to tell people I was angry, but I could
show it through the way I played on piano, And
even as an adult, he would self soothe by sitting
and playing the theme song to his show on piano.
He talked about his passion for music during a nineteen
ninety nine interview for the Archive of American Television, saying,
my first love is music. It is a unique way

(13:32):
for me to express who I am and what I'm feeling.
Music was always my way of saying who I was
and how I felt. I was able to cry or
laugh or say I was angry through the tips of
my fingers on the piano. I would go to the piano.
Even when I was five years old, I started to
play how I felt, and so it was very natural
for me to become a composer. Having written all of
the music for the neighborhood, I feel as if that's

(13:54):
one of my gifts to children. There's something very mystical
and wonderful about how music can touch us. You know,
it's elemental. It must be what heaven is like. What
do you think about that? I mean, you actually write
music and are a true musician. I mean. One of
my favorite terms for why music has a hold on

(14:15):
us comes from Daniel J. Levitton. It's a musicologist, and
I don't think he coined the term, but he's the
first person I saw apply it to music, which was
evolutionary cheesecake. Because we don't need music, you know, apparently
we must. Well, in terms of evolutionary psychology, you can
kind of point to, or even evolutionary biology, you can

(14:36):
point to like all of the different things that make
humans human and brain function, and you know, the way
our larynx has developed to communicate more complexly and and
really like the enjoyment and creation of music, even though
it fires different parts of our brains, is like not
strictly speaking necessary, you know, in terms of how we function.

(15:00):
And so that's why it's called evolutionary cheesecake. It's like
a cheesecake whips but you don't need it. But it's
just something that it's It's this huge it's one of
the greatest buy in my opinion, the greatest art form.
But it's a beautiful way of putting it. I think
when whenever people try and talk about why it is

(15:22):
beautiful and why it matters, that's what I always come
back to, because it's not really it's like the least
it gets it. Why people become so obsessed with it
even though it's simultaneously devalued and depressing, depressing and all
this other stuff. But it's like, yeah, I don't know
that was a tangent. Sorry, no, I mean, I think

(15:43):
that this speaks more to our different personalities that I
you know, I mean, like you just said, we've seen
remnants of early musical instruments in you know, caves from
times when people when human beings were just struggling to
eat and survive. I mean, there's clearly something there that
I choose to believe that there's some kind of energetic

(16:06):
connection to the divine. It's more closer to Fred Rogers
definition than yours or the Levitands definition, but yeah, I
like to believe that there's some kind of you know,
they say, like the light, we only see a tiny
percentage of the wave spectrums visible to us. Oh yeah,
and there's just stuff on other sides that you know,

(16:27):
X rays and all different kinds of waves. I just
think that there's something similar to that with sounds. Maybe
there's just all sorts of other things going on that
we can't perceive, but it is necessary. Yeah, well, I
mean it's it's vibrations, and that is the essence of existence.
Is like Brownie in movement, Like every molecule is vibrating.
It is presumably at some kind of frequency. Right, So

(16:49):
this has been the metaphysics portion of the musical metaphysics
portion here No, neither did I Yeah. Over the course
of fred career, he would compose over two hundred songs,
nine children's operas which I have been unable to locate.
I don't know what those are interesting and released. He

(17:10):
released twelve albums of children's recording in addition to the
nine hundred episodes of the TV show. Some of these
songs were released on records in the nineteen sixties, including
the theme song, which ultimately one of MC grammy, and
he even released a song protesting the practice of dying
baby chicks different colors for Easter. This was the sixties
thing called Don't pick on the Peeps, which featured the

(17:33):
stirring condemnation. How do you think the chickens feel? This
is where you punch in Werner Hurtz, I talking about chickens.
The enormous flat stupidity of a chicken's eyes really quite
a thing. Maybe they're distantly related. Actually the anti vast exactly.

(17:56):
Music really colored how Fred saw the world. In an
early interview in the six's, he used a musical term
to describe how he wanted the show to impact children's lives,
saying he wanted to have a way for children to
navigate the difficult modulations of life. And it's a great
interview clip that opens up Morgan Neville's twenty eighteen documentary

(18:19):
Won't You Be My Neighbor. He's sitting at his I
think it's the grand piano, that's Grandma Bottom, and he's
just kind of waxing poetic about it, and he said,
you know, there's different modulations when you play music. Some
are easy, like going from C to F because it's
mostly all white keys, and then there's tougher ones like
C F sharp and he demonstrates it on the piano.
His fingers go through all sorts of machinations and it

(18:42):
looks really tough, and and he said, I'm here because
I want to help kids with those more difficult modulations
in life. And then he laughs at himself. He's like,
does this make sense to anybody? I don't know, this
makes sense to me. And we're like, yes, Fred, the
sound guy, the video guy, everybody tap and was weeping. Well.

(19:03):
Knowing all that, it comes as no surprise to know
that when Fred did find the person to play piano
on the show, because he didn't do it himself, he
found a heavy hitter. How did the jazz pianist Johnny
Costa as the show's musical director, arranger, and keyboardist, and
Johnny held that role until his death in nineteen ninety six.
And Johnny was no slouch. He was described as the

(19:24):
white Art Tatum by Art Tatum. For those of you
don't know, Art Tatum is widely considered to be the
greatest pianist of the twentieth century, unless you're like a
wonk and think it's like Arthur Rubinstein or one of
those classical guys, maybe Glenn Gould. He didn't really need
a gig on children's television, but he accepted the job
because he could remain in his native Pittsburgh to record

(19:46):
the show, and Fred agreed to pay him the same
amount of money that Johnny needed to pay his son's
college tuition, which is five grand or I guess what
about seventy five thousand today's money, like like fifty thousand. Ah,
we live in hell. Fred Fred called him one of

(20:07):
the most talented musicians he'd ever known, and a lot
of people thought that Johnny was slumming it, but Fred
refused to talk down to children, and so the music
that he played in the show was held to an
extremely high standard. Um he welcomed an early synth pioneer
named Bruce Hack and his collaborator Esther Nelson onto the

(20:30):
program in nineteen sixty eight to explore electronic music and
synthesizers for kids, which is not something you saw in
the rest of children's television. I imagining Barney playing like
a mogue. I was thinking like HR puff and stuff.
Although that though they would have probably messed with synths
on HR puffing. Yeah, yeah, uh. You know. Fred thought

(20:53):
that children intuitively responded to music, and he encouraged Johnny
Costa to play as experimentally as he and the other
guys on the gig were a basis named Carl McVicker
and drummer named Bobby ross Thorne, and they would settle
in each taping day to play the show's main theme,
the Charlie Whistle, Mister mcpheley's speedy delivery piano theme, and

(21:15):
the vibraphone notes as Fred fed his fish, along with
other incidental music. And they were in the TV studio
with Fred. They were playing live as they recorded it
as they taped the show, which I think is really cool.
So from Pittsburgh, the Fred now Rogers Weekday Afternoon band.

(21:35):
I mean, yeah, that's live from the Cardigan Room. My
Cardigan quota for this episode, yeah probably. Oh, I feel
like you got to handle the urban legend section of this.
That's like your thing, It's one of my things. For
a figure as beloved, ubiquitous and squeaky clean as mister Rogers,

(21:57):
there naturally were some yard and downright unsavory urban legends
that popped up around him. The one that I distinctly
remember being told, like in school, was that he was
a secret badass and the arm that he was a
special Ops sniper during the Korean War, and that he
wore long sleeves in a cardigan all the time because
his arms were tattooed with his confirmed kills. I'd heard

(22:21):
he was an eighty seal. That was more interesting. Okay,
neither of those things are true. He never served in
the armed forces, and one friend commented on those rumors
by saying Fred didn't know how to use a screwdriver,
let alone kill a bunch of people. His draft papers
are circulating on the Internet, and though he was classified
as fit to serve all through college just before his graduation.

(22:45):
In nineteen fifty one, his status was changed to four F,
which disqualified him for military service. This was during the
Korean War, and so his impending graduation would have meant
that his college deferment was up, so he could have
claimed conscientious objector status even his religious convictions or his
extremely wealthy family could have pulled some cash register leavers. Yeah,

(23:09):
I mean there are gradiations to being disqualified for military service,
and four F is like absolutely lowest, Like you will
not like this, You're done, Like we don't want you ever.
There's I forget what all the other ones are, but
that's like goodbye, we don't ever want to see you again. Basically,
there are some who have a theory that Fred potentially
expressed bisexual tendencies to the draft board, which at that

(23:30):
time was a sure fire away for the army to
never want to talk to you again. A lot of
people try to get out of the Vietnam draft by
using the same tactic. Fred reportedly discussed these sexual feelings
relatively candidly over the years. To quote the twenty eighteen
biography The Good Neighbor, The Life and Work of Fred
Rogers by Maxwell King, quote in conversation with one of

(23:51):
his friends, the openly gay doctor William Hirsch, Fred Rogers
himself concluded that if sexuality was measured on a scale
of one to ten, he said, well, you know, I
might be right smack in the middle, because I've found
women attractive and I found men attractive. However, mister Rogers
neighborhood Cats mate Francois Clemens, who is gay he played
Officer Clements on the show, says in Neveral Morgan's twenty

(24:14):
eighteen documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? If there was
a gay vibe, I would have picked it up. Fred
wasn't gay, not as far as I know. So who
knows grain as salt? Yeah, then again, perhaps Fred's childhood
asthma caused a lingering respiratory problem. And then there's also
the fact that Fred was very badly color blind, so
much so that he needed help telling the difference between

(24:35):
red tomato soup and green split pea soup. And here's
something that I've tried to verify. He reportedly couldn't see
the color blue, which I don't know what that means.
I don't know if that means it just comes through
as gray or what, But that's pretty wild. So yeah, Fred,
for all of his vibrant sweaters, had a hard time

(24:56):
no oneman color they were. And you know, being colorblind,
any kind of problem would definitely put a dent in
your potential career as a sniper. But the thing that
is weird to me is that presumably the draft board
would have known earlier on when he was one A
and fit to serve that he was color blind. So
I can't imagine that was the reason. Yeah, I don't know.

(25:18):
And in closing, who knows? Fred Rogers medical records have
long since been destroyed, But funnily enough, the military did
go out of their way to reject the rumor that
Fred Rogers was a state trained killer, and in fact,
the very first week that Mister Rogers Neighborhood was broadcast
nationally in nineteen sixty eight, he included a puppet storyline

(25:38):
and the Neighborhood make believe about war resistance, which many
took to be a I can't even say barely veiled.
It was an unveiled critique of the Vietnam War, and
at one point in the episode, he asks viewers, isn't
peace wonderful? And in an emailed with journalist Tom Jannaud,
who wrote what many feel is like the definitive profile
on mister Rogers and Esquire can you say Hero? They

(26:01):
became friends after the peace ran and stayed friends until
Fred's death in two thousand and three. Fred roonim an
email talking about the possibility of being drafted, saying I
have no idea how I would have responded to a
Cold War. I may have had to do alternative service,
as did the friends Quaker friends. I have a friend,
not a Quaker friend, who was in the ambulance Corps.

(26:21):
I would have probably been good at something like that.
I would not have been good at shooting people, though,
I don't think I could have done that. So that's
one urban legend about mister Rogers. I think done and dusted.
I mean it makes sense, though, because you know Bob
Ross from the Joy of Painting Mister Happy Trees, and
you know was a drill sergeant for I think the

(26:41):
majority of his professional life. So I mean there is
a little bit of I can see how people would
extrapolate that and think that every peaceful zend out PBS
character used to be a killer in the army. I
don't think Bob Ross killed people. Well, we can hope.
But there are also a few other urban legends related

(27:03):
to mister Rogers. Yeah, they's that famous screenshot supposedly from
the show that has him giving the finger directly to
the camera's laughing as he does it. Yeah, it's even funnier. Yeah,
it's not strictly true. He's singing the song where is Thumpkin?
The song that bestows a name to each finger on

(27:23):
your hand, and the middle finger is mister Tallman, which scans.
There's another one that it's probably the closest to what
might have actually happened, which is that some neighborhood ne'er
do wells stole Fred's car, and then, learning that they
had robbed mister Rogers, they returned it. They went out

(27:46):
of their way to return it to him unharmed. And
that is not true, but a beautiful story, nonetheless, and
one we can all secretly pine for. So all the
pieces are in place for a chill TV legend. This
brings us to a larger question, how did Fred Rogers
get involved with television in the first place. We all

(28:07):
started when Fred came home to visit his parents when
he was a senior in college in nineteen fifty two,
and his parents had just obtained a new fangled TV,
probably becoming one of the first people in town to
do so, and this sparked for his interest, not because
he loved it, but because he absolutely hated it. One
of the first things Fred Rogers ever saw on TV
was the image of two people throwing pies at one another.

(28:28):
I think it was on a kids show, and this
left him offended to his core. He was so angry
that this incredible new medium was being used to show
kids such dribble, and so he took Gandhi's advice and
decided to be the change that he wished to see
in the world. He vowed to use television quote for
the broadcasting of Grace through the Land, and though we'd
initially intended on attending a seminary. After graduating from Roland's College,

(28:52):
he informed his parents that he wanted to get into television,
and they replied, but you've barely even seen a television
And as he told Pittsburgh Magazine, when I first saw
children's television, I thought it was perfectly horrible, and I
thought there was some way of using this fabulous medium
to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen.

(29:12):
And you know, that's the thing about Fred Rogers. He
respected childhood and he knew that, you know, it was
more than just clowns and pies. And this respect became
a hallmark of his show. And you know, in short,
he was a reformer. He saw an opportunity one that
really fit his mo which he later summed up as quote,
It's not so much what we have in this life
that matters. It's what we do with what we have.

(29:34):
The alphabet is fine, but it's what we do with
it that matters most. Making words like friend and love
that's what really matters. I think he's got a sense
that TV was going to be the medium of his
generation and he wanted to use it in the best
way that he knew. How So, after graduating college in
nineteen fifty one, he got a job at NBC in
New York City as a floor director for early TV

(29:57):
shows like Your Hit Parade, which is an old music show,
The Kate Smith Hour, and also an assistant producer for
the Voice of Firestone. And this is so wild to
me because mister Rogers worked at thirty Rock in Studio
eight h which is the famous studio where Saturday Night
Live is now filmed. So that means that the studio
where Eddie Murphy performed his parody of mister Rogers in
the eighties called Mister Robinson was the very same studio

(30:20):
where Fred Rogers first started working in television decades before.
I just think that's so cool. Again, like we say
at the top of the episode, there are no coincidences. Then,
after a few years of working at NBC, he was
coaxed back to his home state of Pennsylvania to work
for WQEED, which was a newly launched public access station
that was actually the first community sponsored TV station of

(30:42):
its kind. And it's worth saying that it was a
sizeable risk to leave NBC at this time because it
was one of the big three networks and w QEED
wasn't even on the area yet. So but he decided
to really go I think probably where he had more
control and would have more of an influence over what
he was putting on the air. And so he went
back home to Pennsylvania. And it was also at this

(31:02):
network that he first put his longtime love of puppetry
to use. And this happened when he was hired to
work on a kid show called The Children's Corner, which
was hosted by a woman named Josie Carey. Fred was
more of a behind the scenes guy who's working as
an organist, and his career as a children's host really
began by accident. They were going to be showing a
quick little bit of film on this show, and the

(31:24):
film strip snapped right when they're about to roll it,
and this was live TV, so they were forced to improvise,
and Fred grabbed a tiger puppet that the station manager
given him shortly before the show premiered, and he just
stuck it through a hole on the set and started
improvising with the show's host. And this puppet became what
we now know as Daniel Stripe and Tiger, and it
was named after the woman who gave it to him,

(31:46):
w QEED station manager, Dorothy Daniel, And as we said earlier,
Daniel the Tiger, he basically became mister Rodgers alter ego
in a sense. Fred's wife Joanne later said Daniel was
pretty much Fred, the real Fred, And so this Children's
Corner show was really an early training ground for Fred,
and that was here that he owns many if not

(32:07):
all of the ten puppet characters he would ultimately perform
on Mister Rogers Neighborhood. There was King Friday the thirteenth,
who was named I love this in an effort to
make kids less fearful of Friday the thirteenth, which to
me is fairly low on the list of things that
I was afraid of as a kid. But go with God.

(32:27):
According to mister Rogers Neighborhood, King Friday was born on
Friday the thirteenth, which meant that Friday thirteenth was now
a day to be celebrated, not feared. The math on
this doesn't always work out, because sometimes there are multiple
Friday the thirteenth cent a year, but just just go
with it. The mischievous Lady Elaine Fairchild, who is horrifying,
was supposedly named after Fred's sister Elaine, whose parents adopted

(32:51):
when Fred was eleven years old, and by all accounts
in his family was kind of a pill and as
is the character Lady a lamb, and I guess whenever
Fred had to say something on Mister Rogers, like in
his house to his sons, he delivered the news and
a Lady Elaine voice, which I think is a very
fascinating and slightly troubling insight, Fred Rogers Psychology. In addition

(33:16):
to these, he also voiced X the Owl, which is
kind of like a badass name for a fifties kids show,
puppet X the Owl, and Henrietta Pussycat, who I kind
of forgot. She's the one always says like, always sticks
me on my ows in between yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Kind of annoying, but yeah, I'll give it to him. Yeah.

(33:37):
And in nineteen sixty one, after several years of working
in the children's corner, Fred caught the attention with the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who's head of programming told him, Fred,
I've seen you talk to kids. Let's put yourself on
the air. Because, again, on the children's corner, he was
just a puppeteer behind the scenes, no one ever really
saw his face and no one ever really saw him
and the magic that is Fred Rogers. So Fred, his

(33:58):
wife Joanne, and the Two Sounds moved to Toronto to
make his on camera debut in the confusedly named show
Mister Rogers All One Word. I don't really understand why
that choice was made. This show was essentially seen as
an early Canadian prototype for the better known Mister Rogers
Neighborhood three separate words. It was only fifteen minutes and

(34:20):
shot in black and white, but it introduced even more
elements that we come familiar to Mister Rogers fans all
over the world, the music, the puppets, the Cardigans, as
well as the neighborhood of make believe and the trolley.
And actually the set pieces from Mister Rogers Neighborhood were
actually the ones that were built by the CBC designers.
He would later take him back to the US when
he launched Mister Rogers Neighborhood. According to the official PBS site,

(34:45):
the trolley from Mister Rogers Neighborhood, I don't understand this
traveled five thousand miles during each season of the show.
Now that's not correct, which to trust me. It's on
like a big graphic on the PBS website. I trip,
We'll checked it. I don't understand what they mean by that.
Like the track that it travels on is like ten
feet long. I know, I don't know, because I mean

(35:07):
if they well they I mean, yeah, I don't know.
Did they run it constantly day and night? It's only
five thousand miles, like you know, that's that's the navigates
the Earth or maybe not quite, but it's up there. Yeah. Well,
Fred spent a full year developing this series in Canada,
and many biographers have speculated, in kind of a psych

(35:29):
one o one sort of way, that Fred's passion for
television stemms really from his unhappy early life. The tiger
was his mother. Yes, never mind, And so he spent
three years in Canada until he returned to Pittsburgh in
nineteen sixty six and expanded his show into a full
half hour. And first it was seen just in the Northeast.

(35:51):
It was like a local it was a prepbs era,
and then it picked up Sears Roebuck as a sponsor
and went nationwide in February nineteen sixty eight. And so
Fred wasn't just working at children's television in the early sixties. Though.
When he wasn't filming the show, he studied at the
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and in nineteen sixty two he became

(36:12):
the unordained minister in the Presbyterian Church. Friend of the pod.
Now we throw to the Presbyterians, show me. Presbyterian writer
Amy Hollingshorf, author of the Simple Faith of Mister Rogers, wrote,

(36:33):
after graduating from seminary, the Presbyterian Church didn't know what
to do with Fred, so they gave him a special
commission to be an evangelist to children through the media.
The television quite literally became his pulpit, and he didn't
speak about it directly through the show, but it was
something he was very open about in interviews. So he
never became a practicing preachers minister. Minister, there we go,

(36:59):
presber preacher, but that's not right. Press evangelist, telepress evangelist.
He did appeared in nineteen ninety six episode of Doctor
Quinn Medicine Woman as a pastor's mentor, the only time
he appeared as any character other than himself on television.
He appeared on Sesame Street and on the animated PBS
series Arthur, but Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman holds the honor

(37:23):
of getting Fred out of costume for the first and
only time. He also guessed on Letterman, which is very
weird demands yeah yeah, more of a Jimmy Fallon kind
of guy in that Jimmy Fallon is no. This was
in his like Letterman's Way Out era. This was in
like the early eighties. This is when like Jerry Lawler
was decan Andy Kaufman like yeah, but speaking of chat shows, yeah,

(37:48):
he also started in nineteen to seventy eight, while on
hiatus from the children's show Mister Rogers, wrote, produced, and
hosted a thirty minute interview program for adults on CBS
called Old Friends, New Friends, featuring esteemed guests the likes
of Milton Burrell, Georgia on My Mind, composer Hoogi Carmichael,

(38:12):
and Robert Frost's daughter Leslie. I think it only lasted
like twenty episodes, it was, apparently, and they talk about
this in the Morgan Neville documentary sort of Unwatchable. Well,
just wasn't his medium, and you gotta work really hard
to make Leslie Frost seem uninteresting. In addition to his

(38:35):
theological studies, Fret also took courses at the University of
Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Child Development, where he met fellow
adults who studied children, you know, the socially acceptable way,
no white vans. These included doctor Benjamin Spock, the childrearing
icon of the baby Boom era, and Eric Ericson, What

(38:58):
a terrible name. I'm so sorry. He's developmental psychologist and
psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development. He coined
the phrase identity crisis, something I refer to almost daily,
So shouts to Eric Ericson. Both of these experts helped
shape Rogers's ideas for how to connect with children through
his show. But the most crucial was his connection to

(39:21):
doctor Margaret McFarlane, co founder and director of the Arsenal
Family and Children's Center in Pittsburgh. And she would go
on to be a consultant on his show for over
thirty years. But you know, he was far from a
chilli academic. There are just all of these stories, not
just from the Tom Janoude, the journalist who became very
close to him, but many others Rest and Tom Janoude

(39:46):
and the rest. But he wrote, you know, as you
mentioned before, probably the definitive profile and fred in Esquire
nineteen ninety eight, and he wrote, he worked hard on
his friendships. He prepared for his friendships, he took notes
on his friendship. He even kept files on his friendships.
And not long ago I found out he'd kept a
file on me. The files are in his archives at

(40:07):
Saint Vincent College in Latrobe. Apparently they are extensive box
after box of information and inspiration concerning those he loved,
and in one of those boxes are the names of
my wife, my dogs, and one of my nieces who
was facing trouble and for whom he prayed. There were
also print outs of our correspondence and notes he took
on our phone conversations, written on yellow legal pads in

(40:29):
his eerily calligraphic hand. Does this freak me out? No,
because I used to wonder how he did it, how
he was available to so many people on so many
different occasions. Now I know. I also remember that, for
all his scrupulous preparation, his conversation was never canned, but
rather questing and free. Fred had a very overarching emphasis

(40:51):
on egalitarianism, to the degree that his office didn't have
a desk because he didn't want to place objects between
him and his guests, so he had a sofa and armchairs.
And interviewers actually found him to be a tricky subject
to interview because he would ask questions of the interviewers

(41:12):
instead of giving answers. And this wasn't because he was
trying to be evasive or duck their questions. He was
just curious about their lives and that was his way
of getting closer to people. He pioneered the celebrity selfie
long before the age of Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift.
He was in the habit of getting photos with interviewers

(41:32):
and would even send them little albums of the time
that they spent together. One of your favorite anecdotes that
you dropped in here when he was being chauffeur to
a PBS executive's house for dinner, and he asked what
the driver was going to do between drop off and
when it was time to take him back. The driver
replied he was just going to wait outside, which is
pretty much power for the course for the life of

(41:53):
a limo driver. Fred wouldn't hear of it, and he
insisted that the driver come into the PBS executive's house
to eat dinner with them, and then on the ride
back home, Fred sat in the front of the car
with the driver. The driver says, Oh, we're passing my
house on the way back to Fred's house, and Fred
asked if he could stop in and meet his family,
and so the driver acquiesced and described it as one

(42:16):
of the best nights of his life. He said, Fred
played piano for them and chatted with them until late
in the night. Again, I've spent weeks researching this episode.
I have not found a single, remotely, dark, stormy negative
thing about Fred Rogers, which makes me very happy. We're

(42:39):
going to take a quick break, but we'll be right
back with more too much information in just a moment,

(43:00):
king up dinner with Fred. He was a staunch vegetarian
for most of his life, and this was for moral reasons.
He later said, I don't want eat anything that has
a mother really puts the rest of us in an
awkward position. That's a health of ways to do do it.
And it probably becomes no surprise that Fred Rogers didn't
drink or smoke either. He co owned the Vegetarian Times

(43:22):
magazine for a time in the eighties, which he sold
in the nineties for what was reportedly a healthy prophet
good for Fred, and he also took major corporations to task.
When Burger King had the guts to parody mister Rogers
and one of their ads, how Dare They, Mister Rogers
called them out in a big press conference, effectively shaming

(43:44):
the company into canceling the ad. Ironically, Tofu Burgers is
one of mister Rogers's favorite metals. He was very much
a creature of habit. For breakfast, mister Roger, He's usually
had milk and cereal or fresh fruit and toast. Lunchtime
found the meaning yogurt and crackers or cotted cheese with peaches,
and for dinner he often favored tofu and vegetables. And
as a result, he kept a very spelt one hundred

(44:05):
and forty three pounds, and he reportedly weighed himself each
day to ensure that he kept that exactly the same weight.
And he told writer Tom Jennold for his profile and esquire,
the number one hundred and forty three or one four
three means I love you. It takes one letter to
say I and four letters to say love and three
letters to say you. One hundred and forty three I

(44:27):
love you. Isn't that wonderful? So for Fred Rogers, one
hundred and forty three wasn't just his weight, but also
a sort of cosmic confirmation of who he was. And
Jannold later said that Fred would email him from an
AOL account, and his AOL address was ZZZ one four
three at aol dot com and the zzz signified the

(44:50):
fact that Fred slept soundly through the night, and the
one forty three was I love you It's incredible. But yes,
as I said, Fred Rogers was very much a creature
of habit and kept a very strict daily regiment. Uh.
In fact, being mister Rogers sort of sounds like being
in boot camp. He was up at five thirty every

(45:10):
morning for a prayer and some studying. He would do
a little writing, make some phone calls, and then he
was off to take his daily swim at the Pittsburgh
Athletic Club. But naked. Yes, Yes, my favorite part of
the it's my favorite part of that Esquire profile. It's
just so like it's it's again, just like it's stuff

(45:31):
about him that would kind of be creepy and weird.
It's like if you actually found out at any point
that someone had bad things to say about him. The vegetarianism,
the swimming in the nude, the over familiarity with strangers,
the obsession with like classical piano, like all of it
is something that could very easily be hallmarks of a

(45:53):
serial killer. Yeah, you know, and then you're just like, oh, no,
just just a sweet weird man. He was definitely eccentric. Yeah,
I mean this in this Touch and od profile, I
think it opens actually with Anne in the locker room
with mister Rogers and mister Rogers is stripping off. I mean,

(46:13):
it's a great callback to the opening of the Mister
Rogers TV show when he takes off his jacket. It's
it's actually brilliant. He's mister Rogers in the dress room,
takes off his suit coat, takes off his tie, takes
off his shirt, and keeps going, keeps going, and finally
he was naked. And Fred looks at the writer Tom
jan Oden says, well, Tom, I guess you've already gotten

(46:36):
a deeper glimpse into my daily routine than most people have. Amazing.
Arguably the most precious part of Fred's day was when
he attended to his fan mail, and early in his career,
he and his wife Joe Anne would write their responses
on the dining room table together fairly quickly, but as
the number of letters swelled between fifty and one hundred

(46:56):
letters a day, he began to oversee the respects with
the help of a personal assistant before personally signing each
one himself, but his assistant later clarified that no one
received a form letter from mister Rogers. Heather Arnott, who
was an assistant on mister rodgers neighborhood, told the Pittsburgh
Post Gazette he respected the kids who wrote. He never
thought about throwing out a drawing or a letter. They

(47:19):
were sacred and often in these fan letters, these kids
were pouring their hearts out to him about a loss
of a family member or a pet, and Fred felt
it was the least he can do to respect them.
He later said, anyone who does anything to help a
child in his life as a hero to me, and
this is really sweet. Some of Fred Rogers fan letters
were published in an eighteen ninety six compilation, Dear mister Rogers,

(47:42):
does it ever reign in the Neighborhood? And some of
them are really cute too. And then, after all this work,
mister Rodgers frequently took a midday nap before turning in
for bed at nine thirty every night, where he'd sleep
for an uninterrupted eight hours, secure in the knowledge that
he was the most beloved man on the planet. Now,

(48:03):
such a punishing workload was bound to wear on anyone
and Fred Rogers expressed his frustration not by swearing, but
by uttering mercy, not on like Uncle Jesse from Full
House orson in Pretty Woman. It was a one that
he said frequently as he sat down the tackle his
pile of fan mail. But generally this was the strongest

(48:23):
word in his personal lexicon. But that's not to say
he lacked a sense of humor, even for body or
jokes and gags. Surprisingly, he actually really enjoyed a lot
of the mister Rogers parodies. He said that the first
time he met Eddie Murphy, who regularly parodied him on
SNL as mister Robinson, he threw his arms around the
comedian and gave him a giant hug and they took

(48:45):
a selfie together with a polaroid, which they showed off
on The David Letterman Show, which is hilarious. And Fred
told David Letterman that he believed that these parodies were
done quote with kindness in their hearts. But it was
not easy being mister Rogers when he wasn't writing original music,
answering fan mail, or giving an endless stream of the
two hundred commencement speeches he delivered at points in his career,

(49:08):
fundraising or actually taping the eight hundred ninety five regular
season episodes of his show, he would write it, and
writing it was a complicated process, more than you'd think.
Maxwell King, author of the book The Good Neighbor, The
Life and Work of Fred Rogers, wrote in The Atlantic
that Fred meticulously chose his words when writing scripts for

(49:28):
the show because he wanted to make sure he was
communicating in the most effective way to young children who
tend to think in extremely literal fashion. This is really
interesting the man, and this could lead to some inadvertent miscommunications.
And King said that Fred was extraordinarily good at imagining
where children's minds might go, adding the mister Rogers wrote

(49:49):
a song called you can Never Go down the Drain
because he knew that this was a fear shared by
many children. In the book, King describes the nine step
process that Fred would to translate an ordinary adult sentence
to one that Rogers felt would resonate with children by
validating their fears and providing what the children needed. So

(50:09):
a sentence like it is dangerous to play in the
street becomes your favorite. Grown ups can tell you where
it is safe to play. It is important to try
to listen to them, and listening is an important part
of growing. Another example is that in one episode, there's
a scene in a hospital in which a nurse inflating
a blood pressure cuff says, I'm going to blow this up,

(50:30):
and Fred insisted that they redub the line as I'm
going to puff this up with some air, because blow
it up might sound like there was an explosion. And
then he was worried that children would cover their ears
and not hear what was happening. Next once, he enlisted
one of his writers to write a manual intended to

(50:51):
teach doctors how to talk to children, and this woman
worked hard on it, using all of her education and
experience in the field of child development. But when she
did him her opening, he crossed out what she had
written and replaced it with six words you were a
child once two. Fred learned early on in his TV
career to pretend that he was speaking to just one child.

(51:13):
He also made sure to speak at a very specific
pace of no more than one hundred and twenty four
words per minute. This is thought to be the ideal
pace for children ages three to five to process. The
speed and clarity also made it extra intelligible. To non
native speakers, and many people, including Ricky Martin, credit the

(51:34):
show with helping them learn English. Since Fred was so
deliberate about his word choice, speed, and cadence, it makes
sense that he was not a big fan of ad living.
He felt that he owed it to his young viewers
to make sure that every word was thought out. It's
worth reiterating that Fred Rogers wrote and edited all of
the episodes, wrote and saying most of the two hundred

(51:57):
songs created, all of the characters, both puppet and human,
played most of the significant puppet roles, hosted every episode, produced,
and approved every detail of the program, So that's a lot.
The show went national a year before another PBS children's juggernaut,
Sesame Street, premiere in nineteen sixty nine, and though the

(52:18):
two were often lumped together, they were seen as two
sides of the same coin. Sesame Street focused on cognitive learning,
where Mister Rogers Neighborhood focused on young children's social and
emotional needs. Writer Kathy Murlock Jackson said, while both shows
target the same preschool audience and prepare children for kindergarten,
Sesame Street concentrates on school readiness skills, while Mister Rogers

(52:41):
Neighborhood focuses on the child's developing psyche and feelings and
sense of moral and ethical reasoning and fashion. I was
more influenced by the fashion. Yeah, let's see that. Yeah,
Louise was a pretty badass. Oh, I mean Oscar the
Grouch in that I aspired to live in a trash can.

(53:06):
Much the same way that Fred was strict about the
writing on his show, he demanded excellence from his guest stars.
After Roger's death, Joe Nigrie, who played the royal handyman
in the Neighborhood of Make Believe, told the Associated Press
that Fred didn't take kindly to celebrity guests who seemed
to be phoning their performances in because they were on
a kiddie show. Yeah. I like to imagine as soon

(53:28):
as he got off camera he broke into like Arlie
Ermi's voice. You call that an inspirational speech, maggot. The
guest list for Mister Rogers is impressive. Tony Bennett, Yo
Yo Ma, Julia Child went in Marsalis, the cast of
Stomp Okay Sure LeVar Burton, Bill Nye, Astronaut, Al Warden.

(53:52):
Children's book author Eric Carl magician David Copperfield, among many others.
Fred later said of his guests, the thing that I
remember best about successful people I've met through all the
years is their obvious delight in what they're doing, and
it seems to have very little to do with worldly success.
They just love what they're doing, and they love it
in front of others. Another notable guest of the show

(54:14):
was Margaret Hamilton, best known as the Wicked Witch of
the West and Wizard of Oz. Fred invited her onto
the show in nineteen seventy five because he knew that
kids were still terrified of her, as evidenced by the
famous band episode of Sesame Street that aired once in
nineteen seventy six before being yanked from reruns from being
too scary, presumably featuring Margaret Hamilton. Yeah, oh yeah, that

(54:37):
was the episode. She had guessed that on Sesame Street
and it was so terrifying, and so many parents wrote
in the complaint, which was sad because I think the
whole episode of her on Sesame Street was about how
she was like misunderstood. Yeah, it was so freaky that
it was yanked off the air, and for years it
was like, oh, on the top ten list of like

(54:58):
lost media that p I wanted to see, and it
only very recently came out. I think last summer. Somebody
found it and put it on YouTube and I watched
clips from it, and it is indeed pretty creepy. Yeah,
and then later that would serve as the plot of Wicked. Yeah.
Woh yeah. Well, we can't talk about fellow humans on

(55:18):
Mister rogers neighborhood without discussing mister Speedy delivery himself, Mister McFeeley.
That character was named after Fred's maternal grandfather and his
own middle name. And Yeah. Years after the show ended,
Fred Rogers admitted that he wished he chose in a
different name for the delivery man because he was sick
of all the dirty jokes that came from it. Mister
McFeeley was played by David Nuwell, who was originally hired

(55:40):
onto the show as a public relations manager, and Tred
apparently liked his vibe and cast him in the role
of mister McFeeley basically on the spot and ego eyed.
Fans of Mister Rogers have noted that mister Rogers never
shakes mister mcfeeley's hand, just once in the series finale,
and also during a Christmas special ironic for a man

(56:01):
named mcpheely. The other main human on Mister rodgers neighborhood
is the beautiful and talented Lady Aberlin. She is King
Friday's niece who acted as kind of a surrogate older
sibling or parent to the characters in the Land of
Make Believe. Lady Aberlin was played for thirty three years
by Betty Aberlin, who came from more of an avant
garde underground arts background than the one might expect for

(56:21):
a Mister Rodgers intimate. She owsted a late night radio
show with free jazz and spoken word pieces in the
mid seventies, and she also worked with the comedy deal,
The Smotherest Brothers and most interesting to Me. She is
a long standing association with director Kevin Smith and has
appeared in guest roles in the movies Dogma, Jersey, Curl
Zach and Mary Make a Porno, and Red State. And

(56:43):
the only other truly reoccurring live character most of the
time on Mister Rogers are his fish, which he always
made a big display of feeding, presumably saving the lives
of countless family goldfish given the children as pets these
frequent reminders to feed the fish. It probably helped Fred
always announced when he was going to feed the fish

(57:04):
because he once received a letter from a five year
old blind fan reading, Dear mister Rodgers, please say when
you're feeding your fish, because I worry about them. I
can't see if you're feeding them, so please say you're
feeding them out loud. And this was always one of
my favorite moments of the show because it was always
so quiet and meditative, and these little moments was something
that Fred made true to include throughout the show, and

(57:26):
in fact, in the intro to each episode, you'll notice
the stoplight, which he inexplicably has in his living room
is always on yellow when he walks in, and that's
a subliminal reminder to both kids and parents to slow down,
which I thought was cute. Fred had absolutely no fear
of dead air. In one episode, he invited a marine
biologist to teach kids about fish and specifically how they eat,

(57:49):
so for one segment, they wanted to demonstrate how fish ate,
so they tossed the mic into the tank and waited,
but the fish weren't hungry. The biologist started to tap
the tank and try to get the fish to eat,
but they just weren't own for it, and the crew thought,
you know, we'd probably need to retape this, but Fred
didn't want to. He thought it was a great lesson
in teaching kids the importance of being patient. And interestingly,

(58:10):
a Yale study examining the difference between Sesame Street viewers
and Mister Rodgers viewers determined that kids who watched Mister
Rogers had a much higher what's called tolerance of delay,
meaning they were more patient. So that's interesting. But mister
Rodgers was very against quick cuts, and Tom jannatas quoted
as saying he was in favor of media being human,

(58:31):
meaning there should be mistakes, there should be accidents, and
if that was the way it was filmed, then that
was how it should stay. Many television critics have noted
how Fred used time in a different way than many
other TV hosts. He would do things like, we don't
know how long a minute is here, let me show you,
and then just sit there for a minute of dead air.
And I can't even call it dead air because that

(58:53):
implies that it's wasted time. It's just slow time. And
there was another lengthy segment where Fred's showcases his breathing technique.
It's all part of zen, the art of mister Rogers,
and he later said, I think silence is one of
the greatest gifts we have. And I mean, if you
watch mister Rogers now and compare it to like, I'm
sure any Bluey whatever, what are the New Kids shows.

(59:15):
I don't even know. The speed of it is just
it's unlike anything on the air now. But it's amazing.
But it like it's kind of has like the joy
of painting quality to it. It's very calming him in
the Beckett Samuel Beckett, Oh my god, every word is
like an unnecessary stain on nothingness, waiting for mcpheely. And

(59:39):
there we come to mister Rogers true co stars his sweaters.
I am hard pressed to name a man more strongly
associated with my favorite garment. Maybe Bill Cosby, but I
think that honor has been revoked at this point. Everyone
can picture in your mind's eye the way that mister
Rodgers zips his card again all the way up at
the beginning of each episode and then brings the zipper

(01:00:01):
back down to mid level, much more casual. They originally
had buttons on his cardigans for the first couple episodes,
but they took too long to fasten, so he switched
his zippers very smart. This is also the part of
the show where he switches his shoes from wingtips to sneakers,
which I had assumed was part of his way of
signaling if they were going to have a fun, relaxing
time together. That's only part of the reason. This satorial

(01:00:23):
choice was also dictated partially by necessity because his fancy
dress shoes made too much noise when walking on the set,
so he switched to Sperry topsiders or convers And for
those of you who want to get the fool Fred
Rogers look, I have bad news for you. You cannot.
For the majority of the series, his cardigans were made
especially for Fred by his mother Nancy. We mentioned at

(01:00:45):
the top of the episode that she did her part
for the war effort during World War Two by knitting
sweaters for the local boys serving in Europe to keep
them warm, and she continued to knit a sweater a
month for the rest of her life, giving them out
to her family members, including Fred, as Christmas presents, and
Fred ultimately amassed a collection of more than twenty distinctive
Varsity Next sweaters, which and he wore them on TV

(01:01:08):
as his way of saying hello to his mother, which
is adorable. It's like Carol Burnt tugging her ear to
say hello to her grandmother in the every episode. Yeah.
During one episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, Fred actually explained
the background of his sweaters, holding one up to the
camera so they could do a close up on his
mother's handywork, and he told viewers she makes sweaters for
many different people. That's one of the ways that she

(01:01:30):
says she loves somebody. Though Fred's mother, Nancy, died in
nineteen eighty one, he continued to wear her sweaters for many,
many years, but after a while, sadly, they started to
become afraid and decidedly not camera worthy, and finding replacement
cardigans for Mister Rogers proved oddly difficult. The colors needed
to be appropriately vibrant and the zipper exceptionally smooth so

(01:01:53):
wouldn't get stuck and delay the shoot, and they really
found themselves stuck until one day the show's art director,
a woman and Kathy Borland, saw a postal worker walking
down the street in Pittsburgh, and she realized that his
cardigan was a perfect facsimile of Fred's. And she called
the local post office supply and got a bunch of
standard issue mail carrier cardigans. I guess those were really

(01:02:14):
close to the style those mom made. And she got
them all done in white so she could die them herself.
And hilariously, this art director, Kathy Borland, she'd worked as
an art director on George Romero's Day of the Dead,
making outfits for five hundred zombies. So she's made outfits
for five hundred zombies and mister Rogers, I cannot imagine
that there's anybody else on the planet who can claim

(01:02:35):
that honor. But dyeing these sweaters was no easy task.
She had to buy an industrial size soup pot from
a restaurant supply company, which, at seventy dollars, took a
sizeable chunk out of her budget. And then she would
throw all these white sweaters in in the backyard and
mix it with a giant yard stick like the mom
from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I guess you

(01:02:58):
know the scene. Then she them dry on a clothesline
in her backyard and that was that, and she waxed
the zippers herself for a smoother pool, but she later
told the Smithsonian dot Com, every time he put that
sweater on during a shoot, my heart would go into
my feet, and it was only after he got a
smooth zip that she could relax. And speaking to the Smithsonian,
Fred donated one of his cardigans, the red one, to

(01:03:19):
the National Museum of American History, in nineteen eighty four,
where it is still on display for all to see.
We should get you a red zip cardigan. I know,
I'm surprised I don't have one, although I don't you
know what, I don't really look good in cardigans. I
look a little too. I look like I mean it.
You would look good in cardigans because everyone would know

(01:03:40):
you didn't mean it. He looked like you mean it.
You know what I mean? I do? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I do. Mister Rogers Neighborhood is one of the longest
running programs in TV history, having produced nearly nine hundred episodes,
almost five times as many as Friends. Until nineteen seventy five,

(01:04:01):
Rogers and his colleagues were making sixty five episodes a year,
and then, presumably buckling under this punishing workload, he took
a hiatus until nineteen seventy nine, at which point he
produced around fifteen episodes a year on average until two
thousand and one. During this hiatus we mentioned earlier, he
attempted to launch Mister Rogers After Dark, featuring a friend

(01:04:23):
of the Pod, Leslie Frost, but he decided that he
wanted to stop for good during this hiatus, essentially feeling
that he after doing five hundred and eighty five episodes
at that point over like eight years, he said all
he'd had to say. But by nineteen seventy nine he

(01:04:44):
felt moved to return for an unusual reason. This was
soon after the Christopher Reeves Superman movies became a big
success at the box office, leading to scores of children
tying homemade capes around their backs and try and imitate him,
which obviously didn't end well if they were jumping from
great heights. A lot of kids were injured killed around

(01:05:06):
this time, and Fred Rogers was outraged because he felt
that the producers of these films were being irresponsible by
not going out of their way to explain to them
that Superman and every other superhero were just pretend. So
he vowed to do a return of his show for
a themed week of superhero programming, and these themed weeks

(01:05:27):
were really the hallmark of the latter years of the show,
tackling difficult topics. It is like death, divorce, children, getting lost,
and even the nuclear arms race. So say what you
will about Fred Rogers, but he was unflinching when it
came down to giving kids really the truth, just phrased
in a different way of divorce. He said, some people

(01:05:49):
get married and after a while they're so unhappy they
don't want to be married anymore, which is accessible and unvarnished.
He wants said the world is not always a kind place.
That's something all children need to learn for themselves, whether
we want them to or not. But it's something they
really need our help to understand. Can you say the

(01:06:12):
grim embrace of the grave? Can you say every living
thing dies alone? The most stark example of this comes
just a few months into the shows around on June seventh,
nineteen sixty eight, just days after Robert Kennedy was killed
by the CIA. Can you say the CIA killed MLK?

(01:06:41):
Can you say what was the LSD dosing? Is it
mk Ultra? Can you say mk Ultra Project Monarch Children
can you say, candidate, can children? Can you say Manchurion? Children?
Did you know that there's a very good chance Lee

(01:07:01):
Harvey Oswald was given LSD when he was stationed and sorry,
that's possibly true though, because he was at one of
the bases where they were doing that. Yeah. Yeah, Have
you read Acid Dreams? The book? Oh man, that's a
good one. You should look that one up. Anyway. In
this episode, they're in the Land of make Believe when

(01:07:24):
Daniel Tiger gives Lady Aberlin a balloon which they inflate
and let the air out slowly, and then Daniel drops,
what does assassination mean? Is wild to watch? And do
you think they know? Because he didn't add lib is
actually she is actually just acting? But you know she

(01:07:48):
has taken him back. She says, have you heard that
word a lot today? He says yes, and I didn't
know what it meant, and she said, well, it means
somebody getting killed in a sort of surprise way supposed
to a deliberate way. Fred would explain his decision to
tackle the subject by saying, I felt I had to
speak to the families of our country about grief, A

(01:08:10):
plea not to leave children isolated and at the mercy
of their own fantasy of loss and destruction. Children have
very deep feelings, just the way parents do, just the
way everybody does, and are striving to understand those feelings
and to better respond to them is what I feel
is a most important task in the world. He spoke
about death on the show when he went to feed
his fish and discovered that one of them had died.

(01:08:33):
They didn't fake that that fish was really dead, and
they zoom in on it, motionless at the bottom of
the tank, and again, in a way that could scan,
very creepy, dispassionately points out all of the ways he
knows it's dead, which is like a mondy python sketch. Children,

(01:08:54):
if you want a body not to float to the surface,
you have to puncture the lungs so that the eric
can let out of them, and that way it'll sink easier.
Can you say, lime, Jesus? And then he went to
the backyard and buried it, and he used that moment
to explain and hopefully alleviate children's fears about death. Sixty

(01:09:16):
eight was a rough year for kids and the rest
of the United States. King Friday thirteenth, at one point
was Roger's entryway into the concept of civil disobedience. He
erected a wall in his kingdom topped with barbed wire
in an effort to keep out the changers, repeatedly saying

(01:09:37):
down with the changers because we are on top, which
would later become the official platform of the GOP. Ultimately,
the neighborhood is saved through civil disobedience. Lady Aberlin and
the other puppets send King Friday balloons over the wall
with cards that read love and Peace, which I think
was a John Lennon yoko on an art piece. Also
around that same time. Tolerance was obviously a cornerstone of

(01:09:59):
mister Roger's neighborhood, and many episodes revolved around the topic
of racism, but Fred was a master of the show
don't tell approach. One particularly potent example was filmed less
than a year after the assassination of MLK. It was
a small moment when Rogers invited his African American friend,
Officer Clemens, to cool his feet off in his inflatable

(01:10:19):
swimming pool. And this is not long after footage of
segregated pools had made the rounds in the news. With
Irate a white hotel owners dumping bleach and other cleaning
chemicals into their pools filled with black, peaceful protesters. Pools
had recently become desegregated, but the controversy remained, and so
the image of these two men, one white and one black,

(01:10:42):
doing something as simple as dipping their bare feet into
the same pool was fairly radical and a beautiful way
to demonstrate to children that it was okay for people
who were different to share not just a pool, but
to share space and ultimately friendship. The character of Officer
Clemens is really interesting to me. He was played by
a singer dancer named Tis Clemens, who became one of
the first African Americans to have a recurring role on

(01:11:04):
the children's television show, and Fred's choice to make the
African American character on the show a cop was obviously
an intentionally loaded choice. This African American character was both
a beloved neighbor to mister Rogers and also a respected
authority figure. Francois Clemens himself later admitted, I've always felt
that the police were the most dangerous people in the neighborhood.

(01:11:24):
Real talk. Yeah, and Fred approached Francois early in the
show's development about playing a part on the show, and
Francois initially blanched because he was worried it would interfere
with his singing career, and Fred used to tease him
about that for years, but he also said it was
the moment that he fell in love with the guy.
Francois claimed that mister Rogers told him it was then
that I knew you wouldn't kiss my ass, which is

(01:11:46):
a very unmister Rogers thing to say, but he claimed
those were his exact words. The pair remained close for
the rest of Fred's life, but they did have a
kind of tense moment early in their career. Francois marriage
dissolved in the early seventies when he came to the
realization that he was gay, and to use his own words,
he couldn't pray it away, so Francois began to embrace

(01:12:08):
the side of himself and frequented gay bars, and someone
associated with the Mister Rogers Neighborhood's show apparently found out
about this and relate it to Fred, who told Francois
at the time that he could no longer go there
if he wanted to remain on the show for fear
of some kind of scandal, and Fred also told him
that if he came out publicly, he couldn't be on
the show anymore either. However, there were no hard feelings

(01:12:30):
between the Fair and Francois later said in the Morgan
Neville documentary very tearfully that he looked at Fred as
his surrogate father, and in nineteen ninety three, when he
retired from the show as Officer Clemens, they recreated the
pool moment together, a friendly reminder that basic rules of
neighborliness and civility remained unchanged. How do you feel about that?

(01:12:50):
It's not great. It's not great. No. I don't think
it was necessarily Fred's feelings about homosexuality. I think it
was his feet year of what other people thought about homosexuality,
potentially damaging what he had built, which was for the
greater good of children. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, it's
a tough that's a tough one. Yeah, there's no way

(01:13:10):
to really like. I assume he didn't speak on it.
I've never heard him speak on it. This was it
was a pretty sizable element of the Morgan Leval documentary.
Not sizeable, but they go in on it fairly extensively.
It's also worth noting that, like for being progressive racially,

(01:13:31):
that's a dimension of some you know, sects of Christianity,
whereas homosexuality is pretty much a no in all of them.
So it might have come down to his faith and
sex outside of marriage for quite a few especially back then,
you know, it was yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I
don't know, it is it's really thorny. I mean it

(01:13:55):
was Stonewall sixty nine around the exact same time they
shooting the scene in the pool. Yeah. So, but I mean,
you know, that's still a kind of an underappreciated part
of civil rights of this era. So yeah, I don't know,
it's it's interesting to think about. It's all conjecture, right,
Speaking of dead air, two straight guys talking about another

(01:14:20):
long dead white guy's thoughts on homosexuality. Well, I actually
just found a Clemens quote from the book Peaceful Neighbor
Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers. Did you quote that? Oh? No,
I want to hear it. This is kranzois Clements talking
about mister Rogers telling him about the not to be
on the show, and he said, I want you to know, Frank,

(01:14:42):
that if you're gay. It doesn't matter to me at all,
I said, but if you're going to be on the show,
you can't be out as gay. People must not know.
Many of the wrong people will get the worst idea,
and we don't want them thinking and talking about you
like that. If those people put up enough fuss, then
I couldn't have you on the program. It's not an
issue for me. I don't think you're less of a person.

(01:15:03):
I don't think you're immortal immoral. Oh yeah, I don't know.
I don't think you're immortal, but there's only one way
to find out. If those people put up enough fuss,
then I couldn't have you on the program. It's not
an issue for me. I don't think you're less of

(01:15:24):
a person. I don't think you're immoral. Um. Yeah, So
I think it really did come down to wanting to
protect the show, and he told him. He said, you know,
this doesn't mean our friendship has to end. He said, man, this,
I mean, this is the depressing part. Clement says that
Roger told him talent can give you so much in
this life, but that sexuality thing can take it all

(01:15:46):
away faster than you can ever imagine. You can have
it all if you can keep that part out of
the limelight. So that's that's interesting. I mean he did
suggest we talked about you talking about him suggesting that
he marry a woman. No, I didn't hear that. Yeah,

(01:16:09):
I'd married a woman. Yeah, and that's what it says.
He said, Fred told him, have you thought about getting married?
And then he said people do make some compromises in life.
And so he did marry a woman in nineteen sixty eight,
but then they divorced in seventy four. And apparently Fred
later he stopped saying that he should remain in the
closet and he said you should find a gay man

(01:16:31):
to be happy with. But he still refused to address
it on the show. So, and I guess in the book,
this book Peaceful Neighbors also talks about I was wrong
about the Presbyterian thing, that the Pittsburgh Church, the sixth
Presbyterian Church was apparently actually relatively welcoming to gay people
of that faith. Oh oh god, this is this is

(01:16:53):
this is great. On Clemen's last appearance on the show,
Rogers wrapped up the show with his standard clothes lines.
You know, you make every day a special day. Just
by being you and I like you just the way
you are. And Clemens asked him when they were finished taping.
He said, you know, you were looking right at me
when you said that. Have you been talking to me
or were you talking to me? And Fred said, yes,

(01:17:16):
I have been talking to you for years, but you
heard me today. Oh yeah, that was that was rough.
That was like a very sweet part of the episode. Yeah,
part of the movie. It is unfortunate that it came
down to business decisions, but take some cold comfort in
the fact that you know he was not personally bigoted

(01:17:37):
in any way. As you meditate on that. We'll be
right back with more too much information after these messages,
and then we're going to talk about how Fred Roger

(01:17:58):
was saved PBS, the VCR and pave the way for Netflix.
Fred Rogers became a crucial pillar for the burgeoning PBS
network in the early seventies, but there is a decent
chance the network wouldn't have even existed without him. In
nineteen sixty nine, he quite literally saved the network basically
single handedly. PBS had first been proposed by President Lyndon

(01:18:20):
Baines Johnson in nineteen sixty eight as part of his
sweeping social programs known as the Great Society. But when
President Nixon took office in nineteen sixty nine, he wanted
to cut the burgeoning networks funding from twenty two million
to nine million, suppose the leading effort to find money
for the war that he'd just been elected to end.
Seeking an articulate order who is sure to tug at

(01:18:40):
the heartstrings, the leadership at PBS taffed Fred Rogers, who
was really relatively unknown at that point, to speak before
congressional hearing and essentially plead for funding. And the clip
of the speech from nineteen sixty nine has made the
rounds on the Internet for many years, at surfaces every
now and then, basically because it's like watching the end
of a Robin Williams movie. I encourage everyone to pause

(01:19:02):
this right now and go look it up, because it's
really something special. I might punch some of an in
in here. It's everything about it is just so cartoonish.
The chairman of the committee is this gruff senator from
Rhode Island named John pass Story, and he is just
cartoonishly dickish. It's day two of these hearings, and he
is just wildly unmoved by the plight of PBS. He's

(01:19:23):
just so unsympathetic, and he's so over everything. He's sick
of people reading testimony they've submitted, he's sick of the
whole discussion, and he seems like he's inches away from
telling the speakers to scram or get off his lawn.
He's just hilarious. In fact, he literally says, all right, Rogers,
you got the floor, like kick things off. It's really funny.
And he's just a beautiful foil for Fred Rogers, who

(01:19:44):
you know as a man who's often described as a
cartoon character brought to life. He's just the perfect depiction
of a wide eyed Jimmy Stewart esque innocent and within
six minutes Fred reduces the Senator and the rest of
the committee to a tiery puddle. He speaks simply and
eloquently about his goals to instill confidence in children and
lead by example, to show them how to manage their

(01:20:07):
feelings in healthy ways to ensure they become productive members
of society. He says, in part, this is what I give.
I give an expression of care every day to each
child to help him realize that he is unique. I
end the program by saying you've made this day a

(01:20:27):
special day by just your being you. There's no person
in the whole world like you, and I like you
just the way you are. And I feel that if
we in public television can only make it clear that
feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a

(01:20:50):
great service. Could I tell you the words of one
of the songs, which I feel is very important? Yes,
this has to do with that good feeling of control
which I feel that children need to know is there.
And it starts out what do you do with the

(01:21:11):
mad that you feel? And that first line came straight
from a child. I work with children doing puppets in
very personal communication with small groups. What do you do
with the mad that you feel? When you feel so
mad you could bite, when the whole wide world seems
oh so wrong and nothing you do seems very right.

(01:21:35):
It's great to be able to stop when you've planned
a thing that's wrong and be able to do something
else instead, And think this song. I can stop when
I want to, can stop when I wish, can stop, stop,
stop anytime. Know that there's something deep inside that helps

(01:21:57):
us become what we can. Past story who obviously has
never watched mister Rogers show before, is visibly teary by
the end of Fred's a few minutes on the stand,
he says, no, no no, I'm supposed to be a pretty
tough guy, and this is the first time I've had
goosebumps in the last two days. I think it's wonderful.
I think it's wonderful. Looks like you just earned a

(01:22:20):
twenty million dollars have. The room fills with applause, and
Fred smiles sheepestly. Cue the strings. It's like the end,
I guess, the end of a Rob Williams movie. It's
a beautiful moment, one that has been viewed millions of
times on YouTube. Usually it's shared in times when the

(01:22:42):
arts funding is on the chopping block, which is every
couple of months, and it's also studied by public relations
experts and academics because Fred is just so compelling. Oh
sweet man, right, I don't think I've really great put together?
How much he kind of sounds like John Waters. Yeah,
it's really a beautiful moment. Word of Fred's testimony reached

(01:23:06):
Richard Nixon himself, who was so impressed that he appointed
Fred the chair of the White House Conference on Children
and Youth and more Germaine to our interests. It really
kind of helped make Fred a household name. That was
kind of one of the things that really launched him
in the public consciousness. So by now probably a decent
number of listeners are aware of Fred Rogers' role in

(01:23:27):
saving PBS thanks to that viral clip. But a lesser
known fact is that Fred Rogers also helped save the
VCR and pave the way for Netflix. Is there no
end to this man's string of good deeds? This was
part of another court case in the late seventies that
actually pertained to Sony's Betamax machine, which is the long
dead competitor to the VCR. More than just the home

(01:23:48):
video market, Beta Max was revolutionary for allowing consumers to
tape live TV and watch it as often as they liked,
whatever they liked, and the studios weren't exactly thrilled with this,
and in nineteen seventy nine, Disney and Universal filed a
lawsuit against Sony, claiming that the Betamax machine was a
copyright violation that would cost the millions of dollars per

(01:24:08):
year due to unauthorized duplication of materials. This case, Universal
Studios versus Sony Corporation of America, also known as the
Betamax case, went all the way to the Supreme Court
in nineteen eighty three, and by my tally, the arguments
were heard for a full year. But one of the
most compelling of these arguments came from, of course, mister Rogers,

(01:24:29):
and he defended the use of the VCR because he
reasoned that it allowed working parents to sit down with
their kids when they were home at night and watched
television together as a family. Fred said, I've always felt
that with the advent of all this new technology that
allows people to take the neighborhood off the air, they
then become much more active in the programming of their

(01:24:49):
families television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people
being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has
always been you are an important and just the way
you are, you can make healthy decisions. I feel that
anything that allows a person to be more active in
the control of his or her life in a healthy
way is important. And the Supreme Court ruled in favor

(01:25:12):
of Sony, making it legal to record a broadcast for
later use and they even referenced Fred's testimony and their
concluding statement. And this also, according to people with better
legal minds than I possess, claim that this crucial breakthrough
and home video paved the way for Netflix. So there
you go. Fine, but that's not all. Yes, Netflix isn't

(01:25:35):
the only thing mister Rogers has gifted us. Gave us
an early break to future Oscar nominee and repeating two
time Batman Michael Keaton, imagine how wild it would have
been if I said Christian Bale or Adam West when
Adam West and Burward were having all their weird orgies
at the height of their yes, they had been on

(01:25:57):
and done the BATWATTUSI with mister Rogers. Anyway, Michael Keaton's
first job is as a volunteer stage hand on Mister
Rogers Neighborhood, where he helped run the Picture Picture Machine
and appeared as Purple Panda a lot of alliteration in
that particular summary. Keaton, as expected, had a wonderful experience
on the show, later said that Fred Rogers was one

(01:26:18):
of the nicest, authentically good people you've ever met. Following
Fred's death, Keaton, who at this point had not only
been Batman, but Beetlejuice as well, and let us not
forget Multiplicity, Guy Rice, Mister Mom and the rest at
the Rest. He was tapped to host the PBS special

(01:26:41):
Fred Rogers America's Favorite Neighbor, and appeared in another special
celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the show, Mister Rogers, It's You.
I like haven't really talked about the surprisingly rowdy atmosphere
on the set of the show. Thanks to the fun
loving and not vegetarian Minister crew. They love to play

(01:27:01):
pranks on each other and also mister Rogers, and given
his personality, you know that that tracks would be fun
to get one over on your svelt Vegetarian Daily five
thirty swim Bossum. Once Michael Keaton placed a blow up
sex stall into the closet on the set, the same
one where mister Rogers retrieves his card again at the

(01:27:23):
start of the episode. Fred found it during a taping
and then began waltzing around with it on the set
before bringing it back to the closet. He's got an
idiosyncratic sense of humor, friend does He was a big
Monty Python fam in the Morgan Neville documentary. There's a
story of a crew member who loved to steal people's camera,
take a picture of himself mooning the lens, and then

(01:27:44):
return it to where he found it. This was in
the days when you had to, you know, drop your
film off to get developed, so that that that's a
long conjo a joke takes weeks to land. The stage
hand did this to an unsuspecting mister Rogers, mooning his
camera while wearing what they would you believe in? According

(01:28:05):
to the anecdote, was a King Friday the Thirteenth mask.
Mister Rogers said nothing about it for months until Christmas
came around, and then at the holiday party he presented
the crew member with that very photo enlarged to poster size.
This is probably my favorite bit. Fred Rogers was also
champion of another media legend and Pittsburgh icon, George A. Romero,

(01:28:31):
who brought us Night of the Living Dead, Day of
the Dead, many other dead themed films, Donna the Dead, Martin,
the Crazies, what other stuff that he film in it
around Pittsburgh Monroeville. Technically, mister Rogers hired George Romero when
he was fresh out of college needed a filmmaker to
create a series of short segments for mister rogers neighborhood.

(01:28:54):
Romero later said Fred was the first guy who trusted
me enough to hire me to actually shoot film. Titles
were stuff like how light bulbs are made and mister
Rogers gets a ton selectomy. Romero considered the latter, shot
on location in hospital, his first major production. He added,
I still joke that mister Rogers gets a ton Selectomy
is the scariest film I've ever made. And then in

(01:29:17):
this really heartwarming Fred attended a screening of Romero's breakthrough
film Don of the Dead. God, can you imagine what
he thought of that? Did we get his capsule review
of that? I would love? George Romero would later cast
another mister Rogers, vet Don Brockett, who played Chef Brocket
as a zombie in Day of the Dead and eighty five.

(01:29:39):
That guy also had roles in Flashdance, Fletch Lives, and
Silence of the Lambs on the as one of the
one of the incarcerated gentlemen sharing a block with Hannibal.
So your degrees of Hannibal Elector and mister Rogers is
one doesn't surprise me. In a way. Another unexpected friend

(01:30:04):
of mister Rodgers neighborhood was Coco the Gorilla. Yes, the
beloved primate who learned to communicate with a thousand words
of vocabulary and American sign language. Big fan of mister
Rogers neighborhood, Coco was and Fred found out about this
and decided to visit her and shoot a segment, and
as soon as he entered the room, Coco signed the

(01:30:26):
words love you visit Coco Love before hugging him. She
was so familiar with the show that one of the
first things she did was unzip his cardigan and remove
his shoes, just like he does at the beginning of
the program, and reportedly Coco got very upset upon hearing
the news of Fred's death in two thousand and three,

(01:30:48):
which is something that she also felt about Robin William's death.
I'm gonna call bullshow on that. I mean, who's going
around telling gorillas that famous people died? Yeah, that's part
of your zookeeper duties. Every day you wake up and
check TMZ and you go read it to Cocoa to
see if she can sign something tragic about it. Did

(01:31:13):
you ever read the the Gawker thing? Though? When when
Robin died BuzzFeed did. These photos of Coco Gorilla mourning
the loss of Robin Williams are incredibly moving. So the
Gawker post was it was all written in Gorilla, Coco, Coco, sad, Cocoa,

(01:31:35):
water eye, uh Man, funny Coco, Cocoa man, funny, Cocoa
hug Man funny man, hug Coco. People want water eye,
people eye Coco, people water eye, water eyewater people want.

(01:31:56):
And it just ends with the repeated phrase people want,
people want, But what people want? Are you quite moving?
Tales of mister rogers healing powers, both in person and
through the TV are a legendary. There's a story of
a young boy with severe autism who broke his lengthy
silence by saying X the Owl, one of the names

(01:32:18):
of mister Rogers' most popular puppets. That was enough for
the boy's father to make the trip to meet the
TV legends, and so he said to his son, let's
go to the neighborhood and make believe. And after meeting
Fred Rogers, the boy slowly began speaking and reading, and
the father believed that mister Rogers saved his son's life,
and then there's a story of actress Lauren two Is
I think is how you say her name. That's probably

(01:32:40):
not how you say her name. She's a veteran of
the show The love Boat, and she also felt that
mister Rogers saved her life. She'd left The love Boat
at the height of its popularity during her struggles with
substance abuse, and she said that the morning that she
hit rock bottom, she happened to look at the TV
and see the opening of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, and she
later described the moment as quote God speaking to her

(01:33:00):
through the instrument of mister Rogers, and felt moved to
get sober, which she's been ever since. And if this
isn't enough to make you believe in miracles, then listened
to the story of Beth Usher, a young woman who
was suffering up to one hundred seizures daily due to
a brain issue, and for reasons I don't personally understand,
watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood alleviated her symptoms, and in the

(01:33:22):
lead up to a brain surgery to try to correct
the issue, her mother contacted Fred Rogers for assigned photos
and encouraging gift. Rogers was extremely moved and called the
little girl that very night, and he spoke to her
both as himself and has his puppets, and he sent
her a giant box of memorabilia from his show. And
then not only that, he went and visited her in

(01:33:43):
the hospital, and the two remained friends for the rest
of Fred's life. But perhaps the most famous child associated
with mister Rogers is Jeff Arlinger, who appeared on the
show as a ten year old in nineteen eighty one
in his electric wheelchair, which he used as a result
of the spinal tumors that limited his mobility, and in
one of the most unforgettable scenes from the series, he

(01:34:03):
and mister Rodgers have what I believe to be an
impromptu duet on the song It's You I Like. You know,
it's you I like. It's not the things you wear,
you know, all the things, not the way you do
your hair, the way's at the Billy Joel's song anyway,
But they altered the lyrics for that moment too, It's
you I Like, not your fancy chair, And the moment

(01:34:24):
was highlighted in Morgan Neville's twenty eighteen documentary And It's
Not a Dry Eye In the house folks. The director
later commented, Fred often said that this was his favorite
moment of the show. It was normalizing the kind of
thing that we tend to brush under the carpet in
our society. Fred felt, the differences are all superficial underneath
it all, we all have the same fears and all

(01:34:45):
have the same hopes. He looked at people as humans
first and our physical conditions second. And there's also a
very touching story from Tom Jannaud's Esquire profile where Fred
meets a boy with cerebral palsy who was I think
also abused by some of his caretakers, so he was
both physically and emotionally in a very tough place. And
at one point during their visit, the boy has some

(01:35:07):
kind of an emotional crisis and needed to leave the room,
and when he came back, Fred said to him, I
would like you to do something for me. Would you
do something for me? And on his computer that he
uses to speak, the boy said yes, and mister Rogers said,
I want you to pray for me? Will you pray
for me? And the response blew this boy's mind because
he was so used to being the object of prayers

(01:35:29):
and being pitied and to quote the Peace. Ever since then,
he keeps mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk
about wanting to die anymore because he figures mister Rogers
is close to God and if mister Rogers likes him,
that must mean God likes him too. And Tom Jenna,
the journalist, praised Fred for knowing how to get the
boy to feel better about himself. But Fred stops him

(01:35:51):
in the middle of this praise and says, oh, Heavens, no,
I didn't ask for prayers for him. I asked for me.
I asked him because I think anyone who has gone
through the challenges that he is gone through must be
very close to God. I asked him because I wanted
his intercession. Yeah. Fred's sons later admitted that it could

(01:36:12):
sometimes be difficult living with someone who's effectively the second
Christ in their words, and yet because in the immortal
words of slipknot people equals. There were some who have
dared to suggest that mister Rogers I'm glad I got
slip slipnot reference to our mister Rogers episode. There are
some who dared to suggest that mister Rogers was maybe

(01:36:34):
not a good influence on children. In fact, perhaps he
was even harmful for children, much in the same way
that the other child growing experts of Fred Zara, especially
Benjamin Spock, were later accused of fostering a lazy, self
obsessed generation of kids. Some have leveled similar accusations that
Fred for convincing viewers that their specialness is inherent, therefore

(01:36:55):
they don't actually need to work for it and foster
that specialness. Allow me to quote discussion Fred about mister
Rogers on the Yahoo Answers website, which opens with this passage.
Mister Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked
them just the way they were. He should have been
telling him there was a lot of room for improvement.
Nice as he was and as good as his intentions
may have been, he did a disservice. And this sentiment

(01:37:18):
was echoed by a professor at Louisiana State University by
the name of Dawn Chance, and he actually committed his
feelings to the pages of the Wall Street Journal in
a two thousand and seven article called Blame It on
mister Rogers, Why young adults feel so entitled? And in
the PC he states his belief that mister Rogers created
a quote culture of excessive doting and as supposed to proof.

(01:37:39):
Professor Chant said that the many Asian born students in
his class except lower grades as an indication that they
need to work harder, and he attributes this work ethic
in part to the fact that they didn't grow up
watching mister Rogers. And he contrasts this with American students
infected by Fred Rogers, who quote hit you up for
an a because they came to class and they feel
they worked hard. This world owes you nothing. You have

(01:38:02):
to work and compete. If you want to be special,
you'll have to prove it. So that is according to
the Wall Street Journal. Believe it or not, mister Rogers
was actually called a task for his message of acceptance
on tolerance during his own lifetime, and he clarified and
all he meant by all the special business was a
secular way of expressing that you are a beloved son

(01:38:23):
or daughter of God. He said, your special means you
don't have to do anything sensational for people to love you.
And for Fred, love was elemental. He's quoted as saying
love is at the heart of everything, all learning, all parenting,
all relationships, love and the lack of it, and one
of his favorite quotes is from the book The Little Prince.

(01:38:43):
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential is invisible to the eyes. But nothing
gold can nothing all that glitters, nothing gold can fade.
Makes cliche which all the glitters is gold is not gold?
Stay gold, pony boy. It must have dawned on Fred

(01:39:06):
Rogers by the dawn of the twenty first century that
we didn't deserve him. So yeah, so by the turn
of the turn of the century. In the year two thousand,
he decided he was ready to retire the age of
seventy two. The final episode of the show was taped
that December and aired on August thirty first, two thousand
and one. In typical understated Fred Rogers fashion, there was

(01:39:26):
no publicity about it, no media on set, and then
less than two weeks later nine to eleven. Fred felt
compelled to make a public statement about nine to eleven,
which he did on the first anniversary of the attacks,
although he did not mention them by name. Speaking to
adult viewers, he told them, I'm so grateful to you
for helping the children in your life to know that

(01:39:46):
you'll do everything you can to keep them safe. This
proved to be his final television visit. Though it is
so ungodly sad, so we're gonna just gloss over it
for ours, yes, not yours. Fred's wife Joanne said that
he'd seemed somewhat depressed after he stopped doing the show,

(01:40:08):
and she would ask him about it, and he would
respond by saying, I miss my playmates, which is crushing.
Making things worse, He began to experience intense stomach pains
around this time, and in December two thousand and two,
shortly after the airing of his last TV message, he
was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He underwent surgery the following month,

(01:40:30):
reportedly delaying it slightly so that he could serve as
Grand Marshal of the two thousand and three Rose Parade
with the creator of Candid Camera, Art Link Letter and
Bill Cosby, so that that didn't age well. But these
medical efforts failed to slow the spread of the disease,
and Fred spent his last weeks studying the Bible and ruminating, pondering, pondering.

(01:40:57):
One night, while speaking to his wife, he evoked the
story of the Sheep and the Goats. The metaphor from
the Bible, in which God is the shepherd, separating the
cheeps from the goats, in other words, and undesirables from
the desirables. I guess there's the message of that from
the bad, because from the bad, what's so bad about goats?
Goat cheese is delicious, bait, trash You God. They have

(01:41:24):
a new sound of the text notification from you. I'm
I'm upgrading God, downgrading God from an enemy of the blood.
Just under Jeffrey Katzenberg, this passage is paraphrase and knocked
and boiled down to whatever you did for the least
of your brethren you did to me, which is you know,

(01:41:48):
the Fred Rogers ethos as well. In his final weeks,
Rogers asked his wife joe Anne if he was a
sheep or a goat, and she assured him that he
was the former. I just think it's it's it's poignant
that even looking back on his entire life, he was
so humble that he wasn't sure yeah that he had yeah,
you know yeah. To find that really sad, not tragic,

(01:42:14):
but very fitting of the kind of guy who was.
I guess, well, you know, I mean, it's it's He's
very human. Everybody has doubts. Everybody, even somebody is universally beloved,
can on their deathbed think did I do enough? What
did I do? Yeah? What did I do Yeah. An
interview with the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Joe Anne talked about
their final discussion, in which she let him know that

(01:42:35):
he could leave if he was in pain. She said,
there was a feeling of real relief when I could
say to him, you know, we're going to be okay,
We're going to be all right, the boys will be fine,
and I'm going to try to be fine. So when
he went, I could feel he went at peace, and
even with joy, I really feel he went with joy.
Fred Rogers died on February twenty seventh, two thousand and three,

(01:42:58):
at his home in Pittsburgh, with Joanne at his side.
Following his death, PBS published a guide for parents for
their kids to talk about what had happened, which is
something that he surely would want it. Do you think
he wrote it in advance? Ah? You know what, I
don't know. I haven't been able to confirm that, but
it reads a little bit like it. We have some

(01:43:21):
we like to share now because families are so important
to young children. They may want to know that Fred
Rogers had a loving and caring family. He had a wife,
two sons, both of whom were grown and married, and
two grandsons. His family helped to care for him all
through his illness. Some children may express disbelief, saying, but
I just saw him on TV. You can help them

(01:43:42):
understand that when people die, they don't come back to life.
But mister Rogers put his programs on videotape so they
can be shown over and over again. It's okay to
cry in front of children. Fred Rogers talked about seeing
his father grieving when his own father, Fred's grandfather died,
and that helped him to know that it was okay
for men to show their feelings. It helps children know

(01:44:03):
that it's okay for children and adults to cry, but
we can deal with our feelings and smile again later on.
Remember that Fred Rogers has always helped children know that
feelings are natural and normal, and that happy times and
sad times are part of everyone's life. Yeah. I said
this a moment ago. I just think it's really sweet

(01:44:25):
to hear of Fred's himility. Towards the end of his life,
questioning the impact he had and the life he led,
and he'd achieved and nearly every accolade a person in
his position could receive. In two thousand and two, one
year before his death, he was presented with the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, which is the highest civilian honor in
the United States. The medal commemorated his quote contribution to
the well being of children, career in public television that

(01:44:48):
demonstrates the importance of kindness, compassion, and learning. He also
won two Peabody Awards and any Lifetime Achievement award, and
not only that, he basically earned every major television award
for which he was eligible. And in nineteen ninety eight
he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In nineteen ninety nine, he was inducted into the Television
Hall of Fame, and he even had an asteroid named

(01:45:11):
after him. And yet these uncertainties about himself persisted. There's
a surprising bit in Morgan Neville's documentary where they found
the note from Fred written in uncharacteristically hostile negative terms,
and this note was written to himself. It reads, in part,
am I kidding myself? But I'm able to write a
script again, Am I really just whistling? Dixie? I wonder

(01:45:33):
if I don't get down to it, I'll never really know.
Why can't I trust myself? Really, that's what it's all about.
That and not wanting to go through the agony of
creation after all these years, it's just as bad as ever.
I wonder if every creative artist goes through the torches
of the damned trying to create. Oh, well, the hour
cometh and now is when I've got to do it.
Get to it, Fred, get to it. But don't let

(01:45:54):
anybody ever tell anybody else that it was easy. It
wasn't away. The insecurities that plagued Fred as a child
remained with him through adulthood, as is the case for
probably all of us. And in a way, that's what
made Fred so good at connecting with children and the
child and all of us. He never forgot how vulnerable
it was to be a kid. This is tough, man, Yeah, yeah,

(01:46:22):
he wow, I this is the one that finally got me. Um. Sorry,
I'm not expecting this. It's just so sweet man, It's yeah.
Not many of these episodes are us, you know, addressing
a being of pure love? Well, we did do Dolly
last week? Oh that's true. Yeah. He gave dignity to

(01:46:45):
children by respecting their emotions, and in many cases, those
emotions from childhood are still there deep inside all of us.
And in that way he was able to touch the
deepest part of us. And you know, there's no way
we're going to sum up all of Fred Rogers like so,
I'm not even going to try. But perhaps the biggest
legacy are the lumps in the throats of these two
thirty five year old men mourning the loss of a

(01:47:07):
TV host we never met who died twenty years ago.
Fred Rogers dreamed of using television to build a community
out of an entire country, and two decades after his death,
that bond between television neighbors is still very real. The
expression of care that he offered had a significant effect
on generations of children who felt genuinely loved by him.
But in classic fashion, he was quick to remind others

(01:47:30):
that they're loved by many who lived outside the television
neighborhood too. There was a practice that he routinely employed
when speaking to large groups of people, and I'd like
to share it with you now so you can hear
it in his own words. This was from nineteen ninety seven,
when he was accepting the Lifetime Achievement Emmy. It's his
biggest honor to date, yet he gave a tremendous gift

(01:47:51):
to the audience. I'd like you all to experience it now.
So many people have helped me to come to this night.
Some of you are here, some are far away, some
are even in heaven. All of us have special ones
who have loved us into being. Would you just take

(01:48:15):
along with me ten seconds to think of the people
who have helped you become who you are, those who
have cared about you and wanted what was best for
you in life. Ten seconds of silence. I'll watch the time.

(01:48:50):
Whomever you've been thinking about how pleased they must be
to know the difference you feel they've made. It's pretty good,
powerful man, I know I know well. To end, I'd
like to share a quote generally attributed to Fred Rogers.
I've actually been unable to track down the source, but

(01:49:11):
it seems legit, and even if it's not, the spirit
of the words is certainly true to his intent. These
are mister rodgers three keys to success and happiness. Quote.
The first way is to be kind, the second ways
to be kind and the third ways to be kind.
Sign of a pitch da damn him to hell. Laura's

(01:49:39):
part was my dad came up to me earlier and
was like, what's wrong. I just watched some Mister Rodgers clip. Yeah. Yeah,
it's fair, it's fair. Who Well, this is a TMA. First, folks,
thank you for bearing with us. George and has done

(01:50:00):
his usual heroic job of editing so you did not
get through multiple breaks that it took two grown men
to repeatedly collect themselves. This has been a special edition
of TMI. Oops, all sobbing. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm
Jordan Runtalg. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information

(01:50:25):
was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive producers are
Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog. The show's supervising producer is
Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written and hosted
by Jordan Runtog and Alex Hegel, with original music by
Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like
what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review.
For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

(01:50:49):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Everything You Didn't Know