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Speaker 1: Do I start, Welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to start.
Speaker 1: This is comedian w Kamal Bell. We met years ago
Speaker 1: at the beginning of both of our careers. I think
Speaker 1: I bombed a couple of volunteer events. Yeah, you bombed
Speaker 1: a little bit, and I got to see bombs. I
Speaker 1: love this guy. Look at him bombing like a pro. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great and uh and yeah. It's been wild that
Speaker 1: our careers have gone in these crazy trajectories and now
Speaker 1: we reunited to discuss Fred Rogers today come out has
Speaker 1: a CNN show called United Shades of America where he
Speaker 1: travels around the US talking to people about what's wrong
Speaker 1: with this country. And I wanted to talk with him
Speaker 1: because he did something really interesting with that show. He
Speaker 1: sat down with some of the most hateful people I
Speaker 1: can think of, and he had a conversation. I'm Carvel
Speaker 1: Wallace and this is Finding Fred, a podcast about Fred
Speaker 1: Rogers from I Heeart Media and Fatherly in partnership with
Speaker 1: transmitter media early and I think it was the first
Speaker 1: season you talked with some white nationalists, uh, and some
Speaker 1: pretty heavy movers in that. I imagine you've got a
Speaker 1: lot of pushback from people about giving the people platform
Speaker 1: given how did you make sense, why did you decide
Speaker 1: to do that, and what did you learn in that experience.
Speaker 1: I believe, and you know, platform and Richard Spencer or
Speaker 1: any of these people would be tonight in the United Shades,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take the night off and let Richard
Speaker 1: Spencer run the show. To me, that's platforming. That's normalizing.
Speaker 1: Sitting out and talking to Richards Spencer about what he
Speaker 1: believes in all of his white nationalists beliefs in the
Speaker 1: middle of an episode that is highlighting the importance of
Speaker 1: immigration and refugees in this country. To me, it is
Speaker 1: not platforming. I also think when Trump was first selected,
Speaker 1: the fear of platforming and normalizing is I think we're
Speaker 1: really buzzwords at the left held onto in lieu of
Speaker 1: doing the actual work, Like you know, no, we I
Speaker 1: feel like looking at it in the face is actually
Speaker 1: helpful to me to go how serious is this? Not
Speaker 1: looking at it in the face, to me, is is
Speaker 1: sort of a way to sort of like just pretend
Speaker 1: like you can still go to yoga class and and
Speaker 1: uh in the farmer's market, because I think the reason
Speaker 1: why we have Trumpet office right now is because a
Speaker 1: lot of people on the left were wanting to look
Speaker 1: at him, you know, they weren't willing to really like
Speaker 1: is this possible? No, it's not possible, because I've been
Speaker 1: doing a chance in the morning. So for me, it's
Speaker 1: the fact is it's like if we've if we if
Speaker 1: we've learned anything in this current air of Americas that
Speaker 1: we got to look at this stuff in the face,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So for me, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the it's Sunlight's the best disinfectant. Like I I
Speaker 1: believe that. Did you find Richard Spencer uh intimidating who's
Speaker 1: probably a foot shorter than you. Yeah, he's not as
Speaker 1: short as most whitespurad. I think that's why he was
Speaker 1: the leader. He was like, did you play in the NBA?
Speaker 1: After you go in there, you do realize everybody's like
Speaker 1: five four and like and they would sort of trying
Speaker 1: to like walk up to me, a couple of them
Speaker 1: trying to get me to a flinch or just sort
Speaker 1: of like and it was like, also six four man,
Speaker 1: I'm not not. I just sort of like it became
Speaker 1: fun to me to sort of like look comfortable, you know.
Speaker 1: And so by the time I sat down and talked
Speaker 1: to him, it was really fine. We are here to
Speaker 1: talk about Mr Rogers. And that's good cause I was like, man,
Speaker 1: this is really not what I prepared. Know. I tend
Speaker 1: to approach things from like, um, and Uh, the reason
Speaker 1: I'm asking about your experiences with Richard Spencer's because I've
Speaker 1: been really stuck on this this sort of ethical position
Speaker 1: that Fred Rogers took, which is that it's it's you
Speaker 1: I like. I like you just the way you are, Uh,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And I wonder how that squares
Speaker 1: with people who were like Richard Spencer. Could Fred Rogers
Speaker 1: say I like you just the way you are? And
Speaker 1: I know you can't speak for him, So I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you to speak for you. Did you when
Speaker 1: you look at him, see anything that you felt compassion
Speaker 1: for when you talked with Richard Spencer or some of
Speaker 1: these other white nationalists? So, Uh, the thing is, when
Speaker 1: I think about that, I like you just where you
Speaker 1: are when you sit down with people individually. A lot
Speaker 1: of times all that stuff, a lot of the bluster
Speaker 1: goes away. Like when I talked to the clan and
Speaker 1: uh in was it in Kentucky. It became very clear
Speaker 1: to me after a while, like, oh, you guys have
Speaker 1: come from a community where there's no jobs, there's no opportunity,
Speaker 1: your educational system isn't good, and you're just mad, and
Speaker 1: you have bought a bill of goods from somebody that
Speaker 1: is black people's fault. Like that's the problem is that
Speaker 1: that you went from, Like I want more opportunity and
Speaker 1: more jobs of my community too, It's got to be
Speaker 1: somebody's fault. And then somebody sold you can we talked
Speaker 1: to you about black peop they handed you be it's
Speaker 1: black people fall pans. And so for me, when I
Speaker 1: take away the when I look at that part, I go,
Speaker 1: that's the part I could have empathy with. You know,
Speaker 1: these people are not the billionaire people who were running
Speaker 1: this country and using tools of white supremacy to keep
Speaker 1: things going. These are people who are like, got sold
Speaker 1: a bill of goods based on being vulnerable. A few
Speaker 1: years ago, I was in Michigan reporting a story. I
Speaker 1: was at the gym and I looked up and saw
Speaker 1: Kamal's face on the TV screen. This was several months
Speaker 1: after the election, and the alt right was feeling definitely emboldened,
Speaker 1: so much so in fact, that they were white supremacists
Speaker 1: marching in downtown Berkeley, of all places, which happened to
Speaker 1: be where Kamal lived. He had just spoken at a
Speaker 1: counter protest, and on Fox News they were playing his
Speaker 1: speech and calling him a radical black separatist, and suddenly
Speaker 1: Kamal had become a target of white premises. That was
Speaker 1: when I got streets got hot for me for a second,
Speaker 1: exactly the streets got hot for you. And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I was I had a lot of feelings
Speaker 1: seeing that, actually, dude, Like, on the one hand, I
Speaker 1: was like, this is absurd, But then in the other hand,
Speaker 1: it kind of struck a little bit of fear in
Speaker 1: my heart because I thought, God, if you can call comal,
Speaker 1: or if you can get like like the Confederate flag
Speaker 1: waivers income as a black separation, what who among us
Speaker 1: is safe? Is like, this is the most integrated dude
Speaker 1: I've ever met. And uh and um. I was just
Speaker 1: really amazed by that, and I thought a lot about it,
Speaker 1: and I guess I want to ask you what that
Speaker 1: experience was like for you to be targeted in that
Speaker 1: way and how you made sense of that, like how
Speaker 1: you navigated that. Was that scary at all? Like it
Speaker 1: only became because you had kids at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it became scary because over the next week or so,
Speaker 1: it like I became the like the the deep intern
Speaker 1: dark web, intern hinterland internet all right target, Like I
Speaker 1: was just the person on summer Jam screen. So like
Speaker 1: like so all these memes start going up, and you know,
Speaker 1: we were in downtown Berkeley, so people see me walking
Speaker 1: into my house, you know, and also we're right now
Speaker 1: where all the alright rallies are. It was scary. It
Speaker 1: was like the first time I felt like that my
Speaker 1: thing I do on TV is can affect my family,
Speaker 1: like in a way that it feels like we have
Speaker 1: to sort of like think about our security protocols and
Speaker 1: think about like where we send our kids to school
Speaker 1: as opposed to like oh yeah, you know, and all
Speaker 1: these sorts of things that sort of that that we
Speaker 1: weren't thinking in that way before. Doesn't that kind of
Speaker 1: make you hate people like they're putting your family in
Speaker 1: jeopardy and putting you in the situation where you feel like,
Speaker 1: I mean, doesn't that like trigger rage and hating, you
Speaker 1: know it triggers like I'd say it, triggers like Papa Bear,
Speaker 1: protect your family, you know it, triggers like don't do
Speaker 1: anything stupid the people who are doing this I already
Speaker 1: wasn't a fan of anyway, like this has really Yeah,
Speaker 1: I sort of knew this, you know. And also the
Speaker 1: history of black people in this country is that, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't know the history of are people without knowing that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we get taken out regularly. Now. I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm not trying to be some sort of martyr
Speaker 1: or something, but it's just like, if I choose to
Speaker 1: do this work and I choose to be public about it,
Speaker 1: It's not that I'm like ready to die or any
Speaker 1: of that nonsense. You know, I got too many children
Speaker 1: to die right now. But I do feel like this
Speaker 1: is a part of the gig. I mean, my wife
Speaker 1: talked about that, like, and I think about like people
Speaker 1: like Dick Gregory as far as like he actually gave
Speaker 1: up comedy to be an activist at one point in
Speaker 1: his life, and so this is the work I want
Speaker 1: to do, and it feels right now in this country,
Speaker 1: feels like it's necessary. If anything, I feel bad, but
Speaker 1: I'm not doing more of it. I think more about that,
Speaker 1: like what more can I do? Or how can I
Speaker 1: do this better than I think about the people who
Speaker 1: who have enmity towards me. And also the thing is
Speaker 1: most of them don't even They're just blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: like they're gonna move on to the next person. We'll
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Speaker 1: otter dot ai. What's your first earliest memory of seeing
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers or seeing a show? Did you watch you
Speaker 1: growing up? I watched you growing up, so I don't
Speaker 1: have like I don't have the time my mom sat
Speaker 1: me down, we didn't have cable, so I guess most cable. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you know I'm talking about like Sesame Street,
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers, the Electric Company three to one contact for
Speaker 1: my old heads out there lane right now. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: for me, like Mr. Rogers is just one of the
Speaker 1: things that I watched on TV. And then for me,
Speaker 1: the weird part is like, even when I got older,
Speaker 1: every now again you flip past and go, let me
Speaker 1: just watch a few minutes. Why what is what? What
Speaker 1: did that bring to you? I think there's something the
Speaker 1: greatest of kids programming, there's something so pure about it
Speaker 1: that it's doing anything he wants to do that adults
Speaker 1: watch it too, Like I think that's true. When it's
Speaker 1: not pure, when it's really about like you just want
Speaker 1: my kid to buy this thing, don't you, then it's
Speaker 1: like it becomes too self conscious of like the things
Speaker 1: that's trying to do. But Mr Rogers is super pure.
Speaker 1: It's just like this is one persons statement being supported
Speaker 1: by the team of people around him and somebody who
Speaker 1: works in TV. That's hard to do. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: gonna ask you about that, like as it has your
Speaker 1: understanding of what he was able to do change now
Speaker 1: that you are a maker of television. Yes, great, thank you,
Speaker 1: goodnight everyone. Yeah. No, I mean it's like it's hard
Speaker 1: to get everybody on you if you have everybody on
Speaker 1: the same page that they're all in service of of
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers. I can still call Mr Rogers. You say
Speaker 1: Fred because you know him like that, But I've been
Speaker 1: called that only by black people on the show. I
Speaker 1: just want to point that out because white people have
Speaker 1: been like Fred Red Fred and then viewing and she
Speaker 1: was like, you know him like that exactly like Fred Rogers.
Speaker 1: Excuse me? Are you a son that? Uh? Mr Rogers?
Speaker 1: Is that it's clear that like everybody was on the
Speaker 1: same page, or at least I knew that this was
Speaker 1: this is the voice I'm following. That's not that's not
Speaker 1: case nine percent of the TV that's ever been made.
Speaker 1: That's not the case that they're not listening to one
Speaker 1: for even some of the TV we like, it was
Speaker 1: like it was a nightmare back there, but when it happens,
Speaker 1: you can feel it. So for me, there's not much
Speaker 1: difference between Mr. Rogers and Atlanta. With Donald Glover, you
Speaker 1: could feel it like there's not much on that show
Speaker 1: that Donald Glover hasn't been like check, it's fun, it's
Speaker 1: the Atlanta's really interesting comparison, one that I had never
Speaker 1: made um but that rings true for me, partially for
Speaker 1: what you said about the creative process, but also because
Speaker 1: both of those shows make a lot of use of
Speaker 1: space and silence, and they do this thing where they
Speaker 1: train the listeners to sit still long enough to start
Speaker 1: to feel and experience more subtle levels of what's going on.
Speaker 1: And they've built a lot of trust with the audience.
Speaker 1: So even if you're like, where's this going, he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sit here and see. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the important thing too, is that the that you when
Speaker 1: you build that trust with the audience, and that comes
Speaker 1: from the audience knowing I trust that, uh Mr Rogers
Speaker 1: or Mr Glover, I trust that these people have a plan,
Speaker 1: because so many times you watch a lot of TV
Speaker 1: and it's like there's no plan. They just had to
Speaker 1: get this done. They just had to turn this in
Speaker 1: and there was a way which Mr Rogers did. There's
Speaker 1: something that feels like we're here for one purpose, we're
Speaker 1: all pulling together and we're not trying to do something
Speaker 1: that is cooler hip or trendy. We want to create
Speaker 1: an experience and have you joined us today and come
Speaker 1: back the next time. Also, I think talk, I mean
Speaker 1: I think againswers from Mr Rogers. I think the reason
Speaker 1: why I respond to Mr Rogers because the way my
Speaker 1: mom treated me talking to your kids like their people,
Speaker 1: you know, like talking, not talking to them like their kids. Like.
Speaker 1: Certainly Mr Rodgers as slows down because he's trying to
Speaker 1: make you understand, but you feel like he's a friend
Speaker 1: of yours. And I think and for me as a parent,
Speaker 1: when you feel like you're like I'm the I'm your friend.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm the friend who pays the rent. So
Speaker 1: every now and again I make some decisions. But really
Speaker 1: I would rather us be friends. I would rather us
Speaker 1: talk through these problems instead of like, instead of me
Speaker 1: saying because I said so, yeah, you know, it's interesting
Speaker 1: you bring up your mom and I met your mom
Speaker 1: and read her book, and um, she's a person with
Speaker 1: a very strong black identity, which is part of the
Speaker 1: way you were raised. And um, and I wonder when
Speaker 1: I talk to people about Fred Rogers a lot of times, uh,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll bring up in some way depending on their race.
Speaker 1: A question about how I feel about him as a
Speaker 1: black man. In other words, the question I was actually
Speaker 1: talking with, of all people, I'm not gonna name drop.
Speaker 1: I was talking with someone, don't. I was talking with
Speaker 1: someone in Cape cod randomly that i'd run into who
Speaker 1: is a known historian, and I said, I'm doing this
Speaker 1: thing in Fred Rodgers, and he immediately said he was
Speaker 1: a white guy. He immediately said, how do black people
Speaker 1: feel about Fred Rogers? Just like, sir, That's why I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna name drop, because I don't want to I
Speaker 1: don't want to kill his book sales because this book
Speaker 1: is very important. But but that's the first thing he said,
Speaker 1: and uh whatever, I stumbled through the answer also kind
Speaker 1: of annoyed and the excuse myself, But it did make
Speaker 1: me think about this inherent belief that somehow what Fred
Speaker 1: Rogers did was like doesn't work for blackness, or there
Speaker 1: was misaligned and like, you know, that's been I mean,
Speaker 1: in the famous Eddie Murphy sketch. That's sort of the
Speaker 1: premise of that joke is that if you did Fred
Speaker 1: Rogers in the black neighborhood, it might look like this.
Speaker 1: But I want to hear you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about how people understand funny. At the same time I
Speaker 1: was taking into Mr Rodgers, I was also watching Eddie murphyst.
Speaker 1: I never saw Eddie Murphy's Mr Robinsons Neighborhood as being
Speaker 1: critical of Mr Rogers. His portrayal of Mr Rogers felt
Speaker 1: like Mr Rogers, but an Eddie Murphy version of it.
Speaker 1: And also it never occurred to me that it was
Speaker 1: really the black version of Mr Rodgers. It was just
Speaker 1: the the the this version of blackness of Mr ross
Speaker 1: which is the thing white people do. That's the black version. None, No,
Speaker 1: that's like the hood, criminal black person M Rodgers. Sorry,
Speaker 1: thereference criminal and black Viking news. Yea, so radical separatists
Speaker 1: come out bell Yeah, so again, Tucker Carlson again. So
Speaker 1: for me, it was just the idea that like, this
Speaker 1: is how this is Eddie Murphy. It was a love
Speaker 1: letter Mr Rogers. And when I watched Mr Rogers, I
Speaker 1: didn't watch him as a white guy. I watched him
Speaker 1: as Mr Rogers. And I think that's that's the thing.
Speaker 1: I think when a white person asked that question, they
Speaker 1: understand black people and people of color can tell the
Speaker 1: difference between a white guy and Mr Rogers. If that
Speaker 1: show had been made for white kids, we would have
Speaker 1: been able to sniff it through. Doesn't feel like it's
Speaker 1: talking to me, But the fact is Mr Rogers was
Speaker 1: talking to all kids. I've been trying to get a
Speaker 1: black person to come on this show and say that
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers transcends race. Can I can? I get you?
Speaker 1: Can I put you down for transcends race the way
Speaker 1: that when Prince died, he transcended race. Remember printing Prince
Speaker 1: dying David Bowie died. I was like, no, I said,
Speaker 1: David Bowie transcended race. Mr Rogers transcends his race. Wow,
Speaker 1: we got it, We got it, Cliff. Uh. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: funny because I think a lot about um, I think
Speaker 1: a lot about this. He doesn't transcend race, he transcends
Speaker 1: his race. That's so that's an interesting distinction. Tell me
Speaker 1: more about that, just that he that he's so good
Speaker 1: that I don't even score him down for being white,
Speaker 1: that I don't do good, don't see him through through
Speaker 1: his whiteness, which I see a lot of people through
Speaker 1: their Yeah. Yeah, I actually it's a really interesting point.
Speaker 1: No one made that quite as articulately. You're so articulate. Uh,
Speaker 1: no one's made that quite as articulately as you have.
Speaker 1: That there was something It wasn't that he transcended for
Speaker 1: the existence of race, but something about the way he
Speaker 1: presented himself didn't allow you to think of him just
Speaker 1: as a white guy period. And I wonder what that is, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, part of me thinks that because he was
Speaker 1: trafficking in a certain kind of respect and kindness that
Speaker 1: typically we don't see associated with like your average run
Speaker 1: of the mill white person when interacting with like the
Speaker 1: rest of the world or your average run of the
Speaker 1: mill kids show, Like there are a lot of times
Speaker 1: they're yelling, you know, they're they're not actually trying to connect,
Speaker 1: they're trying to u order, you know, like do this now,
Speaker 1: do this? Go buy it? Like it's very like the
Speaker 1: cast of kid shows. And he was just like he
Speaker 1: just wanted to sit with you, and it was clear
Speaker 1: he cared. And I mean, it's so hard to do
Speaker 1: through the TV camera when you're looking at the camera,
Speaker 1: because he's literally looking at a camera. He's not looking
Speaker 1: at a person. And I know that too, for having
Speaker 1: to look at camera when they say talk directly the
Speaker 1: camera and I was like, yeah, because you're looking at
Speaker 1: a box and you're looking at like half the camera
Speaker 1: guys shoulder and you know, and you're wondering if he's
Speaker 1: paying attention or whatever? How do you go about that?
Speaker 1: Because I was gonna ask you about that, like about
Speaker 1: similarities if any that you see between Fred Rogers United Shades.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can find that, but but
Speaker 1: just as you a person who has to like do
Speaker 1: a similar kind of work, which is I need to
Speaker 1: talk to people, need to reach people at home, how
Speaker 1: do you go about that technically? Like how do you
Speaker 1: think through that? The thing I think about is vulnerability,
Speaker 1: Like if you're vulnerable on camera and if you let
Speaker 1: people know when you don't know, or if you let
Speaker 1: people see you uh, if if you let people see
Speaker 1: you break, or if you let people see you like
Speaker 1: basically sweat, you know, there's like then they connect with
Speaker 1: you as on a human level. I'm trying to be clear,
Speaker 1: I'm not the expert here. I'm sitting with some experts,
Speaker 1: and I also don't always have the right opinion, and
Speaker 1: sometimes I mispronounced things and sometimes I will say so
Speaker 1: we had a moment in a show we did last
Speaker 1: year in Salt Lake City and I sat down with
Speaker 1: a bunch of young people to talk about what was
Speaker 1: life like to be Mormon and me and the LGBTQ
Speaker 1: plus community. What's that like? And I said to one person,
Speaker 1: I said, well, as a gay man, and the person
Speaker 1: stops said no, no no, no, I'm not a gay man
Speaker 1: of intersex and I was like, oh sorry, and the
Speaker 1: person was like, no, no, big deal, Like basically happens
Speaker 1: all the time. And the first edit that came back
Speaker 1: from the production that cut out the moment of my mistake,
Speaker 1: because that's what you're supposed to do in TV, cut
Speaker 1: out the mistakes. I was like, no, no, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: that's real, that really happened. I'm not if you cut
Speaker 1: it out, it looks like I always know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. To me, I like lean on the fact that,
Speaker 1: like I that the audience, to the cores in the
Speaker 1: show knows that I'm not trying to be the expert.
Speaker 1: So for me, Mr Rogers feels like a person who's
Speaker 1: making a TV show. He doesn't feel like the host
Speaker 1: of a TV show. And I talked about that with
Speaker 1: the United Shades. If I start to feel like I'm
Speaker 1: hosting the TV show We're doing something wrong. Fred Rogers,
Speaker 1: his work was very much of his time. He did
Speaker 1: something on TV that was, on the one hand, very successful.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, almost no one else repeated it.
Speaker 1: I mean, in his legacy, there's a small tradition, but
Speaker 1: for the large part, the rest of children's television just
Speaker 1: became more manic, more insane, more not And so I
Speaker 1: guess I wonder, assuming that you couldn't have that exact
Speaker 1: person appear right now in the twenty one century, what
Speaker 1: would if Fred Rogers of the century look like. You
Speaker 1: don't want somebody to repeat, You want somebody to stand
Speaker 1: on the shoulders of And also it means they may
Speaker 1: make it look differently. And so I do feel like
Speaker 1: like I think about like hair Love the animated you know.
Speaker 1: So so Matthew Cherry wrote a book hair Lovel about
Speaker 1: a black dad doing his daughter's hair, trying to learn
Speaker 1: how to do his his black daughter's hair. And I
Speaker 1: would say black twice, just because it's possible for people
Speaker 1: to have kids with different races. So it just turned
Speaker 1: they turned into an animated feature. And it is that
Speaker 1: almost sounds like science fiction to me, that that's in
Speaker 1: a movie theater. And it's not like if you read
Speaker 1: the book, that's all it's about. It's not about and
Speaker 1: now we got to go fight a dragon. It's and
Speaker 1: it's not about like or some bad things gonna happen
Speaker 1: if I don't do your hair. But the steaks are
Speaker 1: not that high. But for me, there's something about it
Speaker 1: that it's pure, And that's Mr rogers legacy is is
Speaker 1: the pureness of how to sort of like put out
Speaker 1: good content for kids in the world that is so
Speaker 1: pure that adults are excited about it. Given how expanse
Speaker 1: of his vision for love and acceptance in the world was,
Speaker 1: and given how uh shitty the world the world is,
Speaker 1: do you think he was successful? Yes, because I think
Speaker 1: that this is the thing I said earlier about like
Speaker 1: when we're making when I'm making anything I'm making, whether
Speaker 1: it's a podcast or writing or you know, shades, when
Speaker 1: I'm writing it, I'm like, this is going to change
Speaker 1: the world just because you I think you have to
Speaker 1: feel that. Have to feel that way. Every basketball player
Speaker 1: thinks that they're they're like top five all times. Have
Speaker 1: to think that, whereas why you why are you stepping
Speaker 1: out there? But then when you get on the court,
Speaker 1: you just gotta make sure you're helping win the game.
Speaker 1: Maybe in the gym by yourself your top five all time,
Speaker 1: or maybe when I'm home writing on my computer or
Speaker 1: if I'm making nice shades. I think this is going
Speaker 1: to be the thing that is like the definitive episode
Speaker 1: on reproductive justice in America, and then at the end
Speaker 1: you have to be I hope people watch it and
Speaker 1: talk about it, and I think Mr Rogers one because
Speaker 1: people watched it and talked about it, have been inspired
Speaker 1: by it. You know. I think that it's a big
Speaker 1: thing to do to make the world a more equitable,
Speaker 1: just loving place. That's a big task, and you have
Speaker 1: that more people working on it. You know. At the
Speaker 1: same time he was working on it, there's a guy
Speaker 1: across town named Martin Luther King Jr. Who was also
Speaker 1: working on you know what I mean. So like and
Speaker 1: they are different ways to do this. I don't want
Speaker 1: to call either one of them failures because because it
Speaker 1: didn't happen. I think that I believe, and there's not proof, right,
Speaker 1: was that things move in a more equitable and just direction.
Speaker 1: They just don't always move consistently, and they don't always
Speaker 1: stay moving forward. Right now we're at a point where
Speaker 1: it's starting to move back. But I feel like in
Speaker 1: the long line of history, to paraphrase Dr King who
Speaker 1: stole it from a Quaker, the arc of history has
Speaker 1: been towards justice, but it hasn't always been consistently towards justice.
Speaker 1: And I think that, Yeah, I think that the fact
Speaker 1: that we're sitting here talking about Mr Rogers and the
Speaker 1: fact that we're sort of d constructing it. Two black
Speaker 1: men talk with Mr Rogers, Mission accomplished? Do you um?
Speaker 1: My last question is, uh, if he were here, I
Speaker 1: would be crying. And after you composed yourself and stopped
Speaker 1: weeping and cleaned all this snot off of your face,
Speaker 1: bubbles bubble bubble clear snock bubbles, what would you ask him?
Speaker 1: What would I ask Mr Rogers? I guess the thing
Speaker 1: you do? You feel successful? I think that's the thing,
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of times people who are
Speaker 1: in on that side of it have very complicated things
Speaker 1: about what they've done. Sometimes it's like, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what you caught, what the world tells you, that's how
Speaker 1: do you feel inside? And so for me, if he
Speaker 1: felt like nope, that would make me say, I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about that a lot too. Was Fred's successful? Did
Speaker 1: Fred feel successful? Next time we'll explore the ways in
Speaker 1: which he was, but also the many ways in which
Speaker 1: he wasn't. I went up to get him to come
Speaker 1: down to the studio and he was. He was a mess.
Speaker 1: He said, why am I doing these? These aren't going
Speaker 1: to do any good. Finding Fred is produced by Transmitter Media.
Speaker 1: Our team is Dan O'donnald, Jordan Bailey and Mattie Foley.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Sarah Nicks. The executive producer for Transmitter
Speaker 1: Media is gretit Cone. Executive producers at Fatherly are Simon
Speaker 1: Isaacs and Andrew Berman. Thanks to the team at I
Speaker 1: Heart Media. Our show is mixed by Rick Kwan, music
Speaker 1: by Blue Dot Sessions and Alison Layton Brown. I'm Carla Wallace.
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