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Speaker 1: from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, the global conservation
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Speaker 1: your podcasts. Have you ever tried to explain this world
Speaker 1: to children? I have kids, two of them. Have you
Speaker 1: ever sat down with a kid and tried to explain
Speaker 1: why there are Nazis marching in the exact place where
Speaker 1: you took them to the farmer's market and waited in
Speaker 1: line for Papoosa's Have you ever tried to explain how
Speaker 1: a person who lies, assaults, insults, grifts, fakes and hates
Speaker 1: can be elected into one of the most powerful jobs
Speaker 1: in the world. Have you ever tried to explain to
Speaker 1: them why they should be good people, How they should
Speaker 1: be good people in a world where there is so
Speaker 1: much bad, where they see people who look like them
Speaker 1: shot by police, murdered by vigilantes, run over at rallies
Speaker 1: I have, And even though my whole job as a
Speaker 1: writer involves being so called good with words, there are
Speaker 1: no words good enough to explain why things are the
Speaker 1: way they are and what we should do about it.
Speaker 1: It's too much, it's too big, it's too overwhelming. Maybe
Speaker 1: you don't have kids, maybe you don't have to make
Speaker 1: this world makes sense to children. So I ask you, how, then,
Speaker 1: do you make sense of it to yourself? Do you hide?
Speaker 1: Do you tell yourself that everything is fine? Do you
Speaker 1: convince yourself that you're doing everything you can? And do
Speaker 1: you make excuses for when you're not? I mean, do
Speaker 1: you know what to do like today, like right now,
Speaker 1: in this moment, to help. Do you know how to
Speaker 1: be a good person? Are you a good person? Because me,
Speaker 1: I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure about any
Speaker 1: of us. What does a good person in this world
Speaker 1: even look like? I mean, what would they tell you
Speaker 1: if you could find the time to sit down and
Speaker 1: listen to them? Did you ever have a scary dream?
Speaker 1: What did you do about it? There might have been
Speaker 1: one good guy on television of all places. Did you
Speaker 1: tell the people you love about it? The people who
Speaker 1: love you? This old white guy in a zip up
Speaker 1: cardigan and blue tennis shoes who played with puppets. When
Speaker 1: I was a little boy and I had a scary dream,
Speaker 1: sometimes I'd get some paper and crayons and I would
Speaker 1: draw pictures about my dream. I mean, is this the
Speaker 1: guy like, is this quiet dude staring into a camera
Speaker 1: and talking slowly about crayons? Is this the guy who
Speaker 1: can stand up to our very worst? And sometimes that
Speaker 1: would help so much that I was able to get
Speaker 1: back to sleep real soon. Mr Rogers made it seem
Speaker 1: so easy, so casual, to know how you're feeling, to
Speaker 1: be comfortable in your own skin. But it's not easy.
Speaker 1: It takes work, and that's actually what Mr rogers Neighborhood
Speaker 1: was all about. He was showing us how to do
Speaker 1: that work. Really helps to talk about the way you feel,
Speaker 1: because everybody has feelings all the time. In a time
Speaker 1: like this, Fred Rogers has something we desperately need. I
Speaker 1: think the real genius of Mr Rogers having done his
Speaker 1: show and having it be targeted towards children is that
Speaker 1: what he has done is created a template for just
Speaker 1: how to recognize your feelings and know what it is,
Speaker 1: which is basically how you get to all the other stuff.
Speaker 1: It's how you grow. He taught us how to plant seeds.
Speaker 1: He taught us to plant seeds, seeds that were supposed
Speaker 1: to blossom into healthy, safe, caring, loving feelings for ourselves
Speaker 1: and then for all of our neighbors. And he he
Speaker 1: had three decades on television to show us, to convince us,
Speaker 1: to guide us into making the kind of world he
Speaker 1: dreamed of. And yet here we are in a world
Speaker 1: that is well m It's not Mr Rogers neighborhood. I'm
Speaker 1: Carvel Wallace and this is Finding Fred, a podcast about
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers from I Heart Media and Fatherly in partnership
Speaker 1: with Transmitter Media. I'm a writer. I got my start
Speaker 1: by writing about music for MTV and Pitchfork in places
Speaker 1: like that. But for a few years I was also
Speaker 1: the parenting advice columnist for Slate, and every week we
Speaker 1: would read dozens of letters from desperate, frightened, weary parents
Speaker 1: wondering how to raise good people, how to be good people.
Speaker 1: And so I think a lot about what stands in
Speaker 1: the way for them for us. But the other thing
Speaker 1: is I grew up as a complete TV nerd. I mean,
Speaker 1: TV might have had more of an impact on how
Speaker 1: I understand the world than any adult in my life.
Speaker 1: And so now that I am the adult, the parent,
Speaker 1: even I find myself wondering what TV has to say
Speaker 1: to my kids, to our kids, about what we can
Speaker 1: do about the world we live in. And so that's
Speaker 1: how I get to Fred Rogers, a guy who made
Speaker 1: TV about this very question. You might have noticed there
Speaker 1: is an explosion of Mr. Rogers nostalgia going around, but
Speaker 1: I'm curious about it, Like, why now Fred has been
Speaker 1: dead for almost twenty years and there are suddenly movies
Speaker 1: and documentaries and books. Why is it that generations of
Speaker 1: adults are all collectively having this nostalgia moment right now?
Speaker 1: I was really interested in feelings as a kid because
Speaker 1: nobody talked about feelings, but I seem to have so many.
Speaker 1: This is Ashley c Ford. She makes her living by
Speaker 1: thinking deeply about how people feel and trying to communicate
Speaker 1: something about how that impacts their inner lives and outer lives.
Speaker 1: I am a writer of essays, articles and a memoir,
Speaker 1: and I am a Fred Rogers enthusiasts. What does that
Speaker 1: mean of Fred Rogers enthusiast? Well, I think of being
Speaker 1: an enthusiast as being a person who likes a thing
Speaker 1: from many, many different angles. I remember being very very
Speaker 1: little and like a nap time when I went to
Speaker 1: a babysitter, she would put on Mr Rogers and I
Speaker 1: was like, Yeah, this is not going to put me
Speaker 1: to sleep. I'm fascinated, Like I loved Mr Rogers, and
Speaker 1: so I was like, if you want to put me
Speaker 1: to sleep, you better put on popa Beaver story Time
Speaker 1: or something because Mr Rogers, ain't it, lady. He talking
Speaker 1: about all kinds of stuff that I'm interested in. You know,
Speaker 1: lots of kids have had that experience. I mean millions actually,
Speaker 1: but actually has talked about how as an adult she
Speaker 1: found help from Mr Rogers. I feel like, at different
Speaker 1: stages of my life, I have come to understand the
Speaker 1: man and his impact. And I almost want to say
Speaker 1: the genius of his empathy. Like we talk about genius
Speaker 1: and so many capacities when it comes to other things
Speaker 1: and things that we think of as you know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote hard, but empathy is really hard. And talking to
Speaker 1: people about empathy and getting people to understand empathy is
Speaker 1: so hard. And this man was I believe a genius
Speaker 1: at it and not just because of innate talent or inclination,
Speaker 1: but because he valued it and he committed to it
Speaker 1: and he worked really hard at it. This I love
Speaker 1: this idea of being a genius of empathy. And to
Speaker 1: be a genius of of something like empathy feels like
Speaker 1: a new idea because we tend to think of the
Speaker 1: realm of feelings as not requiring work or clarity or discipline.
Speaker 1: And problem, yeah, yeah, it is our problem. And I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about that. I want to I mean, like, first,
Speaker 1: in your own experience, what makes empathy difficult? Like, what
Speaker 1: do you find empathy difficult or something that requires work rather?
Speaker 1: And if so, what makes empathy difficult? Empathy is difficult
Speaker 1: because people don't have empathy for themselves. M let's talk
Speaker 1: about empathy. That word is used everywhere today, so much
Speaker 1: so that it seems to have lost its power, because
Speaker 1: actually it's a pretty radical idea that we can so
Speaker 1: closely identify with another person that we can understand their feelings.
Speaker 1: A lot of us aren't even comfortable with our own
Speaker 1: feelings anger, fear, sorrow, maybe even certain kinds of happiness.
Speaker 1: And if we're not comfortable with our feelings, then We're
Speaker 1: not really comfortable with ourselves, are we? So then how
Speaker 1: can we be comfortable with other people? When Ashley came
Speaker 1: back to Mr. Rogers as an adult, she realized that
Speaker 1: these were the questions he was grappling with. Yes, watching
Speaker 1: the show did feel like being with an old, caring friend,
Speaker 1: but there was way more going on there than just
Speaker 1: the warm and fuzzies. The first episode is my favorite
Speaker 1: episode of Mr. Rogers, and I think what Mr Rogers
Speaker 1: did was established something in that first episode when he
Speaker 1: sings the song I like you as you are. I
Speaker 1: like you as you are exactly and precisely. I think
Speaker 1: you turned out nicely, and I like you as you are.
Speaker 1: I do the first time I saw the episode, though
Speaker 1: I wasn't a kid it, I was an adult. I
Speaker 1: had had a really, really tough day and I decided
Speaker 1: to take a bubble bath and have a glass of
Speaker 1: wine and just be in the tub and take care
Speaker 1: of myself. But I didn't want to be like alone
Speaker 1: with my thoughts, because you know when you have like
Speaker 1: those sort of stressful, hard days that you're like, I
Speaker 1: need to watch anything, I need to do anything, because
Speaker 1: being in my head. My head is not a safe
Speaker 1: space right now. And so I was like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: going to set up the computer. I'm just gonna play something.
Speaker 1: And I was like, what can I play that would
Speaker 1: just be so gentle? What can I watch that would
Speaker 1: be so gentle that it just it won't make right
Speaker 1: now harder for me? And I just thought of Mr. Rogers,
Speaker 1: clicked the first episode of Mr. Rogers, and I'm crying
Speaker 1: in the bathtub. I like you, I like you. What
Speaker 1: I felt like I had rediscovered a piece of myself,
Speaker 1: like a part of myself, which happens as you age,
Speaker 1: like you start to think about all the things that
Speaker 1: you've cast off for reasons that when you look back,
Speaker 1: or like that was to fit into something else. And
Speaker 1: I miss that thing and I want it back. And
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there and I'm listening to this song I
Speaker 1: Like You as you are, and I'm remembering, Holy sh it,
Speaker 1: I used to like myself. I wouldn't want to change
Speaker 1: you or even rearrange. I used to really really like
Speaker 1: who I was, and I don't feel like that right now.
Speaker 1: And it was the beginning of trying to like myself again.
Speaker 1: Like you, Yes, I like you, Oh you, I do
Speaker 1: I you like you? As Yeah, are you like what
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Speaker 1: dermatologist about Consentics. That first episode of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood
Speaker 1: aired nationally in nineteen sixty eight, and the world in
Speaker 1: it felt probably a lot like the world does now, scary, chaotic,
Speaker 1: and unspeakably violent. There was the war in Vietnam. Dr
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Jr's a set fascination and the protests
Speaker 1: and uprisings that came after. Anger and confusion hung over
Speaker 1: a lot of adults, and Fred's revolutionary move was to
Speaker 1: recognize that their kids were probably feeling it too. The
Speaker 1: very first week of the show when it premiered, had
Speaker 1: to do with the ruler of the make believe Land,
Speaker 1: King Friday the thirteenth, building a wall to keep out
Speaker 1: people and ideas that he didn't want in his kingdom.
Speaker 1: And now that's creepy when you think about it. In
Speaker 1: David being Cooley knows a big TV moment when he
Speaker 1: sees one. He's watched a ton of them. He's been
Speaker 1: a television critic for over forty years. And yeah, he
Speaker 1: loves the Sopranos, and he loves Breaking Bad, and he
Speaker 1: loves all the prestige television about people murdering one another
Speaker 1: and dissolving bodies and acid or whatever. But he's also
Speaker 1: fascinated with the first week of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and
Speaker 1: the things Fred Rogers is able to communicate in a
Speaker 1: land of make believe. Lady Elaine has been up to
Speaker 1: her tricks again, and she's moved the Eiffel Tower on
Speaker 1: the wrong side of the castle, and the tree has
Speaker 1: gone away from over here to the middle, and the
Speaker 1: clock is over here in the fountain. Well, it's just
Speaker 1: all mixed direct. She must be really upset. He's furious
Speaker 1: about it, and he has established border guards in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood make Believe. That sounds like a war. The people
Speaker 1: in his kingdom. The other puppets, the other characters send
Speaker 1: out balloons. Boy, do you ever look nifty with all
Speaker 1: those blows over the wall? That are nice, supportive balloons
Speaker 1: like you know, we like you, we want to get
Speaker 1: to know you. And they decide a wall and a
Speaker 1: barrier isn't a good thing. Now, this was, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's dealing with Vietnam um essentially, but it still resonates,
Speaker 1: I mean, much more than I'm comfortable with it. Resonating.
Speaker 1: Vietnam was just one in what seemed like a laundry
Speaker 1: list of dark and difficult news items in because earlier
Speaker 1: that summer, Bobby Kennedy was shot and Fred Rogers asked
Speaker 1: for a prime time special because he understood that even
Speaker 1: if children were too young to understand who Bobby Kennedy
Speaker 1: was or what had happened, they would feel the vibe
Speaker 1: in their own homes about how upset their parents were,
Speaker 1: how upset uh they're older siblings were, and wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about it. So in one sketch, he has Daniel
Speaker 1: Stripe a tiger. Just a minute, I want to show you.
Speaker 1: Simply asking Betty Aberlin, one of the human people who
Speaker 1: visits in the neighborhood and it's a bloom off, could
Speaker 1: you blew it up for you? Asked her to blow
Speaker 1: up a balloon and then let the air out and
Speaker 1: do it a few times. And he was concerned about
Speaker 1: something this little, this little puppet. What about your air,
Speaker 1: my my air inside me? Mm hmm. What if you
Speaker 1: blow all your air out, then you won't have any left,
Speaker 1: just like the balloon. But people aren't like balloons, Daniel.
Speaker 1: When we blow air out, we get some more back in. Oh,
Speaker 1: what does assassination mean? And this is out of a
Speaker 1: children's hand puppet. As far as you know that any
Speaker 1: other children shows address that topic? Yeah, no, and and
Speaker 1: and I've looked. I just ask you in regardless of what,
Speaker 1: uh the big news event is, can you imagine any
Speaker 1: children's television program that's on right now coming up almost
Speaker 1: with like a news special addressing the emotional consequences of it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't exist. This special ran the evening after Bobby
Speaker 1: Kennedy died. Fred Rogers wrote this scene overnight. He was
Speaker 1: so tuned into his audience that he knew that this
Speaker 1: was something that children and their families absolutely needed to hear.
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers empathized with the kids who were feeling so
Speaker 1: scared and confused, So he talked right to those kids,
Speaker 1: and then he talked to their parents too, about how
Speaker 1: to help with the children. The best thing in the
Speaker 1: world is for your children to be included in your
Speaker 1: family ways of coping with the problems that that present
Speaker 1: themselves any time, but particularly now in this very difficult
Speaker 1: time in our nation. Fred Rogers invented a neighborhood where
Speaker 1: people got together to talk about the things that confused
Speaker 1: them or scared them, and he used this place to
Speaker 1: show his viewers what you have to do to work
Speaker 1: through your emotions, and in doing that he was able
Speaker 1: to communicate complex concepts, moral, even spiritual concepts, concepts that
Speaker 1: even adults are still struggling to get a hold of.
Speaker 1: Empathy is about like sort of finding the space between
Speaker 1: the parts that connect, right, Like we know as humans
Speaker 1: that we are connected to each other inextricably and irrevocably.
Speaker 1: Like we know that because we have to live in
Speaker 1: the world together and we have to rely on each other.
Speaker 1: I UM, in working on this project, I'm like really
Speaker 1: struck with what seems to me an apparent paradox. I
Speaker 1: think that this question of empathy feels so complicated for
Speaker 1: some people because on the one hand, it's like, are
Speaker 1: you saying we should have empathy for for rapists and
Speaker 1: racists and violent people and white supremacists. I think that
Speaker 1: makes people feel panicked about the idea of empathy, and
Speaker 1: I want to explore that a little bit with you, Like,
Speaker 1: how do you see those ideas working together? Well, let
Speaker 1: me start here. I'll start by saying, um, and I
Speaker 1: guess I'll just say whatever I say, and you guys
Speaker 1: can decide whether or not that's not appropriate. UM. My
Speaker 1: father has was in press and from the time I
Speaker 1: was about oh six months old until I was almost thirty,
Speaker 1: and my dad was I found out when I was
Speaker 1: fourteen years old that my dad was in prison for
Speaker 1: sexual assault, that that's why he was there, and that
Speaker 1: that's why he would be there for however long. And
Speaker 1: my dad had also written me letters up until that
Speaker 1: point my entire life. I mean, just so many letters.
Speaker 1: You're the best girl in the world. I love you
Speaker 1: so much. You're my favorite girl. UM, I think you're amazing.
Speaker 1: Never forget that your dad loves you. I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: you all the time. Nothing is better than your smile,
Speaker 1: you know, like all this kinds of stuff. And that
Speaker 1: had been to be perfectly honest, like the basis of
Speaker 1: my self esteem. And then to find out that this
Speaker 1: was true about my father was really, really tough for me,
Speaker 1: but it started the beginning of a real understanding the
Speaker 1: complexity of humanity, and that a person can be one
Speaker 1: person's hero and another person's worst nightmare and their monster
Speaker 1: and the thing that was hiding in the dark, and
Speaker 1: both of those things can be true about a person
Speaker 1: right like it has to be like, there was no
Speaker 1: there was no other way to see this. He has
Speaker 1: both done a bad thing and he a terrible thing,
Speaker 1: a monstrous thing, and he has also, you know, been
Speaker 1: the thing that up into this point has kept me
Speaker 1: from feeling like I was alone in the world. And
Speaker 1: the truth is we're connected to these people for better
Speaker 1: or worse. We all want to be good, to be friendly,
Speaker 1: to be neighbors, at least most of us. But when
Speaker 1: we see other people acting well bad, we get hurt,
Speaker 1: we lose our own balance, we get mad. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of reactions to the state of our country,
Speaker 1: the state of the world, the state of society, all
Speaker 1: those things that are a lot of reactions right now
Speaker 1: that it is perfectly understandable for people to be this angry,
Speaker 1: and so I don't really blame the people who are
Speaker 1: kind of hot headed and lose their minds, or you know,
Speaker 1: like or or are so seems so consumed by their
Speaker 1: anger that they're more angry than alive. Like. I don't
Speaker 1: blame them, but I do always think, Man, who's going
Speaker 1: to be there? And how are they going to deal
Speaker 1: when the anger stops being enough? Because it'll never be enough.
Speaker 1: It will never, ever, ever, ever ever be enough. What
Speaker 1: do you do with the man that you feel? When
Speaker 1: you feel so mad you could bite, when the whole
Speaker 1: wide world it seems, and nothing you do seems very
Speaker 1: What do you do with the man you feel? It's
Speaker 1: a question that preoccupied Fred Rogers. He wrote a song
Speaker 1: about it. He felt so strongly about it that he
Speaker 1: recited the lyrics to that song in front of a
Speaker 1: Senate committee hearing in You Got the Flaw. It's a
Speaker 1: famous bit of footage, and we'll return to it again.
Speaker 1: But I'm struck that this is one of the first
Speaker 1: times Fred Rogers was really explicit about what he was
Speaker 1: doing with his TV programs. And I feel that if
Speaker 1: we in public television can only make it clear that
Speaker 1: feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a
Speaker 1: great service for mental health. Uh. I think that it's
Speaker 1: much more dramatic that two men could be working out
Speaker 1: or feelings of anger, much more dramatic than showing something
Speaker 1: of gunfire. Could I tell you the words of one
Speaker 1: of the songs, which I feel is very important. This
Speaker 1: has to do with that good feeling of control which
Speaker 1: I feel that that children need to know is there.
Speaker 1: And it starts out what do you do with the
Speaker 1: mad that you feel? And that first line came straight
Speaker 1: from a child? What do you do with the mad
Speaker 1: that you feel? When you feel so mad you could bite,
Speaker 1: When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong, and
Speaker 1: nothing you do seems very right? What do you do?
Speaker 1: Do you punch a bag? Do you pound some clay
Speaker 1: or some dough? Do you round up friends for a
Speaker 1: game of tag? Or see how fast you go? It's
Speaker 1: great to be able to stop when you've planned a
Speaker 1: thing that's wrong, and be able to do something else instead.
Speaker 1: And think this song I can stop when I want to,
Speaker 1: can stop when I wish, can stop, stop, stop any time?
Speaker 1: And what a good feeling to feel, and what a
Speaker 1: good failing to feel like this and know that the
Speaker 1: failing is really mine. I guess that makes me think
Speaker 1: a lot about the force of anger and the violence
Speaker 1: and ugliness that anger can cause. And here's this person
Speaker 1: sort of standing at the riverhead of anger and wanting
Speaker 1: to divert it. And I think it's a fascinating idea.
Speaker 1: And I want to ask you, what do you do
Speaker 1: Ashley with the mad that you feel? Oh? My god,
Speaker 1: I think because anger is a thing that I had
Speaker 1: to teach myself, give myself permission to feel in my adulthood,
Speaker 1: because I grew up in a very angry household where
Speaker 1: anger was the emotion. Did you, um? But every day
Speaker 1: I I think. What I have learned to do with
Speaker 1: my anger is to talk to it, which sounds so
Speaker 1: I know that it sounds a little booboo, but hey,
Speaker 1: this is Mr Rogers. Um, but I do. I talked
Speaker 1: to my anger because what I've what I've essentially learned,
Speaker 1: is that every emotion is just trying to tell you something.
Speaker 1: And when I'm angry, I think it's trying to tell
Speaker 1: me what I care about. It's trying to tell me
Speaker 1: what's important to me. Years ago, Um, I was really angry.
Speaker 1: I was working at a media company and the Ferguson
Speaker 1: Uprising was happening, and the newsroom was covering it. We
Speaker 1: were all talking about it, and I had a conversation
Speaker 1: with a boss who told me that they did not
Speaker 1: want me to tweet out the words black Lives matter
Speaker 1: because it was political and it could affect my colleagues
Speaker 1: ability to do their job. And I remember feeling so
Speaker 1: angry at the implication that I could choose. That's not
Speaker 1: just a choice. And I think that's when I just
Speaker 1: got to it, why where I was just like, you
Speaker 1: know what I can. I'm gonna do something, and it's
Speaker 1: going to be something that they're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to do anything about. I ended up raising about
Speaker 1: half a million dollars for the Ferguson Library because it
Speaker 1: was a really safe place for children. Schools were closed
Speaker 1: and teachers were going to the library and just sending
Speaker 1: emails to parents and saying, hey, if you need to
Speaker 1: bring your kids to the library, we're just all going
Speaker 1: to go to the library. And it's not that it
Speaker 1: makes the anger go away, but what it does is
Speaker 1: it it makes the anger not feel chaotic. I'm giving
Speaker 1: it a job so that I don't have to live
Speaker 1: within in my body. What do you do with the
Speaker 1: mad that you feel. What do you do with the sadness,
Speaker 1: the frustration? What do you do with the joy and
Speaker 1: this surprise or the love that you feel? Over something
Speaker 1: like nine episodes, Fred Rogers used the language of children
Speaker 1: and the land of make believe to talk about feelings.
Speaker 1: But this is not light work. Mr Rogers Neighborhood was
Speaker 1: not a simple show, and Mr Rogers Fred Rogers was
Speaker 1: not a simple man. He was a preacher who did
Speaker 1: his best work on television. He was a wildly talented
Speaker 1: musician and composer who wrote songs primarily heard by four
Speaker 1: year olds. He was deeply involved with people who were
Speaker 1: transforming the very way we think about children and learning.
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers was a radical in a sense. He was spiritual,
Speaker 1: he was revolutionary. I mean he might have even been subversive.
Speaker 1: Get scared me, get mad if we get too scared
Speaker 1: about fights, will never do things together? Ever? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think now right, I think this is the calming down
Speaker 1: way to say I love you. Fred Rogers left us
Speaker 1: an enormous body of work, a road map. I think
Speaker 1: that we can revisit to see what we can learn
Speaker 1: that still applies as much today as it did in
Speaker 1: n So We're going to talk to the people who
Speaker 1: knew him best. What was true about Fed Rogers is
Speaker 1: he was he was tuned in at a deeper level
Speaker 1: than most people in the daytime. I was learning this
Speaker 1: complex child development theory in grad school, and at night
Speaker 1: I would come into the control room and I would
Speaker 1: see Fred live out all the things I was learning about.
Speaker 1: We'll also seek out people like Ashley and others who
Speaker 1: grew up with Mr. Rogers, people who recognize there's something
Speaker 1: deeper going on there. We're gonna try to understand some
Speaker 1: of what Fred coded into his children's program and see
Speaker 1: if we can put it into a language for the
Speaker 1: adults who so desperately need it. Now, we're trying to
Speaker 1: crawl into of mind of Fred Rogers. How did this
Speaker 1: singular dude from an Appalachian town happen to develop some
Speaker 1: of the most spiritually sophisticated, substantial, maybe even essential television
Speaker 1: of all time. You can call his work of philosophy,
Speaker 1: but it really just comes down to this, how can
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers help us be better neighbors? Next week? When
Speaker 1: I met Fred Rogers, he was a very unusual positive energy,
Speaker 1: so damn unusual, and by that I mean those puppets.
Speaker 1: What on Earth was a grown man doing plan with
Speaker 1: those puppets? Finding Fred is produced by Transmitter Media. The
Speaker 1: team is Dan O'Donnell, Jordan by Lee and Maddie Foley.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Sarah Nick's editorial will help from Michael Garofalo.
Speaker 1: The executive producer for Transmitter Media is Credit Cone. Executive
Speaker 1: producers at Fatherly are Simon Isaacs and Andrew Berman. Music
Speaker 1: by Blue Dot Sessions and Alison Layton Brown And thanks
Speaker 1: to the team at My Heart. If you like what
Speaker 1: you're hearing, rate the show, review the show, and tell
Speaker 1: a friend I'm Carvel Wallace, thank you for listening. Teething
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