100 Divine Neighbor transcript (Fred Rogers)

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Jennifer: [00:00:00] This is Famous and Gravy biographies from a different point of view. To participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello@famousandgravy.com. Now here's the quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

Michael: This person died 2003, age 74.

Friend: He was an ordained Presbyterian minister. A famous ordained Presbyterian. Okay, gimme more.

Gimme more. The fellow who, uh, was in the United States, he Ross Perot. Is he dead?

Michael: Not Ross Perot. Good guess. We actually did an episode [00:00:30] on Ross Perot, but that was before we were taking ourselves seriously as a show. But it's not bad. He once volunteered at a state prison in Pittsburgh and helped set up a playroom for children visiting their parents

Friend: celebrity prison.

I go to Johnny Cash, but that can't be it. Was he like an advisor to president's kind of guy? Not an advisor to president's kind of guy. Eddie Murphy

Michael: parroted him on Saturday Night Live.

Friend: Uh, I'm, I'm stunned. Not a clue. One of his sweaters [00:01:00] hangs in the Smithsonian. Eddie Murphy sweater in the Smithsonian.

Michael: I got nothing.

That's not nothing , it's, it's just one of those days. He composed his own songs for his show and began each episode in a set made to look like a comfortable living room singing. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Friend: Wait a second. Mm-hmm . Oh, okay. I got it. Fred Rogers. Mr. Rogers. Oh, it's Mr. Rogers.

Today's dead celebrity is Fred Rogers. Wow. That's a good one. [00:01:30]

Archival: Just one minute. One minute. To think of those who have made a real difference in your life, who's made a difference in your life? Oh, a lot of people, but a lot of people who have allowed me to have some silence, and I don't think we give that gift very much anymore.

I'm very concerned that our society is much more interested in information. Then wonder [00:02:00] in noise rather than silence. How do we encourage reflection? Oh my. This is a noisy world.

Michael: Welcome to Famous and

Jennifer: Gravy. I'm Michael Osborne. And my name is Jennifer Kian Armstrong.

Michael: And on this show we choose a famous figure who died in the 21st century, and we take a totally different approach [00:02:30] to their biography. What didn't we know? What could we not see clearly? And what does a celebrity's life story teach us about ourselves today?

Fred Rogers died 2003, age 74. Okay, so I am thrilled today to be joined by a friend of the show, fication Armstrong. She's a New York Times bestselling author and pop culture historian. Jennifer helped out with our Carrie Fisher episode, and I have lost track [00:03:00] of how many books you've written.

Jennifer: I'm currently working on my ninth book, which is about the television show, parks and Recreation.

Michael: Amazing. Well, and I know one of the other things you're up to these days is you've launched and are helping to contribute to this ministry of pop culture or Substack.

Jennifer: Absolutely. Um, it's me and four other pop culture authors specifically. We all write similar kinds of books and we also . Share something with your show in that our big thing is just for us, it's really about making meaning of the pop culture [00:03:30] we love, whether it's old or new or in between.

Michael: I really like that you spoke to meaning here because like pop culture is often a gateway to a deeper conversation. So you and I got on the horn not too long ago and we started brainstorming and I threw out the name Fred Rogers. You had a very strong response to it and 'cause you also wrote an article about kind of like the Buddhism of Fred Rogers Exactly.

Do you call yourself a Buddhist?

Jennifer: I do. I'm a practicing Buddhist. I'm a student with the Village Zendo in New York City and New Paltz Zen Center [00:04:00] here in my hometown of New Paltz. I'm very involved with it and have been a student for about 15 years now.

Michael: Fabulous. All right. Let's get right to it. Category one, grading the first line of their obituary.

Fred Rogers, who gently invited millions of children to be his neighbor as host of the public television show. Mr. Rogers neighborhood for more than 30 years died of cancer. Early Thursday, he was 74. Jennifer, your initial reaction.

Jennifer: I like it. This [00:04:30] man was pretty singular. We're gonna talk about some of the corners of his life that maybe people didn't know as much about, but he was who he was.

There wasn't a lot hidden, and this has got to be one of the easiest obit. First lines to write because you aren't like, oh crap, what about his turn as a villain on the, you know, whatever. Like, right.

Michael: Or some hidden scandal or something like that. Right? There's, yeah,

Jennifer: none of, there's no big complications and so, yeah, I'm not really mad at this.

I would say the [00:05:00] one I. Piece of finesse here might be gently as well. Well,

Michael: that was what I honed in on and I actually, I think I have more gripes than you do here, . I had the reaction of understatement. There's a lot going on under the surface in terms of values, but that actually is my number one gripe here.

This doesn't capture his values. Use at all. And I know that's not easy, but like yeah. Kindness or compassion or generosity, service. I mean, there's like, all we get in terms of [00:05:30] emotion or adjective is exactly what you pointed to gently. Gently is a nice word and it's definitely inaccurate word, but I, I wanted.

More here. This doesn't quite capture impact or stature. So on one hand I'm sort of like, okay, with understatement, but I had the same reaction you, you did. Like at first I'm like, I like it. It's simple. You know, why make this complex? But then I'm like, no bullshit. I do think it's probably it was sudden his death because I mean, he was diagnosed with cancer and then like two months later, boom.

But [00:06:00] it's interesting how durable he is as a pop culture figure. Mm-hmm . That he died in, what was it, 2003? Yes. He's become more impactful over time. They could not have known that when this was written in 2003, but still even the contribution to PBS, the congressional testimony, I mean there, there was a bigger figure here than what this obit captures for me.

So there's, it's missing values and it's missing stature.

Jennifer: I agree. And also just I have a bone to pick throughout reading about him, to be honest, [00:06:30] which is captured here, which is just the way it always, they're always saying like the preschool show. Yes, of course it was for children. I'm not saying like I was gonna spend my adulthood like rewatching Mr.

Rogers. Right.

Michael: But

Jennifer: we could all do worse and you're, I think you're totally right. I was also giving them a lot of leeway. I kept saying to myself, this is like how I think as a journalist. Mm-hmm . Is that I kept saying, you know what? There was a Rogers.

probably. I may not. Rogers. Um, there was, there was a Mr. Rogers [00:07:00] reevaluation not that long ago. Yeah. There's a documentary

Michael: in the Tom Hanks movie. Yeah, yeah. That

Jennifer: really reevaluated him for all of us into this other figure that's so much bigger. And I think maybe we didn't even appreciate that. Like, he's such a Jet X.

And beyond person.

Michael: Yes, I agree. Yeah.

Jennifer: We had to grow up

Michael: in order to like, before we realized what he did. . Yeah.

Jennifer: Like holy crap. But yeah, I was going eight. I might drop it down now to like a seven. . [00:07:30] Yeah. I

Michael: was going seven and I think I'm gonna go six. There is a part of me that wants to New York Times to anticipate somebody's durability and the way their shadow may hang in the popular consciousness for a while.

You know what I mean? Well,

Jennifer: yeah, and I hate, I have a whole thing about the use of the word icon, but if there is anyone, and I would say we had to know this in 2003, if there was anyone who's iconic.

Michael: Yeah.

Jennifer: Like this man made this image that means something. Without saying anything anymore, the sweater. [00:08:00] Is like it.

Yes. You could see just the man in that sweater and it would just bring comfort to millions of people. He invented something that didn't exist before. So I would say, see, I'm like, but now I'm like, this is a one. . .

Michael: Alright. Before, yeah. Let's, let's, let's freeze frame it at six and a seven. 'cause I think that's about fair.

'cause I'll talk myself back up if we can go

Jennifer: right. Exactly. .

Michael: Okay, let's move on. Category two, five things I love about you here Jennifer and I will develop a list of five things that offer a different angle on . [00:08:30] Who this person was and how they lived. I'm gonna let you lead. What do you have here for, uh, five things?

Jennifer: I said positive masculinity.

Michael: Okay. All right. I like it. Let's do this. Right?

Jennifer: Like, to me, that's what this more recent reevaluation was getting at. He's the father figure. We sort of all need, wish we had, I don't wanna say wish our dads could be, but you know, kind of like he was so bravely vulnerable. Mm-hmm

Among other things. And so uniquely him, he did not care [00:09:00] about seeming like some big guy and for a man of his generation in particular. That is extraordinary. This was really, um, I think shown in that famous Tom Juno piece for Esquire.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the 1999 profile. He's kind of like a tough guy.

Go get him. Journalist, I. That's right. And he as this like 180 is humbled and kind of like falls in love with Fred brand. That's senses. Right. And the,

Jennifer: the headline on it is something like, can you say hero?

Michael: I wanna really respond to [00:09:30] this because I love that you live with this. First of all, I'd say this is kind of one of the ongoing workshopping themes of Famous and gravy is reevaluating masculinity.

And what does it mean? That's a question that's at the forefront of culture right now, and it's at the forefront of our show in some ways. I'll say I, because I wrestled with this and I still wrestle with this, I grew up in a hyper-masculine kind of football culture in Texas. Mm-hmm . Where there's like a certain kind of machismo that is very present and I [00:10:00] was a sensitive kid.

Mm-hmm . And, and in a way, Fred Rogers was somebody who I. On some level found threatening. As a child, I wouldn't have called myself a Fred Rogers fan growing up because I would've been afraid of the associations that would've come with that. And so to hear you talk about positive masculinity, you said vulnerability.

What? What is pos masculinity?

Jennifer: I know I've been having these conversations for a while, mainly in the television space.

Michael: Yeah.

Jennifer: I mean, Ted Lasso [00:10:30] is the quintessential example of this. Like they've put him in a sports milia, right? Mm-hmm . Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a coach. He's southern. He's, I mean, he's from Kansas.

He has kind of like that twin. Yeah, he is, got a southern accent. He's dead Midwest, right? Yeah, he is. Heterosexual, which is just important in messaging more than anything. And he turns out to be the strong coach with this sort of ability to like really hone in on feelings, pay attention to the individual people and their specialists.

He has a lot of Fred Roger. It's like if Fred Rogers. [00:11:00] Coached a soccer team, .

Michael: Okay, let me give you my second and actually this is gonna segue pretty well. I'm gonna start with Tiger and the tall grass, the tiger thing. It was reference to Daniel Tiger. What I'm really after with Tiger and the tall grass I.

Is his hidden power. He is a kind of contradiction in that he seems to be like at first glance, frail or weak. Or gentle, right? He actually commands space and he does it with his voice. He does it with his [00:11:30] presence. He does it with his attention. You know, one thing that comes out in the, in the research, in the documentaries is like you underestimate his power, and this is sort of gets into the.

Buddhist thing a little bit. It exists because of his mindfulness, his awareness of spaciousness. And you know, there's this moment in a interview with Charlie Rose where he talks about his favorite part of his book is the White Space in between the text, like a paragraph. Break was meant for you to sit with an idea.

Archival: It's about what, in the [00:12:00] end, it's about being. It's about the white spaces between the paragraphs, which I think are more important than any of the text because it allows you to think about what's just been said. I had a professor one time. and he said, you know, Fred, there's one thing that evil cannot stand and that is forgiveness.

And you notice the rest of the page is blank. Yes. It needs [00:12:30] a lot of time to think about that,

Michael: and that felt like such a embodiment of what he does. He creates space. It's an expression of power, but you don't necessarily . Look at Fred Rogers and think, oh, that's a powerful guy. You know? And I wanted a little bit of a metaphor.

So tiger in the tall grass,

Jennifer: something that really will strike you if you revisit him as an adult is, I mean, one of the famous things besides the Tom Juno story is his congressional testimony and to get funding for a public television.

Michael: [00:13:00] And yeah, we need to set this up a little bit, right? Because this is this iconic moment where PBS in the future of public broadcasting is on the line.

Lyndon Johnson had authorized some money. Nixon was on the fence about it. There's a powerful senator who's very skeptical, and Fred Rogers gives this six minute testimony or something.

Jennifer: Yes, it's incredible to watch. You cannot believe it's real, and they chose him knowing his personal power.

Archival: I'm constantly concerned about what our children are seeing.[00:13:30]

And for 15 years I have tried in this country and Canada to present what I feel is a meaningful expression of care. I think that it's much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger than showing something of gunfire. I'm supposed to be a pretty tough guy and this the first time I've had goosebumps for the last two days,

Well, I'm grateful not only for your goosebumps, but for [00:14:00] your interest in our kind of communication. I think it's wonderful. Looks like you just earned the $20 million

Jennifer: that you watch this man go from this like s murky thing to being like, huh. And that shows you that's, that's, that's a man.

Michael: He went in there, tiger.

In the tall grass. Yeah. And yeah. And, and, and, and positive masculinity. Yeah,

Jennifer: exactly. Okay. Why don't you do it with

Michael: number three.

Jennifer: Okay. I just wrote down just the way you are.

Michael: Okay. [00:14:30] Somebody had to say it ,

Jennifer: because

Michael: Yeah. I have radical acceptance.

Jennifer: Yeah.

Michael: Just the way you are. Say more.

Jennifer: It just, I mean, this, if there's anything, I mean besides, there's the presence, there's the silence, but this was his ultimate power as the TV host, you know, doing his job.

I think it's his

Michael: ultimate mission. Yeah. I think if there is one thing he cares about in this world, if he had to distill it all down, it is start from a place of self-acceptance. Yes, I love you just the way you are. You need to learn to love [00:15:00] yourself just the way you are. We need to accept that we're all special.

And it's, it's such a. Uh, principle rooted in his Christianity and his view of humanity. And it's like the thing Yeah. He cares most about. Yeah, exactly.

Jennifer: I mean, do you remember that song? You are special. I mean, I can't even sing most of it while you, I just remember you're special . Um, you know, and it's so, it just hits you because when you're a kid, I mean, any, any of us, to be honest.

Like, yeah. Yeah. We all keep wanting to hear this. Right. It's all [00:15:30] Did you

Michael: not have to overcome a certain sense of corniness though, with him?

Jennifer: Oh, for sure, but he's right. Okay. This is the kid part, right? Yeah. He's talking to kids.

Michael: I have to remind myself of that, right? Yeah, because it's very easy to get. I don't know.

I think it is like kind of the central question actually, in a way of the positive masculinity thing. Why do I feel threatened by somebody who is willing to be very corny and to talk rights to chi, you know? Chill. Yeah. 'cause it's all about vulnerability. There's a part of me that's like, I realize that by being threatened by that, [00:16:00] that's a question for me, not him.

Jennifer: But I wanna, I do wanna say, I mean, it's interesting that you said that because like at first I was thinking, oh, how strange that you feel that way. But I actually don't think that's strange at all, because I love you just the way you are, but also because Oh, thanks, . Because I think I feel it too. And I, I mean, I don't really realize it.

And if you, I don't know if you watched the scripted film. I think it did something smart in that it's exploring the way probably most of us would feel. Hanging out with Fred Rogers, which is like kind of a little like, dude, take it down a notch.

Michael: Totally. [00:16:30]

Jennifer: Like, you don't have to do your thing right now, but apparently it seems like he's always doing his thing.

Michael: Well, that comes out in the research too, that what you see on the tv uh, show is the man. Everybody hammers that point. If you have some illusion in your mind that Fred Rogers on TV is the alter ego of some. Very different character. Obviously, we're all more complex off the camera, but basically the guy you see is the guy He is, yeah.

He's Fred

Jennifer: Rogers ing people all the time, including Tom Juno. When he did the piece, which was the part that [00:17:00] they took for this movie,

Archival: he had this amazing ability to look into people and see past the adult facade that we present and find, you know, take a really direct look at the. You know, aching kid that's within all of us.

And to decide what that kid needed, and he decided what I needed was trust. And he had, I mean there were people, and I know this, um, in retrospect, but [00:17:30] there were people who worked for him who just thought he was crazy. And

Jennifer: I think it would be. Incredibly illuminating and also very upsetting or very vulnerable if he was like there with you talking to you.

'cause he would do his thing right at you and he would see you exactly for who you are. Yeah. That's not creepy.

Michael: I'm threatening, threatened, just imagining it. It's upsetting.

Jennifer: It's upsetting to think about and so it's very interesting how radical this is. [00:18:00] And I do wanna say like. Part of the reason that I wrote down just the way you are is I have this memory of going to see Mr.

Rogers live. He would go do like a little stage appearance where he talked directly to kids live, and my mom and I took. My younger sibling, I was already like old, you know, I was already like, I had to be tween When we took Scotty, Scotty lost, well, my sibling is trans, and so [00:18:30] Scotty just like lost her shit because she swore, I think he like, kind of peeked out of the curtain a little and she swore that he waved at her directly at her and like she just freaking like could not get over it.

I always took her love of Fred Rogers as this whole, just the way you are, you are special. Like she felt so seen by, I'm like getting choked up. She felt so seen by him and you know, was unique in [00:19:00] so many ways. I. Yeah, and I think really extra appreciated. I think always felt like an outsider in a number of ways.

And I think throughout her life, like she kept talking about that, like that she would always say how much, even when she was older and it wasn't cool. Yeah. She'd be like, I love Mr. Rogers. You know? Yeah. So there's clearly something there.

Michael: That's a great one, Jennifer. I'm glad you pointed it out. Okay. Lemme check number four, social emotional pioneer.

I think that this gets a little bit into the, uh, chronology of his life. So he came from a very well-to-do family and he was [00:19:30] overweight when he was younger. That's right. He was bullied and he then has a kind of semi, sounded like normal-ish, uh, high school experience. Goes to Dartmouth for a year. Can't stand it 'cause it's a total party school.

It's like frat boys getting drunk all the time and then he goes to school for music. I feel like . When I think of him through the lens of social emotional pioneer, there's sort of two things that come out for me. One is it's in contrast to Sesame Street. I feel like the Fred Rogers Sesame Street tension is really interesting because, yes, I'd never [00:20:00] thought of this before, that Sesame Street is the kind of cognitive learning show where.

Presenting with numbers and facts and the alphabet and Fred Rogers is about feelings and how we handle our feelings and how we know and come to understand our feelings. So he's a total social emotional pioneer that way. But the other piece of it to me is creative outlet that I feel like one thing I had a hard time understanding of like, okay, how did you get to this place where you understood.

Endure the needs [00:20:30] of young kids such that you could speak to that audience and help them learn how they deal with their emotions. I think broadly speaking, his answer to that is through creativity. It's why he's into puppets. It's why he's into music. It's why make believe and play. Overall that, and I've really been thinking about this with my kids, who I'm.

I'm working with to try to help them with their emotions, their creative outlets, and giving them creative outlets is part of the process. So he was ahead of the game in terms [00:21:00] of putting social and emotional learning front and center. But I also like, I wanted to sort of stamp that with a kind of creative outlet emphasis, because I feel like that is very much part of his mission.

Jennifer: Absolutely. And it's just reminding me too, that the other part of that is he has this wonderful song about what to do with your feelings. It's something about when you feel so mad, you could bite.[00:21:30]

I mean, I'm reading every day in my life in terms of like, how do I deal with anxiety? And they'll tell you like. Punch a pillow, the scientific, or whatever you wanna say term is called completing the cycle. It's because your feelings come up and you have to put them somewhere because you can't run from the tiger.

So he kind of ex encourages kids to like scream or, you know, don't bite people that you can punch something. It's, it's gotta come out, it's gotta express. Yeah. And that's actually huge. Like if all of us did that more. We'd have a better world. . [00:22:00]

Michael: I couldn't agree more. Okay. Why don't you take number five here?

Jennifer: Okay. I don't have a pithy way of saying this, but he is a television pioneer, and I have to say this as the TV historian here.

Michael: Yeah.

Jennifer: Whenever you're trying to understand TV history, you have to put yourself in the brain space. I. Of the time when something happened. Well, this is a time when there was so much anxiety about television and what it was gonna do to kids' brains and

I mean, you're talking

Michael: the 1960s, which is a tumultuous time,

Jennifer: and this, I would say he is subtly [00:22:30] dealing, like looking around himself and saying like, how are kids taking this in? Yeah. You know, like . People are con figures are constantly getting assassinated. We're going to war in Vietnam. No one knows why.

Everyone's . And

Michael: he dealt with that overtly on the show. I mean, after Robert Kennedy was, uh, was killed. There's a segment about assassination during school integration. There's that wonderful moment. Yeah. You should set this one up with,

Jennifer: with Officer Clemens. Yeah. Who is black and he does this . Apparently kind of radical thing, which is just that they [00:23:00] sha they put their feet in a little kitty pool together.

Yeah.

Archival: They're sharing a swimming pool. Oh. There's Officer Clemens. Hi Officer Clemens. Come in. Hello Rogers. How are you? Come on, why don't you sit down? Oh, sure. Just for a moment. It's so warm. I was just, uh, putting some water on my feet. Oh, it sure is. Would you like to join me? It looks awfully enjoyable, but I don't have a towel or anything.

Oh, you share mine? Okay, sure. Oh, man. I'll put some more water in here. Oh.

Jennifer: This is gonna [00:23:30] turn into a beautiful day. I think this is also a time when most people did not recognize, well, they recognized the power of television, but they recognized it only in the sense that they were freaking out. What is television gonna do to children?

Michael: Yes. But

Jennifer: he saw, okay, we can't do anything. Kids are gonna watch television. We can't stop it at this point. So what can I do? To use that power for good. And the reason him and Sesame Street go together in a way is they're concurrent. Yes. And they're also both coming to the same conclusion with slightly different [00:24:00] responses.

And they saw it as, oh my God, we see kids singing commercial jingles. What if they were singing the alphabet? Instead. Yeah. And he saw it as I can connect directly with that crazy thing I do with my eyes where I look right in the camera, which is very hard to do by the way. Very few people can do it. You know who could do it?

Betty White. So that's telling, I think, .

Michael: Okay. Let's recap. So number one, you said. Positive masculinity. Number two, I said tiger in the tall grass. Hidden power. Number three. You said [00:24:30] just the way you are, is that right? Mm-hmm . Number four. I went with social emotional pioneer, especially as it relates to creative outlets.

And number five, you said television? Pioneer? Mm-hmm . Awesome list. Yeah. Okay. Let's pause for some advertisements. Okay, category three, one love. In this category, Jennifer, and I'll each choose one word or phrase that characterizes this person's loving relationships. First, we will review the family life data.

All right, this one's pretty simple. There's one marriage to Sarah [00:25:00] Joanne. Everybody called her Joanne. Fred was 23 when they got married. They were together for about 51 years until his death at age 74, they had two sons. It's interesting when he is asked about his upbringing, he'll say, I was an only child until age 11, and I think at age 11 his parents adopted a sister.

And so he sort of feels the need to say, I was. An only child for these formative years, I think tells you a lot about how he was shaped. He was also very sickly and frail. I mentioned earlier that he was [00:25:30] overweight and that he spent a lot of time alone playing.

Jennifer: That's right. He had asthma, I believe.

Michael: Yeah, I think Scarlet Fever even he mentioned it at one point, so, okay.

I'm gonna let you lead the first. That was,

Jennifer: I mean, that's the main stuff, and I believe he had a rift with one of his sons for a little bit.

Michael: Yeah. Sounded, I mean, there's not a lot of dirt. His sons like, I have a rebellious period. That's right. And I, I heard one story that they were living in a, in a very large house and.

Pittsburgh and he discovered [00:26:00] lamps with pot growing in the basement. Mm-hmm . And kind of flipped out, which I gotta say endeared me to his sons . Right. Like, it was kinda like, oh, that's great. And again, and and he did have a reaction of like, this would hurt me as a public figure. Yes. Right? Yes. He was not a guy who lost his temper.

But his wife would sometimes, if anybody was gonna yell, she had a little bit more of the disciplin in him, although he obviously believes in discipline as well. So. Right. Where'd you land word or phrase? Did you come up with something?

Jennifer: I actually said ordinary.

Michael: I [00:26:30] was so gonna go. Okay. This is that. That's a good segue.

Yeah, and

Jennifer: it's, it's so I feel like we would know, and granted, you know, things are maybe different now than they were then. But, so something that I've always found that comes up is like, you're gonna hear about it if someone is inconsistent with their image. Mm-hmm . It's like, we all are fine with Charlie Sheen being terrible because we knew he was terrible.

Right. Whereas like Tiger Woods. We would know is my point, right? Yeah. Yeah. If there was some absolute crazy thing And wouldn't you rebel too if you were his sons? Of course. [00:27:00]

Michael: Of course. And one of it even talks about like it's not easy to be this, you know, son of the second coming of Christ. Right. And

Jennifer: that's gotta be so annoying and like imagine being like.

16.

Michael: I would absolutely do drugs. Lots of them. . There's only one. There's only one. It's little spot. Seems small. Hundred percent. So, okay. I love that you said ordinary. I went in that direction too. How I got here, I feel a little conflicted about, but I was like, are there any good metaphors for androgyny?

Because I heard the word androgynous come up a a few times [00:27:30] with Fred Rogers, which I don't know if that's an accurate word or not, but here's what chat GBT encouraged me to think about was the moon. And moonlight. So I went down a bit of a rabbit hole for common moonlight metaphors. Here's what I've got, softness and calmness.

Moonlight is often used to evoke a sense of tranquility and serenity as its light is gentle and diffused. Unlike the harshness of sunlight, beauty, and reflection, just as the moon reflects the sunlight. Moonlight can symbolize the beauty that can be found in [00:28:00] reflection or the way something can reflect the brilliance of something else.

Change in simplicity. The moon's phases from New Moon to Full Moon and back again are a constant reminder of the cycle of nature of life, and they're

Jennifer: constant,

Michael: hidden potential. Moonlight can be used to represent the hidden beauty or potential that can be found in darkness, or the ability to find light even in the darkest of times.

Intuition, in some cultures and literary context, the moon and moonlight are associated with intuition and the subconscious. It sort of gets at the child development thing, and then finally hope and guidance. The moon's [00:28:30] ability to illuminate the night sky can also be used to represent hope and guidance, especially in times of darkness or uncertainty.

As I was reading this, I'm like, dude, check, check, check. All right. Okay. Bt, seriously. Well what you Yeah, I, and I mean, I . The interpersonal life as much as we know is exactly to your point, ordinary. It does seem like he is practicing these principles in all his affairs. It sounded like he struggled with his teenage sons.

Mm-hmm . Who doesn't, right? Yep. And [00:29:00] it also sounds like there's still love and family values are centered, and that's not. BS and that's the point. So, yeah. Moonlight. I thought you might enjoy that ISN pretty good. That's beautiful. Isn't that good? Yeah. I

Jennifer: mean, you just made me think too, 'cause especially I know you guys always kind of like to bring these things back to like how we're all living our lives and Yeah.

Yeah. The constancy, all of that. It just, I suddenly had this insight of like, well, he was married at swimming for 51 years. Okay. Like that's a choice. Yes. You and I both know. That the longer my [00:29:30] relationship goes on, the more that like when someone's like, these people have been married 40 years. I'm like, oh my God, yes, , congratulations.

I used, why are

Michael: people like this? Do I still like each other? That's the other important question. Like just to be married isn't the only thing, but yeah, that's And that's true. That's absolutely

Jennifer: true. I felt like they were a team from what I saw.

Michael: There is a lot out there though about how like . And, and I don't know if we wanna talk about this or not, but it feels sort of important.

The word gay.

Jennifer: Yes. Right? Yes. I have this, I was like, are we gonna talk about this? I think, [00:30:00] I kind of think we need to, this has been a conversation, which may be why I feel Okay. Kind of addressing it. I mean, there's an actual section on his Wikipedia.

Michael: I. Right. And whenever that exists on Wikipedia, it means the kind of popular conversation has crossed a certain something

Jennifer: has happened.

Yeah. And, and so his biographer often kind of, and I don't know how I feel about this, but there was a authoritative biography written.

Michael: Yes, I read this

Jennifer: and that man often will sort of speak for Fred at this point, but he's been asked many times. [00:30:30] Isn't he gay because of his sort of softness, and I'm certain that he was faithful to his wife.

I don't think he had sex with men, but there's this one thing where first of all, he's very gay friendly, which I love. Yeah. Was a gay man. There was a little like

Michael: tension about his, how out he was. Yeah. And what that could mean for the show, but that you have to place into context,

Jennifer: obviously. I, yeah,

Michael: yeah.

Jennifer: Clemens like said he lived, he accepted me when my gay friends came to the set. He was very accepting, so very consistent in that way, [00:31:00] and. Apparently once had a conversation with a gay friend where he said he was sort of in the middle of the sexual spectrum.

Michael: Yeah. That comment, that gets a lot of attention and that gets twisted, perhaps.

That's right. Right. Because one, we don't have context for it. But two, I don't know. So what , I don't know. Who cares? Who cares who he was

Jennifer: attracted to? On the other hand, some queer people have sort of . Happily grabbed onto that and said, you know, Fred Rogers [00:31:30] queer icon .

Michael: Yeah. That's the thing is I don't think there's actually anything that interesting to say other than those who want to claim his symbolic power.

There's really not much of a sexual valence here other than the, than on the point of acceptance, you know? Yeah, that's right. And I think if

Jennifer: you wanna say he's a queer icon, that's where he's a queer icon.

Michael: That's exactly right. Okay. Ordinary and moonlight good words. Category four net worth. In this category, Jennifer and I have each written down our numbers [00:32:00] ahead of time.

We're gonna talk a little bit about our reasoning, and then we're gonna look up the net worth number in real time to see who's closest. Finally, we will place this person on the famous and gravy net worth leaderboard. I'm sure you and I found the same thing came from a well-to-do family was absolutely non materialistic and not about money.

But the well-to-do family, it's not just like a little bit well to do. It's very well to do. He's mostly the product of generational wealth in a sense, which is at the same time, I mean, this guy is the face of public broadcasting. He's opting for [00:32:30] simplicity. So that's all I thought about. I didn't even think about comps.

Did you have anything else to add in terms of how you thought about this question?

Jennifer: Not really. I just thought like it can't be that much.

Michael: Yeah,

Jennifer: it's not Sesame Street. If we keep going back to that like other thing that happened at Smart, well some of the MTS

Michael: are sold in toy stores. Daniel Tiger. The, the puppet is not and he stayed away from that.

Yeah. I mean any kind of, he policed the hell out of commercial interest and had a notoriously strong stance against advertising towards children overall. I mean he is about as dogmatic as anybody's ever [00:33:00] been about that. Alright, let's go ahead and reveal our numbers. So gentrification Armstrong wrote down to 5 million.

Michael Osborne wrote down $12

Jennifer: million.

Michael: Okay. The actual net worth of Fred Rogers is 3 million. Whoa. . That's so low. That's so low. Oh my God. Oh god. I'm so glad. This is gonna place him easily in the bottom quartz hole. Like that's

Jennifer: not anything.

Michael: Alright, let's place him on the famous eng gravy net Worth leaderboard.

Yes. I kind of [00:33:30] love this company. So he, this puts him at easily in the bottom 10%, uh, in a three way tie with Jerry, Jeff Walker, Burt Reynolds and Norm mc. Donald Bert and Norm famously squandered away their fortunes . Uh, norm threw a gambling problem. Bert threw a complete mismanagement of money. Georgia Walker is a reasonably obscure figure.

That's the Fred Rogers Company. Oh my God, do I love this? Okay. Fred Rogers, $3 million. Well done. That's so. In the grand,

Jennifer: we would all take $3 million. But under the grand scheme, [00:34:00] I just,

Michael: I love, I, one thing I've really come to like about the famous eng gravy net worth leaderboard is the kind of imagining the dinner table conversation.

Yes. You know, ?

Jennifer: Yes. I love seeing the, like pools near each each other.

Michael: Renolds and Fred Rogers and Jerry over each other. They're way

Jennifer: over on like the, the, the poor side of the table. They're just like .

Michael: They're at the kids' table. Totally.

Jennifer: Absolutely. I think it's stable. I still want that conversation to happen.

Michael: Right? Oh my God. Okay. We might have to build another segment around that. All right, wonderful. $3 million. [00:34:30] Well done. Fred Rogers. Let's move on. Category five. Little Lebowski Urban Achievers. They're

Archival: the little Lebowski Urban achievers.

Michael: Yeah, the achievers. Yes, I'm proud we are. Of all of them in this category, Jennifer and I will each choose a trophy and award a cameo and impersonation or some other form of a hat tip that shows a different side of this person.

But I'd love to hear what you've got here.

Jennifer: I just thought, I mean, I didn't, I wasn't very creative. I just felt like we have to talk about Eddie Murphy.

Michael: I almost went there. Yes. And this was you [00:35:00] Just after, I think I might have been exposed to Eddie Murphy before I was exposed to Fred Rogers as a child. I had an older brother.

What can I say? Yeah. Did you,

Jennifer: do you remember what you thought of it?

Michael: It at the time? Did you get it? I thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world, but Eddie Murphy was my hero from age, I don't know, four to 14 or so. Yeah. But I also, like, I had the best of Eddie Murphy Saturday Night Live tape.

Okay. That I would watch over and over and over again. Okay. I mean, something about the Eddie Murphy impersonation, it is the one that kind of gets. Brought up [00:35:30] the most?

Jennifer: I think so. And, and, and

Michael: why is that? Like, do you have a theory on that?

Jennifer: I think it's obvious, but I'll say it anyway, which is just like, I mean, in a way this is very, it's as much about Eddie Murphy as it is about Mr.

Rogers, right? Yeah. But there's something fun about juxtaposing those two people. Like I just recently re-watched his famous segment, white like me, where he

Michael: Yeah, yeah. Where he

Jennifer: goes undercover as a white man, , uh,

Michael: I'm buying this newspaper. I love him .

Jennifer: And he does voice that dam Chappelle later. Just completely coop.

Yeah, totally. [00:36:00] But I think it's very similar. But in this case, he's not pretending to be white, right? So he's actually being him, like he's being a character that he would play. He's sort of like a black guy in the neighborhood. Who could that be?

Archival: Let's see.

This is how you answer it though, in my neighborhood. Put it

Jennifer: and the joke is like, what would the black urban version [00:36:30] of this guy be? And it's kind of making fun more of like this concept of the super gentle. Yeah. Um,

Michael: totally. I guess one thing to mention about this is there is a great story of uh, I think it's when Fred Rogers was gonna do Letterman.

He meets Eddie Murphy at, was I guess RCA. Yeah. And Fred Eddie Murphy comes out and like hugs him, is like the real Mr. Rogers and there's a Polaroid of the two of them. I think he got the joke. On some level. Sure. You know for sure. I don't think he

Jennifer: would've been upset by it at all. Yeah, I'm sure you would've thought [00:37:00] it was funny.

Michael: I'm glad he brought it up. I almost went that direction. Ultimately, I wanted something funny. The one that gets me is an SCTV skit, where it's Julia Child and Fred Rogers in a boxing match, and Julia Child is played by John Candy and Fred Rogers is played by Martin Short. Martin Short . As Fred Rogers really kind of works.

Mm-hmm . There is this sort of frailness there, Martin Short, he doesn't have to do anything to make me laugh. And John Candy as Julia Child is actually quite charming [00:37:30] and they're in a boxing rink with gloves on, duking it out like bobbing and weaving and, and . It's, it doesn't show me a different side. But it is objectively funny.

I don't know if it's mean-spirited, but it's definitely funny.

Archival: Roger is chasing her around the rink. She's running in tariff. This is really disgusting. This is not the sort of fair we're used to bringing. I certainly hope the young Mr. Rogers neighborhood aren't staying in to watch this bloody

Jennifer: battle of the PBS [00:38:00] stars is extremely funny you admit.

Michael: The trainer, like squirt some water in John Kennedy's, you know? Thank you. You know, it's really, it's really good. Okay, let's take another break. Category six words to Live by. In this category, we each choose a quote. These are either words that came out of this person's mouth or was said about them. You kick us off here.

Okay.

Jennifer: No one else can live the life you live. And even though no human being is perfect, we always have the chance to bring what's unique about us. In a redeeming [00:38:30] way, and I got this from one of his many, many commencement speeches.

Friend: Yeah.

Jennifer: It's certainly not his most famous quote. And I liked that this was him, because I saw it and I was like, I actually didn't believe it was even him at first, the way it's phrased.

And then I realized, oh, it's a commencement speech. So he's speaking to college kids, so he speaks a little more like a normal person, . Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. You know what mean? Like adult to adult. I liked it because it felt a little more like his. Stuff. But for adults, I know it's just going back to like you are special and all of this other [00:39:00] stuff, but when you're going out into the world as a college kid graduating, you need to hear this so much.

Michael: I, you know, it's interesting. I think it is so much more important to children establish a sense of value and self worth. It is also hard though, in a world of whatever we're at now, a. Billion plus people to hold that idea. True. That 8 billion is such an unfathomably large number that believing every human being is special and sacred and worthy [00:39:30] of redemption, which is, I do believe that actually holding that up and adhering to that is a whole other thing.

And he embodies that more than anybody else. And I think that's what you're getting at here.

Jennifer: That's exactly right. And if I wanna bring a little Buddhism into it, please. There's this idea. In Buddhism where they say, don't do not spare the Dharma assets and what they mean. So dharma is like your stuff, like you were brought here with special things.

Yeah. And oh, you know, it's the whole only you can do, can be you kind of [00:40:00] thing. The idea is kind of like. You were brought here with special stuff. You sort of owe it to the world to use your special stuff. Why be like everyone else when you were given special things? You should use whatever it is that's special about you.

Michael: This is an idea that's also really present in 12 Step work, that when you do inventory and you look at the harm you've caused in the past through your behavior, it is very important to account for both the deficits and assets. Mm-hmm . Like there are things you bring to the [00:40:30] table. It is not . And exercise and just beating yourself up and, and then self-loathing.

And so I, I like that, that's what I hear in that Dharma assets idea. Yeah, it makes sense. You

Jennifer: have to be with it to bring those good qualities to the table. And and

Michael: that's what redemption's about.

Jennifer: That's right. Yeah. And I, and, and you can always turn it back around. Yeah. Until you're dead. Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

It's so funny how the older you get the sort of more, these cheesy quotes mean to you actually. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And that's, I got,

Michael: I got a stack of flash coats, .

Jennifer: Yeah. Like this [00:41:00] one wasn't different from anything else you said, but I like that it was for young adults and we can all stand to be reminded of it,

Michael: actually.

And that's a pretty good segue into, into mind. So here's what I found that I liked. I don't think anyone can grow. Unless he's loved exactly as he is now, appreciated for what he is rather than what he will be. Hmm. It's the second part of that that I really like. Yes. That self-acceptance is not about future self necessarily.

That's It's not about, it's not, and, and I personally have a hard [00:41:30] time letting go of that. I believe in, you know, working on myself, but it is with an eye towards who I'm becoming, not who I am. Right. It's not anchored in the present and I, and I feel like . That's the important part of this statement.

Appreciated for what he is rather than what he will be. I also, frankly, struggle with this with my children. Yeah. I think a lot about, you know, how are they growing up? Who are they becoming, not who they are. And that's the thing that I think can be really hard for parents because development happens so fast and I think it's the time [00:42:00] component of it that is easily lost.

It's not that I'm always gonna love you, it's that. This is where, where you at and who you are at right now is, is all you need to be and is perfect.

Jennifer: Yeah. That also is like, you could apply that to like marriage relationship, you know, you can apply that to all

Michael: relationships. Yes.

Jennifer: All relationships and, and, and most

Michael: importantly, our relationship with ourself.

I mean, that's what this is all about. Right? Yeah, that's absolutely,

Jennifer: that's great.

Michael: Okay, let's go to the next category. This one's I think, gonna be interesting, man in the mirror. This category [00:42:30] is fairly simple. Did this person like their reflection? Yes or no? This is not about beauty, but rather a question of self-confidence versus self-judgment.

I'm gonna read you what I wrote down. Mm-hmm . I wrote down in all caps. Super interesting to think about Excavation point. His main message as you and I have been talking about this entire conversation is about self-acceptance. Don't we kind of, sort of think He's fighting to feel that himself. Hmm. I think that he was bullied [00:43:00] as a young kid.

Yep. I think he was a frail figure. I think he was, you know, a target who had to find his way to a certain sense of self-assuredness. My theory on him is he found that through music, through creativity, and then used that to build his television show as a platform to teach children the same idea, but whether he actually felt it in his heart a sense of true self-acceptance,

There's a part of me that has some doubt. Yeah. Just because of what he's up against culturally. Yep. And [00:43:30] spiritually. I mean, so I, I am a hundred percent. I could, I could be talked into it either way. How do you think about this?

Jennifer: I

Michael: think I'm going with he he did you that he got there. That there's a kind of like acceptance.

I think so. I, I mean, I do think you have to experience it to be able to communicate it. Yep. And it communicates it so effectively. And by teaching it, you reinforce that learning in yourself.

Jennifer: That's right. A day after day.

Michael: Right. Yeah. E exactly. So that's where. I mean, if I had to make a call, that's [00:44:00] where I'd go as well.

But he didn't like he had to overcome to get there. Right. For sure. That's the whole point.

Jennifer: For sure. I think he was definitely talking to, probably talking to his inner child if you wanna get into it every single, single damn day of his whole life. Yes, yes,

Michael: yes, yes, yes. I mean, in

Jennifer: a way that's my point. You bullies.

'cause they probably made this man. Yeah.

Michael: This

Jennifer: is, they made this man's life work. So you can't discount the fact that essentially, in a way, the fact that this is his life work makes you think like, whoa, that had an effect. . Yeah, exactly. On the other, I just think of two things. Yeah. [00:44:30] One of them is the congressional testimony.

Mm-hmm .

Michael: And

Jennifer: one of them is this extraordinary scene that Tom Juno. Paints in his piece for Esquire, which is where Rogers wins a daytime Emmy. And he goes, the daytime Emmy awards. My God. Yeah. You have to go read it 'cause like I won't do it justice. And he does like, he really writes the crap out of this.

But

Michael: that moment is on the internet, I believe. Yeah. So there's this

Jennifer: moment where he goes up to accept his Emmy. He basically says, let's have, I [00:45:00] don't remember how many seconds, 30 seconds, 10

Michael: seconds. I think it's, it just, it's not that long. ,

Jennifer: 10 seconds of silence.

Archival: All of us have special ones who have loved us into being.

Would you just take along with me 10 seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are? 10 seconds of silence. I'll watch the time[00:45:30]

Jennifer: And there's kind of this weird, you know, you have to remember we've got a bunch of like soap stars and stuff in the audience, right? Everybody's glammed up. Yeah. All these people, and this is, they laugh

Michael: initially, this

Jennifer: is Hollywood and there is like a titter. They laugh 'cause that's what everybody's primed to do at these weird shows.

Then they realize, oh, he's dead serious. They all do it and then they all start crying . It's just like,

Michael: it's a, yeah.

Jennifer: I mean, what an incredible thing. And [00:46:00] that's why when I was thinking about the masculinity too mm-hmm .

Michael: In a way,

Jennifer: both of those cases, there's part of me that's like, Hey, Mr. Rogers. Yeah. Like he is like, that is a man, like only a, and you know what I mean by that?

I don't, when I say real man, I don't mean like a jock being. Who can command a damn room.

Michael: Yeah. That's some Zen master shit right there, right .

Jennifer: Yeah. It's just you have to be so confident. He could've just gone up and been like, oh, so nice. Thank you, blah, [00:46:30] blah. You know?

Michael: No, I agree. And you've persuaded me. This man liked his reflection in the mirror.

I think the important point is it was obviously a central part of his journey, and it was learned. And it was arrived at through spirituality, through connection, through education and through creativity.

Jennifer: I agree. The the spirituality cannot be discounted either because that I think this man believed what he believed.

Michael: Yeah. There's no question and, and very broad race. While he was an ordained Presbyterian minister, he was more of a [00:47:00] religious studies major. That's right. He studied

Jennifer: everything he said throughout because he didn't. Like for his show, he didn't want it to be a Christian show. He wanted it to be for kids who practiced any religion.

And you can see it there. I mean there's, like I said, there's so much Buddhism here and I'm sure there's a bunch of Taoism and all kinds of other things too.

Michael: Yeah. Okay. Excellent. Next category, coffee cocktail cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity. I'm gonna use this as an opportunity to bring up Michael Keaton.

I fricking [00:47:30] love that Michael Keaton worked on the set and like the set guys are rowdy and counterculture and long hair and pranksters. I

Archival: think I've worked for Mr. Rogers crew. Which was a wild ass crew. It was a wild crew. Oh, they were the greatest. These guys were the greatest. I mean, just drip with, you know, THC everywhere.

Oh really? Oh yeah. Just, they just, just smelled like they just walked outta Tom Petty's house. Um, interesting guys, you know, everybody had hair down in the middle of their back and, uh, except, except for Rogers. Except for Fred. Yeah. [00:48:00]

Michael: There's a wonderful story about Michael Keaton. Pranking, Mr. Rogers with, he put a sex doll in the closet , where he gets his sweater

And apparently Mr. Rogers like, like laughed, takes the doll, dances around with it and puts it back in the closet. That's the perfect

Jennifer: reaction. Yeah, there's,

Michael: and I mean there's all kinds of like, stories like that of, of guys like messing with him in a very good humored way. Yeah. Uh. So that led me to cannabis.[00:48:30]

I want a little bit of cannabis in the neighborhood of make believe . So I, I am retired from drugs and alcohol, but many of my best memories with cannabis did inspire a sort of childlike quality of imagination around. And I, I don't know if I want to hear the puppet voices or not. I don't know if I can surrender all the corniness of it, but like.

This in, in as much as I want to hang out with Fred Rogers, I think I wanna be high in the la in the neighborhood with, with puppets and, and maybe Michael Keaton lurking in the [00:49:00] background, pulling off some pranks. And it's, it's mostly, I mean, I think among other things, what does it mean to be in touch with your inner child?

Part of it to me is to be in touch with your imagination. He's got that gift and I think he can see somebody's inner child. And I would like for that to be nurtured in, uh, the land of make belief. So where did you go with here, what did you do as cannabis? I felt like

Jennifer: cannabis was so tempting. It's funny that neither of us even thought about cocktails, but especially since you went with the cannabis and have the perfect [00:49:30] scenario for it, yours might be the more selfless.

Option, but I was thinking that I could have coffee with him and he could Fred Rogers me, and I think that would be so interesting.

Michael: What does that mean? What would it mean to be Fred Rogers? I mean,

Jennifer: I, I fe feel like so much of my idea of this comes from Tom Juno's experience with him and the way that like, again, suddenly you're two adults, but he's still kind of like doing his thing and he seems like he can look directly in your soul.

Michael: Mm-hmm .

Jennifer: And be like, are you having a problem, Jennifer?

Michael: Yeah. Would

Jennifer: you like to talk about it?

Michael: It [00:50:00] does feel like he can be lying to emotions, right?

Jennifer: Yeah. I think it would be uncomfortable.

Michael: Yeah.

Jennifer: In a lot of ways, but I think it would be Vulnerability

Michael: is uncomfortable. Yeah, vulnerability is, I think

Jennifer: it's really like a life changing experience.

I think this man looking into your soul for five minutes, I might be, I. Wildly over-hyping him, but like, no, but he, and he's willing to try.

Michael: He has that effect. And there's evidence of it. And it extends beyond the TV show. Yeah. Right. And it extends in these little moments of accepting an Emmy's award or testifying before Congress.

[00:50:30] He is carrying that quality. With him everywhere he goes, he is what we thinking he is. That's what I was thinking is like,

Jennifer: I think he could probably just clock you so fast, like all of your bullshit, which probably people can do all the time. They just don't say it. But I think he could call a person on their bullshit so fast.

And just for the chance of kind of, let's just go with one of an extreme, probably the most heartfelt conversation you'd ever have. I do think this man. He's almost like an alien. Mm-hmm . Like he's, that's the only way I kept thinking that throughout doing the research, he's, he's got this other worldly [00:51:00] quality.

Like he came here from somewhere else to help us. I, I don't know anyone else who has this.

Michael: It does look like divine inspiration, right.

Jennifer: He's plugged into something.

Michael: Yeah. Like a universal spiritual principle on some level. Right? Yeah,

Jennifer: he's, I mean, he makes me also, the reason that I, you know, we were talking about the piece I wrote for Lions Row, the Buddhist magazine.

The point was that we could see he has such a, such Buddhist qual, you know, he's, he's a Bodhi SAA is what we would say, and that's what I see is there are probably other people like this, like the Dalai [00:51:30] Lama or somebody. Right. But tho that's what we're talking about. The level of plugged inness is akin to like tick, not Han.

Or the Dalai Lama.

Michael: Yeah,

Jennifer: and that's a pretty high level.

Michael: Yeah. Fantastic. Okay, I think we've arrived. Final category, the Vander Beek, named after James Vander Beek, who famously said in varsity blues, I don't want your life in that varsity blues scene, James makes a judgment that he does not want a certain kind of life based on a single characteristic.

So here [00:52:00] Jennifer and I will form a rebuttal to anyone skeptical of how Fred Rogers lived. So we always start with a counter argument. I'm struggling a little bit. I mean he, yeah, he experienced some pain as a child.

Jennifer: Pretty normal amount,

Michael: pretty normal amount, or at least not unusual amount. It's

Jennifer: in the, it's in the like zone

Michael: of like a lot of people experience a trouble childhood.

Maybe a little lonely or maybe very lonely. I don't want to dismiss that. I'd really have to push myself to kind of come up with a clever [00:52:30] counter argument for why I would not want this life.

Jennifer: I mean, you know, obviously there's things we probably don't know. We all suffer in some one way or another. We wouldn't be human.

But yeah, I just. This is like this guy, as we were just saying, if anyone was special, it was him.

Michael: So let's go right to it. Rather than sort of spending a lot of time talking about the reasons why we might not want this life. Let's see if we can organize and prioritize why we would. I. We've talked a lot on Famous and Gravy about the idea of an upward staircase.

This is very clearly [00:53:00] an upward staircase life. It's also one of service generosity and giving back so that you become a channel for experience and that a hundred percent convinced is the whole point. Of life, right? Whatever assets I have, whatever I can give back to the stream of life, I need to devote as much of my attention, behavior, and activities towards that end.

Hard to come up with an example of somebody who did that more regularly with more discipline, with more passion and commitment than Fred Rogers.

Jennifer: [00:53:30] Yeah, this, as we were just saying, I think we were like, it was a good transition there because we were kind of getting there anyway, which is, I just think this was like a divinely whatever, however you wanna see divine right.

This is a divinely led life.

Michael: I think history might regard him that way. Actually, I do feel that he will be understood as a figure where a case will be made in future generations for a, a kind of like divine inspiration that he wound up on. I. TV at all is sort of insane. You know, it's insane.

Jennifer: And we [00:54:00] didn't mention this, but he did briefly work in like normal TV production, which is so funny.

He was on like Hit Parade or some, you know, some, some weird, you know, he was, did some like backstage stuff TV in New York before. So clearly like he gathered the ingredients is my point, is like he kind of saw really quickly, okay, we have a troubled world and we have tv, I kind of understand tv. Now I'm gonna go get the music and the puppets.

And put it all together and here it is. And isn't this what we all like want to find is? Yeah. Is to wake up one day and feel as if [00:54:30] some force has said like, you should do this thing because you have these exact talents and only you can bring this to the world and it will heal the world and people will be talking about it more 25 years after your death than they did when you were alive.

Michael: What's funny is that we could sort of unpack that idea. All day. I guess the only other piece I would sort of attach to it may be I think that there is a real principle of present time [00:55:00] experience that for somebody to have this next level eq Yes and be so like tapped in on his own emotional experience and the emotional experience of others, particularly children, does require a kind of nowness that obviously sort of accompanies this.

Divine inspiration idea, but it's a spiritual principle in other words, but it's also a sort of like gets at more the experience rather than legacy is, which is why I'm sort of trying to differentiate it as a second argument for [00:55:30] wanting this life. Do you know what I'm trying to say?

Jennifer: Yeah, I think it's both.

He had, he knew, and I would say going back to like even our man in the mirror thing. I think this is another reason why he had so much confidence. I don't know that he saw it as in like, I'm doing this thing. I think people who feel like God or whatever said, do this and they know they're supposed to be doing it, I think that can give you a kind of confidence that nothing else can and that then that.

Allowed him to have this pioneering television show, [00:56:00] but also shows people the way going forward, how to have a good children's show.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. He sets a template. Actually, that's an argument number three. Yeah. I mean, I think it gets back to your TV pioneer, like he sets a standard. I. Right, right. And it sets a standard that I think we have, have struggled to achieve, but it's obvious.

Obviously

Jennifer: for sure, like Teletubbies is not,

Michael: but at least it's out there, right? I mean, at least that forevermore, we now can say it can be done and it can be done successfully. [00:56:30] And I mean it. I don't wanna get too political on it, but it's certainly a case for public broadcasting, funding . Yes. Among other things.

Right. And I think a little bit transcends time

Jennifer: and taking children seriously. And what I mean by that is like plenty of people took children seriously as a commercial force.

Michael: Yeah. For

Jennifer: this. But he took children seriously as people. Yeah. It's really lovely. And so I think that is like the actual legacy is.

Taking kids seriously as viewers, like [00:57:00] in this intelligent way, not as just like we can sell sugar cereal to them.

Michael: I think that we could go on and on. Yeah, I think that is a great place to end it. Uh, so, all right. I'm gonna recap the arguments for divine inspiration on some level, and I also sort of amend that with existing in the present and an emotional state.

I think you added on there, TV Pioneer and opportunity space, and then most importantly, taking children seriously. and taking their experience seriously. So with that, James VanDerBeek, I'm Fred Rogers [00:57:30] and you want my life.

Okay, speed round here. Uh, plugs for past shows. If you enjoyed this episode, what should our listeners check out?

Jennifer: I can't resist the opportunity to plug the Paul Rubins episode, who is a, yeah, spiritual A of source , but a lot messier, so a lot more drama. I loved that episode. It made me think about Paul Rubins again.[00:58:00]

And gave me a real perspective. So that's, that's a great example of what you guys do, which is that it kind of like doing the entire arc and including kind of the rethinking redemption of him in his death, where now I think we all agree, like the sorted stuff was not that important and that he was wonderful.

Michael: Episode 90, big Adventure. Paul Rubins, AKA Peewee Herman. Okay, I'm gonna go a little bit outta the box here. I'm gonna go with episode 40 Eavesdropper Dick Clark. The common denominator I [00:58:30] see is that Dick Clark was somebody who, for whatever else you make of him, he saw teenagers, he saw adolescence. He had a way of seeing the inner life of a particular stage of life, the same way that I think Fred, Fred Rogers had a talent for seeing.

A particular stage of life. So episode 40, eavesdropper Dick Clark. Here's a little teaser for the next episode of Famous and Gravy. She started teaching herself to play the piano before she was 10, picking up songs from the [00:59:00] radio. The worst day, not Doris Day. Famous and Gravy listeners, we love hearing from you.

If you wanna reach out with a comment question or to participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello@famousandgravy.com. In our show notes, we include all kinds of links, including to our website and our social channels. Famous and Gravy is created and co-hosted by Amma Kippur and me, Michael Osborne.

Thank you so much to Fication Armstrong for helping out with this episode. It was produced by Ali Ola, with [00:59:30] assistance from Jacob Weiss. Original music by Kevin Strand. Thanks. See you next day.