Superheroes Aren't Real

On failure. On trying again. On doing enough.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's Carvel and before we get into this episode,
I want to ask you a favor. Throughout this series,
we've talked a lot about how Fred Rogers has helped
show us how to make the world a kinder place,
a better place. But now we want to hear from you.
We want to hear a story about when someone in
your life showed you what it means to be a helper.

(00:23):
Maybe it's someone in your family, or someone in your community,
or someone that you haven't seen since you were a kid,
but that you still think about something they did to
help you. Whoever they are, wherever they are, however they're helping,
we want to hear about it. So give us a
call at three three six five one five zero five
to nine. Again, that's three three six five one five

(00:44):
zero five to nine, and tell us a story about
someone who has shown you how to be a helper
and we might just play it on an upcoming episode.
Again that number is three three six five one five
zero five two nine, or you can tweet you're still
with the hashtag finding Fred. Okay, now let's start the show.

(01:05):
Here's a question. Did Fred Rogers do enough by he
had lived and breathed children's television for more than twenty years.
He had found kid friendly ways to cover death and
assassination and segregation, but also haircuts and doctors visits and

(01:27):
moving to a new home. And he felt like he'd
done enough. He felt that he created a library of
television visits that covered everything a child needed to know
about growing up. So Mr Rogers decided he was done.
In a week of episodes slated to be his last,

(01:49):
Mr Rogers takes us out to his garage, where he
shows us a big cabinet filled with dozens and dozens
of VHS tapes, all neatly lined up in rows. See
those are all different visits, television visits that we have
on tape. Share this one Justice. He is about to

(02:12):
pop one of these tapes into the VCR. Mr McFeeley
stops by and the two get to talking about how
McFeeley has changed since his earliest visits to the neighborhood.
I remember the days when it was very, very hard
for you to sit still, Mr McFeeley. Well, I used
to talk louder then, and talk faster. I'll show you
a tape on that machine over there, and see if

(02:34):
you remember that visit. I'd like to see that visit.
You know, my video tape machine over here, see if
you remember this time when you came to visit me already.
Fred plays the tape and the two watch what is
essentially a rerun of a Mr. Rogers neighborhood segment from

(02:55):
a few years before. Then, Fred explains, we'll be seeing
a lot of reruns from now on. Well, next week
we'll start to show all of these visits so everybody
can see them the whole way through. Well, I'll look
forward to that. And with that Mr Rogers signed off.
I'm Carvela Wallace and this is Finding Fred, a podcast

(03:17):
about Fred Rogers from I Heart Media and Fatherly in
partnership with Transmitter Media. Fred Rogers felt like he'd done enough.
He created an encyclopedia of programs that anticipated the questions

(03:40):
and anxieties that children have as they grow and learn, like,
for instance, getting poked and prodded or stuck with a needle.
Over the years, Fred had made several visits to optometrists
Barbour's Doctors. Producer Arthur Greenwald worked with Fred in a
series of episodes about going to the hospital. You had
a long time interest in how children are frightened or

(04:03):
overwhelmed by hospitalization. You know, I was really struck by
There was this moment where he was talking about X rays.
He was talking with the physician about X rays, and
the physician was explaining, well, even we can see your bones,
And then Fred said, I know some children who will
wonder if if you can see my bones, can you
X ray my head and see my thoughts? If you

(04:25):
can see the inside of a hand with X ray,
could you see the inside of somebody's head and know
what that person is thinking? No, uh, the X ray
picture won't show thoughts, feelings. Those are things that we
really can't see a touch. Our thoughts are very own,
all right, Thoughts are our own. That's good to know.

(04:47):
When I watched that, I laughed out loud because he
was a grown man, and but it wasn't like silly.
It was like kind of phenomenal and magical that he
was able to capture a very specific, very clear thought
of a child. That was important. And of course some
people look at you like you're insane, But who said
anything about an X ray seeing my thoughts and feelings?

(05:10):
But by God, that is exactly what a preschool was thinking.
Fred was always working to eliminate misunderstandings, and that was
a real gift for television audience of toddlers who weren't
necessarily used to being seen and heard and responded to.
But this kind of deep focused listening made adults uncomfortable

(05:31):
because they're socially just not used to people paying attention
to their every word, and so a lot of the
things will casually say as a passing joke, Fred would
pause an interpret it out loud, which would be either
illuminating or embarrassing, depending on you know, how comfortable you
are with that sort of conversation. It seems like Fred

(05:53):
was betting on most people being comfortable with that kind
of thing, because when he left Mr Rogers Neighborhood, he
set out to make a new television program for adults.
He developed a new show with PBS called Old Friends,
New Friends. It featured Fred talking with other adults about
what they're passionate about and where their inspiration comes from.

(06:16):
That's what he was interested in. This is TV critic
David b. And Cooley. It's like, if you're a musician,
where does the music come from? You know? What was
it like that made you become a musician and sort
of get to the bottom of what what is art
and what is an artist. The show was documentary style.

(06:38):
Fred visited different locations around the country. He talked to
famous and not so famous people about their lives and
show them at work. Pittsburgh baseball legend Willie Stargel opened
up about resilience. Comedian Milton Burrow talked about the rewards
of fame. Fred visited Robert Frost's daughter An NPR hosts
Susan Stamberg. Old Friends, New Friends was conversational, warm, and

(07:02):
because this was still Fred Rogers after all, it was slow.
Responses to the show were mixed. I saw them and
and I loved what he was doing with them, but
you have to you have to be open to it
and be interested. Not everybody loved it. Fred's biographer Max

(07:23):
King told me he didn't think it was very good.
I watched a lot of it. It's not particularly compelling.
The approach that he brought to children's television just didn't
translate to adult television. Betsy Siemens had worked with Fred
and Mr Rogers Neighborhood. She later helped produce episodes of
Old Friends, New Friends, the idea that he was going
to quit doing the neighborhood. I thought, good for you,

(07:45):
you know, I mean, I I found like people move on.
I mean I I think I think I was aware
that it was hard for him because he had been
doing this other work for so long, and I think,

(08:07):
you know, it's hard to just really switch gears and
work for a completely different audience and in a in
a really profoundly different medium. The show featured extreme close
ups of people's faces, long silent pauses, deep reflection on
family histories, and many of Fred's signature moves, slow pacing,
intimate production, emphasis, and emotions, but these didn't necessarily translate

(08:32):
for most grown ups. Fred's show was illuminating, but many
viewers found the intimacy embarrassing or even worse on TV boring.
One New York Times critic wrote that for some viewers,
This Quiet Man may appear to have taken one volume
too many, But I watched it the only episode you

(08:54):
can really find online an interview with concert pianist Lauren Hollander,
and honestly, I found it brilliant. The intimacy, the patient's
Fred's willingness to hover over difficult topics, with sometimes difficult people.
Was transfixing. You're the only pianist who has ever communicated

(09:15):
to me the feeling that this instrument is a place,
that it is a country, that it's somewhere that you
go to say something. And I've felt that today. Were Beethoven,

(09:44):
the throws of his deafness kept a little chimberpot under
the keyboard, and he used to keep his head pressed
here against the wood. He could not leave the instrument
long enough to take care of his needs. And we
who grew up here know that it's an answer, because

(10:09):
there's a way of dealing with that incredibly complex reality.
When I heard that, it occurred to me that maybe
that is the case for Fred too, that he was
like Beethoven or Lauren Hollander, and that in a sense,
the precision and love and kindness of Mr rogers neighborhood

(10:33):
was his place, his country where he could deal with
the incredibly complex reality. And he got to go back
there when he returned to Mr Rogers neighborhood. More than that,
after a break in, Fred Rogers wrote himself a note.

(11:08):
It's typed neatly on a piece of yellow legal paper,
the kind Fred used for early drafts of his scripts.
Am I kidding myself that I am able to write
his script again? He wrote? Why don't I trust myself?
He continues, after all these years, it's just as bad
as ever. Oh well, the hour cometh and now is

(11:31):
when I've got to do it. Get to it, Fred.
Just a few weeks prior, a four year old boy
named Charles Green died after jumping from his grandmother's seventh
story apartment in Brooklyn. His mother told reporters he'd been
trying to fly like Superman. Fred Rogers had already started

(11:53):
working on a new episode to The Neighborhood Program, but
he was shaken by the story of little Charles Green,
the kid trying desperately to be like a hero he
saw on screen. When Fred left The Neighborhood Program five
years earlier, he thought he'd said everything there was to say,
But the world itself had changed. Daycare was now a

(12:15):
widespread and normal thing, but clearly a terrifying thing to
a toddler, and what to say to kids about divorce
as it became more and more prevalent. Television itself had evolved,
had become a never silent fixture in every home, and
there were more channels and programs spraying all sorts of
violence and fantasy at children. So Fred did what he

(12:37):
knew how to do best. Remember when I was a boy,
I used to take a sweater and put it around
my my shoulders like that, hold the arms out like that,
and pretend that I was flying. Yeah, let's go out here.
I'll show you what. Had a couple of steps there

(13:01):
at the porch, and I would girl like this. But
of course I never took off. Because only birds and
bats and bugs can fly. People can't. Only birds and
bats and bugs can fly. I want to sing that

(13:23):
with me. Only birds and bats and bugs can fly.
Sometimes I wish I could fly, but only birds and
bats and bugs and fly. Fred made an entire week

(13:44):
of programming about how superheroes aren't real. He even visited
the Universal Studio sound stage where The Incredible Hulk was filmed,
and he showed the star looferign no putting on and
taking off his costume. That's all part of his work,
all part. And here's the special solution that takes the
green makeup off. I like seeing the makeup coming off

(14:08):
just as well as going on. But I was glad
to show my television friends that because it's important to
realize that people just don't change shape and change color.
That's all just sort of movie business, isn't it. It's
it's just makeup pretend. Of course, you remember the note
Fred wrote to himself. A few weeks later, he added

(14:31):
a handwritten PS. It wasn't easy, but it was good.
This I must remember. In the sixteen years since Fred passed,
he's been turned into a TV superhero himself, someone who
was born with extra powers of intuition and communication and
self control and love. Fred Rogers wasn't a superhero. His

(14:57):
biographer told me that Fred himself would be horror hid
that anybody might think he was a saint. But producer
Margie Whitmer told me that Fred did believe that his
show mattered. It's hard, I think when you when you
become famous, there's lots of people who tell you how
wonderful you are. You know, he had lots of followers.
You tend to believe that you're making a difference. The

(15:19):
audience was national, even international. There were enormous lineups to
meet Mr Rogers when he did public appearances. He was
Mr Rogers, but the program was bigger than him. I
just had a letter the other day. It was from
this woman who said, fourteen years ago, I had a

(15:41):
baby who was sixteen months old, and I had that
baby in the backseat of the car, and I was
in such a terrible depression my heart. I didn't even
know that I had put him back there. And she said,

(16:01):
I was driving along and I saw this truck coming
and I thought, I'm just gonna end it all. I'm
just gonna go straight into the truck. Because she was desperate,
and she said, I started turning to the left, and
all of a sudden, I heard this little voice singing,

(16:24):
It's a beautiful day in this And she said, I
veered my car to the right, and I thought of
life and love. And now it's fourteen years later, and
I just need to thank you. Well. You know, to

(16:50):
hear that your works can be used in such wonderful
ways is a great blessing. When I started interviewing people
for this project, there were two questions. I asked almost

(17:12):
everyone who knew Fred, did you think he did enough?
Do you think Fred thought he did enough? And while
the responses varied, a lot of people told me the
same thing, Yes, they think Fred did enough, but he
always wanted to do more. Fred returned to the Neighborhood

(17:33):
Program in nine. The show ran until two thousand one.
He kept at it almost three times as long as
his first run, for decades and for generations of kids.
He was a voice of comfort, of stability, and of reason.
He'd made a special episode when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.

(17:53):
He'd recorded p S A S in the middle of
the Gulf War. Fred finally retired in two thousand one,
after nine episodes and thirty years on the air. But
we don't know if Fred ever actually felt like he
did enough. We do know that just a few weeks later,

(18:14):
planes flew into the Twin Towers in New York. When
nine eleven happened, he was so distraught. I don't think
that I ever really until that day, I didn't think
on a real internal level about his mission as saving

(18:40):
the world. I thought. I think I just thought about
it in more practical terms, we of helping people try
and do the best they can. I think it really
hit home to him when those when the Twin Towers
got hit that he's not the savior. He can't save

(19:02):
the world. Some of Fred's producers including Marty Whitmer, convinced
him to send one final message in his office. I
went up to get him to come down to the
studio and he was. He was a mess. He was said,
why am I doing these? These aren't going to do
any good. I said, you have to do them. And

(19:25):
I said, Fred, people care about you, People listen to you.
You have got to do these. None of us can
save the world. We can do the best we can do.
In the p s A Fred recorded after September eleven,
he repeated his story he'd often told about his mother

(19:46):
comforting him when he was young. She told him, notice
the people who are helping during times of crisis. Look
for the helpers. She said, there's always someone trying to help.
Look for the helpers. Has become this sort of stock meme,
one that gets reposted all over social media after a catastrophe,

(20:08):
whether a natural disaster or mass shooting. But there's something
I want you to notice about Fred's final message. Listen closely.
Who is he talking to. I'm just so proud of
all of you who have grown up with us, and
I know how tough it is some days to look

(20:29):
with hope and confidence on the months and years ahead.
But I would like to tell you what I often
told you when you were much younger. I like you
just the way you are. And what's more, I'm so
grateful to you for helping the children in your life

(20:50):
to know that you'll do everything you can to keep
them safe and to help them express their feelings in
ways that will bring healing in many different neighborhoods. It's
such a good feeling to know that we're lifelong friends.

(21:12):
He's talking to us, to the adults in the room.
His producer, Betsy Siemens says, this is the message of
friends that we need now. Look for the helper. Was
advice to children, and we are not children. And I've
heard a lot of adults saying, oh well, Fred Rogers

(21:33):
made me feel so much better because he said look
for the helpers and no, no, that was advice to children,
and that was not advice to the parent. It's an
interesting distinction though, between the child and the parents and
the adult. Uh, because the harm that comes to many
of us in our childhoods. I think this is my

(21:53):
theory my therapist agrees is that is that it we
get frozen in moments in time and we don't ever
overcome our childhoods in that way, and so we constantly
have this child in us that is crying out for
the things that we need as children, crying out for
safety or for acknowledge, manner for because we don't get
those things as young people. And so I think that

(22:15):
that may even be we may be experiencing a mass
level of fact as a country. Maybe it's one of
my theories. And so when people hear that quote, that's
the child in them, the unhealed child who's still going,
oh great, now I know what to do. It's it's
hard to be an adult, and it's hard to be
an adult when your own child hasn't been raised. Absolutely, however,

(22:39):
it is the universal human condition. It's true for all
of us, and it was true for him, and I
still think I know that one of the things that
was very important to him on the program was that
he always be the adult, the adult who can play
with children, and I mean, he acknowledged all of our

(23:00):
inner children in his own but he also understood that
there comes a time in life when we also have
to be the adult. And I think that was one
of the fine points of his work. We're the grown
ups doing what we can. Doing enough doesn't mean fixing

(23:21):
a tragedy as massive as nine eleven, but it does
mean helping every one of us has something essential inside
of us that we can use to help. For Fred,
that meant sitting at the bedside of a comatose kid,
or staying on the air for thirty years, helping children
grow into adults who could help other people. What does

(23:44):
it mean for you? I think he drove himself very hard,
and I think his expectations of himself were extraordinary, So
I would guess that he never thought he did enough.
Because here's the thing. There is no enough, There is

(24:04):
no finish line. The problems were faced with are so big,
so many, that no one of us can address them alone.
It's not easy to keep trying, but it's one good
way to grow. It's not easy to keep learning, but
I know that this is so. When you've tried and learned,

(24:27):
you're bigger inside than you were a day ago. It's
not easy to keep trying, but it's one way to grow.
You've got to you see every little bit, You've got
to do it, do it, do it, do it, and

(24:49):
when you're through, you can know who did it for you.
Did it. You did it. You did it, And when
you've done something that you wanted to do and you've
done it well, you can get such a good feeling
from that next time. I think it was the first

(25:18):
time in my life where I felt seen by an adult,
like when he got down to my eye level, introduced
himself and looked me in the eye. Of course, I've
had adults introduced themselves to me a million times up
into that point and asked me what my name was,
But the way that he looked at me, I felt

(25:41):
like you saw me. Finding Fred is produced by Transmitter Media.
The team is Dan O'donald, Jordan Bailey, and Maddie Foley.
Our editor is Sarah Nicks. The executive producer for Transmitter
Media is Greta Cohne. Executive producers at Fatherly are Simon
Isaacs and Andrew Berman. Thanks to the team of a
I Heart Media, Fred Rogers interviewed tape courtesy of the

(26:03):
Television Academy Foundation Interviews. The full interview is available at
Television Academy dot com slash Interviews. Our show is mixed
by Rick Kwan, music by Blue Dot Sessions and Alison
Layton Brown. If you like what you're hearing, rate the show,
review the show and tell a friend I'm Carvell Wallace.
Thanks for listening.