Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Deep Thoughts About Making TV With Intention, Religious Compersion, and Nostalgia for America's 20th Century Saint Artwork

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Comedy Podcast

80s and 90s movies and early 2000s tv may be called stupid shit by some, but you know it matters. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, sister podcasters who love well-crafted fiction and one another. In this comedy podcast, we look at the classic movies of our Gen X childhood and adolescence, analyzing film tropes to uncover the cultural commentary on romance, money, religion, mental health, and more. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, comedy to drama to horror, we use feminism, our super smart brains, and each other to uncover the lessons lurking behind the nostalgia of pop culture. Come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.

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Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Comedy Podcast

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Deep Thoughts About Making TV With Intention, Religious Compersion, and Nostalgia for America's 20th Century Saint

April 28, 2026 • Sister podcasters raised by 80s and 90s movies: Tracie Guy-Decker, lover of animation, Muppets, comedy, and feminism & Emily Guy Birken, storytelling nerd, mental health advocate, and pop culture aficionado • Episode 134

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It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood
A beautiful day for a neighbor.|
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?

The Guy Girls' neighborhood is full of nostalgia this week as the sisters return to the gentle, sunny television show that helped raise millions of American children: Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Tracie shares how Fred Rogers' plan to go seminary was changed when he was horrified to see people throwing pies at each other on his parents' brand new television set in the 1960s. (One can only imagine how upset Mr. Rogers would be by 2026 pop culture.)

Instead of becoming a minister right away, Mr. Rogers developed his countercultural television show that made intentional choices about everything from pacing to storytelling to word choice to help protect and develop the mental health and growth of his audience. With every decision Fred Rogers made, he considered the psychology of children, believing them capable of handling straightforward conversations about difficult topics.

Our collective nostalgia for Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood is well placed, whether you were among the youngest baby boomers watching in 1968 or the eldest Gen Z watching in 2001: Fred Rogers was an authentic, humble, and deeply thoughtful man who really was singing directly to us. His intentionality in creating a program that fed our minds and spirits as children means we can go home again to this neighborhood as adults. It's nostalgia that actually pays off.

Hi, podcast neighbor! We're glad we're together again!

Cold Open And Show Premise

SPEAKER_01 0:00

As he was dying, he was like, Do you think I'm a sheep? By which he meant like he had been studying scripture like sheep go to heaven. And his wife was like, Fred, if ever there are any sheep, you're one. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know what's worth talking and thinking about. And so do we. So come over think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit. I'm Tracy Guy Decker, and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood with my sister, Emily Guy Birkin, and with you. And we used to watch this together. So I know that you have seen many episodes of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. But tell me, what is sort of in your head? What is the furniture of your mind around Mr. Rogers?

SPEAKER_02 1:02

So it's a lot of little things. So it's things like changing his shoes when he comes in. It's him singing. It's non-toxic masculinity, uh, gentleness. It's the fact that he went

Childhood Images Of Mr. Rogers

SPEAKER_02 1:20

before Congress and convinced them that TV could be a force for good and education. The fact that he narrated feeding the fish because one of his audience members was a little girl who was blind, I believe, and was worried that the fish never ate. And so he was like, oh, okay, well, I'll make sure that you know my my audience who can't see what I'm doing know what I'm doing. It's there's a quote from him that goes around every time there's some sort of horror, horrible tragedy, which is that after something terrible happens, look for the helpers. I don't remember the show having this like important effect on me as a kid. It was just kind of there in the background. It's as I became an adult and an educator and recognizing how good he was at what he did that I kind of understood what an icon he was. And then there's just this one tiny like factoid. He was friends with Romero of zombie fame. And so was like he George Romero, I think it was blanking on his first name, was I don't know if he like gave money towards uh Night of the Living Dead, but he was he was an early like fan of it because they were friends, and so it's just like the least Mr. Rogers thing you can think of, but in the same way, the most Mr. Rogers thing you can think of. And in part because of the way that Night of the Living Dead was such a critique of our system in a very different way that Mr. Rogers is. He's like kind of the best of American culture in a lot of ways. It's just a lot of sunshine and positivity.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Ask me why we're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Oh, tell me, why are we talking about Mr. Rogers?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Yeah. So, like you, I feel like I came to truly appreciate Mr. Rogers as an adult. I did enjoy Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, but I can remember being like, okay, Mr. Rogers, get to the make-believe. Like, I didn't really want to like be with him. I wanted to be with the puppets. And it was kind of just what was on while we were waiting for Sesame Street to come on, or 321 Contact, or whatever it was. And as an adult, I came to like deeply appreciate

Relearning Rogers As Adults

SPEAKER_01 3:50

who Fred Rogers was and what he chose to do. I recently, with one of my partners, Gary and I went to Pittsburgh so that we could visit the Heinz Center for, I don't know the official name of the museum, but it's a museum in Pittsburgh where they actually have a number of Mr. Rogers' artifacts. He Mr. Rogers lived his whole life in Pittsburgh. And so I was really excited to go see some of the artifacts that they have on display. To be honest, I was a little disappointed with the museum exhibit. They have some great artifacts, but very little interpretive text to sort of help you put it into context. So this is actually like doing this episode with you was kind of my like making up for the fact that I didn't get the context from the museum. And to prepare for today, I watched the documentary from I believe 2018. And I watched the biopic, although that's the wrong word, but the movie that had Tom Hanks starring as him from a couple of years ago, I watched both of those. And then I did go back and watch several episodes. So there's again, like in part because of why I like what I was looking for, this is gonna be a little bit different than our usual episodes, but I think it'll be good. So a couple of postcards from the destination of what I want to talk about. In some ways, this is gonna be a different episode because often our job, as we've set ourselves, is to find the sort of unintentional lessons that were behind the entertainment that we watched. But everything that Fred Rogers did was so intentional. That's not what we're gonna be talking about.

What We’re Digging Into Today

SPEAKER_01 5:29

I want to talk about pacing because Fred Rogers actually kind of hated television and that and like was really trying to give a like use the medium in a different way. And so I want to talk about pacing. It stood out while he was making the show, which was forever. I mean, he started in 1968 and he didn't stop until the early 2000s. He took a couple breaks, but like there are so, so many episodes, but it was radical when he was doing it, and it's only become more radical now. So I want to talk about that a bit. I want to talk about the importance of the difference between what is real and what is make-believe, and what Rogers was trying to do with the neighborhood of the kingdom of make-believe. This is a subtext that's going in the background. I want to talk about his faith and how it shows up in ways that like often a Christian content creator, like I get kind of turned off because it feels sort of proselytizing in a way that Fred Rogers never was. And I want to talk about that a bit. In the like 90s and early 2000s, there was some controversy around Mr. Rogers, where people were like, no, no, everybody isn't special. You're wrong. I'd like to get into that and what that was about. And that spilled over into at his funeral, he died in 2003. There were protests of the sort of Scottsboro Baptist Church variety across the street from his funeral. And that's yeah. So we'll talk briefly about that. So before we get to that, let me remind you of sort of the segments of the show as he did them, because they stayed the same always. And then, you know, some of the things I learned through through the the biopic and actually the article on which the biopic was based and the documentary, and then sort of rewatching some of the shows. Every episode of Mr. Rogers' neighborhood opens

The Neighborhood’s Reliable Structure

SPEAKER_01 7:32

on there's like a little miniature town, you know, like a think train, miniature train kind of a town that the camera like pans over to this little house with yellow shutters. And then we are inside the house and Mr. Rogers comes in and greets us. And he sings a song. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. He sings a song while he takes off his blazer, puts on a cardigan, and changes his shoes out of loafers into sneakers. Interestingly, like he leaves his tie on, you know, like he's only so casual, he actually gets. Yeah. And then there's a little bit of like he's talking directly to the camera, a little bit of something. He engages with something. Sometimes he tells us about instruments or he tells us about blocks. It's always going to be related to some other thing. Sometimes he'll show us off a brief video on picture, which is like a framed painting that then becomes a screen. And then it's time for make believe. And he says, Let's pretend. And he goes, and there's a little switch that they don't hide, that he brings Trolley out. And Trolley makes a series of like dings and whistles that somehow are language. He talks to Trolley briefly, and then he sends Trolley to the neighborhood of the kingdom of make believe, and we follow Trolley there, where there's a series of characters who are puppets and a couple of humans who interact and we see stories. So there's King Friday the 13th, which I never remembered that he was the 13th, but I really love that. I don't remember that either. I just remembered it being King Friday. His wife, Queen Sarah. They have a kid, Prince Tuesday. There's X the Owl who lives in the tree, and Henrietta Pussycat, who says meow a lot, like as punctuation for her words. There is Lady Elaine, who is one of the few human puppets besides the king and queen, and has like big red nose and stuff. She works in the museum carousel. And there's Corney, who has like a much longer name and it works in like a little chair factory, like lives and works in a chair factory. And then there's Daniel Tiger. You learn in the documentary that Daniel Tiger, to a certain extent, is Fred Rogers. Like that it was an alter ego of Fred's. I mean, they all are, but the sort of the Daniel is the way he shows vulnerability. The humans that inhabit the kingdom of make-believe, the same actors are in the real world. We meet them in the real world and they have the same last name. So Betty Aberlin in the real world is Lady Aberlin, and she's the niece of the king. And there are others like that, like Handsyman Negre, Negri in The Land of Make Believe is Mr. Negri, who owns the music shop in the neighborhood. So all of the humans like are in both places with slightly different names. I think that's all we need to like know about the actual show. Okay. The trolley brings us back, and then there's an end, and then Mr. Rogers sings a farewell song that's always the same about how he'll be back tomorrow with new ideas for you, and you'll have things to talk about. And so will he. And then he says goodbye, and that's the end. I'm going to start with this intentionality piece. Going back and watching the actual original episodes, and I'm I'm like looking for the things like where's the casual misogyny? Where's the casual racism that I'm like that's always there because they were drawing from the same well that had those things in it. I'm not saying it's completely bereft of that, but it is so much less

Intentionality And Inclusive Speech

SPEAKER_01 11:11

than what I expected. And I think that's because Fred Rogers didn't just draw from the well, he examined every single cup before he then presented it to his television neighbor. And I think part of the way he did that is just who he was. And in some ways, the mechanism, like the assumptions that he made, like he doesn't say, hello, boys and girls, but he says, hello, you in the singular. He in the documentary, you learn that like that was a very specific and intentional thing. He speaks to the camera as if he is speaking to one singular kid. And he doesn't have a specific kid in mind, but was very important to him that he speak to the camera to a kid. And I think when you're doing that, that becomes then a filter for examining that thing that you drew from the well, right? So, like I don't remember where I learned it because I I consumed all this stuff very recently. So it may, it was either in the documentary or it was in the article that Tom Juneau wrote that was the basis for the biopic. It's called Can You Say Hero? It was in Esquire. It was like a feature title, sorry, cover feature in Esquire in, I believe, '98. But there was a storyline where like they had somebody in the neighborhood had found a dog. And the neighbor who found the dog talked about like bringing the dog back to her owner. And this was like, they were filming, and Mr. Rogers was like, I don't like that. I don't like the word owner. Let's talk about bringing the dog home. Thinking about that one kid helped him to recognize that that I don't like that word in the same way that he didn't talk about like asking your parents for things, going to your parents. He was talking about going to a grown-up you trust. Because he was thinking about like, what about that one kid who doesn't have parents or can't trust their parents? When you sort of filter the storylines and the thing, like through that sort of sense of like that one avatar on the other side and imagine many of their potential circumstances, it starts to like I think filter out some of the crap that is in that well that we were all drawing from. This is me speculating. I think in some ways, just the man was on a different plane of consciousness.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

Yeah. He well, he was a genius, an emotional genius. I know, I wish I could remember where I saw this because it's been years ago, but I remember seeing something about how a lot of kids and then adults on the autism spectrum were avid audience members of Mr. Rogers. And so were much older than the expected audience. And so saying boys and girls would have been inappropriate because these would have been at least chronologically adults, but yet it still was an appropriate show and meant so much to these adults watching this, gave so much. I really wish I could remember where I saw it. Because it it's probably been 20 years ago. It was when I was working for AmeriCorps, because one of the program leaders that I worked with was a huge fan of Mr. Rogers and was right around when Mr. Rogers died. I remember, I think he brought in something, a documentary or something like that, talking about Mr. Rogers. And I feel like that was there that I that uh was talking about how much, how meaningful this was. And it really stuck with me because I was like, that I understood in part because of the intentionality and the the repetition, like the sameness of each episode, but that also has the because I know as someone with ADHD, like there's the sameness of the episode, but there's novelty too. So you know what to expect, but you get the dopamine hit of the novelty as well. So it's the comfort and novelty at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Yeah, for sure. One note the only thing that I was like cringing about a little bit is actually just the way language has changed. There's an episode that's featured in the documentary that you can stream Mr. Rogers on, like, at least in Maryland on public television. It's like a channel where you can just like choose. And they don't have a whole lot of episodes. It's like maybe 10 episodes. But of those 10, like four of them at least are mentioned in the documentary. You see clips in the documentary. So they chose, I'm sure, based on that. But one of them that was in the documentary, and I also watched the entire episode, features a young man, Jeff Erlinger, I think was his name, who is disabled, a wheelchair user, and had some pretty severe like physical limitations because he had had a tumor as a baby. And Jeff refers to himself as handicapped, which is not a word that we would use today. But Jeff says it. And that is the language that was being used at that time. It was the 80s or 90s, I don't remember now. And then Mr. Rogers like sings a song with him. That's a song that Rogers sings all the time about I like you just the way you are, not because of the things you do, not because of the way you do your hair. And he changes the lyrics slightly for Jeff, not because of your fancy chair. And then in the documentary, they show like 15, 20 years later, there's some like gala or something for Rogers, and they bring Jeff out, and Rogers didn't know he was gonna be there, and he like vaults onto the stage to greet this man. It's just really heartwarming. That was the only moment, and Jeff himself is the one who used the word that is now out of date. So, even that, like, it just was the time. It was the language we used at the time. Yeah, yeah. Language changes over time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So let me talk about pacing a little bit. The pacing was in many ways the point. The documentary and also Juno's article and the biopic based on Juno's article make clear Fred came from a fairly affluent family. And he came home from college and he was thinking of going to seminary,

Slow TV And The Skill Of Silence

SPEAKER_01 17:52

and his folks had just bought a TV. And so he sat down to watch the TV, and there were people throwing pies in one another's faces. And he was like, This is awful. We can use this to do better. And he decided to put off seminary to try and do programming for kids. And originally it was a different show that then eventually sort of some of the puppets moved into Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. He hated the sort of like whizbang wow flash, flash, flash that was television in the 60s. Like I can't imagine what he would think of it today. Oh my goodness. And so he very like the pacing, which even as a kid, I can remember being like, okay, Mr. Rogers, get to the puppets. So, like, even then in the like 80s, when I was watching it, like it felt really slow. Today, the adult I have become in 2026, I'm watching these episodes from the 80s and 90s, and I find myself reaching for my phone in the middle. And I was like, no, Tracy, put it down. You're watching this. But like it wasn't easy sometimes, you know? Like that's just not, I mean, so slow, in fact, that like intentionally slow that in the documentary they talk about like a time that he was like, Do you want to know how long a minute is? Let's feel it. And he set an egg timer and just sat there for a minute.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

In the in one of the episodes I watch where Yo-Yo Ma visits, which I watched in part because it's in the documentary, Yo-Yo Ma plays several things to demonstrate things and then plays one piece of Bach. And then we come back to Mr. Rogers' house and he says, Sometimes when you hear really beautiful ma music played by really talented, you know, really good musicians, like it's nice to just sit and think about what you heard. Let's do that. Oh my goodness. And then for like, I don't know, 10 seconds, like he just is like smiling at the camera while he and I are thinking about the music we just heard yo-yo ma play. That is so countercultural. Oh my goodness. Yes. Yeah. And such an important life skill that I think like yours and my kids, my kid in particular, because I'm less screen careful than you are. But like our kids don't have that skill to just sit. Like, I don't think my kid knows how to be bored or and how to just like sit with the boredom, I mean, or with her thoughts. This 30-minute show didn't obviously did I I watched it and here I am all these years later, and I'm like, where's my phone? But it was like somehow I feel like it was like like a rock in the river, kind of doing a little something to divert the flow when it was on for those of us who grew up with him. And so that was just something that I wanted to name that I don't know that you could produce a show today. You get a green lit.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Like if it came from Mr. Rogers, like when he was already the icon that he was, but like a young child psychologist, child development expert who wanted to use TV the way Rogers used TV, like I don't know that they could get a green lit today. So I think that's like just worth noting the pacing and like he was fighting something in the culture that won.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

Well, just to add on top of that, it's very weird to bring this up when talking about Mr. Rogers. But some of the discourse about heated rivalry. But also about The Pit, which I don't know if you know anything about that show. I don't watch it. No. I don't watch it either, but a lot of the same audience that loves heated rivalry loves the pit. And so there's some media analysts that I've been watching have been talking about both. And both of these shows are shows that you have to pay attention to. These are not. Double screen shows. Whereas Netflix has been producing a lot of shows that are shows that you just have on while you're on your phone. And so I'm bringing that up because like the attention economy has been such that like the expectation is you're not actually paying attention. And so part of what like anyone who has like who's been like really negative about Heated Rivalry or The Pit hasn't actually been watching it. They've had it on in the background while they're scrolling on Instagram because they're like, why do you like this show? It's not even that good. And it's like, well, clearly you aren't watching it because it is excellent. Because of the same kind of thing that you're talking about is the intentionality. And there is pacing and things like that that you actually have to pay attention to to actually catch. It's very different from this like sunny children's show.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

It was a sunny children's show. And also one of the other ways that he was completely countercultural is that Mr. Rogers talked about things. In his first week, I learned this in the documentary. In the very first week it was on, Bobby Kennedy was killed. So he talked about it. In the land of make-believe, he had Daniel Tiger ask Lady Aberlin, what does assassination

Naming Hard Things For Kids

SPEAKER_01 23:21

mean? In the first week he was on the air rap. Wow. And this comes through in the documentary and in Juno's work. He said, Everything is mentionable. And if it's mentionable, it's manageable. And we have to teach our kids that. I knew that he tackled hard stuff, but that blew me away that in the very first week. And he was willing to do so early on. Yeah. And the way he did it too, I like I was unfamiliar with this. So the documentary knew that people like me would be. And so they showed the clips of when it happened. There was like a balloon like floating in front of Kennedy that had his name, you know, a campaign balloon. And he sort of bats at it moments before he's shot. And so the piece, the segment where Daniel asks about assassination, it's not it's kind of apropos of nothing, but he actually has a balloon and he asks Lady Aberlin to blow it up for him and she lets, she blows it up, and then he has her like let the air out. And so he's like building up to it with this balloon, which was part of the sort of visuals for the kids who would have been somewhat aware at the time in '68. And so again, so much intentionality, not just like, oh, I guess we need to talk about this, but like really thinking about like, what did a child notice? What would a child have noticed who might have seen the news footage, who might have been watching with their parents when it happened? And he did that again and again. Like he he took on hard stuff. I have a feeling we watched, I don't remember, but I have a feeling that when the Challenger disaster happened, Mr. Rogers was one of the people who helped us cope with it. Right. Cause like we were in the cafeteria watching the TV, like millions of other American kids when that happened. This is a thing that, like, along with the pacing that Rogers did that was like counter to conventional wisdom about how we produce television for children. One of the things that's interesting, this is not a direct correlation, but I'm gonna make it anyway. You mentioned knowing that he went before Congress and sort of saved public television. The documentary shows the footage of that hearing. There was one senator who was very skeptical. And Roger spoke directly to him and he said, May I tell

The Senate Hearing And Authenticity

SPEAKER_01 26:02

you the lyrics of a song that I sing? And the senator's like, I mean, sure. Whatever, right? And then he like said the lyrics of this song about like how you matter, and I don't even I don't remember which song it was now. Like I just watched it a couple of days ago, but and at the end, the senator's like, I think you just got your $20 million. The lesson I'm taking away is the authenticity of Fred Rogers, right? Like Mr. Rogers was not a persona he put on, it was who he was. And when he went before Congress, he didn't try to pitch the thing he thought that was most important. Like he just was himself. He was like, kids need to know this, let's talk about it. I'm talking to one kid. What does that one kid need from me? And there was there's something like so, I don't know why that's so hard. I feel like in 2026, that's so hard. I mean, even in thinking about our project here in this podcast, what we're doing right now, right? Like we have these conversations like, what will people want to hear? Like, that's not it, because Rogers was actually wondering what children needed, but more like what will sell. That's the conversation that sometimes you and I start to go down that one or the other of us will be like, oh, I don't, oh, let's not do it, let's not do it this way. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And like, it's not selling. So, like, there's this pressure today. And I'm sure he felt it too. I'm sure it was on him too. Yeah. But he stayed true to sort of who he was and frickin' changed the world. And that brings me to another piece I want to talk about about him, and that's his faith. He was deeply driven by his faith. He had planned to go to seminary when he finished college, took a break to start making TV. He did go to seminary eventually. He was very driven by a love of Christ. He was a Christian. But one of the things

Faith As Worth Without Conversion

SPEAKER_01 28:07

that I have noticed just in living is that people who are truly confident and comfortable in their own faith don't feel a sort of graspy jealousy about other people's faith. They just feel a sense of compersion, which is a word I'm borrowing from the polyamory community. It means joy in another's joy. Right? Like it's like the Dalai Lama says, There are many paths up this mountain, and Buddhism is my path, and it is precious to me. There are other paths, and I would not try to make you take my path if it's not the right path. And I think that that that would that is true of Fred Rogers. And the way that he like he thought of what he was doing as a ministry, not to convert, but to remind us all that we are made in the image of God. And that nothing can change that. And holy smokes, does that not like just make me vibrate higher? Like I that just like yes, he was doing the work of God by reminding people, children, that formative time when we when shame starts to creep in that you don't have to do anything to be worthy. You're worthy because you are human and because you exist. And that's one of the things that, like, as an adult, I look back and like I get teary when I think about that and the difference he made in people's lives doing that. And that's exactly what he got flack for in the 90s and early 2000s. There were all these articles, these right wing like articles that were like, meow meow, he lied to me. Like that was like the a headline, like a headline was something like that that had meow meow because Henry had a pussycat says meow meows. Yeah. And like Mr. Rogers was wrong, you're not special. Like Mr. Rogers is telling everybody that like they wanted to say that Mr. Rogers' message was like the participation trophy. That was the argument. Was like the argument that people have against the participation trophy, was what they were saying about Mr. Rogers. And even at the time, I was like, those people are idiots. And I was like, I don't know, in my like early 20s, maybe when those articles were being published.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Now, looking back on it, I just think how hierarchical those people obviously believe the world is.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Cause I'm sure they think they are special. They're not saying like, I'm not special, Mr. Rogers lied to me. They're saying, you're not special, Mr. Rogers lied to you, which feels like the root of a lot of the evil in our society right now. So I don't know where I'm going with that, but I just like needed to bring it into a conversation about Mr. Rogers because it is one of the critique that has been leveled against him or against his sort of the way you did what he did. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

So a few years ago, I'll call him a colleague of mine, was wrong on the internet. This is someone who's a kind of a professional shit stir in the financial community. I don't remember how it started, but so it was saying something about how, like, you know, you need to marry young because then you can get a high value

Backlash Against You Being Special

SPEAKER_02 31:49

woman. And so, you know, several of the women in my my my field were like, sorry, what now? And my response is like, oh, so I mean, do does she have fine Corinthian leather? Does she have a salted caramel scent or how what what is a high value woman? And so, of course, he's just like, well, no tattoos, a virgin. I mean, like, yeah. And so I was like, all right, I'll bite. We're all of us, because I know this person is a person of faith. We'll put that in quotes, but not like Fred Rogers. I said, We're all beings of infinite worth. All of us are high value. And so he's like, oh, so you could marry anyone. I was like, that doesn't mean I get along with and am compatible with everyone. You know, just because someone who I find morally repugnant is a being of infinite worth doesn't mean that we are going to actually get along or like each other. It just means that they also have a spark of Hashem within them. And like this professional shit stir, as they do, like deleted all their comments because that's what they do. They stir shit. That's the sort of thing like growing up, I encountered more Fred Rogers type Christianity than that. So I was very surprised the first time I met that kind of response. I'm no longer surprised. But that kind of hierarchical thinking, that kind of like you're on a spectrum, and if you're not high enough on the spectrum, you're not high enough on this hierarchy, then you're not worthy, is so sad and like so shame-filled. Yeah. And it's exactly what Mr. Rogers was trying to prevent and protect us from.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Yeah. And I think that the story of, as it's especially as it's told in the documentary, which I highly recommend if you haven't seen it yet, uh, the story of Francoise Clemens, who played Officer Clemens on the show, is indicative of that, of what you're talking about of Rogers, right? So Francoise Clemens is a black man. He was a singer, and he played sort of Officer Clemens on

Francois Clemmons And Moral Courage

SPEAKER_01 34:18

this show, a police officer in the neighborhood. And there was this moment of intentionality. It happened a couple of times, more than once this happened, but it's the first time it happened was early on the show in the late 60s when black folks were fighting to integrate swimming pools, and like white swimming pool managers were like dumping chemicals in the water while they were in there and stuff. Mr. Rogers is sitting in his front lawn on the set using a little baby pool to like wash off his feet, and invites Officer Clemens to join him. And so they there's this footage of their black man's feet and the white man's feet and the hose in the little pool. That happened early in the 60s, happened again in the 80s while you and I were watching. That's that episode I remember. But it happened earlier when Officer Clemens was wearing these weird calf boots and stuff that he had to take off. Anyway, Clemens was gay. And this came to Rogers' attention like fairly early on because he had been at Mr. Clemens had gone to a gay club and had been seen, and the word got back to the Mr. Rogers people. And Mr. Rogers was like, You can't do that. You can't be a part of the Mr. Rogers neighborhood and go to the club. And in the documentary, I'm going just based on what Clemens said, like, he was like, okay, whatever. And then later, like a couple years later, I think, at some point, Mr. Rogers was singing, I like you just the way you are. This is one of his songs. And he was like singing it like to Francoise. And Francois was like, Wait, are you singing to me? To me. And Fred was like, Yes, I've been singing that to you for two years. I'm glad you finally realized I was singing to you. So and Joanne, his widow, Roger's widow, says he met Francois too early, but he got there. So I'm bringing this up because the version of the story that you and I heard before now was much more generous to Fred Rogers. That he was saying you can't do this because it's not safe for you. I can know, but other people can't know. That's the way you and I had heard the story. And maybe that is the true. But the way this documentary told the story, it was like, I'm not gonna fire you, but like I don't want to know about it. It was much more of a don't ask, don't tell. But that changed. And like Clemens actually like tears up in the documentary while he's telling about it. This is an example in my mind, again, of his like authenticity and integrity as a human being, to sort of be able to like, like I think our first response to anything is often our conditioning. But the thing we then come to, that's our true self. That's what I believe. So, like when my first response to something that I'm unfamiliar with is like, oh, I don't like that. That's my conditioning. And then when I sit with it, I'm like, oh why that's it's fine. Why, why was I, you know, that's my true self. That's my true reaction. That's the way I what I believe. And I think this his relationship with Francois Clemens is an example of that. And he lived into it so much so that I don't know if it was actually the Scottsmoore Baptist Church, but it was people like them with those same signs that said, God hates fags. Oh, God, who protested at his funeral. And Tom Juno, who wrote this article and like became a lifelong friend, is in the documentary. And he says, like, I was at the funeral and I talked to them. I'm a journalist. So I went over and I talked to these people who were protesting. And I was like, Do you think he's gay? And they were like, No, we know he wasn't gay, but he tolerated gays. And what was really interesting from the documentary is that Juno says, you know, I saw they had kids with them, you know, and these kids were just, they're just exhausted and they were miserable. And I just felt so bad for these kids. Because I know that's what Fred would focus on. And that was like all of that to say, like Fred Rogers lived his faith in a way that is really, really admirable. And that like I only have like a sense of affection and admiration for. And he did it in such a way that like was smart, but he wasn't doing it to be smart, right? So Juno tells an another story in the article. I'll link to it, but it's in

Why The Biopic Needed Another Hero

SPEAKER_01 39:23

Esquire magazine from the 90s, but they've read they they've made it available. He makes he tells a story about somebody who was a kid who was going through a lot, like physical challenges. Like, and Mr. Rogers asked this person, like this is a young adult, I believe. He asked this person to pray for him. This person who's going through challenges to pray for Fred Rogers. And Juno says that was really smart to do that, to make him feel like he had some agency there. And Rogers was like, oh no, I wasn't being smart. I figure somebody who's going through what he's going through is close to God. I genuinely want him to pray for me. In the movie, the biopic, they have him do that with the fictionalized version of Juno's dad who is dying. It's interesting. Like, I, you know, I say he just he lived his faith in this way of integrity. And that's why you can't make a traditional biopic about this man, right? Like, story needs conflict, at least in the West. And so to make a biopic starring Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers, they base it on this article that Juno wrote, but they make Juno fictionalized as Lloyd Vogel into the protagonist. He's the one with the conflict. And like all the like his life is falling apart and he doesn't know how to deal with living. And he meets Rogers because he's supposed to do a little, just a brief essay about like 400 words he's been aside to write about Fred Rogers for Esquire. But then it turns into this much bigger thing that ends up being because that's how Fred Rogers did. And it is fictionalized, right? Tom Juno wrote an article, Lloyd Vogel didn't exist. I have no idea if Tom Juno actually had the like things in his life that Lloyd Vogel has. I suspect not, but I don't know. But I think that's really interesting. Like as a storyteller, like this icon that we all want to know more about, but we can't make a biopic about him because it would be boring. Yeah. And I find that really fascinating. I also recommend that movie if folks haven't seen it. Like it's a really enjoy in some ways, it's more enjoyable than a traditional biopic because it still is a form of hagiography or saint worship in a way that still gives you the satisfaction of like conflicts and resolution. And in a way that shows it's like we get to be proxy for like Lloyd Vogel gets to be proxy for us. Like this guy can't be real. Anyway, those are the things that I wanted to talk about. I think there's, you know, the documentary shares this scene. Mr. Rogers talks about making mistakes that they make the point beautifully. I don't need to remake it, but basically they have Daniel Tiger like feeling shameful. Like, am I a mistake? And he ends up

Shame Healing And Make Believe Boundaries

SPEAKER_01 42:31

singing this duet with Lady Aberlin where she says, I think you're great. I think you're fine. He's still singing like I'm afraid I'm a mistake because I'm not like other people, which the documentary makes plain. I guess I am just going to tell you. The documentary makes plain, again, intentional. Like kids who are feeling those ways, people who are feeling that way aren't just like, okay, I'm fine now. When someone they love says, No, you're great. I love you. Like it doesn't just go away. Speaking of Daniel Tiger, that's the last thing that I said I was going to talk about and I haven't yet, which is like the distinction between real life and make-believe. This was very important to Mr. Rogers and it became more important over the years. He read about a child who like jumped off the roof wearing a cape and got hurt because he thought he was Superman. And this enraged him because we need to teach our children the difference between reality and make-believe so they don't hurt themselves. And especially that it happened through like a medium related to his medium. It really upset him. So he actually did a whole week about superheroes and talking about superheroes and you know what's real and what's make believe. And we're all super I don't I didn't watch the episodes. But the fact that in some ways it was practical, right? That's why he put on the sneakers. So we wouldn't hear him walking around on the set while he was doing the puppets, because all the puppets are him. But in some ways it was very, very intentional. The land of Make-believe is a different place. And the people we know are there, but they're different people. And we know like that's not real. We're pretending. We know we're pretending. But in the real world, in Mr. Rogers' house, that's different. Like making that distinction, but having the same actors, right? But Fred never shows up. Mr. Rogers never shows up in the land of make-believe. Again, practical, he's the one doing all the puppets, but also intentional because he lives in the real world. And so the humans that are in both, like, we understand that later Lady Aberlin is a fictionalized version of Betty Aberlin in a way that is just kind of foundational. Not that the five-year-old could articulate she's a fictionalized version. But they get it. They get that Lady Aberlin and Betty Aberlin are the same person, but not the same person. When the sort of the form is the lesson that feels like, in some ways, the deepest and like the most important. That was very, very important to him, like helping kids understand the distinction. And the fact that it was like sort of baked in. And of course, that was our my favorite part. Like I just wanted him to get straight to the kingdom of make-believe. But now looking back on it, having that distinction, having trolley take us there was part of the lesson I was getting. So talking about hagiography. Anyway, this has been my saint worship of Mr. Rogers.

SPEAKER_02 45:36

So he's a reminder of like anytime I get down about being American, because I do sometimes lately, there's he's a reminder of like some of the wonderful things that we can produce here in America.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Yeah. Yeah. The documentary makes plain, like he didn't have a big head about any of this. As he was dying, he was like, Do you think I'm a sheep? By which he meant like he had been studying scripture, like sheep go to heaven. His wife was like, Fred, if ever there are any sheep, you're one. Yeah. But, you know, and like after 9-11 happened, like they brought him back to like sort of address the nation. And he was like, Why do they need me? And his producers and everyone was like, They need you. Yeah. And like, and we did. We did. But like he didn't recognize, he didn't always recognize. He didn't recognize just how his big humility is part of what made him so good. Right. So good in both senses of the word, both a good entertainer or edutainer and the good person. It's also, I think, what allowed him to stay in that integrity that I mentioned before, that authenticity, because he wasn't chasing anything. Yeah. He wasn't chasing accolades. He was chasing what was right for the kids he was serving. Yeah. His North Star never ever changed. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we're running short on time. So let me see if I can reflect back to this saint worship that I have just laid out for you. So unlike almost anything that we talk about on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, where we're looking for the unintended lessons behind the media, everything was intentional for Mr. Rogers. Everything. And that included the pacing,

Final Takeaways And Saint Worship

SPEAKER_01 47:24

which felt slow then and it feels even slower now, but was imparting really important life skills. Mr. Rogers thought the silence was like the greatest gift. And multiple occasions you learn through the Juno article, through the biopic, through the documentary. Like he would invite people to just take a minute and think about the people who love them into being, who love them into who they are now. Like he would say, I'll time you. And then they would just be quiet for a minute. He did that from the stage at like an Emmy Award. Then they gave him lifetime achievement. And like these famous people in ball gowns and tuxedos are like crying from this minute of silence. Oh my goodness. So pacing was one of the like things that he did very intentionally. And silence and slowness and intentionality. Intentionality was intentional. Talking about hard things. He met kids. He knew they were kids. He let them be kids. He didn't think they were stupid. He didn't think they were unaware. And he believed they had a right to know and to talk about. He said, everything is mentionable, and what is mentionable is manageable. That's the way the fictionalized version of him says it in the biopic movie. But even in the documentary, we hear different versions of that. What is mentionable is manageable. And he believed that for kids as well. And so nothing was unmentionable. He talked about divorce, he talked about death, he talked about hard things. He was a faithful man. His Christianity was a driving force for everything, but he was not a proselytizer. And so he was able to convey his ultimate lesson, was which was that you, yes, you are made in the image of God and are therefore infinitely worthy in a way that it didn't matter if the you on the other side of the camera was Christian or Jewish or Hindu or atheist. It didn't matter. Because he believed it completely. And the fact that he believed it completely made him the target of the ire of people who don't believe that completely, who are very hierarchical and insecure in their faith, in my opinion, including the folks who were writing these articles, secular articles, about how no, not everybody is special, and the people who would defile a funeral with protest signs and bring their kids along. And then the last thing I talked about was the distinction between what is real and what is make-believe. And he would say to the camera, let's pretend. Let's pretend Lady Aberlin is doing blah, blah, blah. And then we would go over to the kingdom, make believe, and that's what she was doing. And so it gave us as kids, through the mechanism of the actual, like what's happening on the screen, ways to understand the difference between fiction and reality and to celebrate the fiction and enjoy the fiction. It was my favorite part of the show, but not mistake it. And that is a thing that he saw evidence was needed, you know, when kids were hurting themselves pretending to be Superman. And things that I think we couldn't have articulated when we were watching him in the 80s, but I think really created a foundation or helped to create the foundation. I don't want to oversell it, for just understanding how to interact with the world and other media. I think I got everything. So, y'all, if you remember Mr. Rogers as fondly as I do, go watch these movies. Like you won't regret it. He just, yeah, he was just a magical man. What are you bringing me next week, Em?

SPEAKER_02 51:26

So next week, I am bringing you my deep thoughts on the TV show Night Court.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

Oh my God, I love that movie. I love that show so much. Oh my God, I loved it so much. All right, cool. I'll see you. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon. There's a link in the show notes. Or leave a positive review so others can find us. And of course, share the show with your people. Thanks for listening. Our

Next Week And Supporting The Show

SPEAKER_01 52:04

theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin McLeod from Incompotech.com. Find full music credits in the show notes. Thank you to Resonate Recordings for editing today's episode. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head?