Superheroes Aren't Real

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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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. 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? 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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

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 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,

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 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 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 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 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.