The Daily Stoic - Gregg Behr and Ryan Rydzewski on the Wonder and Discipline of Mr. Rogers

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Ryan speaks with authors Gregg Behr and Ryan Rydzewski about their new book When You Wonder, You're Learning: Mister Rogers' Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids, how hard Mr. Rogers worked to be who he was, how we can strive to “make goodness attractive”, and more.Gregg Behr is a father, writer, children’s advocate, author, and Executive Director of the Grable Foundation. For more than a decade, he has helped to lead Remake Learning – a network of educators, scientists, artists, and makers he founded in 2007 – to international renown. His work has been applauded by President Obama, the Center for Digital Education, the Tribeca Disruptor Awards, and his hometown, Allegheny County. You can learn more at www.greggbehr.com.Ryan Rydzewski is a teacher, writer, speaker, and member of the Grable Foundation. He writes books, feature stories, speeches, blog posts, and creative pieces that have appeared in Pittsburgh Magazine, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. His clients include Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania, The Pittsburgh Foundation, the Greater Pittsburgh Nonprofit Partnership, NEXTpittsburgh, Kidsburgh, and ASSET STEM Education. You can learn more at www.ryanrydzewski.com.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend weekend when you have a

little bit more space when things have slowed down be sure to take some time to think to go for a walk to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi I'm David Brown the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday.

Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You know, it's funny. I remember it like yesterday. I was writing the proposal for stillness is the key. And I was just looking for one of the tricky things about writing a book. Writing a book proposals. You have to write a proposal for a book that you have not written. You have to be like, here's all the people I'm going to talk about. Once you pay me

to go do the research and figure out who and what I'm going to talk about. And so I knew I wanted to write about this idea of stillness, adoraxia, apothea, as the Stokes and Epicurians talk about it. But I didn't know exactly who I wanted to talk about. And I just needed to sort of put together a collection of potential examples of people. And I was working with my research assistant. And he suggested Mr. Rogers. And he sent me this like sort of little 10 minute documentary that some person had made about Mr. Rogers. And I obviously I remember watching Mr. Rogers as a kid, but I didn't know that much more about him. And in fact, probably thought he was, I think a lot of people were so jaded in cynical. We almost assumed there's some like skeletons in the closet. There's something

weird, something off. Anyways, I put him in the proposal and then I went and I bought a bunch of different books about him and it, it's changed my life. It changed the direction of that book. He's obviously a major character. This is before the Will You Be My Neighbor and then the Tom Hanks movie came out. Now there's been this whole sort of Mr. Rogers resurgence, which is wonderful and beautiful, but I sort of stumbled upon it, chanceed upon it as I was putting together the research for Stoamlis' The Key.

This would have been in 2018. So I am a huge Mr. Rogers fan. I'm a huge Joanne Rogers fan. His wife, I read anything and everything I can about him. And so when this book showed up at my office, when you wonder your learning, Mr. Rogers enduring lessons for raising creative, curious, caring kids. I was of course intrigued as a parent, but I was more interested in talking to the authors who are connected to the Mr. Rogers legacy. And in fact, Joanne Rogers wrote the forward to the book, a very nice and interesting forward, I would say. So I had Ryan Radeski and Greg Baer on the podcast to talk about learning,

about creativity, and what made this man tick, who was was not a saint as we talk about in the episode, just as the still ex weren't saints, but as someone who worked very, very hard to be what they were and to do the good that they did. And it was a great conversation, which I really enjoyed having. I hope you check out the book when you wonder your learning, Mr. Rogers, enduring lessons for raising creative, curious, caring kids. You can go to their website remakelearning.org. Also Greg Bear.com, that's Greg with two Gs and Ryan Redesky.com.

Also I'll link to those in today's show notes, but I just love that as you see in all of my books. I try to have titles that work independently of whether you read the pages of the book, sort of an epigram, a statement, an argument, a mantra that you can live by and when you wonder your learning is a pretty good one, and we shouldn't expect anything less from the great Mr. Rogers. And let's get into this conversation with Ryan and Greg. You know, I was thinking about Mr. Rogers this morning. I got upset about something I kicked a box in her my foot and I was mad and I sort of went into a whole thing. I think about his, what to do with the mad you feel song pretty often.

It's not exactly the top of your book, but I think it's one of the most beautiful ideas that he came up with. Well, and Ryan, you can imagine there's something that's personally challenging about co-authoring a book like this because suddenly, in all aspects of your life, personal, professional, you start wondering, like, how should I handle this better? Sure. Mr. Rogers might have done or how he might have taken it on.

That's the problem with writing a book about stoicism. Also, is that I am forced to try my best to actually do this stuff. It's always easier to share it with the world than to do it yourself. Well, it's easy to articulate the idea, doing it in practice is what the hard part is. I found that sometimes it even,

it makes it a little bit more difficult because you know better, you know you know better. And sometimes knowing better doesn't exactly make it any easier. No, that's totally right. Actually, you know what, there's a quote I really like. I actually quoted, Joanne Rogers who wrote the forward to your book. Let me see if I can find it. Um, where is this? Um, can I guess what it might be? Yeah, hit me. No one practiced

being Fred Rogers, more than Fred Rogers himself. No, that's not it. That's a beautiful quote though. But it may be part of the same block. She says, I put it in this point in Destiny. She said, if you make him out to be a saint, people might not know how hard he worked. And I think there's this idea that these people we admire are just sort of naturally that way that it's there. They're built that way. It's their personality, it's intuitive, as opposed to a discipline that they practice.

Yeah, it's kind of amazing what Fred had. You're right, I think we tend to think of him culturally as this sort of almost a secular saint, someone who just came down from heaven and was just this perfectly nice guy. This person, none of us could ever match. But Fred had a regiment. You know, Fred would get up at 5 a.m. every morning and he would think about, who am I going to encounter today?

How am I going to make them feel? He would write letters to them, he would pray for them, he would then go for a swim, you know, which is, of course, an active exercise, exercise is an active kindness for the body. He would have his vegetarian breakfast, an active kindness to the earth. And then he would come into his office. And the first thing he would do was answer all the letters he'd gotten, sometimes 50 to 100 a day.

So Fred, he's almost in that sense like an athlete. He had it regimen to be Fred Rogers. Like Joanna wrote, no one worked harder at it than he did. Yeah, thinking that even sort of being, actually there's an interesting passage in meditations or Marx to realize talks about, he says, you know, a better wrestler, but not a better person, not a better forgiving of faults,

a better friend of a friend in tight places. And his point is that actually we so clearly see the cause and effect, the relationship between, hey, if I want to get in better shape, I need to do x, y, and z. If I want to lose weight, I have to do x, y, and z. If I want to learn the piano, I have to do x, y, and z. But then, like, being the person that we want to be, you know, having the temperament that we want to have, the poise or the equanimity that we want to have. We're just like, well, I hope it happens.

There isn't the sense that, oh, this too is a result of the commitment to the following ideals, the following practice, that it will ensue if I do X, Y, and Z. It's just a thing we either hope is biological and then write off as impossible for us if it's not. Or we just hope we'll magically appear one day inside of us. Yeah, I hate it. Oh, bye Greg. I just was going to say we love that you referred to Joanne, right?

Because we had the privilege of getting to know Joanne during the last couple decades of her life. And she, you know, she was an amazing person in her own right. And she also carried Fred's legacy forward. I mean, she was very thoughtful and delivered herself about what it is that she still wanted Fred and his legacy to be in the world. And she was always quick to remind us, right? He was no saint.

He could get mad. He could get frustrated. He could be silly. He could be off point. And that was important to her because she wanted to remind us that his work is approachable, that he wasn't a saint, and that there's something to learn in his work in our own work that matters.

Yeah, it's almost a way of taking ourselves off the hook, by saying there were saints, they're perfect, they were always like this, then we don't have to despair what we can despair, or we don't have to hold ourselves accountable for not getting anywhere close. We're just like, hey, this person's seven feet tall, I'm five feet tall, that's just how it came down.

Yeah, that's something we're always asked, you know, I think anybody who writes a book about Fred is asked a similar question, how has this changed you? And I think both of us have sort of felt the weight of that responsibility having gone through this process, having researched Fred's life

and having, you know, even now, still it came out a year ago, year and a half ago, we're still out there sharing it with the world. How can we responsibly write about Fred Rogers? How can we responsibly talk about Fred Rogers if we don't do our best to live up to Fred ourselves? And we definitely feel the weight of that. We feel the weight of that.

We're recording this on Election Day. We feel that we're out in the world like everybody else. We have the same opinions, we the world like everybody else. We have the same opinions, or we have opinions like everybody else. And sometimes it can be really hard to live up to the standards that Fred himself gave us an example of. Well, there's a burden. There's also an opportunity. Yes. Ryan, do you mind if I should?

Sure. I'll share a deeply personal story. And my co-author, Ryan, knows the story well. So what you should know about me among other things is that my wife is Asian American by background. So my kids are this wonderful hybrid. And my older daughter is of the age that she's beginning to develop her identity.

And it was a little over a year ago. I remember it well because it was a Friday night, NCAA March Madness was going on. I wanted nothing more after a hard week than to sit down and simultaneously watch five college basketball games. Like, I just was so excited about that, right? And as I'm sitting on the sofa, my older daughter comes over, she has her head down, and out of nowhere, Ryan.

She goes, daddy, am I going to be shot? And I looked at her, like like where did that question come from? And you can imagine how I froze. And this is the first time I've ever heard a question like this. And I fully acknowledge that there are far too many parents, families, you can carry gathers across this country who've probably heard that question not only once, but dozens of times. But for me in that moment, it was frightening. And it was like the lessons of Fred and the work that Ryan and I did together came rushing to me at that moment because I thought, I've got to make sure that this child feels like she's safe.

That it's okay to ask a question like that. It's okay to have great big feelings. And she had asked this question, Ryan, because the news of mass murders of Asian Americans in Atlanta had reached our household in Pittsburgh. And it was incumbent upon me in that moment to, you know, make sure that she felt safe and that we would wonder together about the answers to her questions, because I didn't necessarily have them. And so unexpectedly, that was an opportunity, not the burden of this work and how Fred Rogers work in a very particular moment helped me profoundly in a relationship moment with my daughter.

You know, it's interesting because you talk about that in the book, maybe because we're not watching it as much as we used to or or we have this retroactive view of things. But there is this sense that Mr. Rogers' neighborhood was this universally positive and friendly and pleasant, fictional bubble. But you talk about not just what's happening, what was happening in the world as the show was being made, but the events he talks about,

he talks about segregation, he talks about segregation, he talks about death. There's the famous episode where he shows like the goldfish dying, and he's fishing it out of the tank. These are things that you would think you would shy away from, but in fact he embraces them talking about dealing with their feelings, they're not just pretending they don't exist. You're dealing with them. But you had a great line in the book,

forget who you were quoting, but you were saying, these things were in the painting, but they don't destroy the canvas. Yeah, that's a quote from Mary. Rossin. Yeah, Mary Rossin, she was an actress in the neighborhood. It was interesting, Ryan. I think one of the most profound experiences

we had when researching the book, because we like a lot of people, we think back of the neighborhood. It was interesting, Ryan. I think one of the most profound experiences we had when researching the book, because we, like a lot of people, we think back of the neighborhood just like you mentioned, as this sort of pleasant refuge from the rest of the world, forgetting until we went back to revisit it as adults, that it is not that at all. I won't call it dark, but it is real. It's responsive to the culture in which it was made.

And we went to the Fred Rogers archive in Littro, Pennsylvania, where Fred grew up, the Fred Rogers Institute is there. And it's this long, you know, office looking room, completely unremarkable fluorescent lighting, with just boxes and boxes of books, or boxes and boxes of correspondence, rather. And these core respondents,

let us stretch back to the 50s. And they're from young kids, they're from children's parents, they're from a surprising number of older adults in nursing home, people who just wanted to thank Fred for being a presence in their lives. But the letters from children are so vulnerable. The things that they're willing to share with Fred, you know, Mr. Rogers, I'm sick. Mr. Rogers, you know, my parents are with Fred. Mr. Rogers, I'm sick. Mr. Rogers, my parents are splitting up. Mr. Rogers, my dog died. Any number of things. And you can draw, in many cases, you see Fred's notations in the margin, and he's trying

to figure out how he was going to respond honestly to each child. But then you go and watch the neighborhood, and you can almost draw a direct throughline from these letters. The things that kids are concerned about, the things that kids are seeing and they're sharing, you can draw a direct line from that to the neighborhood. The neighborhood was very much a conversation. It was a two-way conversation between Fred and his viewers, and it was a very honest conversation. Yeah, and he doesn't, you know, it would be nice if life didn't include these things, if everyone was wonderful to each other and tragedies didn't happen and we weren't mortal beings. But they do happen. And so how do you raise,

I guess the tricky question is how do you raise good people, how are you yourself, a good person How are you yourself a good person inside that and in spite of that? Yeah, Fred said, you know, one of his quotes is that there's no normal life that's free of pain. You know, it's our wrestling with those problems that can be the impetus for our growth, which to me, that sounds like a very stoic line to me. I don't know to what degree Fred studied the stoics, but I see so much of him in things like you mentioned meditation earlier You know Marcus are really saying things like you know Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself and then you look at Fred being strict with himself with that regimen

And then you look at him being tolerant with others You know what's more tolerant than telling every single child every single person you encounter I like you just the way you are just the way you are. Just the way you are right now. Not telling you you're perfect, not telling that everything you do and say is great, but just by virtue of being a human being, there's something inside you that's worth a while and I see that and I celebrate that. But there's an interesting tension in that quote, right? So tongue tolerant with others, stripped with yourself, tolerant with others,

and then the idea that I like you just the way that you are. So, there is this sense where Fred Rogers is holding himself to very strict standards, but also not a static set of standards, but trying to get better always, right? So, not happy with himself the way that he is, not in a strictly negative sense, but in a sense that he could get better and it shouldn't be satisfied with staying the same. So there is this sense of not accepting himself as he is, but then

unflinchingly and unconditionally accepting everyone else as they are and loving them as they are. There's a there's a beauty in that that I can get better, but I'm fine with you the way that you are. I hope you get better, but I'm not telling you that you're not enough as you are. Exactly. I think he saw that acceptance as a precondition for growth. There's this wonderful story he told about. He was at a fundraiser for George W. Bush and he ran out of the room and disappeared and his handlers couldn't find him.

And they found him under a tree and he said, you know, he didn't want to be at this fundraiser but he also didn't want to be, you know, putting his finger in George Bush's face saying, stop the war in Iraq. He didn't want to be an accuser, he said. He said, you know, people don't change very much when all they have is a finger pointed at them. They only change in relation to someone who loves them. And so I think when we're surrounded by that sort of acceptance, when at least one person accepts us just as we are, we become more willing to change, we become more open to

growth. And I think that's why so many of us, even as adults, are still drawn to the message that Fred told us that somebody out there accepts us, despite all our mistakes, despite all the times we fall in short. Well, Fred often used the qualifier, I like you just the way you are right here right now. And to underscore Ryan's comment that it was the idea that I won't reject your humanity. I accept you as who you are. And together, there's all sorts of learning that we can do. In describing the neighborhood program

to a journalist one time, he described it as an atmosphere. And he was as much creating an atmosphere for himself and the adults and others on that program as much for us in the environments from which we were working. And so how do we create that atmosphere on that program as much for us in the environments from which we were working. And so how do we create that atmosphere that allows us to continuously grow and learn and become the people were meant to become?

I read a book by Tim Madigan, who was like, I guess, a correspondent of Fred Rogers. And he sort of without prompting Fred Rogers had taken to signing the letters, I'm proud of you. He sensed that there was some approval that Tim had wanted from his father or from someone else that he'd never gotten. And again, talking about sort of saintly gestures, senses that he wants someone to say this

to him and he just starts doing it. And yeah, there's this, I don't know how, I don't know if, from everything I've read about Fredgers, that he went around particularly proud of himself, but he found a way to give that grace to other people, which is so beautiful. Yeah, he had, there's this beautiful quote by Fred. He said, whether we're a preschool or a young teen, a graduating college senior or a retired person, we human beings need to know that we're acceptable,

that are being alive somehow makes a difference in the lives of others. We need to know that we're worth being proud of. And of course, Fred showed that in all sorts of ways. He had a song, I'm proud of you, that he's saying all the time. But he also, I think by showing us such a diversity of humanity in the neighborhood, people

who are doing all sorts of interesting things using all sorts of their unique strengths, he showed us that we don't have to be like anybody else in order for somebody to be proud of us. Which of course, when you're a kid, and especially when you're an adolescent, that becomes really hard, you think you have to be like everybody else in order to fit in in order to be worth being proud of.

I had this tiny aha moment this past weekend to go back to that song. What do I do with the mad that I feel? Because I had a moment like that this weekend and all I wanted to do was roar. So I actually phoned to do was roar. So I actually phoned someone who worked with Fred Rogers for decades, you know, knew him inside and out. And this person in sort of counseling me through this moment said, you know, Fred used to get so mad. And I remember asking Fred one time, when you feel that madness, what is it that you do? And Fred's reply was, I think of the other person's pain. And it just stopped me in my tracks to think, because that wasn't the approach, that wasn't the moment that I was having, I wanted to roar. And it gave me

pause. And I think it gives us real insight into Fred's being, of being cognizant and noticing the things around him and wondering about the things about around him that were causing feelings or emotions or big thoughts in himself. Well, again, though, it goes to this idea, right? When you think of Fred Rogers, you would never think that that would be followed by the sentence, he used to get so mad, right? You're right. Yeah.

You think that these people are past these things or above these things, and that's really not the case. I talked about this in the discipline book too. There's a sculptor who sat with George Washington for these sort of number of hours in these sessions, and he was famous to a lot of people as sort of being a Fred Rogers character and that he was always a sort of placid

had this equanimity. But the sculptor says, oh, no, no, it's just right below the surface. He just does a really good job not doing things out of anger. And I think that's kind of the distinction that Fred Rogers is making with that song. You feel angry, you are angry, but there's a difference between feeling and angry emotion and then deciding what actions you are going to take after that or win in the thrall of that emotion. I saw another interview where Fred Rogers said, you know, what

do I do when I'm really angry? Says I hit the keys on the piano extra hard, right? And the point is he finds an outlet for that emotion that is not other people. Well, and he famously said, if it's mentionable, it's manageable, and it's whether it's mentionable to yourself or mentionable to a colleague or someone in your own family,

then you can work it through. Yes, and you know, to go back to the song, he's talking about finding these off-ramps. You're feeling the emotion, but instead of looking back in regret at what you did in the emotion, it's how do you stop yourself before you do that? And I think Fred's ability to do that

is sort of a, he's why we think of Fred the way we think of him. It's this nice guy in a sweat. There's so many examples, especially if you watch Morgan Neville's amazing documentary of, Fred took so much, we don't necessarily know this now, but Fred took so much criticism when he was alive. There were so many moments of people

that sometimes truly, trying to make him look like a fool on national television and interviews. And he keeps his composure. He remains Fred Rogers. He channels that energy back into his program. I think in the end, Fred was able to produce something of so much more lasting value than whatever, you know, that the cheap shot was going to be worth on national television. We have this immense lasting respect for Fred. And I think he knew

that by not acting out of anger, he could maintain that and he could protect his sort of his goodness. Well, this conversation for me points right back to Joanne Rogers. You know, Mrs. Rogers from herself because she reminded us how intentional and deliberate Fred was. Deliberate and intentional in his own personal life. He was deliberate and intentional in what it is that he created for his viewers. And that for me and Ryan has been our aha because we had that emotional tie growing up, watching Mr. Rogers sitting alongside a brother or sister, maybe with a mom, a dad, but go back as an adult and unpack what it is that Fred did.

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for the show, that's Stoic at ToxBase.com. So I think similar to how we see these sort of saintly poised, graceful people, some people also have that view of like creative or curious or artistic people. That there's just this thing that you are, again, as opposed to a discipline you practice, a set of traits you encourage, and that it's unattainable for a certain percentage if not the majority of people to be there. Yeah, it's interesting. Fred, the neighborhood is known for introducing kids

to some of the world's best athletes, some of the most elite artists. You know, people who are in every sense of the word true masters of their field, I think of Yo-Yo Ma and Winton Marsalis and Julia Child, whoever it happened to be. But what's interesting about when they come on the neighborhood is that so often they talk about their own struggles.

They talked about how hard it was when they first started whatever it is they got good at. You know, they talked about how they got frustrated, how they got mad, how sometimes they maybe kicked a box, how sometimes they wanted to give up, and they always talked about how eventually they found help from people they cared about most, eventually how they got better through practice and Fred celebrated that process of learning and mastery, even more than he celebrated what these folks had

achieved. He used to say that we need to show kids that life is made up of striving much more than attaining. And I think it's really valuable to show kids that process because we can sometimes, we read about this in the book. It's really easy to watch a movie as this perfect work of art and just assume that it arrived that way in the world, fully formed, right?

We don't have to see this in a photographer learning to hold a camera or that doesn't take to a single scene. And Fred, I think in a way sort of demystifies the process of creativity and shows children that there is joy in learning a skill, even if you're bad at it. There's joy in learning a sport, even if you're bad at it, even if you don't become Michael Jordan, there are things you're going to get out of trying basketball and loving basketball and being around people who love whatever it is that they do. and being around people who love whatever it is that they do. Yeah, I mean, I think even the title of your book, when you, when you wonder your learning, you know, we think of learning as this special thing, as opposed to any time you are doing X,

you are also doing Y, right? Like that, that, I think what I like about the sort of epigram that is your title is it kind of in and of itself demystifies or brings down to Earth. Like it's funny because wonder has this sense of awe, it's special, and yet even just the idea of like when you're asking questions, you're learning things. Like that it's both sort of high and low. It's not learning is not this thing you can only do in school.

It's not this special thing. It's in the heron and every single person when they go, I wonder how that works. And we're not about to sing, but that the title of our book comes from one of the lyrics of Mr. Rogers' hundreds of songs. And that phrase, there is science backing that phrase up. So there are scientists at the, I think it's University of California, Davis, who found that when you're curious,

when you wonder about something, your brain literally switches on. And they call it like a vortex. It sucks in information about what you're motivated to learn, but also everything around it. So in a very literal sense, when you wonder, you are learning. And what's so fascinating about that study is that it came out in 2014, years after Fred himself passed away, and nearly 40 years after he wrote the song.

Yeah, well, I, I, I tend to go to creativity too, although maybe this sort of undermines his argument about my argument that he makes it also accessible. Is we also just forget that he wrote all these songs, that he was this artistic master who's, he's not just this beloved personality on a television show, but the creative maestro behind like literally everything you are seeing on said show. So I don't know if his mastery is accessible or aspirational, but there is something I think missed about the fact that he's also an artist, not just like a guy reading lines from a teleprompter.

Yeah, 200 songs, a dozen operas. I mean, we sometimes think of Fred as almost a triad. You have Fred Rogers, the scientist, Fred studied with some of the top psychologists and pediatricians of his time. You have Fred Rogers, the musician. Fred was a composition major as an undergraduate. He was a great concert pianist along with his wife.

And Fred Rogers, the philosopher, the Fred Rogers who is an ordained Presbyterian minister who studied world religions. Fred brought all of this to the neighborhood and without that sort of triad, that triumvirant of different Fred's. I don't know that we'd have the neighborhood as we know it today. That's right. That's right. Yeah, he's not just a character and a suit dancing around, making kids laugh, but there is this enormous amount

of subtext and science beneath almost nothing that he's doing on the show is unintentional. Well, and we'd love to talk about the science and this goes to Fred being intentional and deliberate because it was when he was enrolled at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. And he decided he wanted to use this new, fangled technology of television, which he noticed

was attractive to kids. And he said this out loud to his teachers at the Seminary. It was those teachers that said, Fred, you better learn something about child development theory and practice then, if you're going to use this medium to somehow minister to teach to kids. And that's how Fred ended up in a place called the Arsenal Family and Children's Center here in Pittsburgh. And this Ryan is where Fred Rogers' story gets completely interesting to us as adults

looking back at how he did what he did, because he was in a place where Benjamin Spock, the pediatrician who wrote baby in childcare, happened to be. You know, that book, baby in childcare, maybe the second best book, selling book, and all of American publishing history, even surpassing the amazing Ryan Holiday. He was there with folks like Brazelton coming through. Eric Erickson was in this space.

There was Margaret McFarlane, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh who became his lifelong mentor and dear friend. And so Fred was in his own atmosphere of science, right? And he was learning from all of these incredible people. It's almost like a Mount Rushmore of 20th century child development pediatrician, psychologist psychiatrist who all just happened to be in this place at the same exact time. And he took all of that science, and he applied it to puppetry and lyrics, and a physical set itself. I mean, it's everything about Fred's program was grounded in science. Yeah, it's very beautiful too, because I think one of the things that I'm struck by It's very beautiful too because I think one of the things that I'm struck by with Fred Rogers that I think is missing in so many sort of entertainers and creators today, even when I watch what my son likes to watch on YouTube, is that it seemed that there was this profound sense of

responsibility or obligation that he had to children, but also just by nature of the platform that he eventually found himself for having, right? Like there's a number of things that he did and said that were unpopular, but he did because he thought they were right. There certainly would have been things he could have done that would have made the show much more entertaining to children, much more merchandisable, you know, any number of things that he seems to be totally disinterested in, in favor of what he thought, you know, children actually needed, or that he felt like his obligations were, you know, within the intersection of those rules that

we're talking about. Yeah, I mean, he used to talk about the weight of that. He was to talk about, you know, can you imagine what it's like to give children the best you can in a half hour of of television every day? Can you imagine how much responsibility, how much work goes into that? And then when you realize, like, to create a daily children's television on one hand, it would be a lot of work for anybody. But for somebody who's writing the scripts, doing the songs, coming up with these characters, and then on top of all that, making sure every single decision you make is grounded in the most cutting-edge science, whatever's proven to work for kids, down to things like the

color of the walls, down to things like the shoes that he puts on every single millisecond of that show, there's an intention behind it. And when you multiply that by 900-plus episodes over the course of many years, the amount of work that went into that, it's just, it's astounding that one man was able to sustain it for so long. Of course, he had a wonderful team around him, but he took that, that he took that responsibility seriously every single day. And in fact, there was, there's a great story of when he was once brought on to help another television station launch their own children's program.

And he was being his sort of Fred self, really high standards, sort of stopping production, over details that everybody else thought were maybe a little too minute. And someone said Fred, like, this is just, it's a television program for children. Who cares? And he stopped and he said, that's exactly why we care, it's a television program for children who cares. And he stopped and he said,

that's exactly why we care. This is a television program for children. He wanted to make sure they got it right. Yeah, I was just out that he was driven by his religious studies, right? I mean, he described it as a minister to children. He thought of that moment of exchange in a screen as sacred words that he used to describe the power of

what he felt. Yeah, and there's some, that seems to be missing, I feel like when things are decided by the algorithm or successes is determined by how many followers you have or whatever, there does seem to be, then I guess I feel it even with my platform is there is always this haunting sense that, not haunting sense, but there is this temptation that you will do better if you tell people

what they wanna hear as opposed to what, not even that you need, they need to hear it because that sounds like through this sort of all-knowing master, but what you think it is important to say, right? So this sort of tension between like the truth as you see it, and then what people or audiences are receptive to or respond to.

And do you have, I think, the courage and the commitment to do what you think is true or interesting or important and not what you think will play well? You know, there's an exchange around the turn of the millennium that I think captures Fred's motivation in the context of this conversation so well. It was a journalist who turned to Fred and said, Fred, what is the biggest challenge? We're like, what is it that's facing us as humanity? And you might have, I mean, let's think of the things that he might have talked about. He might have talked about violence in the world. Bless you, sir. He might have talked about climate change. He might have talked about all sorts of things. And he turned and said, try to make goodness attractive. That's the toughest

assignment you'll ever be given. Yes. Fred accepted that challenge throughout his life to make goodness attractive. And that's in the end what motivated him and motivated his attention to every detail in service to young people. So it's interesting because we admire Fred Rogers so much because he seems to be a kind of a goodness embodied and he has this massive resurgence and you know there's not a lot of Fred Rogers critics out there. And yet I think he's probably right that it's a very difficult assignment. So why is it so difficult to make goodness attractive? If that is deep down, what we end up admiring,

and yet for some reason, that through to people seems so difficult. Ryan, it's easier to tear down than it is to build. It's easier to criticize than it is to create. Yep. It's easier to hate than it is to create. Yeah. Yeah. These are the hate that it is to love. I know what you're talking about, that sort of pressure with a platform, right?

And you're, we don't pretend that ours is nearly as large as yours, but you know, you can tell when an op-ed or a book is written for Twitter, right? Just. It's just, it strikes, strikes you as inauthentic almost immediately. And yet, it's safe. It's what I think the authors think is going to play well, what they know is going to at least sort of shield them from online criticism.

And I do wonder sometimes, how would Fred operate in this climate? I have no doubt that he'd be able to do it, but the avenues for, I guess you're reaching so many more audiences now. Sure. And those audiences, they can react in ways that they couldn't in Fred's time. They don't sit down to write a thoughtful letter to the creator anymore and say it's an angry tweet.

So I do wonder how would Fred maintain those standards. I have no doubt that he'd be able to do it because Fred Rogers productions, the company that he started, they're still doing it. They're doing it with Daniel Tiger. They're doing it with Alma's way. They're doing it with these programs that I think uphold the standards that Fred created in the neighborhood. They're based in science.

They make goodness attractive, as Greg mentioned earlier. And I won't even pretend to be nearly or even remotely far long in a journey and understanding so stosism, Ryan, as you have. But I think of the tenets of stosism. You think about wisdom. You think about courage, it takes wisdom and courage to place that sense of making goodness attractive before all else. Yeah, that's remarkable courage in that. And this is I think where justice comes in, right? Because sort of why are you doing it, right? Or who are you doing it for? You know, there's obviously some great, there's obviously some unpopular views that one could advance that are based in nonsense

or based in selfishness or hatred or any of these things, right? I think also where justice comes in is sort of like, who are you for? What, why are you doing this? And there did seem to be a sort of a remarkable selflessness or purpose to Fred's work, which I think you're saying is rooted in part in his sort of religious obligations. And Ryan and I get all sorts of questions,

whether it's on Zoom or in-person keynotes or in book studies, like, what would Fred do? And we're always quick to say, like, who we couldn't possibly channel Fred. Yeah. But we do know enough to know that Fred would be putting kids first. He would be with an orientation of noticing

what's going on around us in support of our young people, the atmosphere that we're creating, and wondering whether we're serving that goodness at its core. There's no doubt about that. Yeah, I think he'd be making his art and then trying to live his ideals in his personal life also. Absolutely. And you mentioned earlier that question, who are you doing this for? There was a point where his production company made him raise his own salary because he was taking so little money from the show. They said, Fred, the IRS is never going to believe that you make such a small salary.

So, he had to, now of course, Fred came from some family wealth. That makes things easier. But it's a demonstration of the fact of who Fred was there for, what that, all that work was going toward. And it wasn't toward building a bigger platform for himself. It wasn't for self enrichment. It was for those kids, the end of those kids, who he liked exactly the way they were.

Yeah, I put a little note next to my desk here on the side, it has the four virtues on top, and then it says, am I being a good steward of stoicism? The idea of being, I've sort of found myself in this unusual unexpected circumstances where this resurgent philosophy, I get associated with and people ask me lots of questions about and when people Google, like, my stuff comes up, some of that's from the work that I've done,

some of it's random luck, it's kind of a, then part of it's just, you know, once the snowball starts going downhill, it just picks up a lot of speed. But I try to, as I try to think about the decisions that I'm making in a given moment, I try to go, you know, who is this for? Is this for me? Am I the primary beneficiary

of this decision, or is this benefiting the thing that's been quite good to me? Or is this being true to the values that I purport to believe in? Ryan, it makes me think we should have a sign that says, are we being good stewards of Fred Method? Yeah, right. We talk often about the Fred Method

and we describe it as a simple equation. Learning sciences plus whole child equals the Fred method. Now those aren't phrases obviously that were used 40 or 50 years ago. They're very contemporary understandings of the social, emotional, cognitive growth of young people combined with what we're learning about learning itself. But there's a question we're always asking ourselves, are we sturdying this in a right way? That seeding the Fred method in the world,

in ways that teachers and parents and camp counselors and librarians and others can use in their own ways, in their own settings, remarkably. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground

up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Cotopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty.

So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. Well, look, I think Fred would like, Fred would probably connect this to this sort of biblical idea that if you've been blessed, be a blessing, right? And when you are in the unusual circumstances, both of us are benefiting from the legacy that you did not create, right? I didn't come up with any of these ideas.

I'm talking about things that, you know, smarter people than me came up with a long time ago. You are able to put red Rogers and invoke everything is reputation, you know represents on your book so you've been blessed and then how do you pay that blessing forward I think is the is the kind of obligation that we all are dealing with. So let's talk about curiosity, though, which is obviously the subject of the book. How do you find that one, if curiosity is not this sort of innate natural thing. How does one cultivate it in young people? Like if one has young children, how do you encourage that kind of creativity? So in the neighborhood, it started with us, started with the adults, right? Fred, if you watch basically any episode

of Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, one of the most striking things that again, we don't necessarily remember if we're just thinking about watching Fred and our childhood, but we notice this, we went back to it as an adult, that he's always asking questions, and he's explicitly talking about how much he wonders about the world, and he's singing songs like, did you know that song? Did you know when you wonder your learning? He knew how important it was to show children that he is a learner too, that he is a lifelong learner, and that whatever they do together, wherever they go, he'll be learning alongside with them. And I think, Ryan, take this back to your work. This is something that I always admire in your writing. I see your mind changing. I see you wondering about the stories that

you're sharing and the points that you're making. I see you're sort of sharing, you're learning along with us and that makes me and I'm imagining the rest of your readers excited to learn to be on that journey with you. The neighborhood very much was a journey. Fred didn't show up as the guy who knew everything. He was the guy who took us around his neighborhood, which was staffed with all these amazing, interesting people who had all these crazy, fun stories to tell. And he was surprising himself along the way. I think that's really part of the charm of Mr. Rogers neighborhood and why so many kids are so attracted to it, even all these years later. Yeah, I wrote this thing for daily dad recently

where I was talking about how, you know, if you were to ask a kid what the best part of being in adult would be, you, most of the time, I'd get something like, well, you don't have to go to school anymore, right? Because as parents, we model this idea that education is a thing that you graduate from, and then you don't have to do anymore, right? That like, school education is this thing that kids are mercilessly and unpleasantly subjected

to. But then when you're an adult, you're in charge, and that means you won't choose to do that anymore, right? Which is really sad. And probably sends a more powerful message to our kids about how to think about school and education than any number of incentives we set up for their homework or lessons or whatever. Like we're really telling them that we think school sucks by deliberately not undergoing anything remotely like it

now that we are in control. We love to cite a quotation from Fred. The best teacher in the world is the one that he is the one who loves what he or she does and loves it right in front of you. Now, that can happen in your own kitchen, is your cooking? It can happen in your garage, is your maybe cutting wood, it can happen in all sorts of ways. What are the small and big ways that we're demonstrating to our kids that we love the thing that we're doing at that moment? And this was the genius of calling it a neighborhood, right? Right. The neighborhood, it was an

educational television program. He could have called it Mr. Rogers classroom or Mr. Rogers school, but it was a neighborhood because Fred recognized that essential fact that learning happens everywhere. He showed us that learning happens everywhere. In the neighborhood, our classroom was, you know, it was the music shop and the bakery and the museum go around and the community garden. All these places that are full of things that can truly excite kids and show them that again learning happens not only in school But also in your living room and every other place you're gonna go on your day-to-day life. I wrote a one really tactical example of this playing out. That's here. So it's the Asket basket. Ryan knows that I love this.

So in our book each each chapter is grounded in a theme, and chapter one is all about curiosity. So we ground you in the work of Fred Rogers and emotionally take you to an episode of the neighborhood and then connect it to modern learning science being published by places from MIT to Stanford to Carnegie Mellon University and beyond. But then what we really try and do is cite examples, actual things in the actual world that people are doing, and things that you or I can do. And it's not meant to be teaching or parenting for dummies,

not by any means, but it's just to give some insight about something that you can do. I love the Asquit Basket. So head of Sherpon, who worked with Fred for decades, and was there on the first day of production back in 1968, relayed an experience to me and Ryan. She'd gone to visit a classroom. She was observing what was happening in the classroom.

And as she walked in, she saw this huge, wicker basket up front and thought, well, that's curious, what's that massive wicker basket is, nothing in it, what's that for? She sat in the classroom and watched the lesson unfold. And I love to think this is a classroom of older students and not younger students, because the kids in this classroom were asking all sorts of questions. I mean, kids, we know have tons of questions, and we know from data that those questions

that get acknowledged and notice tend to decrease as kids get older. We adults need to do better job. This we've discouraged those questions. That's right. Right. But this teacher was the exact opposite. She was noticing the questions and writing sometimes it was right on point, right? Like, right when my lesson plan, let me take a moment and answer.

But more often than not, it was right out of her, over the left field wall. Like, I don't know where that came from. But what the teacher did is notice the question, acknowledged it, took time to have the student articulate the question, and then wrote it down on a piece of paper and put it in the ASCAP basket, and announced later together will wonder about the answers to your questions. Well, that's something you or I can do.

And in fact, I've started to do it with my young daughters. It's a lot, sometimes it's easy to say, hey Alexa, what's the answer? Right? Well, you know, we have a Tupperware bow in our kitchen now and we have a post it right next to it. And sometimes you say, I have no idea what the answer is, but let's forget that out later.

And we'll put it in the Asket basket. That's an example of the type of thing that we can do in a small way, but that matters in a big way to kids, that they notice that we notice their questions and that their questions are valid, that their questions are respected, and that there's going to be an opportunity in a fun, joyful way to learn. Yeah, I think about this, because I wrote a story about it for daily dad recently, the chef Kwame Awagacci, or Anwachi. He tells the story in his memoirs where he had his mom or in this very small apartment

and they smelled this smell coming from somewhere in the apartment complex and they're not sure what it is and it's kind of weird. And his mom goes, let's find out. And he's like, what are you talking about? And she takes them on every floor of their building. They finally locate the smell. They knock on the door and this small Indian woman opens it and they go, we were just smelling what you were cooking.

And the lady was like, okay, like are you about to complain? You're going to say something offensive, whatever. And his mom just says, you know, we were smelling it and we'd like to taste it. And you know, she's stunned. She lets them, she's cooking this curry and they didn't. Whatever, you think about why this guy goes on to be an award-winning chef, it's from that, right? Like, there was something that was curious or unknown or unusual and his mom showed him not just that you can

trace that back to the end, but that you should be brave enough to do so. Like, and you just think about what a message that sends to your kids, I just loved that story so much. Well, I love it because it's such a Fred method little moment, right? Yeah.

And our interests, our passions are built up in all of these sorts of moments. And there were some researchers from the University of California Berkeley who went and unpacked the lives of world premiere scientists. Like how did you become the scientist? And they ultimately identified 26 variables that really marked these individual's lives.

But in one word, describe these collection of 26 variables was the word fascination. And fascination begins in little moments like you just described in a caring adult, Dick and Shawn saying, what's that smell? Let's go explore where that comes from. Let's taste it, let's feel it. Where is that?

Right? It happens in those moments. And the compilation of thousands of little moments like that. I love it so much. We write about in the book, so Susan Engle is one of the world's leading experts on how curiosity develops in kids. And she's in a classroom, she's relating this experience, she's in a classroom, and one of the students raises her hand and says, are there any cultures in the world who don't make art?

And that is such a fascinating question, speaking of fascination. But what the teacher says is, not now, it's time for learning. And it's just like, it's this funny little example. There are so many ways that we as adults can hear these questions and miss these opportunities. And I think something we can learn from Fred even now is how to notice them and how to model them and how to show kids that every wondering they have is full of value. Not only for the question itself, but for the potential that that question suggests. Well, I think about that at bedtime, right? It's like my son was doing this yesterday.

You know, it was time for bed. I was tired, I read him one book, and then he wanted another book. And then I'm like, no, you're like, no. And they're literally asking you to do the thing that you think is most important in the whole world. And your instinct is to say no, because in your head you set some arbitrary time that people are supposed to go to bed. And you have this sense that you should, you need to go do other things.

But what is it that I need to go to? I'm going to sit on the couch and you know, check my phone. And I'm going to, there's also this part of me that's going to be sad that I'm, that misses my kids. Meanwhile I'm trying to wrap that up promptly. You know what I mean? There's this kind of weird parent. I think that the story you told is so good, right?

It's like, no, I can't teach you right now. It's time for learning. We don't notice just the preposterous contradiction or ridiculous priorities that we sort of implicitly show to our kids and the way that we respond to certain things that they're curious or interested about. And Ryan, that challenge of the bedtime routine, I mean, that doesn't just in so many ways speak to demotoration because you want to acknowledge that moment, you want to encourage that creativity.

And there's also competing right, the competing right of rhythm and routine in kids' lives. And so this is our challenge as those caring adults, whether it's as a dad or a teacher in a classroom or a librarian, is sort of allowing for all of those things to happen in a way that's balanced. I'm actually going through this now with my young kids too. I don't like video games. I don't like them. I like they're not fun for me.

I probably buy the argument that they're not the best for you. I see that it's a technology designed to sort of capture attention and exploit our vice-pog-of-all. My son is really interested in them. Like very, very, very interested in them. And he loves my andcraft and all this stuff. And there's this part of me that is sort of coming around to this idea that it really doesn't matter

what your kids are interested in, what matters is that they're interested in that thing. And it should be encouraged not just when you think it's dumb, but probably the most encouraged when you think it's dumb, because that's how I'll also learn about things, right? So there's this, I think there's also this kind of snobbishness that every generation has about certain things. Which is what's so beautiful about Fred Rogers.

I don't know when Fred Rogers was born, but I imagine for his generation, television wasn't seen as a breakthrough cultural medium of artistic excellence, right? Like it would have been down market, and yet he sees in it not just its potential, but I think what most attracts him to it is that there is a tension of young people on it,

and he sees it as a tool to do, to teach the meta skills of curiosity and virtue and all these other things. And you're absolutely right. Fred hated television when he first saw it. The first time he ever, he turned it on and he saw two people throwing pies in each other. Yeah, he saw the three stages or something. Yeah, and he said he hated to see people using technology to demean one another. So, and you can only imagine what would he think of social media, right? Or is it just...

In a sense, like, he ran into the fire. He saw accurately that this technology was going to be huge. He saw accurately that it was going to be attractive to kids, and he made it his mission to make goodness attractive, as Greg mentioned earlier. Well, and Ryan, I love your to make goodness attractive, as Greg mentioned earlier. Well, and Ryan, I love your example of video games, right? Because I think so many of us as parents struggle with that, because that's clearly something that's attractive to kids.

And it makes me think of a learning festival that happens here in Fred's hometown. The festival's called Remake Learning Days. And the whole idea is to help parents, families, and caregivers alongside the young people in their lives, experience new approaches to learning. And we know a lot of kids are lit up by gaming and technology and hands learning.

And one of the events that happens annually that I just love is a company called Shell Games. It's the largest gaming company here in Pittsburgh. It's one of the largest in the United States, created by a former Walt Disney World Imagineer who has this collection of 100, you know, plus amazing people building all sorts of educationally and entertain related games. But what they do is they they held this big open house and you can imagine like hundreds of parents show up and like my kid is fascinated by games, you know, maybe someday they'll be, they'll make video games. But they get into the space, right? And they realize, like, oh, there's an accounting department.

Oh, there are artists. Oh, there are musicians in this space. Oh, there are folks who studied the liberal arts, right? Like, you start to see these other experience gaps, and it goes back to Ryan's idea that, you know, it's the tornado, it's the vortex, because it was the gaming that prompted this experience, but then you start being fascinated by all these other people

doing these other things, and like, well, I'm interested in music, too. Well, I'm interested in money, I'm interested in whatever it might be. Right? You start with that passion and interest, and then you figure out those experiences that build out from there. Well, that's one of the things I was telling my son, you know, he likes this one channel where the guy plays Minecraft and he's very expressive and he's show whatever.

And I was like, you know, he and I have the same job. And my son was like, what are you talking about? And it's like, I'm an entrepreneur, he's an entrepreneur. I'm a creative person and artist, he's a creative person and we both have YouTube channels like people will be watching this on YouTube And it was funny. We're sort of Going back and forth about this and he didn't really get it and then you know, he starts talking to me about sponsors Because you know he watches the videos and there's ads for the stuff because this isn't PBS, you know

And I was like, oh, yeah, I have some of the same sponsors, right? And he like sort of loses his mind because he all of a sudden he's like interested You know, and I was like, oh yeah, I have some of the same sponsors, right? And he like sort of loses his mind because he all of a sudden he's like interested. And you know, this is not the means of which I was hoping to connect with my son about the ways that I monetize my podcast or whatever that we're having this weirdly capitalistic

commercial connection. But the point is connection is connection, right? And curiosity is curiosity. And people are interested in how stuff works for different reasons and different parts of it lights up different parts of their brain, as they said. And I think that's what I found so interesting about Fred Rogers and then also the book is this sort of profound non-judgmentalness about any kind of curiosity or interest or profession. He goes to the baker. How does that work? He's using a cram. Well, where do crams come from? You know, every episode is about him just trying to figure out how stuff works. And so often,

I think, or most beautifully, who are the people that make that thing work? And what is their experience in the world and what do we share with that person. And this goes back to Ryan's comment that Mr. Rogers built a neighborhood, right? It wasn't Mr. Rogers living room, it wasn't Mr. Rogers school, it was his neighborhood. And Ryan, as you just said, we went off to crayon factories and museums and gardens and restaurants and all sorts of places. And this is the challenge I, facing us as caring adults. Schools remain critically important in kids' lives. But how in our communities do we start

to think about learning as a landscape? And a landscape that's connected, school, home, internet, after school, athletic field, museums, libraries? What is it that we can do in cities across this country to build out that landscape, to build out that neighborhood? In so many ways, Fred Rodgers' work, 20 years after his passing, is more relevant now than it's ever been. Because our challenge in 2022, 23 and beyond, is to build this remarkable landscape for learning for our kids. Well, it's like your mail doesn't just show up, right? Mr. McPhilly drops it off,

and that's a person, and they have this and that and you know, you know, he just does such an interesting job thinking about the human beings behind the things that we so often take for granted in life. It's cool that you brought that up, Brian, because you know when people talk about those segments, we often hear, oh, the time we went to the spoon factory, or the time we saw how crans get made. And Fred was adamant. Those segments were called how people make crans. How people make spoons. In fact, right here in Pittsburgh at the Children's Museum, Fred helped design an exhibit based on those segments. And it's called how people make things. And it's for that exact reason. He wanted to show kids that, again, things don't just arrive in the world. If you want to see how a spoon gets made,

that spoon began as an idea in a human being's head. You too can have an idea. And with enough practice and enough training and enough support from caring adults, you too can create a beautiful spoon or a beautiful new color of crayon. It is something that is within the realm of possibility. You have agency as a creative person.

And he wanted to celebrate workers. He wanted to show kids that like there are people out there who make the world work, and they deserve all the respect and kindness and generosity in the world. That's beautifully said. I would just bring back my only criticism of Mr. Rogers is that he didn't often enough turn the camera on himself to explain how he did all this stuff, which just felt like it appeared seamlessly

and fully formed into the world as opposed to being a factory of ideas and human beings and all of that. There is one episode where he does that. The camera cuts away and it shows you the set and you see the cameraman pushing things around. You see the people building props coming in. And I agree, if you missed that one out of 900, you would actually walk away with that impression

that Mr. Rogers' neighbor is just this magical place that appeared, but it's right down the street from our Greg and I are sitting now. It's a WPED, It's still almost fully intact. You can go in there today. And it's a good feeling to know that the people who helped Fred create that place are not only still with us, but they're out doing amazing work in their own right

and carrying on Fred's legacy. And those are the people that I hope we've spotlighted and done justice to in our book. And Bob, did, the book is fantastic and I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for saying that. Thank you. It means so much and maybe it's our small little effort to turn that camera on Fred. Yes. Help us all understand and unpack what it is that he did and how he did it and how in our

own ways, in our own places and our own neighborhoods we can do it to. I think you did a great job and thank you both so much for giving me some time today. What a honor. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoke Store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend.

The app goes the way. You go as the enemy, still in this is the key, the leatherbound edition of the Daily Stoke. We have them all in the Daily Stoke Store, which you can check out at store.dailystoke.com. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.