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  • Hi, I'm John Green, welcome to my neighborhood. This is mental_floss and

  • today we're going to talk about Mr. Rogers, with whom I have a lot in common.

  • By the way, thanks to copyright laws, that's the only picture of Mr. Rogers

  • we can afford so you'll be seeing a lot of it today. But yes, Fred Rogers and I

  • have many similarities. We both considered becoming ministers,

  • he actually did,

  • both happily married to women named sara(h), and we both make stuff for young people.

  • ...Although I don't think that his work has been banned from several dozen

  • high schools in Tennessee.

  • Mr. Rogers was an Ivy League dropout. He completed his freshman year at Dartmouth

  • and then transferred to Rollins College so he could get a degree in music.

  • And he was an excellent piano player, not only did he graduate from Rollins

  • "Magna cum laude," but he wrote all of the songs on the show, as well as more than 200

  • other songs and

  • several kids operas including one called "All in the Laundry." Mr. Rogers

  • decided to get into TV because when he sought for the first time he,

  • "hated it so." When he turned on a set all he saw was angry people

  • throwing pies in each other's faces

  • and he vowed to use the medium to make the world a better place. Over the years,

  • he talked to kids about their feelings, covering topics as varied as why kids

  • shouldn't be afraid of haircut, or the bathroom drain (because you won't fit) to

  • bigger issues like divorce and war. In the opening sequence of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood,

  • the stoplight is always on yellow. That's a reminder to kids

  • and parents to slow down a little. Also, Mr. Rogers wasn't afraid of dead air time,

  • unlike me: Once he invited a marine biologist and explorer onto his program

  • to put a microphone into his fish tank, because he wanted to show the kids at

  • home

  • that fish make sounds when they eat.

  • However, while taping the segment, the fish weren't hungry

  • so the marine biologist started trying to egg the fish on, saying "C'mon," "It's Chowtime," "Dinnerbell."

  • But Mr. Rogers just waited quietly. The crew thought he'd want to retape it,

  • but Mr. Rogers just kept it...to show kids the importance of being patient.

  • Fred Rogers was a perfectionist and so he disliked ad libbing.

  • He felt that he owed it to children to make sure

  • that every word on his show was thought out. But here at mental_floss we love ad libbing

  • because it's much less work. In a Yale psychology study, when Sesame Street and

  • Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood went "head to head," kids who watched Mr. Rogers not

  • only remembered more of the story lines but their, "Tolerance of delay," a

  • fancy term for their ability to wait for promised treats or adult attention,

  • was considerably higher. Mr. Rogers was also beloved by Koko the Gorilla, you know

  • Koko the Stanford educated Gorilla who can speak about 1000 of

  • American Sign Language, she watched The Neighborhood, and when Mr. Rogers made a

  • trip to meet her she not only

  • embraced him but she did what she'd always see him do on screen:

  • She proceeded to take his shoes off. Those shoes were store bought, by the way,

  • but every one of the cardigans Mr. Rogers wore on his show

  • was knit by his mother. Today one of them resides in the Smithsonian--a red one.

  • Mr. Rogers chose to donate that sweater because the cameras at his

  • studio didn't pick up the color very well. Mr. Rogers could start to feel

  • anxious and overwhelmed, and when he did, he liked to play the chords to the show's

  • theme song on the piano on set in order to calm himself. The other way you could

  • tell he was exasperated? If he said the word, "mercy." Mostly, he said it when he got

  • to his desk in the morning, and the

  • mountains of fanmail were a little bit too tall. But, "mercy" was about the

  • strongest word in his vocabulary. And yes, Mr. Rogers responded to every single

  • piece of fan mail. He had the same routine every morning: wake up at 5:00AM.

  • Pray for a few hours for all of his friends and family,

  • study, write,

  • make calls, reach out to every single fan who took the time to write him,

  • go for a morning swim,

  • get on a scale,

  • then start the day. My morning routine is a bit less ambitious than that, Mr. Rogers,

  • I thought you were supposed to make me feel good about myself!

  • You just made me feel terrible! But speaking of that daily weigh-in, Mr. Rogers watched his weight

  • very closely. And he'd like to weigh exactly 143 lbs (65 kg).

  • By the way, he didn't drink smoke or eat the flesh of any animal. NATCH.

  • Why did mister rogers like the number 1-4-3 so much?

  • Because it takes 1 letter to say "I". 4 letters to say, "love."

  • And 3 letters to say, "you" (Jean Luc Picard).

  • Now it starts to get a little weird. So, journalists had a

  • tough time covering Mr. Rogers because he'd often befriend them,

  • ask them tons of questions, take pictures of them, compile an album for them at

  • the end of their time together, and then

  • call them afterwards to check in on them and hear about their families.

  • He genuinely loved hearing the life stories of other people. And it wasn't

  • just reporters. Once, on a fancy trip up to a PBS

  • executives house, he heard the limo driver was gonna have to wait

  • outside for two hours, so Mr. Rogers insisted that the driver come in and

  • join them. Then on the way back, Rogers sat up front,

  • and when he learned that they were passing the drivers house on the way,

  • he asked if they could stop in to meet the family. And according to the driver,

  • it was one of the best nights of his life. The house lit up when Rogers arrived.

  • He played jazz piano and bantered with them late into the night. Okay so thieves,

  • Smithsonian curators, reporters, limo drivers, kids, all these people loved

  • Mr. Rogers, but someone has to hate him, right?

  • Well, LSU professor Don Chance certainly doesn't love his legacy: He believed that

  • Mr. Rogers created a, "culture of excessive doting" which resulted in

  • generations of lazy,

  • entitled, college students...

  • ...and that makes sense, because generally the deterioration of culture can be traced

  • back to a single public television program... Other curious theories about

  • Mr. Rogers that are all over the Internet:

  • That he served in the army and was a sniper in Vietnam; that he served in the

  • army and was a sniper in Korea; that he only wore sweaters to cover up the

  • tattoos on his arms.

  • These are all untrue.

  • He was never in the army, he never shot anyone, (and) he had no tattoos. One other rumor

  • we'd like to quash? That he used to chase kids off his porch

  • on Halloween. That's crazy! In fact, his house was known for being one of those

  • generous homes that give out

  • full-size candy bars... because of course it was! In fact, for all the myths that

  • people want to create about him, Mr. Rogers seems to have been almost exactly

  • the same person "offscreen," as he was, "onscreen." As an ordained presbyterian

  • minister and

  • man of tremendous faith,

  • Mr. Rogers preached tolerance first.

  • He never engaged in the culture wars, all he would ever say is, "God loves you

  • just the way you are." He was also kind of a superhero, like when the government

  • wanted to cut public television funds in 1969, the then relatively

  • unknown Mr. Rogers went to Washington and almost like straight out of a Capra

  • film, his testimony on how TV had the potential to give kids

  • hope and create more productive citizens

  • was so passionate and convincing, that even the most gruff politicians were

  • charmed...and instead of cutting the budget, funding for public TV

  • jumped from $9M to $22M. Years later,

  • Mr. Rogers also swayed the Supreme Court to allow VCRs to record TV shows

  • from home. It was a cantankerous debate at the time, but his argument was

  • that recording a program like his allowed working parents to sit down with their

  • children

  • and watch shows as a family. Plus it allowed them to watch Captain Stubing on The Love Boat

  • anytime they wanted, without having to stay up till 8:30PM. He was

  • also heavily parodied, but most of the people who made fun of him, loved him.

  • Johnny Carson hoped his send up of The Neighborhood would make

  • Mr. Rogers more famous,

  • and the first time Eddie Murphy met Mr. Rogers, he couldn't stop himself

  • from giving the guy a big hug. Alright, we're running out of time so lets speed this up.

  • Mr. Rogers was color blind. I mean that figuratively, his parents took in

  • African American foster children, and he loved people of all backgrounds equally,

  • but also literally.

  • Michael Keaton got his start on the show: He was a puppeteer and worked trolley.

  • Mr. Rogers once made a guest appearance on Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman

  • as a pastor's mentor,

  • and many of the characters on his show took their names from his family. Like,

  • Mr. McFeely was his grandfather's name, Queen Sara is named for his wife.

  • And lastly we return to the Salon so I can tell you probably my favorite story

  • about Mr. Rogers: that he could make a whole NYC subway car full of

  • strangers sing. He was rushing to a meeting and there were no cabs available

  • so Mr. Rogers jumped on the subway. The car was full of people, Rogers

  • assumed that he wouldn't be noticed, but he quickly was of course,

  • and then people burst into song, chanting "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood"

  • Thanks for watching mental_floss, which is made with the help

  • of all of these lovely people and remember that you make every day

  • special just by being you. If you have a fascinating question, you've always wanted the

  • answer to, submit in comments and we'll try to start answering them here at the

  • end of the video April.

  • In the meantime, DFTBA!

Hi, I'm John Green, welcome to my neighborhood. This is mental_floss and

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