Author: Motley Fool Staff / Source: The Motley Fool
Fred Rogers taught millions about love, kindness, and self-acceptance on his long-running show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He also had a brief brush with the Fool!
In this bonus episode of Rule Breaker Investing, we play back a 2002 interview between Fred Rogers and the brothers Gardner on The Motley Fool Radio Show. Mister Rogers shares how the Neighborhood got its start, his opinion on kids these days, advice for teaching your children about money, how growing up during the Depression shaped his attitude toward thrift, his best and worst investments over the years, what manages to stoke his ire, and so much more.
And, if you have the time and access, be sure to catch Won’t You Be My Neighbor, the Fred Rogers biopic that just dropped this weekend.A full transcript follows the video.
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This video was recorded on June 9, 2018.
David Gardner: Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing! Thanks for joining me for this weekend extra. It’s a really special extra. It lives on in my mind. As I talked about this with my producer, Rick Engdahl, and my longtime compatriot, Mac Greer, we thought, we should definitely air our interview with Fred Rogers from many years ago because of this weekend — Fred Rogers’ documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, is now out in theater. So, yeah, we’re going to promote it a little bit and get you out there. In fact, by the time this airs, I’ve already seen it, because I went to it Friday night. I bet I loved it. So, I definitely wanted to have my friend Mac Greer in. Mac, first of all, hey!
Mac Greer: David, good to see you!
Gardner: Happy weekend!
Greer: Happy weekend! Happy weekend for me, too! I think we’re probably going on Saturday to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor.
Gardner: OK. We’re going to the AMC Shirlington, which is not the biggest theater here in Washington. I don’t think it’s in a huge release, maybe not making all of the IMAX screens out there. But, I hope it’ll do good sales.
Greer: I think it will. The preview looks awesome. Fast-paced, not anything like the actual Mister Rogers’ real show. But that’s OK.
Gardner: Mac, thinking back in the day, you had many roles at The Motley Fool. One of them was helping us book guests like Fred Rogers. Do you remember dialing him up and trying to get him on The Motley Fool Radio Show?
Greer: I do. This may have been my high-water mark. This is back in 2002. If you’re of a certain age, then you look at Mister Rogers, he’s iconic. I think he was a saint in every way. I watched his show as a young lad in the late 60s, I started watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Sesame Street, that was my one-two punch.
Gardner: So did I.
Greer: Pretty strong.
Gardner: Did you ever watch The Electric Company coming on a little later?
Greer: I did. I did like The Electric Company. That was almost a little too edgy for me. I liked the slower pace of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. I don’t know what that says about me.
Gardner: While you don’t have a Mister Rogers’ sweater on right now, Mac —
Greer: I don’t.
Gardner: — it’s almost like you could have. You’re accoutered often in a way that, you would not look out of place in a Mister Rogers’ sweater here in this office.
Greer: I think that’s a compliment? I’m not quite sure. I’m not quite sure how to receive that. But, yeah, he was a hero of mine. And we had a colleague at the time, Carol Feld, who had a connection to Mister Rogers. He was based in Pittsburgh. So, she said, “Call this guy, David Newell, see if you can get Fred Rogers on the show.
”Over the course of months, we tried to get Mister Rogers to come on the show. Finally, he did come on our show. This is back in November of 2002. And I’m talking to David Newell on the phone, and we’re finalizing the deal. He finally says, at the end of this conversation, “And maybe sometime, you’ll want to have me on the show.” And I’m like, “Because we’re going to do a special on David Newell? That makes no sense to me.” And then he says, “I’m Mr. McFeely.”
Gardner: Oh my! Wow! Jaw-dropper.
Greer: Jaw-dropper! If you watch Mr. Rogers, Mr. McFeely, he was the mailman! And I’m like, “I am so sorry, Mr. McFeely, for not paying you the proper respect.” I don’t think we ever actually had him on the show.
Gardner: I was going to say, I think history will show that we never did have Mr. David Newell on — who I believe is still living. Unfortunately, Fred Rogers is no longer with us. But, I think maybe there’s a little bit of an IOU that you want to close the loop on at some point, before the summer’s out.
Greer: I think so. There you go.
Gardner: Well, without further ado, Mac, I think we should probably roll it. This is about a 15-minute interview or so. It includes my brother Tom and me interviewing Fred Rogers. He was a delight. I hope, if you were a Mister Rogers fan, as Mac Greer and D. Gardner were back in the day, I hope this will give you the warm fuzzies as you hear Fred’s brush with The Motley Fool.
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D. Gardner: Two words sum up our next guest: Mister Rogers. For 33 years, Fred Rogers entertained and educated millions of us as host of the television show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He’s the recipient of numerous honors and awards and is the author of numerous books, including his most recent, the Mister Rogers’ Parenting Book. We’re truly honored to have him join us, from NPR member station WQED in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Tom Gardner: Mister Rogers, welcome to The Motley Fool Radio Show!
Fred Rogers: Thank you, brothers Gardner!
T. Gardner: We have to ask: kids these days, what do you think?
Rogers: I think that the outsides have changed a lot, particularly louder and faster, but the insides of us don’t change. Human beings, no matter what our age, want to know that we are lovable and capable of loving.
D. Gardner: So, really, when you step away from it, do you think of kids today as more similar or more different than, let’s say, the 1950s and 60s?
Rogers: More similar.
D. Gardner: For the very reason you —
Rogers: Well, I look on the insides of people, and always have. I think that it’s far more important to think about what’s not so visible in life. This is a money program, you said, so these views may not be what you’re looking for, but they’re my views.
D. Gardner: Well, let me say that money, we view as just a medium. It is synonymous with opportunity for us. In the end, it’s the decisions that you make.
Let me ask, Fred Rogers, when did you first come up with the idea for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood?
Rogers: Well, it wasn’t my idea. As a matter of fact, I went to Toronto to do a program, thinking that I was going to go and do puppets and music, as I had always done here. And Dr. Frederick Rainsbury said to me, “You know, I’ve seen you talk with children. I’d like to translate that to the screen, so, let’s just do that and call it Mister Rogers.” Well … [laughs] that was quite a switch for me. I had never been on the screen before. But, you know, I love children, and I trust that that comes through.
T. Gardner: When did the first program air, and when did you first realize that Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was going to be a national success?
Rogers: Oh, it aired in the early 60s. And I think that, the time that I heard a little girl in a store saying to her dad, “Meow meow have meow please,” [laughs] I think that’s when I knew that some people were watching. Do you know Henrietta Pussycat? She’d be glad to talk with you. “Meow meow, money talk, meow.” No, no, Henrietta.
“It’s a great pleasure to be with you, brothers Gardner, Tom and David. Incidentally, that thing that Mister Rogers said earlier on, foolery does walk the orb like the sun, you know that one?”
D. Gardner: Yes, we do well.
Rogers: “Well, now, is it tomfoolery or davidfoolery?”
T. Gardner: It’s a little bit of both, although, tomfoolishness being a word in Webster’s, I’ll take credit for it.
Did you ever think of your work as a business? Was this a career for you, something that you loved to do that you didn’t think of as a career, or both?
Rogers: Oh, I think it’s always been a ministry for me. I felt that what people really want is to be in touch with somebody who cares about them and wants to appreciate them. Through the neighborhood, we’ve been able to do that a lot. We have wonderful guests. Those people who come to offer their own talents, it seems to me to be a great thing to do.
T. Gardner: Let’s talk about your new book, The Mister Rogers’ Parenting Book. What one or two tips can you give to my brother, who I think, overall, is doing a very good job with his three kids, but self-improvement is an ongoing process.
Rogers: I think one of the best things that we can do as parents is to remember what it was like to be a child. Get to know who the children are. I saw a wonderful list today about adults in relationship with kids. There were 150 things, things like “be yourself,” “listen to their stories,” “feed them when they’re hungry,” “call them to say hello,” “hold hands during a walk,” things like that, you know? Just, show them that you are invested in them, and boy, they will bloom. Build something together. Ask them to help you. Introduce them to people of excellence. Tell them what…
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