- That's Mr. Rogers. - Who is that?
- Watch.
- ♪ Isn't it for me? Isn't it the same? ♪
♪ (playful intro) ♪
- (narrator) A television program for children made its
unauspicious debut on station...
- Remember when we made you watch this every day with us?
- I remember.
- (narrator) Its host, Fred Rogers. - Dad, do you know what this is?
- That is Mr. Rogers. I grew up watching that show.
- (girl) I wanna tell you something.
- (Rogers) What would you like to tell me?
- (girl) I like you. - That's so sweet.
- (woman) Low production values. - That's Mr. Rogers.
- Who is that? - Watch.
- (Rogers) Hello. I've always felt that
I didn't need to put on a funny hat or jump through
the hoop to have a relationship with a child.
- You know, this show actually started in the '60s.
- What, really?
- (man) He was always trying to get a message across
in every show. A week on death.
- (puppet) What does assassination mean?
- He teaches children a lot of different things.
- He always opens the book for people to ask questions
about things that aren't usually spoken of
in the household.
- (man) They didn't want black people to come and swim
in their swimming pools.
- One thing, why wouldn't they let African Americans
swim in their swimming pool? - Well, a long time ago,
people had different opinions and those people
didn't think that people of certain colors or
different nationalities should mix with each other,
but Mr. Rogers, he didn't like those bullies.
He stood up to those bullies. - Wow.
- So, this scene is more so about racism.
- It was illegal to put your foot in a pool?
- Yeah, so he's-- basically, it was illegal
for them to be in the same pool.
He's making a statement pretty much saying,
"That's ridiculous. We're all friends.
Why can't we swim together?"
- (Rogers) Love is at the root of everything.
All learning, all relationships. Love or the lack of it.
- Oh, this is when it gets real.
- (Rogers) Children have very deep feelings.
- Aw.
- (Rogers) Won't you be my neighbor?
- Do you know who that is?
It's Daniel Tiger.
- It started off, pretty much, children's television
educational TV for a lot of kids.
- (Rogers) The greatest thing that we can do
is to help somebody know that they're loved.
- Aw.
- (Rogers) And capable of loving.
- I'm speechless.
- ♪ Won't you be my neighbor? ♪
- Won't you be my neighbor. - Yep, that's the song.
Won't You Be My Neighbor. That was it.
- Wait, that's from-- isn't that from when
I was five, I remember watching Daniel Tiger.
- Just wanted to include everybody, which was really good
because at that time, when it first came out,
it wasn't inclusive like that.
- I don't think he's ever seen Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.
- Yeah, I have. - Oh, you have?
- I've seen it on YouTube everywhere.
- When I was a little girl, we didn't have a lot of shows.
We didn't have YouTube. - What?
- And every afternoon after school, Mr. Rogers came on.
Do you know who Daniel Tiger is?
That came from Mr. Rogers. - What?
- Yeah. - I learned how to button
from that guy. - I know you did.
- (Mr. Rogers) The truth is inside of us
and it's wonderful when we have the courage to tell it.
- I've seen this episode. - You have?
- Yeah.
- Always gotta speak the truth, right?
- I guess.
- ♪ What if I were very very sad ♪
♪ And all I did was smile? ♪ - Aw.
Oh, that smile is scary.
- ♪ All I did was smile ♪ - And all I did was smile.
- Yeah, that's crazy, right? - Yeah.
- ♪ What might become of my sadness? ♪
- He's telling us to express your feelings.
- Back then, when he would sing, I didn't know any better,
I would think, "Oh my God. This is so corny."
But now looking back as an adult,
there was a message in every of the songs he would sing.
- ♪ I think I'd learn a lot that's real about freedom ♪
- Smart man. - There should be more shows
like this now.
- Sometimes, when I get sad I don't wanna say it.
- But don't you feel better after we talk about it?
If we talk about it. - I don't like when
I try to hide it, and then I really want
to say it, but it feels-- I just can't.
- Well, you gotta let that stuff out, Jordan.
There's no reason to keep it inside.
- That song was about telling the truth.
How important is it to tell the truth?
- Very important. - Have you ever told
a lie before? - This is Kids React.
A lot of people are gonna watch this.
- (Rogers) This is my friend Jeff Erlanger
and I asked him if he would come.
- Does he remind you of some of the kids at your school?
How some of them are a little different?
- No.
- (Rogers) And I wanted you to see his electric wheelchair.
- That's a really cool wheelchair.
- (Rogers) Do you know that song that I sometimes sing
called "It's You I Like?" - (Jeff) Uh huh.
- It's sweet.
- (Rogers) I'd like to sing that to you and with you.
- (Jeff) Okay, sure. - (both) Aw.
- ♪ It's you I like ♪ - I forgot about the songs.
- ♪ The way you are right now ♪
- He would bring kids on to show differences
and to tell people it was okay to be different.
- It's okay to have to be different if you're handicapped.
You're a person. You're a human being.
- ♪ And when you're feeling blue ♪
- It makes you feel good when they sing, huh?
- Mm hm. - Yeah.
- ♪ You yourself, it's you ♪
- That time frame, they didn't really have
handicapped people in shows. He believes that you
should have friends of all aspects.
- Even though you're different, there's things
you can find about someone that make them cool
and unique and special.
- (Rogers) There must be times when you do feel blue.
I'm not feeling blue right now, though.
- (Jeff) Me neither. - That's a nice clip,
'cause it's showing you even people who are
injured or need special needs are the same as you
and they are not different. - Yeah.
- This episode would have been very helpful
for Jordan when she was younger,
because her grandfather's in a wheelchair
and she was deathly afraid of the chair.
It'd be good to see more of that on screen.
- Do you remember about the boy at the gym
that you used to play with? - Yeah.
- And you had questions about his disability.
- He's one of my friends and he's not really
that different from everyone else.
- That's why it makes me so emotional to see
just from my time era as a child to now
how different things were and Mr. Rogers was at
the forefront of everything.
- (Rogers) When I was very young, I had a dog that I loved very much.
- Was this the one about death? Yeah, I've seen this one as well.
- (Rogers) Her name was Mitsy. - This is the one we watched,
remember?
- (Rogers) When she got to be old, and she died.
- (both) Ouch. - Max just lost his dog.
- (Rogers) I really missed her when she died.
- Kinda blurry. - Oh, it's old.
- ♪ Sometimes people get sad ♪ - What do you know about death?
- That it's very sad. - Yeah.
- ♪ But the very same people who are sad ♪
- Basically, what he's saying is that everything dies
and everything-- it's just a evolution.
- It's just the circle of life. - Right.
Like when grandpa passed away.
- If something or somebody dies that's close to you,
it's okay to be sad, because it's part of life
and we've taught you that as well.
- ♪ Isn't it for me? Isn't it the same for you? ♪
-Aw. Are you okay, buddy?
Mr. Rogers addressed sad things.
- When I was a little girl and something would happen
and someone would die people didn't really talk about it.
People didn't share their emotions in the same way
that they do now and so Mr. Rogers was very
important in opening doors for that.
- All of these topics, death, questions about
things in life, it's like, he's asked those questions
to us before and I know as a child, it was something
that we never spoke about, but Mr. Rogers explained it to us.
- Are you all right? - Yeah.
- (FBE) So, do you know who the host was
from all these clips? - No.
- She hasn't seen any of the episodes.
I feel like we should watch more of them,
'cause they're-- - No.
- Come on, man. - I don't like--
- There's important stuff in there.
- Mr. Rogers. - What's his first name?
- Roger? - (laughs)
- It touches on so many topics that we deal with
as parents. Even though Mr. Rogers
isn't around now, and isn't playing on TV now,
he still has an impact on this generation.
- It really molded who I was as a kid.
And I would really be curious what he would think of today.
- (FBE) So, do you think that there is a show
like this on TV today that talks about these issues
for you to learn? - The only thing I can
think about is Daniel Tiger. Honestly, nothing on
Disney Channel.
- I kind of watched Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood,
which was basically the same thing,
so technically, I already did watch this.
- Sesame Street. If they played Sesame Street
and Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, I think kids would watch
both of them.
- They're shows that-- it'll touch on little things,
but I don't think it was anything as significant
as what Mr. Rogers was doing.
- We live in the YouTube generation.
- YouTube. - Most of the educational stuff
was when she was littler and now it's,
I hate to say it, it's--
we could do better.
- (FBE) So finally, what was this experience
like for you both reacting to Mr. Rogers
here together. - It was definitely a new
experience. Totally emotional.
- I did not expect this. - I did not expect this either.
- I think it was fun because of the fact
that she actually thinks a little bit more deeper
than what I expected.
- I thought, "How cool." This is something that's
part of my childhood. My little feisty one
over here gets to see it. We like hanging out together,
so it's always fun.
- I like it. Any time I can give her
a little glimpse of things that I grew up with.
Things that I did with my grandparents or my parents.
It's nice.
- I didn't even know who Mr. Rogers was
before this day, so I think I learned some new people
and new things. - You would like to share
your whole childhood with your kids but obviously,
life is fast, busy and we can't sit down
and talk to him about everything.
Mr. Rogers was a revolutionary educational person
that taught a lot of kids a lot of things
and tough issues that were not really talked about
at home with your parents, so I'm glad that we were able
to see that together.
- Thanks for watching Kids React.
- Come say hi in the comments. - And a shoutout
to Addison Sharp.
- Subscribe for new episodes every day.
- Bye.
- Hey guys, Vartuhi here from FBE.
Thanks so much for watching this episode of Kids React.
We have almost a thousand episodes of this show
across all generations. If you wanna check them out,
there's a playlist in the description.
Bye guys.