So given that, what do you think he would have said after the murder of George Floyd or after, for instance, the racial profiling that was happening in Minneapolis and we're hearing children talk about this in their classrooms or in their homes today? What do you think he would have encouraged parents and caregivers to say?

We can't know exactly, of course, what Fred Rogers would say about something that has happened since he's been gone.

But I want to like give some honor to that question for a minute, because I think the reason that we ask that question is because we want to have some sort of answer to how do we do this? How do we manage this? And we'd like to be able to ask somebody that we really trust and who he has.

seen can do this and can do this really well.

This being the really, really hard work of talking honestly with children about things that are terrible and are not right.

And so, of course, there's this pull to say like, well, what would Mr. Rogers do? It would be so great to be able to have that answer, right? What we do know is what he did do in instances like this in 1981.

He said, children are seeing and hearing about this in the news.

Talk to me a little bit about who are these helpers today?

What attracted you? What is the mission of the institute?

Well, so the Fred Rogers Institute carries forward Fred's legacy by focusing on caring adults.

So we are-- While Productions is still creating children's media, the institute is focused on supporting educators and parents and other professionals who are doing work with and for young children and older children.

Um, so we have a lot of different professional learning and, and resources that we offer and community building that we do to support people who are the helpers in children's lives, and that's, that's what attracted me.

I, I started there eight years ago, have been in this role for two years, and it's been, um, a dream of a job.

I get to work a- inside the Fred Rogers Archive.

Um, we have countless, um, tens of thousands of items from his life and work that he, he saved.

That says a lot about Fred.