Episode 468: Nostalgic Future

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James.

I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that all of you who are listening are able to be with us today. This is a very special episode with a couple of friends that I'm going to introduce to you right now. They have a new podcast called Nostalgic Future, and it's a great new show. On Nostalgic Future, Joe Cook and Chris Marchand explore their pop culture obsessions in an attempt to prove that the past is the only way forward. Each episode will focus on a piece of pop culture history, often something that has been influential to Joe or Chris. Joe has a history in radio, both DJing and managing at stations, and Chris is a teacher, musician, and author of a book on the history of Christmas. For several years now, they've also hosted Between the Songs podcast, which is on the music of Rich Mullins. The new podcast, among other subjects, will have conversations about Quantum Leap— yes, I love that show— Beatles music, uh, music from the '90s, and weird cartoons from the '80s. So Joe Cook and Chris Marchand, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks, Rick.

Yeah, thanks for having us on.

Well, it's so great to be able to visit with you guys, and Zoom is kind of fun because we get to see each other even though the listeners are only going to hear the audio of this. It's fun to be able to interact in this way. Uh, Joe, I feel like I've known you for a while, although today is the first time that we've actually spoken like word to word together today, which is— it's great to have you on and be able to do this. Chris, I think this is your second or third time on Voices in My Head. So I'm—

second time you were our guest on our podcast.

That's right. I got confused because I know we've talked because of things— I've been on your show because of Rich Mullins-related stuff.

So that's right. So yeah, we were, you know, we were interested, you know, in your take on, on your Mullins song on Thunder. And so that, you know, yeah, all the crossover, right? The crossover interests.

That was so much fun. And I really enjoyed listening back to our conversation too, which I don't always do when I'm on a podcast, but I had so much fun with the conversation.

So, you know, with episode I had fun, which is I kind of like making these radio specials even though I don't do radio. But so I interwove your songs in amongst your interview. So to me it was like, I love doing stuff like that. You know, I would get paid to do stuff like that in the real world. But, you know, I just, I make podcasts for fun.

Wouldn't we all? That would be, yeah, it'd be fun if we could all get paid for that. That'd be great.

So yeah.

Well, you know what, let's dive right in today. I want to make the most of the time that we have together. But let's, let's first start, just let everybody know if you could just in, you know, try to keep it to like 30 seconds to a minute each, but tell us a little bit about yourself. Let's start with Joe this morning and then we'll go into Chris and just tell our audience just a little bit about who you are.

Yeah. So as you mentioned, I worked in radio for many years. I managed, you know, the whole Rich Mullins thing that, you know, I actually lived out on the Navajo Reservation for 4 years, managed some stations out there, started Ragamuffin Archive on YouTube, gosh, like 12 years ago. I've been doing that ever since. And, uh, just have, like we're going to talk about today, just many pop culture obsessions that I just haven't been able to shake my, uh, entire life. And this, this podcast is just going to give Chris and I, uh, it's like a group therapy session for us to work through why we're so obsessed.

Awesome. And Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, I'm from Peoria, Illinois, and kind of born and raised here. Married, we have 4 kids, and, uh, I'm a pastor, so I'm an Anglican minister. I've also, like you, Rick, a music pastor, worship leader, and I currently teach online classes for a school called Scholae. And so I do a lot of teaching and yeah, working on my own music as well and, and doing podcasting, other sorts. So I just kind of— I'm also, you know, currently trying to do some writing as well. So yeah, that's all the things.

Yeah. And, and your book, by the way, is great. The one on Christmas that you wrote. And I hope—

thanks.

I hope it will gain more and more of an audience as the years go by. And as we develop a deeper understanding of the seasons of the church and how Christmas isn't just today. But anyway, I just wanted to put that plug in there. Tell us the title of your book real quick.

It's called Celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas: A Guide for Churches and Families. And so it goes through the 12 days, separates them out, you know, and gives suggestions and background history on the 12 days.

Yeah. Excellent. It's an excellent read for sure. So we wanted to make sure to put that plug in there. Well, let's, let's dive in. Oh, sorry, Joe, you wanted to say something?

Well, just that, you know, this Nostalgic Future thing, this is a big deal for me, but this is like, for Chris, this is just like one of his 700 podcasts. So there you go.

Yeah, that's right. Understood. That's right. He's very prolific. So, well, well, well, let's dive into this, this new podcast that you have. And I was able to listen to the first episode which is available now, and to marvel at both of yours' fandom for Mama Jo's Jam Band, you know, and their third album especially. That's an inside joke. You have to listen to the episode to get that reference for sure.

But it was— that was me. I came up with that, right?

Yeah, I think it was.

That was my guilt trip from my uncle, right? You know, it was like of him, like, you haven't heard of this obscure '70s band? What are you even doing with your life?

You know, kind of like, right? And that's, you know, and that's actually the purpose, the perfect way to go into it. Obviously, Mama Jo's is other than like it would be an awesome band name now because I really want somebody to have it. Like, I want it to be my backup band, like Rick Lee James and the Mama Joe's Jam Band, you know, or something. Um, but it really— the way that you introduced the episode, it was actually the perfect way to do it. You, you said, this is how we often enter into conversations about things that we like. So you took, for instance, like, let's, let's imagine that my uncle had this record, and let's just imagine it was called Mama Jo's Jam Band. And I love the way that you stated it was something like this. Instead of coming at it like, what, you haven't heard this? How dare you? You know, almost like you're less of a person because you haven't enjoyed this. And I think you had stated that you wanted to treat this podcast and the things that you talk about and the topics as though it was a way to welcome a person into it and say, let me show you something that I appreciate and has enriched my life in some way. And I hope that you know, maybe you'll like this as much as I do. And if you don't, that's fine, but let's talk about it, you know, type thing. So am I hearing you correctly? Is kind of the purpose of the show?

Yeah, I think that's really important to me, the kind of to maintain that kind of mentality, because it's interesting how the generations do that to each other. It's almost like they pit, they pit each other against each other, even the younger generation. So like with my, I have a teenager now and I'm trying to just build appreciation into him as opposed to like, well, I'm the younger generation, so you'll never get any of this stuff. It's like, hey, hold on, you know, like, you know, uh, instead it's like, how do we form a mutual appreciation? That's what I'm kind of interested in, right?

So, and Joe, yeah, go ahead. You look like you had something to say.

Yeah, well, you know, and the thing about it is it can be very tempting to fall into, you know, that mindset of his uncle. I remember, this must be 10 years now, the first time I met a teenager who had never heard of Bruce Springsteen. It was almost like a sucker punch to me, to realize it's almost like this coming to grips with your own mortality. "Oh, there are going to be people who don't know that this guy who's meant so much to me, Like, there are going to be people who never realized he existed at some point. And that's almost terrifying to me. So I think this is part of us just kind of coming to grips with, we're a couple of old guys now, and the world's changing, and how do we keep up? Do we even bother trying to keep up? You know, it's just a lot of questions to be answered.

One of the funny parts of this podcast is I came up with this idea of the title, and then a friend of mine was like, Well, that's really interesting. That's a Dua Lipa album from last year, Future Nostalgia. And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, of course it is. Yeah, Dua Lipa. Yeah. And of course I had never even heard of Dua. I've barely heard of Dua Lipa and her album, you know, it's kind of the reverse of our title, but it's just like, okay, well, and I listened to a few songs and I think she's great. I like it.

Sure.

But there you go.

I had no idea either.

It was, you know, Yeah, well, I think that's a great approach to entering into not just pop culture stuff, like I think your podcast is going to focus a lot on, but honestly probably any conversation. That's probably a good posture to enter into, you know. If we can create an atmosphere of welcome, I think that's a very holy thing and a very beautiful thing if we can find ways to do that. We often I feel like we want to be very precious about the things we love sometimes, and we can almost become prideful and even mean about it in some ways. But I remember having a similar, you know, when you were talking about people not knowing Bruce Springsteen, and this has been 15 years ago, all right? So it's not been recently, but when I was still youth pastoring, I made a Star Wars reference thinking everybody's going to know this. And those teens looked at me like, what in the world are you talking about? I've never seen Star Wars before. So even then, like, uh, you know, there's, there's just a, a way that pop culture starts to die out after a while. And when you think about it on, on a broader level, I mean, a lot of things— it's, it's interesting to me to find the things that have stood the test of time. It's, it's sometimes easier to find those things in in the church, for instance, like which hymns hung on, you know, like there was— there have been probably millions of hymns written, you know, from, from ages past, and yet there's like this select handful that everybody knows that have stuck and they're still remembered. So that's just one example of like a thing that for whatever reason has stood the test of time. So if something as big and huge as like Star Wars which seemed to us in our childhood probably the biggest thing in the world— this thing will never die— already it started to, even with all the Disney stuff and everything, already even that has started to lose, you know, some of its significance. So I, I think just even the, uh, the conversation of things like this and welcoming people into something broader is great. So I appreciate that about your podcast. Um, well, hey, let's, let's get into like a a for instance of what it might look like on your podcast. Now, you do have some funny segments already on the show, and I think it's nice that the show's already got a few elements baked into it right from the start. Um, you'll have to tell me, uh, what it's— the segment was called, I forgot. Delusions of Grandeur with O.J. Simpson. Tell me about where that came from.

That's Joe, man. Yeah, tell us about that.

I'm, uh, What can I say? I am oddly fascinated by O.J. Simpson.

He's—

I wouldn't call myself necessarily a fan, but, you know, he's maybe my favorite personality to follow on Twitter because it's just— I don't even know how to put into words what, you know, the disconnect with, you know, that is there. He says a whole lot of nothing. In his videos. And it just, to me, it's just absolutely fascinating. And there's other people like that, that Chris and I have discussed over the years. Mike Love from the Beach Boys is a guy that we're sort of fascinated with. I met Mike Love, that's a story for another day. And just people like that who kind of just see the world through a totally different lens than The rest of us. And O.J., you know, I, you know, our generation, you know, the O.J. trial was, you know, it was a, you know, just such a huge moment in our young lives. And I, so I am, you know, I've read a lot of books on it and on him. And it's just one of those things that, you know, I saw that, that clip. And I thought, oh, this has to be— I don't even know why this needs to be on the podcast. But this does. I sent it to Chris, and he's like, yeah, let's do this. Yeah.

It was, it was, it was strange the way it pulls you in when you're listening to it. And, you know, I, and I don't, I don't know OJ from his like football career. What I knew before the trial, I liked him because of the Naked Gun movies.

Me too.

Like, that was like, who is this? This guy's hilarious. And then my dad was like, oh, that's a professional football player we used to, you know. And then, and then the next generation knows him as, you know, an alleged murderer, you know. That, I mean, people have different feelings about that, but most people I think are pretty unanimous animus of like, I don't really trust this guy, you know.

Well, and that's the same for me, you know, because we were, you know, we were, you know, by the time we, you know, were old enough to know what was going on in the world, O.J. was retired from football, right? So it was Naked Gun was my introduction. I remember watching The Towering Inferno as a kid. You'd see O.J. on like, you know, on NBC, like broadcasting, and he just seemed like the nicest guy in the world. Yeah. And like, who didn't love O.J. Simpson? And then You know, like, it's hard, I think, for the younger generation to understand, like, the shift that occurred in the mid-'90s with this guy where he became, you know, famous and then overnight he was infamous. And it was just— so it's a fascinating thing. I horrified Chris a month or so ago because I've been collecting signed books and I got a signed O.J.

book. Oh, wow.

And I put it on the shelf next to Chris's book just to mess with Chris.

Yeah. Yeah.

I was like, Joe, I wouldn't— there's like the essence of O.J. in your house right now. And I don't know that I would be okay with that.

Well, you know, it is interesting because these perceptions that we have, we don't really know these people. You know, that's, that's one thing about pop culture. And as we saw in just a few weeks ago, I mean, the slap that happened on the, the Oscars, we— everybody all of a sudden went from Will Smith that super nice guy to what in the world, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock and left, you know. And I don't think any of us know quite what to think of that yet, you know. And we formulate these opinions about people based on really these illusions in some ways that they're set up. But what I thought would be kind of fun to talk about with you guys today, and I had messaged Chris about this, was let's talk about somebody that like, let's do kind of a for instance of what might happen on your show on my podcast today. And the person that I was thinking of, because I'm so involved with Mr. Rogers stuff, because I do a Twitter feed where I post quotes every day, or almost every day, from Fred Rogers. And I've read just about every book on the man that I can find. I've seen documentaries. So I'm pretty well versed. I mean, I wouldn't say I'm a historian, but I'm about as close as you can get from like a layman's perspective, just because of what he's meant to me in my life. And he seems to be somebody that everybody has a perception of as Mr. Rogers. And it's interesting to me that he is someone who off the screen unanimously— I've never heard a person that knew him, worked with him, never read like this book that goes, but here's the other side, you know. Like, he was like, from all I can tell, even more Mr. Rogers off the screen than he was on the screen. Like, which is an amazing thing. Even his kids in the documentary about it and say it's not the easiest thing to have like the second Jesus as your dad, you know, is what they say. And, and they kind of like really struggled with that, you know, became like rebellious and things. So maybe we could do like a for instance today, not knowing how versed either of you are in him, but could we try like a sample conversation of what like might happen on your show? So let's say that we brought up Mr. Rogers, okay? And go. I'm just gonna say, all right, let's pretend it's your podcast.

I think what's interesting about what a lot of our episodes will become is both Joe and I's difference of the experience. And so for me, I have a strong visceral experience of Mister Rogers. So I'm actually going to toss it to you, Joe. I'm curious, what, what was your experience? Because for me, it's like, like almost like a second father of Mister Rogers. It was that strong of an influence, which I'll talk about. But what about you?

I had a pretty deep connection too at a young age, you know, as so many did. Just to go back for a second to what Rick was saying, like, thinking about that, you know, I've thought about that a lot over the last few years. It's interesting to me because Mr. Rogers has had such a resurgence in the last few years. And when you were talking about him, I was thinking of that line from Don McLean, you know, "This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you." He ought to an otherworldly kindness that— and I've thought a lot about that. You know, I drove when the documentary came out a few years back. It was—

Won't You Be My Neighbor.

Won't You Be My Neighbor. Won't You Be My Neighbor. I get the two movie titles mixed up.

Yeah, me too. I do the same thing.

But when it came out, I was living on the reservation. So we had to drive 3 hours to go see that movie in Albuquerque. And it was— but it was important to both my wife and I because we both grew up watching him. But I think even more important than the connection to our childhood is when you look at where our world is today, where America is today, I think people are just desperate for kindness. And when you look at the kindness that he represents, he's like the very best of what we could be. And I think that there's just a desire for that. For me, as a, as a, you know, 4-year-old, I, I don't know if I ever shared this with anybody. I used to, you know, when Mr. Rogers, it was like a relationship between the child and the host. And, and he very much took that seriously. I may have had an appointment to see Fred Rogers every day. And, you know, when he would come into the house, and, you know, take off his jacket and change his shoes. You know, I would, you know, put on a sweater and I would put on sneakers and I would wear a tie during the show because I just, you know, something about, you know, him just spoke to me. And it's like, I, you know, even at that age, I wanted to be like Mr. Rogers.

Wow.

So This is where then we would start to kind of bounce back ideas back and forth with each other. And this, you know what, this actually relates to— this is going to sound weird. This relates to O.J. All right. I managed to do it. I bridged the O.J. Mr. Rogers divide.

Bring it in.

Which is this. I watched an episode last night. The one I watched, it was kind of a later episode. They made fortune cookies. Eric Carle, you know, like the Hungry Caterpillar guy, was on there. What really struck home with me was— this is almost like— this is like churchy language a little bit, but, but real presence. And I think what's magical about Mister Rogers is something that I don't fully understand, which is that through the medium of film or digital, whatever, like his real presence was with us. And I don't know what to make of that, but like, that's where the nostalgia comes in, which is like What do we even do with that feeling? The feeling that we knew Mr. Rogers, that he was present with us. All the— like, as I was watching through the episode last night, just all the little feelings. Like, as a kid, it was like, will he put his shoes on in time?

Yeah.

Like, you know, like, like, I always had that feeling. It was this beautiful, like— and then the one episode I watched, another one, he didn't put on his cardigan. And he even addressed it right away. He's like, now you might have noticed that I didn't put on my karte. And I was like, oh, ah, and it was just so interesting. It just that presence of being with him. And I'm kind of fascinated in exploring that feeling. Right. So that's one place we would take it.

Yeah. And I watched a clip too. And, you know, part of what we're, you know, our approach with this podcast is we want to talk about things that we loved when we were kids and see where do they hold up today, you know. At 41 years old, how do I feel about this thing? Chris mentioned in our first episode G.I. Joe, you know, we were both obsessed with G.I. Joe, you know, when we were 7. Will it still be good when we watch it today? Um, with Mr. Rogers, I watched a clip this morning and it was hilarious, you know, and at 4 or 5 years old it wouldn't have been funny to me. It was, but he, you know, he came home, he, in the episode I watched too, he also, he did not wear his sweater. He took out a lab coat and put on his lab coat and he started to, his plan for the day was to make rainbows and it wasn't working for him. And he was getting like kind of hacked off about it. But like, even when he gets mad, Mr. Rogers gets mad in a way, in a way healthier way than the rest of us do. It was hilarious to me because he, you know, he's like, you know, he's got to work through his anger. So he decided instead of like, you know, kicking and screaming, he was going to draw a picture because that's a healthy way to work through his anger. And he also, he also got on the phone with Mr. McFeely because Mr. McFeely knows a lot about making rainbows, which is just hilarious to even think about today. But as you know, as a kid, like, you don't think about how kind of absurd that is. And Mr. McFeely is like, well, did you Do you have your prism? Do you have— like, it's all of, like, you know, the tools for rainbow making right at his disposal, you know, and it's just, it's great.

I had the privilege to talk with David Newell, who played Mr. McFeely, not too long ago, and we recorded a conversation together. And, you know, he has really become to me sort of an ambassador as to what Fred Rogers was, and he has a way of of carrying himself in person too that is very Fred Rogers-like. And he says, "It really is just from the influence of being around him and it made me want to be that way." And if I was gonna add some things to this conversation too, let's pretend I'm your guest for the week here, even though you're on my show, let's pretend that way. I could just talk forever about the man. I mean, I just feel like there's so much. Really encountered him— like, I watched him as a child and I liked the show and all, but I first really encountered him through this book by Amy Hollingsworth called The Simple Faith of Mr. Rogers, which she was a friend of his. She worked on the show and she really— it's, it's more of a spiritual, spiritual biography than anything, and sort of like his practices, how he became so intentional. And it's interesting too because, you know, as we're talking all as guys in our early 40s right now, now, that's about when he started the show. You know, he'd done a lot of living in his life and a lot in the world, but, you know, all of this wisdom and very intentional lifestyle of the way that he practiced his routine, you know, he would get up every morning very early, somewhere like 4 o'clock, between 4 and 5, and he would start his prayer time and he would read his Bible. And he had this incredibly long list of people that he would pray for, you know. And so it would just keep growing, it seems like, and people that he would meet. And, um, and then he would go exercise. He loved to swim, so he would go swim laps before he went through every day. And, and it was very much this very intentional routine of his life. And he would weigh in, and he weighed 143, you know, 143 pounds, which in his numerology, 1 was I, 4 was love, and, and 3 was you. So it was like even his weight was supposed to say I love you, you know. And then he would walk through— this was what I picked up and didn't know from her book— that his also routine is he would walk through the studio door every day. His prayer was, Lord, let some word that is heard be thine today. Let some word that is heard be yours, you know. And, and so he wasn't preachy, but he in a sense was trying to present what does it mean to show what Jesus is teaching as far as love, love your neighbor, and how do I do that? Like, and so it was, it was very intentional. And Chris, you looked like you had something you wanted to add.

Well, so this actually leads me to a question, and I maybe I would ask this of you, Rick, that, you know, you've immersed yourself in his world so much. I was watching the show last night and I was like, this is utopian. So the, the world, the neighborhood that he creates for his show is nearly— perfect isn't the word, but it's a society. It's an inter— interconnected society where people can live together. Now, I'll say this. King Friday was given a gift in this episode and he didn't receive it worthily. And I'm trying to remember who addressed it, but he was like, oh, he did.

King Friday did.

Oh, is Mr. McFeely. He's like, he didn't really seem grateful. He was giving him fortune cookies now. So there is sin in his world, but But my point is, is then, then they can address it with each other. So I think what I'm curious, Rick, is he created such a different world than our world. You know, his world is almost the exact opposite. How do you deal with kind of like almost like it almost seems a little too perfect? What do you feel about that? Like Mr. Rogers himself was so unique, but can we live out his vision? I'm curious what you think about that.

Yeah. And because I You know, when you mentioned the, the 1-4-3 wait thing, I remember, I think it was in the documentary, they discussed that. And it's like my wife and I looked at each other because, you know, we've, we've signed, you know, letters to, or emails or whatever, to each other for 20 years, 1-4-3. And, you know, one of us will say 1-4-3 and the other one will be 1-4-3-2. And I love you, I love you too. And, and then to see like, like Mr. Rogers took that to a whole whole other level. Like, what drives somebody to, like, you know, to, to, to try to, like, love at such a level, or to have, um, every part of their being just an embodiment of love, to, to very literally to his physical weight?

Well, I, I've got thoughts, and I just want to let you and your listeners know that Zoom is telling me we have 8 minutes and 30 seconds left, so I'll try to be as concise as I can in my answer. But it would seem that way when you look at the show. It does seem almost utopian when you go into it, but you also realize that, that if you were to watch the, the show as a whole, like from beginning to end— and I want to reference everybody to the book Peaceful Neighbor by Michael Long, which is really an amazing work about the, the intentional counterculture that Mr. Rogers set up with his show and his life. But like, in the first week of his show, like, he, he dealt with things in a subversive way that you wouldn't think. But the very first week of the show was dealing with war and, and like this idea of, you know, building walls and posting guards and, you know, not listening to the people in the other kingdom. And so the, the Neighborhood of Make-Believe became this place that was kind of a little bit scary at first. The king misperceived what the neighbors were doing and started posting guards, so that— and the guards were ready with their guns to attack and stuff. And so he wasn't quite as— like, he would use the neighborhood of make-believe in places like that to take us to places that we could use our imagination to, like, envision how to deal with conflict and things. And he's doing it online like a preschool level. So it's, it's kind of interesting that he would use that method. But if you look deeply into what he's doing, there's a whole lot of truth there. So let me give you— I made a list of things that I know he dealt with over the years on his show that people probably didn't even realize he dealt with. He dealt with war and peace several times. And I apologize, by the way, if you guys hear my dogs whining in the background. They both went outside. I'll have to get them in a minute. So sorry everybody if that's happening. He also dealt with things like racial racial politics on his show. And that's— that was a huge thing during, during the time, and it still is today, obviously. But for him to like take that on in the way that he did was amazing. He dealt with economic injustice and, and hunger and the problem of people like needing food. He even did a show where like they, they were talking about peace, but he was showing like in ways that airdrops were done in other countries to bring food to people were hungry and things like that. He did shows about gender equality. He was a vegetarian, so he dealt with things like vegetarianism and caring for animals and caring for creation. So there was this ecological side. He dealt with the environment. He did these radical, like, peacemaking shows during the time of the Vietnam War. He dealt with the nuclear arms race, the Persian Gulf Gulf War. There was a War on Terror episode. I mean, there was just a ton of things that he did, and you would think, I didn't know Mr. Rogers did all that in his idyllic neighborhood. And I think what we saw in the house with him— and he did deal with conflict sometimes, but he always dealt with like, what do you do with the mad that you feel? But I think the Land of Make-Believe became more this place where he would play these scenarios out.

Out.

Like, and he would do it in a safe way with children, with puppets and things that, that look almost ridiculous and mundane, you know. Like, they're not, they're not super sophisticated in any way. And in fact, he intentionally didn't have the puppets move their mouths or anything. They literally are just like all of its imagination when it comes to that. Um, but you know, when you think about it, with 3.5 million viewers weekly, which is about what he had, he probably reached more people with his messages on nonviolence, for instance, than any other Christian activist you could ever think of. And if you look back at those shows, it's like, wow, you know, or even death. That was the one I didn't even write down. But like, for him to sit and deal with like the death of a goldfish and then talk about mortality issues with very young children in a way that still welcomes all of us in. I mean, very powerful stuff there. So with about 4 and a half minutes to go, I'm going to turn it back to you guys and let you respond.

Well, I have two things jumping off of that, which is number one, he's still fathering us today, which I just find fascinating. So all the things that you just mentioned, I'm just like, my mind is like blowing up, like even like talking about nonviolence, making peace in a way that people don't fully understand. So the fact that he's still fathering us, like that's what we would discuss on the podcast, kind of that nostalgia factor. There's the entertainment factor too, which is I'm sitting there watching fortune cookies being made. I'm like riveted. I'm like, oh my goodness, fortune cookies are amazing, you know, like, so the fact, and like the puppets, it's like, yeah, they're not very sophisticated, and yet we're sitting there watching it like, I love this, I just love it.

Yeah, well, yeah, like the crayon factory, like when he would do picture picture, I mean, things like that, it was just, it was educational. And it was still as an adult, you know, sometimes if I can't sleep and I need something to relax me, or if I had a stressful day, it's strange, I'll go to things like that just because of the calming effect. It's like, you know, it has this way of doing it. And I think he was very intentional about that. And again, it didn't happen by accident, I don't think. Everything with Fred Rogers, he was very intentional about. He was, he was kind of like the, the, the opposite of what we see in our political parties today, which is always there to inflame and make things worse. His way was to, how can we get this and, and bring us back to a place of calm and peace and kindness? So, well, hey, that was, that was a fun, uh, little jaunt into Mr. Rogers' neighborhood today. But I hope it gives people an understanding of kind of some of the ways that your show might go in future episodes. And you've already addressed some of the great topics you're going to be dealing with today. I want to let— before we run out of time here on Zoom today for this conversation, I want to let all of our listeners know, uh, that they're going to be able to find all the links to your show and, uh, several links that just has to do with you guys, um, on our webpage at voicesinmyheadpodcast.com. Or if they follow, uh, the Rick Lee James Substack page, we have a whole thing on there. So should be that even as the podcast they're listening to today hopefully the links will be in the show as they're supposed to be, and you can just with a simple click get over to their podcast and listen, because it's, it's a great start to a new episode. In the last— it looks like we have exactly 2 minutes to go. Any closing thoughts that you guys have that you want to share with my audience about your show?

Um, yeah, we just hope they'll check it out. We'd love to hear from them. They can shoot us an email, let us know what they think. It's a nostalgic magicfuturepodcast@gmail.com. Uh, you know, we, uh, we actually would love— we want to have a listener mailbag. We really want to interact with our audience. Um, check us out. We have a YouTube channel. We're starting to make some video content from the podcast. We released our, uh, we're doing a segment called the, uh, the Rabbit Hole, uh, where we kind of go into different things that maybe we're discovering even today that we kind of— new obsessions, I guess, is what I should say. And We have a video we just dropped today on one of our rabbit hole segments. Chris?

Oh no. Yeah, just, just we want to invite people into the conversation, I think. Yeah. So, you know, we want to hear from you. We can't cover everything on the podcast, but, you know, if you have opinions on some of the things we cover, that's— we want— we love that interaction with people that are listening.

And tell them the Twitter name for the podcast real quick.

Oh, sure. It's @pastfuturepod.

Alright, @pastfuturepod. So if you're a Twitter user, you can easily interact with them in that way as well. Well guys, this has been great today. Thank you so much, Joe and Chris, for being some of the voices in my head this week.

Thanks, Rick.

Thanks.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com. Where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for your concert or speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.