Twice with Mitch Albom

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I just announced all my tour dates. They just went
on sale. It's called the High and Mighty Tour. I
will be starting debuting my new material in February of
next year, so I'm coming to Washington, d c Norfolk, Virginia, Madison, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Detroit, Michigan, Cleveland, Columbus,
and Cincinnati, Ohio, Denver, Colorado, Portland, Maine, Providence, Rhode Island, Springfield, Massachusetts, Chicago,

(00:27):
of Course, Indianapolis, Indiana, Louisville, Kentucky, Albuquerque, Masa, Arizona, Kansas City, Missouri,
Saint Louis, Missouri, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Nashville, Tennessee, Charlotte, North Carolina, Durham,
North of Carolina, Saratoga, California, Monterey, California, Modesto, California, and

(00:48):
port Chester, New York, Boston, Massachusetts, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.
I will be touring from February through June. Those are
the cities that I'm in. Pre sale started last week,
so tickets are flying. I haven't added second shows yet,
but we probably will be to some of these. So
go get your tickets now if you want good seats

(01:10):
and you want to come see me perform.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I will be on the High and Mighty tour.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Hi Catherine, Hello Chelsea.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Can you hear the waves crashing?

Speaker 3 (01:20):
I sure can't.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
And You're like, hair is very beachy right now, Well,
let's look like shit.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
For the past two weeks, I've been walking around in
a bucket hat. Yeah, seriously, like one of those hats
that basically like hides your.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Head from the sun.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
But then I realize, like, I look so much better
with sun.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
I might as well just.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Get some sun and then laser it off when I
get back. But I don't really have a lot of downtime.
When I got back. I mean, I've been sleeping so
much in my Orca. I drove forty five minutes. I
was like, Okay, I've got to take dog to a
real beach because the beach in front of my house
is great, but there's no dogs allowed on it until
October thirty first.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Until October thirty first. Oh, it's like while people are swimming,
there's no dogs.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I get it.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, like what that's the day I leave.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
But so I go in the mornings and I go
at night. But I was like, oh, let me take
him to a really nice dog beach. So I drove
forty five minutes to Palma to some shithole beach where
there were dogs running and I see this big german shepherd.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
I'm like, oh, that looks scary.

Speaker 5 (02:16):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
And Doug is like, you know, he's playful. He wants
to play with everyone. He goes up and he bothers them,
like until they play with him.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
The puppy.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
And this dog was like, she said into me in Spanish,
is that immature?

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Like an older dog or a younger dog. I'm like younger.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
She's like no, no, no, And then the dog just launched,
launched onto Doug and like grabbed him. Luckily, Doug is
so furry. Yeah, and he didn't break his skin because
he was holding onto him and I was like ripping
him from It was such a dramatic scene.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Oh my god, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
It's okay. He was fine. He forgot about it.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Two seconds later we were do a different part of
the beach and he was like submerged in sand and water.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
So he has a short memory.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
But so then we get home and he's covered in
sand because he went in this really low sandy beach
and I don't want the sand in the house. Right,
So they got him a little kiddie pool to put
him in.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
He hates that. He hates being hosed.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
So I bring him upstairs to the pool pool and
there's like we have a little mini pool, as you
know upstairs in America. I bring up to the pool pool,
I put on his life preserver.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
And I just pick him up and throw him into
the pool. And it was ridiculous his reaction. I mean,
he is such a pussy.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
So and then when after I traumatize him, he comes
running to me for comfort. So I feel like like
a man who abuses his wife. Oh, I feel terrible,
or I can't take the sand.

Speaker 4 (03:31):
I'm like, Doug, you have to agree to one form
of rint sauce, right.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
The hose, the kiddie pool or the big people pool.

Speaker 4 (03:38):
And I know he's got so much hair, gets like
in all the nooks and cranies, so if you didn't
wash him off afterward, it'd be coming out for days
and days and days.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
No, I mean there's so much stand in my bed.
I've given up caring about that. I just like, take
another Xanax.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Just like a nice expoleian I suppose anyway, So that's nice.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
It's gonna be really nice being alone and not having
people here and just being with me.

Speaker 6 (03:58):
And my dog.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah, usually a bank brow.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
I've made hard boiled eggs about thirteen times. I know
how you're coming around. I've made egg whites about four times.
I've made what else?

Speaker 2 (04:11):
What else?

Speaker 6 (04:12):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (04:12):
I make yot what? I don't make yogurt, but I
mixed the yogurt. She didn't say she was going to
bring those eggs in the airplane, Catherine. Don't get ahead
of yourself.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, I did not say that. I get rid of
it than.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Exactly. Good timing, Brad and good timing. However, we have.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
A great episode this week.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
One of my favorite authors.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
He wrote The Little Liar, He wrote Tuesdays with Maury,
and he wrote my new favorite book twice Mitch Album
is here. So say hello to him.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Hi Mitch, Yeah, hello, Hi, So nice to meet you.
How are you.

Speaker 7 (04:44):
I'm fine, Thank you, my pleasure. Nice to meet you too, Nice.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
To meet you. I'm a huge Mitch Album fan.

Speaker 5 (04:50):
Huge that right?

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Oh, yes, The Little Liar is. I've given that book
to so many people. It is one of my favorite books.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
It takes such a dark subjec matter and I don't
know if this was your intention, but the way that
I read it was it was almost like a fable,
like you were talking about something that really happened, but
managed to make it more digestible, and it was beautiful
and everything. I mean, this book is so beautiful too.
This book is new, book is called Twice. It comes
out on October seventh, and this is a very interesting

(05:22):
subject matter. Mitch Album has written I think eight number
one New York Times bestsellers.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I'm right behind you. Mitch.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
By the way, I have six number one New York
Times bestsellers, but.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Mine are more memoirs, and yours.

Speaker 7 (05:33):
I'm sure you'll pass me very quickly.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
I don't know, forty two million copies. I don't think
I'm anywhere close to that.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
I mean, I have a very specific personality type and appeal,
and yours is much faster. So we're going to get
into this book. But you tend to write some like
Tuesdays with Maury, which was one of the most six
or maybe the most successful book of all time, wasn't
necessarily I mean, it was memoir ish, whereas Twice and
The Little Liar, the five people you meet and have

(06:00):
then right that book I actually haven't read yet. I'm
going to read that on my flight to New York
this week. That's one of your books that I need
to read.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
How do you decide what you're going to do?

Speaker 1 (06:08):
I mean, I know the story with Tuesdays with Maury, right,
you were kind of doing that for Maury.

Speaker 5 (06:14):
Yeah, Tuesdays with Maury was an accident. I was just
going to visit an old professor of mine who was
dying from lu Gerrig's disease. And one visit turned into
another and another, and we ended up doing kind of
a last class together and what's important in life once
you know you're going to die. But there was never
supposed to be a book. It was just a series
of visits. And then at one point during these visits,

(06:36):
he told me that his biggest fear was that when
he died, his family was going to go broke and
they were going to have to sell the house, and
you know, because they didn't have the money to pay
for his bills. So I got the idea to, you know,
try to put a book together and see if I
could raise enough money for him to pay his bills.

Speaker 7 (06:53):
And everywhere I went, everybody turned me down.

Speaker 5 (06:55):
Everybody. They said it was a stupid idea that I
was a sports writer. That I was. It would be
depressing that I didn't know how to write a book
like that, and I probably would have given up on it,
except that, you know, I was trying to do something
for somebody else, which is kind of one of the
points of the book, and so I kept pushing. I
found one publisher who was willing to do it three
weeks before Mary died, and it gave us just enough

(07:17):
money to pay his bills, and I gave more of
all the money and said, here, you don't have to
worry about when you die.

Speaker 7 (07:23):
And that was kind of for me. That was sort
of the end of the you know journey.

Speaker 5 (07:27):
You know, I'd finally kind of grown up a little
bit at age thirty seven and had done something nice
for somebody else instead of just my own career. And
I was going to go back to sports writing, and
I just wrote this very small little book that wasn't
supposed to sell. I'd printed twenty thousand total copies, I think,
for the world. Then, you know, the world had different

(07:49):
ideas and people took to that book and it grew
into something that I never could have imagined, and it
kind of pinballed my career, particularly in writing, in a
whole different direction. And so then from that point, you know,
it was well what am I going to do next?
And you know, it led to a lot of other things.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
So talk to me a little bit about the impact
of that book and about how you received all of that.

Speaker 5 (08:17):
You know, it wasn't expected, and I'd never written a
book like that, you know, I was in sports, and
so I sent it to a friend of mine, Namy Tan,
who's the writer of The Joy Luck Club, who i'd
know before that, and I said, listen, you write books
like this, I don't you know, is.

Speaker 7 (08:31):
This any good?

Speaker 5 (08:33):
And she read it and she wrote me back. She said,
all right, I'm going to tell you two things. One
good book, and I think a lot of people are
going to read it. And number two, you're about to
become everybody's rabbi. I did not know what she meant,
but I do now. And so you say, how did
I receive? You know, I mean, I went from being

(08:54):
the guy that people would stop in airports because I
was on ESPN, you know, and they would say, you know, hey,
sports guy, you know who's going to win the super
Bowl and you could just say, you know, Patriots and
get an the escalator and go up. And then all
of a sudden, I became the guy that people would say, Hey,
you know, my mother died of cancer and the last
thing we did was read Tuesdays with Maury together, and
can I talk to you about her? And can I

(09:15):
show you a picture? And you know, you can't just
go Patriots and go up the escalator. You know you
have to stop and you have to talk. And that's
been my life ever since. And I'm not complaining about it.
Quite the contrary. It's it's sensitized me in a way
to people that I never would have had otherwise. And
it's made me realize what's really going on in people's minds,

(09:36):
even if they're strangers passing you by in an airport.
And my concerns became kind of different, you know, and
my interests became different. And so when it came time
to write another book, I wasn't interested really in sports
books anymore, and I took to novel writing, mostly because
I was too scared to write anything after Tuesdays with

(09:57):
Maury and nonfiction because I thought everybody it would just keep.

Speaker 7 (10:00):
Saying, well, where's Morey. How come Mary's not in it?

Speaker 5 (10:03):
And so I said, well, I'll just go the whole
other direction and just start writing fiction. And they told
me I was an idiot for doing that, but I said, well,
that's what you told me for Tuesdays with Maury, so
you know you were right then maybe you won't be
right again. And that was the five people you Meet
in Heaven and then that kind of launched my fiction
writing career.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
Wow, who knows what other skills you have up your
sleeve that you don't even know about. I mean, you're
a sports You've been a successful sports writer, a successful
nonfiction writer, and now a successful fiction writer. I mean,
we don't even know what else you could be capable of.

Speaker 7 (10:35):
Well, who knows, probably very little.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Maybe a professional ballerina or I think it's a ballerino. Actually,
if it's a male ballerina. Okay, So five people you
meet in Heaven? How did you conceptualize that? Like, obviously
you're taking a big risk, because I in the writing world,
I understand like you, like anythink, I think professionally, once
you get put in one corner, people want to keep
you there and they want you to keep producing what

(10:58):
was the most successful. So how did you conceptualize the
five people you meet in heaven?

Speaker 7 (11:04):
Well, it's funny you asked that.

Speaker 5 (11:05):
And you know, one of the reasons I was interested
in talking to you is because I feel that you
probably have endured the same thing. You know, you've probably
been told, well, your stand up comics, so you can't
host a show, you host a show, so you can't
host a podcast. You know, you can't, you can't, you can't.
And I was certainly told that, you know, after Tuesdays

(11:26):
with Maury, which nobody wanted, then all anybody wanted was
Wednesdays with more, you know. And every time I went
into a publisher, they would say, yeah, but you know,
give us another Mory book. And I said, I don't
have any more Mory books. I said everything I had
to say, but I do have this idea for this novel.
And the idea of the novel was I wanted to
write about people who feel that they don't matter. And

(11:49):
so I came up with this idea based on an
old uncle of mine who had told me a story
about a near death experience where he had died and
he had seen all his relatives waiting for him at
the edge of it his bed before he kind of
came back into his body and lived again.

Speaker 7 (12:03):
And I always had this idea that.

Speaker 5 (12:05):
That's what happens when you die, and so I came
up with this idea that there'll be this old guy
kind of like my uncle World War two vet, who
died trying to save a little girl from an accident
at a peer where he worked an amusedment park and
a cart falls and he goes to push her out
of the way and he feels these two little hands
in his you know, her hands, and then he dies

(12:26):
and he doesn't know if he saves her or not.
And he goes to heaven and he finds out that
the first stage of heaven is you meet five people
from your life, each of whom was in your life
for some reason. Maybe you knew them, maybe you didn't
know them, maybe it was a relative, maybe it was
someone you spent two minutes with, but in some way,
they changed your life and you change their life forever.
And with each person he meets, he finds out that

(12:50):
he was very significant, you know, and that this is
something that he did that they didn't think mattered. Change
this and change that changes, and he keeps asking them, well,
what happened at the end of my life? I felt
these two little hands in my hands, you know? Did
I push the girl out of the way? Did I
save her? Did I save her? And nobody can tell
him until the end. And the last person that he
meets is a little girl who he was responsible for

(13:13):
killing and during the war, and he didn't he never
knew about it. And he says, you know, after she
tells him, andever he breaks down and she tells him.
He says to her, but did I save the little girl?
Just tell me that was my life worth something that
I did? I push her out of the way, and
he says and she says, no, you pulled her, you know.
And he says, well, no, I felt her hands and
she says, no, those were my hands. And I was

(13:36):
bringing you to heaven. And the reason that I tell
you that story is because when I went around to
different publishers to tell them the story of five people
you meet in Heaven, I went to this one place
called Hyperion, and it was the only place that was
willing to listen to me about writing a novel. Everyone
else just wanted Wednesdays with Maury. And they said, well,
we'll hear you your story. What is it?

Speaker 7 (13:58):
And I told the story and I got to that point.

Speaker 5 (14:00):
Where he says the little girl says to him, those
were my hands and I was bringing you to heaven.

Speaker 7 (14:04):
And a woman in the room burst into.

Speaker 5 (14:06):
Tears and she and she said, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
so you know, and I said, no, it's okay, it's okay.
So they said to me, we want this book. We
don't want Wednesdays with Maury. We want this book. This
is this is going to be a really good book.
So I left that meeting and I went and got
in the elevator with my literary agent and I said, okay,

(14:26):
two things. Number one, let's sign with this company because
they were willing to do a novel and they want
to do it.

Speaker 7 (14:33):
And number two, whoever that woman was, I want her
to be my editor.

Speaker 5 (14:37):
And that woman became my editor for the next four
books that I wrote. And she always joked around that
that was the luckiest cry that she ever ever had.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Sorry, Yeah, I mean Wednesdays with Maury's is such a
it's so emblematic. First of all, Mary's dead, so I
don't know what Wednesdays with Maury would look like it's
so emblematic of our like, you know, creative worlds, like
the people the decision makers in creative lands. And another
thing that in you telling us that story reminds me

(15:07):
of is my favorite quote of all time, which is,
it doesn't matter how many people say no, you just
need one person.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
All you need is one person.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
And everyone gets so fixated on the rejection in any
sort of creative endeavor, and on a larger scale, in
any endeavor. You know, people get so hung up on
the rejection, and it doesn't matter how many people don't
get you. It just matters that somebody does, and somebody
gives you the green light to go ahead with your
creative ideas. So this is another example of that being
so true. And yeah, I love that. I mean I

(15:38):
almost burst into yours.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Listen.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Now, I'm like, do I have to read the book?
But I will read the book because I just love
your writing so much. Let's talk about the Little Liar.
I'm so curious as to how you create these kinds
of ideas for the books, because your books are so disparate,
like each one is so different than the than the next,
and how does one come up with that, like the
concepts of lying and how a lie can spread and

(16:02):
change the course of history.

Speaker 5 (16:04):
Well, I think the reason that my books are different
one from the other is because I tend not to
approach writing, certainly not novels the way that most people do.
Most of my writer friends, they come up sort of
with a plot, you know, they have got an idea
that this is going to happen, or a couple characters
going to do this.

Speaker 7 (16:22):
I never do that. I always try to come up
with a.

Speaker 5 (16:24):
Theme and that I want to write about, and then
once I say, okay, I'm really interested in that theme,
then I try to create a story around that theme.
And that's probably why every story sort of comes out different.
So the five People You Mean Heaven, that the theme
was that people who don't think they matter should find
out that everybody matters. And then I created a whole
heaven and everything around that because it served the theme.

Speaker 7 (16:47):
The little Liar.

Speaker 5 (16:48):
I actually I went to a Holocaust museum in Israel
on a book tour about ten years ago and went
into this Yad vashem Is. It's the really big Holocaust
museum that they have there, and on the walls are
all these videos of people that were collected a lot
by Steven Spielberg, I think when he was making Schindler's List,

(17:11):
and they just run constantly, you know, they're always running.
It's just people recollecting different moments about the Holocaust. And
one of them I stood in front of and this woman,
it was an older woman, and she was saying, everybody
always asks me, why did we get on those trains
when they knew that where they were going to concentration
camps and we were going to be murdered. Why didn't

(17:32):
we fight back? And she said, they don't understand that
we were lied to, that they would use Jewish people
to lie to us and to tell us that we
were going to new jobs or new homes, and that's
how they got us onto the trains. And these Jewish
people they only lied to us because they were being
threatened themselves that their families would be killed if they
didn't do what they said. And I always thought, wow,

(17:54):
there's got to be some kind of story there, because
what a terrible I mean, war is awful and Holocaust
is awful, but then to make your own people lie
to their own people and leave them to their deaths
how would you live with telling that lie? But it
seems so dark to me, Telsea, you know, it's like, God,
I'm getting depressed just even thinking about that.

Speaker 7 (18:14):
Who's going to want to read that? And then I.

Speaker 5 (18:16):
About a couple of years ago, I said, what if
I told that story? Because I wanted to write something
about the truth, because I think it's pretty obvious that
in the last couple of years, truth has become a
relative term, you know, and it really does affect the world,
you know, no matter what your particular view of it is.
I mean, if you can't trust the things that you're
hearing or people that you're hearing them from, it changes everything.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
And I think you said it right there, what your
view of it is. You know, there shouldn't be different
views of the truth. The truth is the truth, but
now there are multiple there's multiverses, right.

Speaker 5 (18:51):
So I thought, what if I make it that it's
a kid instead of an adult who would know better.
What if it's a kid who's ever told a lie
before in his life and he gets tricked into telling
his own people that it's okay to get on these trains, and.

Speaker 7 (19:07):
How would he live with that?

Speaker 5 (19:08):
And that's when I knew I had a book, and
I started exploring it.

Speaker 7 (19:12):
And that's what happens to.

Speaker 5 (19:13):
Little Niko in this story that he's never told a
lie before.

Speaker 7 (19:18):
He's Greek.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
He lives in this Greek village and he's known for
just being a kid who can't tell a lie. And
the first lie that he tells is when a Nazi
tricks him into telling the people on the trains that
everything's going to be okay and get on the trains.
And he does this for three weeks until the last
day he sees his own family being put in one
of these train cars and he runs to want to

(19:41):
join them, and the Nazi doesn't let him go, and
he says, but I want to go with them. I
want to go to the new jobs and the new homes,
and the guy in the Nazi says, there are no
new homes, you stupid Jew, you know, And in that moment,
he realizes that he's told a lie, and his family
is sent away and he's left behind, and from that
point forward ever tell the truth again. He becomes this

(20:02):
pathological liar, which seems to me, Chelsea, I don't know.
That seemed to me like that would be kind of
the natural thing that would happen.

Speaker 7 (20:09):
Your mind would so explode that truth would.

Speaker 5 (20:12):
Just become almost poison because of look at what happened
with it, and he becomes this pathological liar, and that
follows him and his family and this girl who loves
him for the next thirty forty years on their different paths.
It was a really hard book to write, because you know,
every day you're immersed in I mean, you have to
write as a Nazi, you know, you know, I don't

(20:34):
ever want to imagine that I could know what's in
the head of a.

Speaker 7 (20:37):
Nazi, but I had to, and so it was exhausting.

Speaker 5 (20:41):
And when I finished it, I was proud of it,
and I was glad that I wrote. I always wanted
to write one book for Holocaust literature, you know, to
contribute to that. I think it's important that that's not forgotten.
But I didn't want to write, you know, the such
and such of Auschwitz. You know, a lot of books
have been done this similarly, and so I wanted to
come up with original idea, and I think I did.

(21:02):
And I'm very pleased and honored that you think that
that's a good book.

Speaker 7 (21:07):
It means a lot to.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Me and you fictionalize like Nazis. You fictionalized Hitler in
the book instead of calling him by his name. Why
do you do that just under the umbrella of fiction.

Speaker 5 (21:18):
No, I didn't want his name in any of my books, Okay,
so I just referred to him as as the Wolf,
which is how he referred to himself. Actually, everything in
The Little Liar is historically accurate, everything except the characters
who I invented and put in. I I researched the
hell out of that book. I went to Thessalonica and
met with a bunch of people and saw or even

(21:39):
the house that he lives in as a real address
in that city, because I just wanted it to ring
its You know, trying to make up something during the
Holocaust will never be as poignant or as moving as
basing stuff off of real things that happened, because in
that period of time, the real things that happened were
just so moving and so horrifying and so inspirational in

(22:02):
some ways. You know, even the moment where his grandfather,
all the family is in and the concentration camp in Auschwitz,
and the grandfather every night makes them all gather together
and pray and say thank you for whatever they had
during the day, And you can imagine what can people say,
How can you say thank you for anything when you're
in a concentration camp. And he makes them go around

(22:23):
everyone in the family, and one of them will say,
you know, I'm thankful that I got an extra spoonful
of soup. And one says, you know, the guard who
always beats me was off.

Speaker 7 (22:33):
Today, so I didn't get beaten.

Speaker 5 (22:34):
And one says the tooth, my rotted tooth fell out
of my mouth, and one says, I saw a bird,
you know, And just that notion of having hope even
under the most dire of circumstances. You can't make that
stuff up, you know. I read about moments like that
in listening to survivor's talk or tapes of survivors talk,

(22:55):
and just kind of created my own thing that was
parallel to theirs. But trying to create it from whole
cloth is foolish. That the stuff that happened is so
inspirational you might as well use it as your inspiration.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
And what is your process?

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Like what does it mean when you're going to sit
down and write a book, And what does that mean
to your family?

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Like are you gone.

Speaker 5 (23:16):
Yeah, it means bye bye. Yeah. My wife and all
my family kind of know when I'm in a book mode.
I kind of just walk around with a glassy expression
for the better part of eight or nine months, and
my wife has to repeat things to me many times.
But my process isn't isn't as dramatic as I think

(23:39):
people like to imagine it. I just get up in
the morning and come down here where I am in
my office and just sit down very very first thing.
I don't read anything, I don't listen to anything. I
don't turn on I don't turn on a computer or television.
I want a fresh, fresh head, you know, And I
find that I only really have that when I first

(23:59):
wake up, and I just write for the next two
and a half three hours maybe, and then that's it.
And I could sit there for another eight hours, but
nothing is nothing's going to come.

Speaker 7 (24:10):
And so I've learned that, you know, you.

Speaker 5 (24:12):
Kind of you go until your tank is empty.

Speaker 7 (24:15):
And then you come back and do it again.

Speaker 5 (24:16):
I do always try to end on a positive, like
if I'm in the middle of a good paragraph or something,
I stop myself because I find like when you wake
up in the next morning, you look forward to coming
down and working on it.

Speaker 7 (24:31):
If if you left it someplace good.

Speaker 5 (24:33):
But if you left it in the middle of a
really bad paragraph, but.

Speaker 7 (24:37):
You're going to just stay in bed.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Oh that's I love that. That's great. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
So have you ever read the book or it's not
really well, there's a book Daily Rituals. Have you ever
seen that book where it talks about writers processes.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
It's all these different famous.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Painters, sculptors, artists, writers, creators, creatives and what they do.
And it talks about the first few hours of each day.
And then it talks about how you need some physical
you need a physical break, you need some sort of exercise, food,
And then people like Hemingway, would you get shit faced
at two thirty in the afternoon come back and start

(25:11):
writing again after.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Their walk to the bar and back? But so many people.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
I mean, it's very well researched that you're the first
few hours of your day or your most creative and
where you have.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
The freshest ideas.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
But I love the idea of not looking at anything
when you sit down.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
That's fresh advice.

Speaker 5 (25:28):
I'll tell you the other really good piece of advice
I got with regard to writing came when I was
really really young and I was just starting out. It
was in New York, and I had been a musician
and I was kind of transitioning out of being a musician,
and I got a job writing for a TV shopper
magazine that they would give out in the supermarkets, but

(25:49):
they would have a feature story on the cover, which
is really embarrassing I look back on it, because I
would call people saying, Hi, I'm Mitch Album, I'm writing
for TV Shopper, and I'd like to.

Speaker 7 (26:00):
Interview I can't believe.

Speaker 8 (26:02):
And they wanted in a famous people would agree to
be interviewed to be on the TV Shopper magazine, and
one of them was this photographer whose name escapes me,
but it was kind of like Scavoolo.

Speaker 5 (26:13):
You know, he's really well known back then. And I
went and interviewed him and he said I somehow asked him,
you know, how did you get started wit your process
or something like that. He said, well, when I was
really young, there was a photographer like me, you know,
well known and everything, and I really respected him. So
I took a bunch of pictures and I sent my
best stuff and I sent it off to him and
asked if he could give me any advice.

Speaker 7 (26:34):
He said, I waited.

Speaker 5 (26:34):
I waited, and about three months later I got an
envelope back with my pictures and a note, and the
note said, it's obvious to me that you've mastered the
basics of good photography. Now surround yourself with the best music,
the best art, the best books, the best film, and
everything else will take care of itself. And that was it.

(26:57):
That was the total advice that he had, And he said,
I found that to be At first I thought it
was kind of flippant, but then I found it to
be true because there's an osmosis that takes place if
you do surround yourself with other things.

Speaker 7 (27:10):
A lot of writers think, well, all I should do
is just read, read, read, read read.

Speaker 5 (27:13):
You know, a lot of musicians think that all I
should do is just you know, play play play play play.
But there's an osmosis that takes place with other forms
of art that I think sync into you and affect you,
you know. My having been a musician, I find there's
a great asset in writing because I write with the rhythm,
you know, and I can tell what the paragraph isn't
working because I can.

Speaker 7 (27:34):
Kind of like I write like like.

Speaker 5 (27:36):
This, and if I stop, and if i'd well, I'm
not my head's not shaking anymore. It must be this
isn't working, you know, and then I'll change something and
then I'll go bou oh, I got it back again,
you know. So there's a lot of cross influence from
the different arts.

Speaker 7 (27:49):
And I thought that was a good piece of advice too.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, that's great advice.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Okay, So we're going to take a break with Mitch
album and we'll be right back and we're back with
Mitch album. Okay, So let's talk about this the newest
book Twice, which is another great concept, which is this
young boy finds out very early on in his life,
as his mother is about to pass away, that he

(28:13):
has the ability to redo things, but he doesn't have
the ability to redo them twice.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
He can only redo them once.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
I mean, he could do it twice, but he can't
go back and fit it right.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
So at certain point, like there was a point in.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
The book where I was confused because he goes so
far back, So he's redoing things that he's already redone, right,
how do you square that? Because at one point he
goes all the way back many many years, and he's
already redone so many things along the way.

Speaker 5 (28:42):
Well, that's one of the problems. One of the problems
when you create a magical world is then you have
to live by your rules, you know exactly, and you
and you keep saying, well, what are the rules here? Again?
And then at some point you realize, like, you know what,
I created the rules. I'm just just going to write
it and everyone will have to go along with it.
But yeah, the premise of the story is that he

(29:04):
has the power to do anything in his life again,
but only one time, and he has to live with
the consequence of the second time. So, for example, he
misses a shot to end the game a basketball game,
and he goes back to take that same shot again,
and that time he gets hit in the jaw and
breaks his jaw. He can't go back to the first
one and say, I'll just take missing the shot. He

(29:26):
has to live with the broken jaw going forward. And
the presumption is that everything else that happens going forward
sort of happens the same way that had happened before
that he can't really undo any of those things. But
the idea of it was to address again like the theme,
Like I've told you, you know, I just try to
find a theme. This theme was about the grass is

(29:47):
always greener concept, you know, and as you get older,
you run into a lot of people and you become
a person who starts saying, you know, boy, if I
could have done this again, my whole life would have
been different. Or if I only hadn't done that, then
it would be different. And I wanted to really explore
that and see if it really isn't necessarily better or worse.

(30:08):
And then as I was going along, I said, well,
the thing that seems to be the one that people
talk about the most or fantasize about the most, is love.
You know, what if I had married somebody else? What
if I had married that guy who asked me and
I turned him down, Or what if I had what
if I had gone on that date with that girl
that I was too scared too, or you know what if?

(30:31):
What if?

Speaker 7 (30:31):
There's all those things, but we always think we can
do better.

Speaker 5 (30:35):
Or you know, our true love is someplace else. And
I wanted to sort of explore that idea. So that's
that's what motivated me to write Twice.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
Was that personal at all?

Speaker 5 (30:48):
Well, not in the way.

Speaker 7 (30:50):
I mean, I'm only I've been married once and.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Then related to your marriage.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Let's not get you into trouble here, but just in
your life or like I mean, obviously that's something that
comes up, like if you could you know, I always
get that question and every interview is or anything you regret,
and it's like, well, I mean, if I sat down
and thought about everything I fucking regretted, we'd be here
for hours.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
I'd rather not think about it. I didn't do it.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
So I'm here now and while reading this book, you know,
which is such a fucking awesome book. And you know
these books are so they're like nugget sized, yeah, you know,
they're a nice like I mean, they.

Speaker 4 (31:23):
Are perfect Saturday afternoon read, just perfect everything.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
I just love them.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
And this is like three hundred pages, but you whip
through these books so quickly. Our listeners are big readers.
So I just want everyone to know how passionate I am.
But when I do think about the possibility, like I
always had this fantasy if I could just be a
straight a student from like kindergarten through high school and
actually apply myself and really just been like you know,

(31:50):
and then I would have been the prom queen and
all of these things. I always used to think that
when I was in my twenties, like if I could
have just made my parents been like this model child.
And now when I think about the idea of that,
it's like, I don't want to go through all of
that garbage again, you know, I don't want to go
through that life again, because then you have to put
up with all of the ugliness. Also, you have to

(32:10):
reexperience all of the times where you were sick or
someone died or all of those types of things, and
it's like, I don't want to What is your viewpoint after.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Having written something like this?

Speaker 1 (32:23):
What do you think about that, like if you had
the opportunity.

Speaker 5 (32:27):
Yeah, I think I had that viewpoint before I even
wrote it. And that is people have asked me the
same question, Chelsea, you know, is there anything that you
would redoing? I think for some reason they think the
person who wrote Tuesdays with Maury is going to answer, oh,
absolutely not.

Speaker 7 (32:41):
Everything that I've done has been you know, you know,
it's been.

Speaker 5 (32:44):
For a purpose.

Speaker 7 (32:45):
And my answer is absolutely.

Speaker 5 (32:47):
I'll give you like twenty things right now that I
would do differently if I had a chance to do
them differently. But if you said to me, you have
to unlearn everything that you learned from the mistake that
you made, then I would say no, because all of
the mistakes and all of the regrets and all the
things that I did that I would do differently if

(33:09):
I was at that moment again, have taught me the
things that I have learned now, you know, and have
shaped me into the person I am now.

Speaker 7 (33:19):
I'll give you a perfect example.

Speaker 5 (33:20):
Talk about it twice in a lifetime.

Speaker 7 (33:22):
Opportunities.

Speaker 5 (33:23):
So when my wife and I got married, we got
married kind of late age wise, and we didn't have kids.
I was thirty seven, she was thirty nine, and we
didn't have kids, and I kind of delayed it, you know,
I mean I delayed getting married. I delayed having kids.
I was really into my career at that time. And
then Tuesdays with Maury happened, and that was all going on,

(33:45):
and she really wanted to have kids, and by the
time we sort of, you know, we're focused, it just
didn't happen. And as the years passed, I started to
feel like, man, I you know, really really missed something
by not having children.

Speaker 7 (34:01):
But then sixteen years ago.

Speaker 5 (34:04):
I ended up going to Haiti after the earthquake and
got involved with an orphanage down there, and one thing
led to another, and it's a long story that I
don't want to bore you with, but I ended up
inheriting an orphanage that I was working at, and I
have been running that orphanage ever since and go there
every month for the last sixteen years. And I have

(34:25):
well over one hundred children who have come through, and
we have twenty two of them up here who are
either in college or in medical school now, or some
of them got medical care. And we have a little
three year old daughter now that we adopted from Haiti,
and none of that would have happened. I don't think
if I had had kids the first time around, because

(34:48):
I would have been involved with that, i't I wouldn't
have gone to Haiti in the first place, and you know,
probably just wouldn't have had time to do it.

Speaker 7 (34:54):
So I got this incredible opportunity.

Speaker 5 (34:57):
But it's only because I learned from my mistake earlier
how much I appreciated children. And in fact, today, as
we're speaking, we took our little girl to school for
the first time. It was her first day of school
and I got to live that, you know, and it's like, wow,
my age, I get to take gets a hugger and

(35:19):
she grabbed me, said I don't want to go, you know,
and all that you know, and I of course I'm
taking pictures of all of this because you appreciate, you
know this now like I'm going to need this later
and so to have that opportunity is a miracle. But
I don't think it would have happened if I hadn't
made the first mistake. So that's just one silly example
of my personal life. But I think everybody probably has

(35:42):
something in their life that they can look at that way.
You know.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, that's so beautiful.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
I mean, what a gift, What a gift you've been
given with that orphanage, and what a gift you've been
able to give, like the gift as always, you know,
we sometimes we think we're doing something and really the
gift is as ours to take and enjoy.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
I mean, that is such a beautiful story. Thank you
for sharing that.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
I want to ask you personally with all your iterations
in your life, like now we're finding out you were
a musician also, or I'm finding out anyway, and deep
down I do believe you one day you will become
a ballerino. On a personal level, your evolution and your
creative evolution, how has that impacted your life? Because you

(36:27):
obviously know that you have the capabilities to do all
these different sorts of things, and I would imagine that that.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Adds a lot of.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Personal I don't want to say confidence, because it's more
than that. It's like, there's such value in everything that
you're doing.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
How does that impact you.

Speaker 5 (36:48):
Well? I have had a lot of iterations to my life.
When I was younger, I was all about ambition and
was all about achievement and accomplishment. I rose very quickly,
and as first I was a musician and I failed.
So my first experience was failure. And then I moved

(37:09):
into writing and journalism and got into sports writing, and
I had the opposite. I had like a really fast ascension.
I became a lead columnist at the Detroit newspaper when
I was twenty five and was traveling around the world
and covering sports stories and writing sports books and everything.

Speaker 7 (37:24):
I was on ESPN multiple times.

Speaker 5 (37:27):
I worked like one hundred and twenty hours a week
and went petal to the metal whatever it.

Speaker 7 (37:33):
Is until I was about thirty seven, and that's.

Speaker 5 (37:36):
When I encountered Mariy and sort of everything kind of
screeched to a halt, and he kind of really opened
my eyes. You know. He was really somebody that I
loved when I was younger and had totally forgotten about,
and you know, not forgotten in my brain, but just
had paid no attention to because I was so.

Speaker 7 (37:55):
Busy, busy, busy, now here he was dying and every.

Speaker 5 (37:58):
Tuesday it was like hitting the brakes on my life
and you know, no phones, know anything, and we would
just sit there and I felt like I was a
student again. I felt like I was back in college,
and I was sort of reminded like, wow, you really
have changed. You know, you're not the same person that
you used to be when you were listening to him,
and not necessarily for the better. And I ended up

(38:19):
writing that book, and as I told you a little earlier,
it kind of took me over, not the other way around,
and I, whether like it or not, I became a
person that people started coming to and asking, you know,
they would sometimes people would say, Maury, what do you
and I go, WHOA, I'm not I'm not Mary I'm
the stupid one, you know, I'm the one on the
other side of the couch. But but people do that

(38:42):
all the time still, you know. And when you start
hearing grieving stories and you're going to hospice and you're
on the board of hospice, and you're going to funeral
parlors and you're asked to speak at you know, people's memorials,
and you start to change and you become sensitized. And
so then I started to realize that I had an
obligation made to bring that kind of thing to my work,

(39:02):
and that writing about games and you know, who's making
a tackle or whatever is all well and good, it's
but but you might be able to do something else.
And I remember Maury said to me one time, what
do you do for your community? And I said, what
do you mean? And he said, you know, what do
you do for charities for people who are in need?
I said, I write checks? And he said, well, anybody

(39:23):
can write a check, but you've been given a voice,
and you need to do something with that voice more
than just a grandize yourself. I remember that, because you know,
only a professor uses a word like a grandize, you know,
And I've never forgotten that, you know, that really stays
with me. And so I had that part of my
life where I started to say, well, Okay, you've been

(39:45):
given this platform, and you've been given this success.

Speaker 7 (39:49):
What are you going to do with it.

Speaker 5 (39:50):
It's going to go buy a bigger car, or you're
going to try to help people. And you know, when
I got involved, particularly with Haiti, I'm very involved here
in Detroit. Also, I live with the city here and
I started and operate a number of charities here. But
I think when I got involved in eighty with the orphans,
that became this whole other chapter of my life where
it suddenly my life was about kids and their illnesses.

(40:13):
And I mean, believe me, Chelsea, I could spend ten
straight hours telling you about scabies and childhood malnutrition and
brain disease and cerebral palsy and all kinds of issues
that our kids have that nobody pays any attend. There's
no food for them, there's no water, you know, no electricity,
and trying to you know, I'm trying to figure out

(40:34):
how I can get diesel fuel for less than twenty
dollars a gallon. You know, when someone's calling me and saying,
we're making a movie out of your book, you know,
and it's like this completely different sort of worlds, you
know that I have to sort of navigate between, and
now I'm talking to you, you know.

Speaker 7 (40:49):
So so I've learned that life can be.

Speaker 5 (40:52):
A lot of different things, and you can be a
lot of different things yourself. And like I said to you,
I was anxious to speak to you because I admire
the fact that you've done a lot of things yourself
and you haven't let people tell you no, you're this.
I remember I got a chance to meet Maya Angelou
once and she and I were just talking in a
hallway and I said, can I ask you a question?

Speaker 7 (41:12):
It's going to seem really weird.

Speaker 5 (41:14):
She said yeah. I said, okay, you write poetry, you
write fiction, you've been an actress, You've done all this stuff.
Does has anyone ever told you just stay with one thing?
And she said yes, and it's the coolest thing you
can ever say to somebody. And I said, well, why
do you say that? She said, because it's telling a
bird that it shouldn't fly. And I thought that that

(41:36):
was really beautiful. And she said, don't ever let anybody
tell a bird that it can't fly. And so I've
tried to sort of live my life that way and
not worry about the category that I'm in. But if
I feel like I have something to contribute or something
to offer in some way, or I can help somebody,
or I can write something, and whether it be a
book or a movie or whatever that's gonna, you know,

(41:57):
have some positive effect, I should do it, whether I'm
supposed to do it or not.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
And are you injecting yourself into these books that you write, Like,
is there a part of you that's in this book
twice that is part of the main character?

Speaker 7 (42:11):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (42:11):
Yeah, Alfie. This character is named Alphie. He's the he's
the boy. And many of the mishaps that he has
when he's younger with girls are straight out of my playbook. I.
There's a there's a scene where he goes up to
talk to a girl who has a bit of a
crush on and he talks with his hands and he

(42:32):
knocks a glass of milk into her lap and she
just looks up and says, oh god, you know like
that with that and and his response is look at that.
And that's exactly what happened to me. And exactly what
I said, and then I just scumped up and never
talked to that girl again.

Speaker 7 (42:50):
So yeah, I think you have to have a little.

Speaker 5 (42:52):
Bit you know of yourself in order to know your
characters well and have them ring true. There has to
be a bit of a bit of you in there.
But the biggest thing is that I really I wrote
it for my wife. And the love story is between
Alfie and this girl, Gianna, who he meets when they're
very young in Africa and then never sees her again

(43:14):
until he happens to run into her, you know, when
they're college age, and he just kind of tumbles into
love with her and feels it like he's so lucky
to have her, and finally she loves him back, and
they have this wonderful love affair for a while until
something happens and he misreads a situation and he's tempted
to just undo it out of anger and whatever, and

(43:34):
of course he finds out that the one caveat to
his power is love. That he can do anything twice
except love. He can't get somebody to love him twice,
So which I think, you know, that's kind of how
it should be, you know, like if somebody truly loves you,
and you say, all right, you wait over here, keep

(43:56):
loving me. I'm gonna go out here and see if
I can find something better. But in just in case,
I want to come back pick up where we left off.

Speaker 7 (44:04):
That seems so unfair. And so I made the rules.

Speaker 5 (44:06):
Like you asked me before about the rules, Well, I
can make the rules. I wrote the book.

Speaker 7 (44:10):
So I said, it doesn't work with love.

Speaker 5 (44:13):
And if you walk away from a true love, that
person can.

Speaker 7 (44:16):
Never love you again. They'll be in the world.

Speaker 5 (44:19):
You know that you revisit, it can be your friend,
but they can never love you again. And of course
he makes this fateful decision and then he has to
live with the consequences. And so it was my way
of sort of saying to my wife, you know, both
apologizing for any things that I've done that have been
less than right. Also, yeah, I went for great, you

(44:42):
went for satisfactory, Brooky, you know, somewhere somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Right, It's also begs.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
The question, which is so beautiful is if you don't
get somebody to love you twice, what will you do
to be able to just continue to love them?

Speaker 5 (44:58):
That's right, and that's where our hero man is just
estalvaghe himself.

Speaker 7 (45:03):
I'm trying not to tell the whole well.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
Right, yeah, so am I, but you know, probably failing loudly.
But I just it's so beautiful. Your writing is so beautiful.
It really is the definition of escapism. Are your books
like I And the reason I love reading so much
is something that really takes me away, And every time
you're writing just does that.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
So I'm really really grateful to you.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
I want to ask you before we have to let
you go about what you read and what some of
your favorite books are.

Speaker 5 (45:32):
Well, I read everything, and I've learned, you know that
story about the photographer, that anything can be a source
of inspiration for you.

Speaker 7 (45:42):
And so I don't ever say, well, I just.

Speaker 5 (45:44):
Read fiction because I'm writing fiction, or I just read
nonfiction because I'll read, you know, novels, I'll read I'll
read biographies, I'll read instruction manuals. I mean, anything that
I think is going to inspire me. I do tend
to read a little differently, like, Okay, so this is
Ann Tyler's dinner at the Homestick restaurant.

Speaker 7 (46:05):
He's just sitting on my desk here. So I don't
know if you can see.

Speaker 5 (46:09):
So you see the pages are all dog eared, okay,
And under each of those dog eared pages will be
a phrase that I will circle that I think is
really great writing. And then what happens is I'll just
pull these be's why it's here. I'll just pull these
books out, and whenever I'm going to start writing, before

(46:30):
I do, I take it and I just splip the
pages and I just read these great sentences that these
authors have written. And Ant Tyler wrote a lot of
really good sentences in this book, and they.

Speaker 7 (46:40):
Just inspire me.

Speaker 5 (46:41):
It's like it's a little bit like I'm going to
sit down and compose music. Let me listen to something
that's really inspiring first, and then I'll sit down and
I'll compose mine. You know, So I destroy my books,
but I'm good with that. Like I've had people come
up with Tuesdays with Mary's then, honestly, I don't know
how the binding is even holding together.

Speaker 7 (46:58):
You know that it's dog here.

Speaker 5 (47:00):
They're they're marked up there, They've got coloring all over them.
Some of them have little tabs on the pages. Five
people you meet in Heavens like that, A lot little
liars like and These are people who like underline the
books and they come up and they apologize. They say,
I'm sorry I destroyed the book. I said, no, why
would you apologize? Like you you ate the whole meal,
you know, like you really devoured it. Look at look

(47:23):
at what you did to the book. You know, as
someone who comes up on the book as pristine for
all I know, they read the jacket, you know.

Speaker 7 (47:29):
So so I love that.

Speaker 5 (47:30):
And I don't consider, you know, books like holy that
you can't touch them. I think they're meant to be
absorbed that way. So that's basically how I read. I
just read for inspirational writing.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
And do you have any favorite books?

Speaker 5 (47:43):
Many?

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Have you ever read Sirce by Madeline Miller?

Speaker 5 (47:47):
No?

Speaker 7 (47:48):
I thought I was.

Speaker 5 (47:49):
You're the second person that's recommended that to me in
about a week.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
There are some similarities between your writing and her writing.
She has she packs a punch with sentences also, and
it's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
It's a beautiful book. But what are some of your favorites.

Speaker 5 (48:03):
Gilead by Marilyn Robinson is one of my favorite books ever.
History of Love by Nicole Kraus. These are books that
I've read like a hundred times, you know, just because
I so admire the writing as a huge Tom Wolffan,
I think the first chapter of The Right Stuff is
one of the most creative ways of writing. When I

(48:25):
was first getting into writing coming out of music, one
of the daunting things about writing to a musician is
it feels very limiting. You know, when you're used to
you got a whole keyboard. I'm a piano player, and
when you have a whole keyboard to work with and
all the sounds, it feels like the whole world is
that your fingertips that you could create.

Speaker 7 (48:43):
And then when you're working in the world.

Speaker 5 (48:45):
Of letters and words and sentences, not so much, you know,
especially when you're not as good at it. When you begin,
you know you're getting started, it feels kind of ah,
I'm just living within the you know, the words to
the left and the words and the right, and they're.

Speaker 7 (48:59):
Kind of reading a box.

Speaker 5 (49:00):
And then you read that chapter where there's like italic,
you know, and he writes it out sounds and I
remember reading that and I said, wow, you can do
that with words. You know, you can create sounds, and
you can create what people are thinking, and you can
come in with a voice out of left field.

Speaker 7 (49:19):
That's just commenting on what you.

Speaker 5 (49:21):
Just read and then you can jump back out again.
And it really inspired me to say, there is no
limit to, you know, what you could do with words,
and I ended up kind of using that in my
journalism when in my early days as a as a
sports writer, I would say, you know, I wrote a column,
and I would always not be limited by the traditional

(49:43):
form of writing. So I one time I had to
write a story about the Kentucky Derby, and I didn't
know anything about horse racing. I was going to the
Kentucky Derby, and so I kind of wrote a column
about me interviewing a horse and make believe horse and
the horse would talk to me about you know, and
I was asking different questions about what it's like to
be a racehorse. And I remember, and these are the

(50:07):
days when people used to write your letters, you know,
at the newspaper. And I went down picked up my
mail and I it was a letter from a reader
and I opened it up and it was that column.
And I opened it, I pulled it out and he
literally cut it out of the paper and he wrote,
A horse talks to a jackass. I said, that's pretty good,

(50:28):
you know, And I put that up on my bulletin
board and said, you know, this is what happens when
you take a chance. But it still was worth it,
you know, to explore the Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Yeah, I like the idea of not having a framework,
and I like the idea of not having parameters, because
that's all that we're taught in this world is that
there are limits and there are parameters, and that's why
you're told to do the same thing you did well, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,
which is not exciting for a creative brain. Okay, Well,
the book is called Twice. It is a love story.

(50:59):
It's a beautiful love story, and it's a great book.
Another great book from Mitch album. Mitch, we appreciate your
time today. We'll take callers separately and me and thank
you so much for your time for your talk. I
loved it. You're very inspiring.

Speaker 5 (51:13):
Thank you. Well, I'm really flattered that you like my work.
I hope you enjoy five people you meet in heaven.
And I didn't ruin it for you.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Well, yeah, I do know the ending, but I will
still read it. And I think there's some.

Speaker 5 (51:23):
Books you only know a piece of the end.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Okay, Okay, okay, great, great, great. I'm going to read
it on my flight to New York on Friday, and
then I'm coming to Detroit. I'm doing shows in Detroit
next year.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
I'm going to invite you guys, you and your wife
to come to see me.

Speaker 5 (51:36):
Oh love that.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Yeah, i'd love to be wonderful.

Speaker 5 (51:39):
I'd very much like to meet you in person. Thank
you so much for having me on your program.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Okay, wonderful. I have a great day, made so much.

Speaker 7 (51:44):
Thank you too, Bye bye bye.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
He's awesome, awesome, awesome, true manch I know.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
I mean, first of all, a true guy, like what
a model male human being.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
The opposite of toxic masculinity.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
I know, my god, I was started crying twice. Yeah,
it's like it's his writing too. Yeah, I'm so good.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
We got to his kids in Haiti and I didn't
know they adopted.

Speaker 5 (52:11):
I know.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
It's just gorgeous, just stories beautiful.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
It's like he's a vessel truly.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
I mean it is like just like hearing about his life.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Is that the right word? Vessel? Like a conduit conto it?

Speaker 5 (52:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (52:25):
You do? You do hear that?

Speaker 4 (52:26):
When he's like I was focused on myself and I
made this change. I did this thing to help someone
else else, and then all of these blessings came to him,
but then he continued to pass it along. I mean,
just really wonderful. Now I got to read The Liar. Yeah,
that's a great book.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
Okay, So now we're going to take some callers without Mitch.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Catherine, I thought, our time is better spent with Mitch
listening to him talking about writing for some reason, and
so let's take the callers ourselves.

Speaker 4 (52:55):
I think that's perfect. Yes, Well, our first question comes
from Karen. She says, Hello, Chelsea, many of your stories
resonate with me. I was adopted at birth and grew
up with deep feelings of abandonment. I was also an
angry teenager and turned that anger onto my parents for them.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
My issues followed me through college. In my early twenties,
my aunt.

Speaker 4 (53:14):
Connected me with a fantastic therapist and I had a
breakthrough of sorts. However, I was still searching and ungrounded.
I tried marriage to fix my issues and immediately recognize
my mistake. I now call that my starter marriage. In
my early thirties, I remarried, had my daughter, and found
my birth parents. The discovery of these new relationships brought turmoil,
but also emotional connection that had previously been just beyond

(53:36):
my reach. There have been many twists and turns in
my life, many of which have seemed faded, such as
connecting with my second husband in nineteen ninety eight after
near misses in which we'd nearly cross paths many times.
I'm currently trying to write a book to capture my
life story, which I think is worth telling. I have
initiated the process countless times and can't seem to get started.

(53:56):
I know you've written multiple books, so my question to
you is how did you start? Did you develop a
framework and then start writing? Did you just free flow?
Did you have a ghostwriter? I'd appreciate any guidance you
can offer.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Karen Hi, Karen Hi, Hi, How are you?

Speaker 9 (54:12):
Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
You're so welcome. I like your full blonde hair. It
looks nice and great hair from another blonde. I mean,
mine's obviously not real anymore, but it's very hard to
have thick blonde hair.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
So congrats on that beat. Thank you for your note.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
We just had Mitch album on talking about his writing,
so he talked about getting up every morning.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
He doesn't expose himself. I don't know. Do you have
a job or I do.

Speaker 9 (54:43):
I'm a graduate nursing professor.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Okay, what does that mean?

Speaker 9 (54:47):
So I'm a nurse practitioner.

Speaker 6 (54:49):
So I'm clinical faculty for Masters prepared nurses that are
going for their nurse practitioner.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Oh wow, that sounds nice. It's amazing. So what is
your schedule like?

Speaker 6 (54:59):
So I'm mostly online grading and I do site visits,
so I have a lot of flex building. Right.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
So then what he said as first thing in the
morning is when your brain is the freshest. There's lots
of data to back this up. So that's really what
you want to do. Is he told me something that
I don't do, which is not check any media, not
check phone, not check anything. And he just goes and
starts writing before anything can kind of make an impression
on him. So and writes for about two and a

(55:26):
half three hours each morning and then leaves it there
because he said he could sit there for another eight
hours and it just would be useless. And I find
that to be true in my own experience as well.
It's first thing in the morning, when my eyes are
fresh and when my head is fresh and I'm well
rested to get up, and that is I think the
most creative time for most of us. I think not

(55:47):
looking at anything, not looking at the news, not looking
at any social media, not even looking at your phone
is really a great piece of advice that he gave.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
So yeah, I would say to do that. I wouldn't
be too.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Strict with your guidelines for yourself because the desires there
and the construct you just have to envision what you're
trying to put out there. Like with my most recent book,
I wanted my goal was to impart the wisdom that
I had gleaned and to inject women with a little
bit more confidence. Like that was my mo So everything

(56:24):
that Kate was born out of that idea. And so,
like you know, I opened my last book with a
chapter about it's called Little Girl. It's like, who do
I want it? Who I wanted to be when I
was a little girl. How did I envision myself becoming?
And what kind of woman did I see myself becoming?
And then the book takes you through all of the
ways in which I attempted and got derailed or wasn't

(56:48):
really conscious about it and was derailed and then realized,
wait a second, where's that woman?

Speaker 6 (56:54):
You know?

Speaker 2 (56:54):
So that was like my through line. I don't know that.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
I think sometimes you have a structure in your head
and sometimes you have a structure on paper. It really
depends what kind of brain you have. You're talking about
writing your life story basically right right right, yeah, And
I think it's important and valuable to think about what
it is you're giving to the readers that are going
to be reading this.

Speaker 9 (57:19):
So I get a little confused about that.

Speaker 6 (57:21):
So I think I want to tell my story, and
then I think about do I need to make it
a larger picture of maybe you know, my extended family,
and then intertwine my thread throughout it, and I get.

Speaker 9 (57:35):
Caught in the weeds or I think too large.

Speaker 6 (57:39):
It's really hard to figure out how to start and
what to tell, and then I just kind of, you know,
I spin around and around.

Speaker 4 (57:48):
One tool that might be helpful is to get yourself
a pack of like three by five note cards and
go through write on each one sort of like a
story or a scene that you want to write about,
and you know, you might hang them up on a wall,
you might just have them in a stack, But if
you're having a writing day, you know, whether that's you know,
you have a couple hours in the morning or even
just you know, forty five minutes in the morning, go through, pick.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
One that's speaking to you that day and.

Speaker 4 (58:13):
Write about that. Like you don't necessarily have to write
it chronologically. You can always go back and then you know,
put stuff chronologically and weave it in so you can
just go to whatever, like you're in the mood for
or whatever is speaking to you that day.

Speaker 6 (58:26):
That's a great idea because when I'm thinking of a
timeline and starting at childhood, I can't think of any
great meat to you know, grab onto and initiate that story.
And I've always been kind of thinking about it in
a chrominological manner, and so I get stuck on that
and then I'm like, oh, well, so that's a great idea.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
Yeah. And also those index cards that you get, you know,
there's big momentous moments or the moments that you know
you do want to write about, right, you put those
all down the things that stand out the most. So
like your early childhood, you're saying, there's some you know,
you don't have a very clear idea of where to begin.
I think if you put down your biggest memories and

(59:10):
your loudest moments on blue cards, that will kind of
help you remember where Like, it will kind of help
trigger you where to begin, because if you start writing
that stuff, usually writing begets more writings and memory seeking
begets more memories. So I think that like, just by
the practice of writing down the things that you do
recall and the big instances that you do want to

(59:32):
convey in your book, You're going to start to remember
other things.

Speaker 9 (59:37):
Oh that's really great that I hadn't even tried that.

Speaker 6 (59:39):
I hadn't even thought about that, So that's really that's helpful.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
Thank you.

Speaker 9 (59:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:43):
And even if you're writing, say a thousand words a day,
at the end of three months, you've got ninety thousand words,
you know, so it like take it in small bites
if you need to.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
And I also really just like I'm not a very
structured person. I like to just do my own thing.
I don't follow rules. Well, so for me, it's really
when I sit down and I start writing, it creates
a need to want to write more. And another great
piece of advice Mitch Album just gave was he always

(01:00:13):
leaves his writing on a positive note or a positive paragraph,
Like if he's in the middle of a good paragraph,
he'll stop if it's been two and a half or
three hours, because that way, the next morning when he
wakes up, there's a level of excitement to return to
the page.

Speaker 9 (01:00:29):
Yeah, that's really really helpful too.

Speaker 6 (01:00:32):
Yeah, these things, I'm so structured and organized that everything
you're saying to me, really, you know, isn't anything I've
thought about, and I think probably will help get the
ball ruling.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
Actually, yeah, yeah, just don't be so don't be so
regimented about it, and allow yourself to be a free
thinker with regard to this book, like do things you
haven't done before. Since you've never written a book before,
this is the perfect opportunity to try to loosen your
whole struct than Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:01:00):
Sure, okay, good stuff, Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Right, love it. Thanks for calling in.

Speaker 4 (01:01:11):
So this caller is Gene, She says, Dear Chelsea, I
listen to your podcast religiously and find your advice to
be so refreshingly honest and straightforward.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
I'm writing to you as a fellow author.

Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
I've published many books in my life, but now I'm
writing a memoir about being in a family of ten.
My early childhood trauma was so bad it manifested in
medical issues, so I had to cut ties with my family.
I'm writing this book to challenge myself as a writer,
process my experiences, and share my stories with others who
can relate. I know only need to change the names
of family members, but anyone who knows me will know

(01:01:43):
who I'm writing about. Even though my stories aren't pleasant,
they are all true. How do I deal with the
folloout and maintain my conviction and composure should one of
them reach out to me, especially if it's an anger.
Thank you in advance for your help. You're one of
the smartest, sweetest, strongest women I know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Gene. Hi, Gene, Hey.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
I'm so excited to meet you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
Oh, thank you for your kind words, and I'm so
sorry that you had such a traumatizing childhood.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
Are you writing it as nonfiction or are you writing it
like as fiction?

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
No, I'm writing it as nonfiction memoir.

Speaker 10 (01:02:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
I honestly, it's not really your problem what anybody thinks
about what you're going to write about. You're entitled to
write your story. Everyone is entitled to tell their story
and write their story.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
And while you do.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
Have to change the names and you have to change
the scenery, Yes, you're right, people are going to know
what you're talking about. But I don't think it does
you any good to really consider that aspect of things,
especially at this stage. It's almost like you know your
your efforts should just be going towards your honoring your

(01:02:52):
story because by telling your story, you are helping so
many people, and you just have to keep that in
the back of your mind at all times.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
That this is not just for you. This is for
the world, right, and it's for women.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
I like to always think, like, when I'm making a decision,
you know that I'm doing it on behalf of women.
Not every little decision, but big decisions, I think, who
am I doing this for?

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
It's not can't just be for me, but it's for women.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
Absolutely, And that's the only reason I would share it. Chelsea.

Speaker 10 (01:03:26):
I feel very strongly about gleaning from my life experiences.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
In my work as a writer.

Speaker 10 (01:03:34):
I'm almost sixty years old, Like, this is how I
want to spend the rest of my working days is
sharing my stories with people who can relate. But you know,
I am concerned about any potential negative interference from siblings
when it does come out. I have had siblings try
to staybotage some of my book events and whatnot, and

(01:03:58):
that those books said nothing to do with them.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
So that kind of just hangs.

Speaker 10 (01:04:02):
Over my head a little bit, and I am just
wondering what should I do, Like, how how do I respond?

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
If you know, and when that happened.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
I don't think there is a response for that. Any
response is them winning, you know, like them trying to
like sabotage you, and you reacting to it is them
affecting you. And I think you have to just kind
of it sounds like a pretty toxic situation that you've
come from, and I honestly think you just have to
be your own best protector and think of that little

(01:04:34):
girl that you were that wasn't protected, that you're writing about,
and this is your job to protect her in this moment.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Oh, thank you so much. That means a lot.

Speaker 10 (01:04:44):
And yeah, I mean I am trying to listen to
other memoirrists who have gone through something similar and get
their advice and what to do and whatnot, And so
I'm leaning.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
On people like yourself too.

Speaker 10 (01:04:59):
You've written your own memoirs and your own experiences, and yes,
I'm leaning on all of all of you as an
inspiration for not just how to write this, but how
to deal with any intrusions, you know, any negativity when
this book hopefully is out and will be discussed.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
And also you know, you can't fight with someone who's
not fighting back. So say the worst case scenario, someone
walks into one of your book events, You're having a
book talk at a bookstore, independent bookseller, and someone comes
in ands like this.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Is a lie, this is a lie.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Your response is nothing, is just to sit there and
wait for security to escort them out. There's no argument
to be had, do you know what I mean? Like,
I that's a louder argument than an argument. Yeah, to
not get into it. And I think it's it's not
helpful to be putting your energy towards that right now. Anyway,
channel that energy and use that for the book. Yeah,

(01:05:57):
under the assumption that there's not going to be any problem,
there's going to be no intrusions, and that nobody's going
to try to sabotage you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
I hope not, because the way I look good.

Speaker 10 (01:06:06):
It is like me walking into their office where they
work and telling them you know, that's not how to
design a building or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:06:13):
They do for a living.

Speaker 10 (01:06:14):
You know, absolutely, that's how I feel about it. But
how I feel is usually at odds with the people
I grew up with, unfortunately, So I just I hope
I can maintain my composure.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
You can, you can, because but by the time the
book is published, you're going to get into a preparation phase.
You know, you're going to prepare yourself for what happens
in the eventuality that something negative like that does happen.
It most likely won't, but if it does, then yeah,
you're going to meditate on it, and you're going to
prepare for that and how you're going to handle it,
And you're going to handle it with grace and confidence,

(01:06:50):
knowing that this is your story and nobody owns your
story the way.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
That you do.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
Thank you. I mean, from that out of my heart.

Speaker 10 (01:06:56):
I don't want to hurt anybody, you know, it's not
my intention stand So I wrestle with that a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
You know, these are not people I want to hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
Yeah, well, I mean that's worth saying, you know, in
the book was also.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
Yeah, it's a hard line.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
I mean, that's worth considering. Putting in your not like
the prologue or the introduction to the book. You know,
this is my story and this I did not set
out to hurt anyone else but telling my story, I'm
setting out to help people who may have experienced something similar.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
That's perfect. Thank you, that's fabulous.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
Yeah, great, right, Well I wish you lots of luck. Yeah,
and lots of courage and lots of success.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
Thank you so much, Chelsei. I just love what you do.
Keep doing it. I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Thank you, Thanks so much.

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):
Bye, bye.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
Okay, that was your episode of Dear Chelsea for the week. Everybody,
we have minisodes that we are airing now.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
When do our minisodes come out?

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
Every other Friday?

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
Every other Friday? We have a miniesota.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
If you need a little jolt, an extra jolt of us,
we're here. We're here, and yeah, we'll see you next
week or you'll hear us or what the fuck ever?

Speaker 11 (01:08:01):
Goodbye. The word of the week is a grandize verb
to increase the power, status, or wealth of something or someone,
used in a sentence to self. A grandize may be
beneficial if you use it to demand a raise at work.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
A grand eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
I just announced all my tour dates. They just went
on sale this week. That's called the High and Mighty Tour.
I will be starting in February of next year, so
I will be touring from February through June. I haven't
added second shows yet, but we probably will be to
some of these. So go get your tickets now if
you want good seats and you want to come see

(01:08:44):
me perform, I will be on the High and Mighty Tour.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):
Do you want advice from Chelsea?

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
Right into Dear Chelsea Podcast at gmail dot com. Find
full video episodes of Dear Chelsea on YouTube by searching
at Dear Chelsea Pod.

Speaker 3 (01:08:58):
Dear Chelsea is edited

Speaker 4 (01:08:59):
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