December 17, 2023 • 41 mins
Author, screenwriter, philanthropist, journalist, and broadcaster Mitch Albom is an inspiration around the world. He is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, which have collectively sold more than forty million copies in forty-eight languages worldwide. He has written eight number-one New York Times bestsellers, including Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestselling memoir of all time. His new novel is The Little Liar. Newt’s guest is Mitch Albom.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of New World. Author, screenwriter, philanthropist, journalist,
and broadcaster Mitch Album is an inspiration around the world.
Album is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction,
which have collectively sold more than forty million copies in
forty eight languages worldwide. He's written eight number one New
(00:28):
York Times bestsellers, including Tuesdays with Maury, the best selling
memoir of all time, which topped the list for four
stray years and celebrated its twenty fifth anniversary on twenty
twenty two. He's also written award winning TV films, stage plays, screenplays,
a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and a musical. He appeared
(00:52):
for more than twenty years in ESPN and was a
fixture on the sports reporters through his work at the
Detroit Free Press. He was inducted into both the National
Sports Media Association and Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, and
was the recipient of the Redsmith Award for Lifetime achievement.
So with that introduction, I am really pleased to welcome
(01:16):
my guest, Mitch Album, and he's joining us to discuss
his new novel, The Little Liar, which is now available
in bookstores everywhere. Mitch, welcome and thank you for joining
(01:39):
me on New World.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
That's a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. How
did you get into writing accidentally?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I was a musician and that's all I ever really
wanted to be. Never wrote anything while I was in
high school or college. I just wanted to work in
the music business, and I did that for a few
years in New York. Wasn't really getting anywhere and worked
at nights mostly, and so during the day I had
time free. And I was in a supermarket one day
(02:06):
and picked up one of those giveaway newspapers that they
have there, and they had a little thing in the
bottom right corner that said, we could use some help
with our newspaper if you have time. And since I
had some time, I went down there, and I think
I was the youngest person in the office by about
seventy years, and they gave me an assignment that night,
and I'd never written anything, and they gave me an
(02:28):
assignment to cover a parking meter's hearing. And all I
knew about journalism was all the president's men, which I
had seen, like a lot of other people in the movies,
And so I got myself a pad and a pen,
and I went there and asked a lot of direct questions,
and then I guess I had just read a lot
of newspapers in my life, and I knew that you
(02:49):
start with that sort of general paragraph that sums it up,
and then you have a quote, and then you expand it.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So I wrote the story, and the next.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Week when I went back to the supermarket, I picked
up the little paper that they gave out, and there
was my story on the bottom of the front page
and had my name on it. And I got that
little tingled in my stomach, and I've been a writer
ever since.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
How did your family react to your name in print?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Well, my father always wanted me to be a lawyer
or a doctor, and so he hated the idea that
I was going to be a musician. And he tolerated
it because he loved me and he was a good
man and a good father. And then after a few
years I said to him, you know, I think I'm
going to get out of the music business. And I
could see he was trying to hide the smile on
his face, and he said, well, all right, if you
(03:34):
feel that that's the right thing, you know, what are
you thinking of going into and I said writing, and
he said writing, that's the fire to the frying band.
And so he wasn't too crazy about it for the
first few years, but eventually he came around, and I
think eventually by the time I was writing a newspaper
(03:56):
column and then wrote a book, he thought, it's maybe
he'll be able to make something of himself.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I have to ask you before we leave your famed
musical career. You played in the Lucky Tiger Grease Stick band. Yeah,
do you want to tell us all a little bit
about I think this was in high school, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
In high school? It was like a Shana Nah band.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
We greased our hair back and we sang the songs
of the nineteen fifties and the early sixties and do
wop music, you know, and it was a lot of fun.
We played all around high schools and bands and concerts,
and I never had to worry about dancing in high
school because I was always playing in the band, you know,
which there was an easier way to meet girls than
(04:35):
asking them to dance. And many years later, when I
got out of music, just to put full circle on it,
I joined a band of writers with Stephen King and
Dave Barry and Amy Tan and Ridley Pearson, Scott Tureau,
James McBride, kind of a who's who of a lot
of writers. And we've been together now for twenty five
years and honestly new this band is worse than my
(04:57):
high school band.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
So so it performs below the standard of the Lucky
Tiger Grease Stick band.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yes, yes, exactly, Yes, that's hysterical.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Now. I have to say one of the things I
was intrigued by you actually ended up in Crete playing
in a taverna as its singing Elvis Presley and Ray
Charles songs. What was that like? I would think it
must be pretty wild.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Well, I ended up there quite by accident. And I
was over in Europe after college and doing the backpacking
thing before I came back to New York to try
my life as a musician, and I ended up in Athens.
I entered an ad for a piano player wanted on
Resort Island and didn't even know what it was. And
they gave me a plane ticket and flew me over
to Crete. And I walked into the place and the
(05:43):
guy said to me, are you the piano player? I said, yeah,
I said, sit down, start playing. I didn't have any music.
I didn't have anything, and I just sat down at
this piano and started playing piano, which I could do.
And then after he listened to me for a little while,
he took me down to Verner, the nightclub, to negotiate
the deal. And while we were there, he said, can
you sing? And I said, well, I could sing, and
he said, well, go sing with the band and I said,
(06:04):
I can't sing Greek music. He said, just go sing
with the band, or you know, I'm not going to
give you the job. And so I went to the
guy at the band and whispered in his area. I said,
do you know any American rock and roll music? And
he said Elvis Brizzidy and I said, yeah, okay, Elvis Presy.
He says blue sweit Choose. I said, okay, I can
do blues sweit choos. And you know, the lights were off,
and you know that song kind of starts cold, you know,
(06:26):
without any music. So it was like one, two, three,
and then the lights go up and I go one
for the money, two for the show, like that, and everybody's.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Mouth just dropped open. For about the next three minutes.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I became Elvis Presley, and I was kind of swinging
around the whole club.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And dancing and everything.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
And by the time I finished, I got a standing
ovation and the nightclub owner said, I'm hiring you as
my singer and my piano player.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And I got the job.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
And I was there for about seven months, and if
I was smart, I would have just stayed there the
rest of my life, But like a fool, I wanted
to get back to New York so I could starve.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
What was life in Creek like, Oh, it's magical.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
First, well, back then, Crete wasn't developed like it is now.
And I was near this fishing village called Agios Nikolaus,
and I used to be able to ride a bicycle
into town or run into town. And then I just
stand on the corner by the fishing area there where
everybody was in their boats. And they knew me because
you know how many guys on the island of Crete
in that corner of it sing Elvis Presley music. And
(07:20):
so they would pull up in cards and say, oh, hello, elders,
get in the car, Come on, I give you a ride,
do you know, And so I was like the king
of the island. You know, everybody knew me, and the
food was fantastic, the water was you know, turquoise blue,
and the people could not have been nicer.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And many years later, you.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Know this new book I wrote, The Little Iris, set
in Greece, and part of the reason is because I
lived there when I was younger, and I knew a
lot about it and wanted to set a story there.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
You really had quite an eclectic early part of your life.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I did, and then I ended up a sports writer,
which has nothing to do with any of it.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Did you love sports?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
No? Not, particularly when I got into journalism. After I
worked at that volunteer paper that they gave out in supermarkets.
That helped me get into Columbia Journalism School in New
York City. And while I was there, I needed to
pay my tuition. I was working as a piano player
at night, you know, trying to pay my tuition, and
they had a job at the Sport magazine and so
I went over there and I you know, started writing.
(08:17):
And then when I graduated, I wanted to get into
magazine writing. You know, I wanted to be like Tom Wolfe.
I wanted to write long, big magazine pieces. But all
my clips were sports clips, and so every time I
would apply for a job, they would end up giving
them over to the sports editor and saying, hey, this
guy writes sports.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
And so eventually I ended up.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Getting offered a job as a sports writer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida,
and I thought, well, I need the job, I'll take it.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And I've been in sports ever since.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
And I found that I could actually write a lot
of human stories, a lot of stories about pathos and
emotion and things in the sports world because it's a
great backdrop.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
You know, you've got victory.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
And defeat, and you know people working their whole life
for ten seconds. And it turned out to be a
great training field for the kind of writing I would
end up doing later.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
While you were doing that, as I understand it, you
encountered Maury Schwartz, who was a former college professor who
was dying of als or lou Gerrigg's disease. What led
you to decide to write Tuesdays with Maury?
Speaker 3 (09:25):
You know, it wasn't really a book thing, to be
honest with you, Maury was an old college professor of
mine who I was very close with in college. I mean,
he wasn't just a guy I took a class with
I took every class he offered. I majored in sociology
because of him. We were kind of like an uncle
and a nephew. Really, you know, we sat around campus
and ate together. I went to his home, and then
(09:45):
when I graduated, you know, I promised I would stay
in touch, and then I didn't, you know, became very
self absorbed and very ambitious and working my way up
the sports writing ladder, and I just sort of forgot
about him.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Shame on me.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
And then sixteen years later I saw him accidentally on
Nightline with Ted Copple, talking about what it was like
to die from Luke Garritt's disease. That's the only way
I found out that he was even sick, and so
I was very embarrassed by that, and I called him
up and figuring I would just make one call to
ease my conscience, and one call led to a visit.
I figured one visit would ease my conscience. And the
(10:21):
first visit was so unbelievable. You know, he was so
calm about dying, and he was so content with how
he had lived his life that when I flew home
that night, I realized, like he was seventy eight and dying,
and I was thirty seven and perfectly healthy, and he
seemed more content with his life than I was. So
I began to go back the next Tuesday, the next Tuesday,
next Tuesday, and all the tuesdays he had left in
(10:43):
his life to try to find out what he knew
about life that I didn't. And the book only came
about as an accident because he told me one time
that the thing he feared the most wasn't a disease
and wasn't anything physical. It was that he was going
to die and leave his family all this debt, because
he was in debt for all his medical bills for
dying for two years.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
And so he said, I'm going to die twice.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
First time I die, and then on the other side
of the grave, when I realized, my family's going to
have to sell their house and I'm going to be
the cause of it. And so I only got the
idea then to maybe write a book to help him
pay his medical bills. And I privately went around to
all these different publishers in New York trying to find
somebody who was interested in it, and I said, I
just need enough money to pay his bills. I think
(11:28):
it's really interesting story an old man talking to a
young man about what's important in life, right before he dies.
And everybody said, no, everybody boring. You're a sports writer.
It's depressing. Nobody's going to want to read it. And
I honestly I would have given up newt if it
was for me, because I had so many no's, But
(11:48):
because it was for him, I kept pushing and pushing
until I found one publisher who was willing to publish it,
and just a few weeks before Maury died, they agreed
to do it, and I was able to go to
Maury and tell him give him the money to pay
his medical bills. And I said, here, you don't have
to die twice, you know, once is enough for me.
I always said that was the end of Tuesdays with more,
(12:08):
because I had finally learned to do one nice thing,
you know, for this man who had done so many
nice things for me before that. But of course, then
after he passed away, I wrote the book very simply.
I was figuring to go back to my sports writing career,
and they printed twenty thousand copies of it total. I
thought i'd have them in the trunk of my car
for the rest of my life, you know, giving them
(12:29):
out to people when they drove. Hey you want to book,
you know, come by for Christmas and empty out my trunk.
And it just caught on in some way and got
bigger and bigger and bigger. But it was totally an accident.
But that book sort of made you, oh yeah, well
that only made me. It turned my life around. I mean,
you know, I was an ambitious, one hundred hour a week,
(12:52):
you know, sports writer, and from that point forward, instead
of people coming up to me and saying, Hey, Who's
going to win Super Bowl, they would come up and say,
my mother died of cancer. And the last thing we
did was read Tuesdays with Maury Together. Can I talk
to you about it? You know, and your reaction is
quite different than Who's going to win the Super Bowl?
(13:13):
And you start to realize the pain that people walk
around with every day and every airport and every place
you're meeting them. Someone's missing, somebody, mourning for somebody, grieving
for somebody, worried about somebody. And I heard so many
of these stories and my world began to revolve around
that kind of thing. And I never wrote a sports book. Again,
(13:33):
everything I've written since has really kind of been a derivative,
even fictionally, of the lessons I learned and Tuesdays with Maury.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Even though that was a huge success, it took you
six years to write your next book.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Well, I was kind of frozen because all the people
who didn't want Tuesdays with Maury now all they wanted
was Wednesdays with Maury, you know, chicken Soup with Maury
and Venus and Mars and Maury and you.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Know like that.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
And I said, oh no, I'm not going to do that.
You know, I don't want to turn it into a franchise.
And you know, everything that happened, I wrote, there's nothing
else to say about that book, and well, come up
with something, and so finally I said, well, I think
maybe I'll try a novel.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
And they said, oh no, that's a stupid idea. That's
a terrible idea.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
No, no, no, you know everybody who writes nonfiction thinks
they can write a novel and don't do it. I said, well,
but yeah, but you said the same thing about Tuesdays
with Maury.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
You said that was a stupid idea too.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
So I think fortunately because I had been rejected once before,
I wasn't afraid to go up against the rejection the
second time.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And I knew in my heart that I would.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Never find a subject that would please Tuesdays with Moury fans.
If it was a nonfiction subject, they would all say, well,
whoever this guy is, isn't as interesting as Maury. So
I just went the other way and wrote a novel
about a man who dies and goes to heaven and
meets five people from his life. And it was called
The Five People You Meet in Heaven And not would.
It became a really really successful book, and my career
(15:04):
as a fiction writer was created.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Haven't written a fandom of books myself to launch two
consecutive New York Times bestsellers, one in fiction one and nonfiction.
That's really pretty remarkable.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, I think if I had thought about it, I
probably would have been too scared to do it. But
you know what they say about when you're younger and
taking chances, you're not afraid of what you might lose,
And so I thought, well, what do I got to lose?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
And it worked out.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
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(16:27):
So then you came back with for One More Day,
which actually debuted at number one on the New York
Times list and spend nine months on the list. What
triggered that? Why did you write One More Day?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I used to talk to my mother periodically when I
was writing in the mornings. You know, I'd pick up
the phone if I had a little break and with
just dollar number. And you know, my mom we had
a great relationship and she's really encouraging to me. You know,
she was the opposite of what my dad. You know, well,
my dad said, don't be a writer, don't be writer.
My mother said, you do whatever you want to do.
If it's going to make you happy.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Do it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I thought to myself, one day, I'm not going to
be able to, you know, make this call, like what
will be like if she's not here? And I said,
I know what I'm going to feel. I'm going to say, like,
oh no, just give me one more day back, and
I'll say everything that I should have said.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Wrote a book about a guy who loses his mother
and his life kind of goes downhill, becomes alcoholic, and
you know, kind of goes back to his hometown, little
hometown where he grew up to kill himself and he fails.
And when the son comes up, he goes back to
his old abandoned house, having failed even a killing himself,
and walks into the house and discovers his mother's living
(17:37):
in it as if nothing ever happened, as if she
never died, and she's making him breakfast and he gets
this full day, one full day back on earth with her,
and he's able to sort of say all the things
that he didn't and kind of figure out how his
life went wrong, and she sort of helps him.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
And it ended up being.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Ironically the last book that my mother read, because she
suffered stroke right after that and couldn't read or talk
anymore after it, so I was glad that I dedicated
it to her, and the timing of it worked out
to be the right thing.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
What's fascinating about your career is, in addition to writing
both fiction and nonfiction, you've had four of your books
turned into movies.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
That's an interesting experience, especially when you're one of the characters.
Oprah Winfrey made a movie out of Tuesdays with Maury,
and she invited me to come to the set, and
I said okay, And I went there one day and
they were filming a scene and I looked at it
and it was like they had recreated Maury's office and
there was Jack Lemon playing Maury and Hanka's Area was
(18:40):
playing me. And I got there just as they were
about to film this scene and they said, you know,
all right, everybody quiet, you know, action, And I heard
Jack Lemon saying, well, Mitch, you know, this is what
happens when you die, Mitch all these lines that were
from the book. And it was surreal, because, you know,
it was like watching my own life right in front
of me, you know, with two actors who I knew
(19:01):
very well. All of a sudden, they were using our names,
and one of them looked a lot like Maury, and
you know, they made Jack Lemon up to look like
Moury and I never went back to the set, you know,
like it was kind of spooky.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
But they did a great job.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
And Jack Lemon ended up winning the Emmy for that
and Hank his area and the movie and all that.
And I remember Jack Lemon when he got nominated for
the Emmy. I called him up and I said, congratulations.
You know, I think you're going to win because you
did a great job. And he said, thank you, thank you.
Then I teased him and I said, just remember if
you win, don't forget the writer, because they always forget
(19:36):
the writer. You know, they thanked their dog catcher and
they thanked the woman next door or whatever they do.
And he said, okay, okay, okay. And so of course
he ends up winning. And when he went up to
make his acceptance speech, the first thing he said was,
you know, I spoke to Mitch Album months ago about
this and he said, don't forget the writer.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
So I'm going to say it thanks to him. You
know this we wouldn't have had any of this if
not for him. So it was very, very very sweet.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
You know.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
That was my first experience in your movies, your books
becoming movies. And then they made one out of the
Five People You Meet in Heaven, which I wrote, and
that was a surreal experience because these things that are
in your imagination, like I had. There was an amusement
park was the backdrop of the book, and I created
the whole amusement park from my imagination. And then you
walk onto this set that they built and it looks
(20:24):
just like your imagination made it look, only they created
it from scratch. You know, the name of the pier,
the rides, all the rest of it, which are things
I made up, and it's right in front of you. So,
as I say, it's sort of a surreal thing to
see something come to life in a movie.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Was it a challenge to take fiction that you had
written and then turn it into a script.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
From shooting script, it is, you have to lose most
of it. People don't realize, you know how deep a
book is. People always saying the movie wasn't like the book.
And I always say, if you made the movie exactly
like the book, like each scene that you have in
the book was actually seen in the movie. The dialogue
in the book was the dialogue, the movie would be
one hundred and fifty hours long. So most of what
(21:05):
you do is just cut and you cut, and you cut,
and you cut and you cut, and then you really
have to get down to the essence of what the
book was about. And I think in some cases other
people can do that better than you can.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I wrote three of my movies.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
We have some other ones that are being done now,
and I'm just as comfortable with somebody else writing it
because it's really kind of a different thing.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I'm currently watching a series called The Offer, which is
the making of The Godfather, and Pujo, who'd written this
extraordinary book, has the same problem because they hire him
to write the movie script. He's never written a movie script,
and he doesn't know how to do it. And it's
fascinating to watch have that whole sense of the complexity
of As one of the guys said, this is about
(21:46):
a series of snapshots. You know, you got to go
through the book and figure out the right snapshots, because
that's all you got time for.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
I'll tell you something that John Voight played Eddie in
The Tuesdays with Maury, and he taught me a great
lesson once like that. I had written a scene very
much like the scene in the book where he confronts
his father in heaven and his father isn't talking to him,
and he says something to him, you know, like talk
to me, Dad, you know, come on, dad, talk to me,
you know, forgive me Dad, And John Boyd says to me,
(22:15):
can I ask you something? I said, yeah, I said,
why do you have me saying this three times? I said, because,
you know, like I did in the book, it's really important.
He says, let me say it once and I'll do
the rest on my face, And I thought, uh, that's
the difference between movies.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
That's really good. That is a great line which I
will keep now. Beyond all of this, which is really
quite amazing, you also became a playwright, which has its
own kind of discipline and rules and things that are
different than either a movie or a book.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah, much different playwrights. That's where you want to go
if you want to feel important, because the writer is king.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
In the stage world. The writer is just accessory.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
In the movie world, you're lucky if you get invited
to the screening. But in the playworld, the playwrights words
are you know, first of all, it's all about dialogue.
And I had great opportunity to write the play of
Tuesdays with Maury with Jeffrey Hatcher. I didn't know anything
about writing plays at that point, but I had learned
from him and from some other good play rights. They
(23:19):
said that Herb Gardner, the wonderful playwright of a Thousand
Clowns and other people like that. He took me in
and kind of became a mentor, and he said to me,
all of theater is about somebody wants something from somebody else.
Just synthesize it down to somebody wants something from somebody else,
and that's the essence of every great play and everything.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
And I've always kept that in.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Mind when I wrote Tuesdays with Maury with Jeffrey Hatcher,
and then I wrote a number of plays afterwards as
a result of it. And it's a very dialogue heavy thing.
You know, nobody cares. You don't write what something smells like,
or what the wall looks like or anything like that.
It's just people talking, and that's its own kind of discipline,
own set of rules.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Just further expand your amazing range of talent. You're also
a songwriter and lyricist.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Well, that goes back to my music days. I wasn't
very successful when I was trying to be a musician.
But when you don't try and you get into some
other field, suddenly you find out like musicians like hanging
out with writers. And I ended up befriending a lot
of guys through our terrible band that I've told you about,
the rock Bottom Remainders, including Warren Zevon, a guy who
(24:30):
did were Wolves of London and all the rest of it,
and he ended up asking me to write him a
song one time, which I did and he recorded it.
I've ended up having songs and movies that I've done,
and I've had much more success as a musician once
I decided not to be one than I had when
I was trying to be one.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Your newest book is very very timely in that The
Little Liar is the first one you've done set during
the Holocaust. Why did you decide to write about the Holocaust?
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Well, I didn't really decide to write about the Holocaust.
I wanted to write about truth. And the book is
narrated by the voice of Truth. It begins with you
know you can trust the story you're about to hear.
You can trust it, because I'm the only thing in
this world you can trust.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I am truth.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
And it tells the story of a little eleven year
old boy living in Greece who's never told a lie
in his life and a little girl in his village
who loves him, and when the Nazis invaded, they find
out about his honesty and they decide to use it
as a weapon, and they trick him into standing on
(25:51):
the railroad tracks and telling the people who get into
the trains that they're going to someplace good and new.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
They're going to have jobs and homes and.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Everything's going to be fine, and thinking that he's telling
the truth and that if he does this, they'll let
him go back to his family. He does this for
a couple of weeks until on the very last train
he sees his family and this little girl that he
loves shoved into the box car, and he finds out
that these trains are actually going to Auschwitz and the
concentration camps, and he realizes that the first lie he's
(26:21):
ever told in his life is going to be the
worst lie he's ever going to tell in his life.
And the book follows him and the girl that he loves,
and his family and even the Nazi who tricked him
for the next forty years, and shows the ramifications of
that one lie on all their lives, how it changed him,
the girl, the family, the Nazi. And it's kind of
(26:43):
a parable about truth and forgiveness because he spends the
rest of his life trying to be forgiven for what
he was tricked into doing, and his family tries to
find him, and so does the girl to forgive him,
but their lives have so changed that you know, it
takes decades for them to find each other again. Didn't
really set out to write something about the Holocaust or
even about events of today, but it turns out that
(27:05):
it's pertinent to both.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
You put the book in Greece. Why'd you pick Greece?
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Well, as I told you, I lived there for a
period of time as a nightclub singer and a piano player,
and so I knew more about Greece, probably than the
average guy who lives in Detroit does, which is where
I live. And a lot of people don't realize that
the Nazis even invaded Greece, that the Holocaust came there,
and they certainly don't realize that Thessalonica, which is a
(27:30):
city where I set the book, was actually the largest
majority Jewish population of any city in Europe. Everybody thinks
it would be in Poland, or in France or something
not true. Thessalonica had close to like thirty seven percent
was Jewish before the war, and within three years was
(27:51):
wiped out, just totally eliminated. And I thought, if I can,
in twenty twenty three tell a story about the hollow
cost that people didn't know, it only goes to show
you how vast and awful that event was, and that
there's still things that we need to be hearing about,
even at a time when there's very few people left
(28:12):
alive to be able to share those stories.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
It's amazing. And I think the way in which you
have the whole story narrated by truth itself, it really
does in some ways take you back to Tuesdays with
Maury and the whole notion of seeking a larger meaning
and seeking something like truth and love which transcends normal
human behavior.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Well, I always remember that Maury said to me before
he died that one of the things he regretted the
most in his life was an argument that he had
with a friend of his that crumbled their friendship.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And he started to cry.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
When he told it to me, and he said, you know,
I found out a couple months ago that he died
of cancer, and I never had.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
A chance to make it up to him. And he
started to weep and just weep.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
He said, why did I let that nothing conversation separate us?
All I wish is that I could hold his hand
and tell them what a great friend he was, but
I never will. And he looked me kind of square on.
He said, Mitch, if there's anybody you care about in
your life who you're fighting with or feuding with, let
it go.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Just let it go.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
He said, forgive everybody everything, and then forgive yourself, because
when you get to the end of your life, you're
going to wish that you had done that. And I
took that very seriously, and I've tried to live my
life that way, never holding grudges, and anybody that I
care about, if I get into something, I resolve it,
because you never know.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
When you don't get the chance, the next day they're gone.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
And so in a little liar, you know, forgiveness becomes
a big part of the theme and what is truth
and what is forgiveness if not sort of seeking the
truth of what happened and what went wrong. So in
some ways, The Little Liar poses the question of, you know,
what's the biggest lie you ever told and what would
you do to be forgiven for that?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Lot and alcoholics anonymous, seeking reconciliation and forgiveness for the
things you've done to hurt others is a very significant
part of getting your act together and being able to
live without addiction. So in that sense, The Little Liar
you've touched on a central core of human beings. What's
also fascinating is you have a podcast called The Tuesday
(30:21):
People and you've been doing it for four years. How
often do you do it and what's your focus?
Speaker 3 (30:26):
So we do it every week on Tuesdays. The reason
I decided to do it was as we were getting
close to the twenty fifth anniversary of Tuesdays with Maury,
somebody asked me, well, is there something that you can
do differently, you know, write something for the book or whatever.
And I thought about it. I said, you know, Tuesdays
with Mary's pretty well known. It's not a whole lot
more that I can say about it. But then I
(30:47):
realized that I had all these tapes from my conversations
with Maury that I had never really shared with anybody,
and so I thought about the audio medium, and I thought, well,
why don't I do a podcast where every week I
share some of our conversations and we review those lessons.
But as seen through the lens now, I'm a lot
closer to Mary's age than I am to mine back then,
(31:10):
and I am sort of, you know, taking his role
as the teacher now but using his words. And so
we're able to play all these different clips because we
recorded all of our conversations, and it's been very sweet
for me to listen to that, you know, because I'm
listening to myself from twenty five, twenty six years ago,
and my voice still sounds similar, younger, a little higher
(31:32):
like up here.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
But the way I.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Converse and the way that Maury teases me and I tee,
there's a lot of laughing and there's a lot of teasing,
you know, along with the life lessons. There's a lot
of crying that you hear Maury do. And I was
just going to do it for like six months, but
it just keeps going because there's so many tapes, so.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
People can go to where they get podcasts. Put in
the Tuesday people.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, Tuesday people.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
That's great. So one last language is in the middle
of all your creativity, you also are very deeply committed
to helping other people, both in Detroit and in Haiti.
Could you chat a little bit about what you do
and why you doing?
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Sure? Well.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
A lot of this also stems back to Tuesdays with Maury,
when Maury said to me one time, what do you
do for charity? And I said, what do you mean?
He said, well, what do you do for people in
your community? I said, I write checks? And he said, well,
anybody can write a check. You've been given a voice,
and you need to use your voice for something more
than just a grandizing yourself. I never forget that, because
(32:37):
who uses the word a grandize in a sentence except Maury.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Started my first charity that year, which was a scholarship
fund for kids to study the arts in Detroit, and
then I began to get a little bit more deeply involved,
more to be involved than In two thousand and six,
they had the Super Bowl here in Detroit, and I
read a story about a Super super Bowl party for
homeless people, which I couldn't understand what the heck that was,
(33:04):
so I looked into it and it turned out it
was a euphemism for getting all the homeless people off
the streets in Detroit and putting them into this big.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Shelter so that they wouldn't bother the customers.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
And then on Monday morning, right after the Super Bowl,
they were going to kick them out back out into
the street, and I thought, this is just really cruel,
and so I went down to a homeless shelter and
spent a night there to write a story about what
it was like to really need a shelter and how
why you can't give that to people and then just
take it away from them. And while I was in
line at the shelter for the meal, this guy in
(33:36):
front of me looks, turns around and looks me up
and down. He says, aren't you Mitch Album. I said yeah,
and then he looked me up and down again. He said,
so what happened to you? And you know, first I
laughed and he was dead serious. Then I realized, well, yeah,
I guess you know, he probably never expected to be
on this line either. So I was very taken with that,
(33:57):
you know, like it was one of those moments that
kind of stayed with me. And I wrote a column
about it, and I asked people to help give money
to just keep the homeless in that shelter at least
until April when it warmed up. So I was seeking
sixty thousand dollars, and within a week I had three
hundred and twenty five thousand dollars just from people sending
(34:18):
in five and ten and twenty dollars donations, and so
I had to do something with it, and so I
looked into it, and I formed this charity called Say
Detroit Super All Year Detroit instead of Super one Weekend.
And it's grown from that in two thousand and six
to it's now a multimillion dollar operation that handles ten
(34:39):
different operations, all of which we've created here, everything from
infants to five days old up to senior citizens. We
opened the first medical clinic for homeless children in America
was here in Detroit.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
We operate that. We operate a.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Rec center after school for three hundred kids that has
a digital learning center of recording studio football fields in
the most dangerous neighborhood in Detroit. We even have a
bicycle factory where we create jobs refurbishing or building bicycles
that we then give out to people in Detroit because
transportation here is such a challenge, so people can't get
to work or can't get to school, and so we
(35:13):
provide free bicycles. So I've done all that and that's
grown into something quite big. And I take my role
in my hometown here of Detroit very seriously, and I
think I've been blessed. A lot of people's most common
question is why do you stay in Detroit? Why do
you stay in Detroit? I can't believe you live in Detroit.
You know why you're still there. I love it here
and I'm very proud of being from here. That's my
(35:34):
involvement in Detroit and in Haiti. I operate an orphanage
in Haiti that I've been operating since twenty ten, and
I'm there every month of my life. For about seven
to nine days of every month, I spend there running
the orphanage, and we.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Have currently sixty five children.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
We always have about sixty sixty five children, and as
they graduate, they get college scholarships. I've got twelve of
them right now in university here. Michigan and one in
medical school. Haiti is just a remarkable and sad place
on many levels. It's the second poorest country on Earth.
It's the poorest here in the Western Hemisphere. It is
(36:12):
lawless right now and without government. We have to take
armored cars just to get to the orphanage from the
airport and have bodyguards with us.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
This is a topic I'm very fascinated by. We have
been in Haiti off and on since nineteen twenty three
and we haven't been able to fix it. It's a
human tragedy and it has predatory behaviors that makes life
miserable for everybody who's not predatory. The military's intervened several times,
(36:41):
nothing gets improved. What's your gut instinct, and since you
have a personal knowledge of the country, what has to
be done so that Haitians can have a decent life.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Well, first of all, they have to make education available.
And it may sound simple, but you have to pay
to go to school in Haiti, and that's a device
that the rich use to keep.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
The poor down.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
You can't raise up an educated class of people if
nobody can afford to go to school. And every time
a politician comes along promising to make school free, somebody
in power undermines them and make sure it doesn't happen.
So right from the very beginning, they have to make
sure that people get educated. And then you have to
somehow find a way to get a leader there that
(37:25):
isn't corrupt or corrupted by the previous leaders, because corruption
is absolutely endemic to Haitian government. The people are remarkable.
They're resilient. The kids are amazing. We have children who
have been abandoned, left under trees to die, you know,
left in holes in the ground and muddy fields, no
birth certificates, no record of who they are. We have
(37:47):
to give them names and make up birthdays. And yet
they have a joy for living and a resilience and
a faith that is unparalleled. And I wish I could
explain to people why it's important to help out in Haiti.
And you know new because you're an educated man in government.
We ran Haiti for fifteen years, We wrote their constitution,
(38:13):
we kept their money in our banks. We have a
history there, we have an obligation there. And it's not
just some little island off the Florida coast, so to speak.
And it's only seven hundred miles away from us, and
yet the way people live, the life expectancy there is
like twenty years less than here, just because of the condition.
So I wish that our leaders were more dedicated to
(38:36):
doing something there. Unfortunately, you know, it's not a lot
of political benefit to helping Haiti. Of course, if China
suddenly decided to come in there, or Russia or whatever,
we'd be there in a hurry. Witness what happened just recently. Well,
with all these gangs. We have five people living with
us at our orphanage who have to live with us
because they had gangs walk into their homes with guns
(38:57):
and say get out now, no clothes, no anything, get out.
This is our house now and they have no place
to go, so they live with us. The country lives
under that kind of fear and control of these gangs.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
I think it's one of the great tragedies of our time,
and it ought to be fixable. But to fix it
you would have to defeat evil, and we're not very
good right now at doing that.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
No, I wish there was a formula that I knew
how to do that. So I always say I can't
fix Haiti, but I can fix a tiny little corner
of it, and that's why I'm there and I will
be for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
If enough people take on the desire to be helpful
that you have both in Detroit and Haiti collectively will
eventually produce a better planet with better living conditions. Mitch,
this has been fascinating. You've had a remarkable life that
has sort of unfolded before you. I can kind of
sense that you kept drifting forward and the next thing
(39:54):
would open up, and then the next thing. So I
really want to thank you for joining me. I want
to and mind our listeners that your new novel, The
Little Liar, is available on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere,
would make a great holiday gift. I encourage everyone to
pick up a copy. You can read more about Mitch's
work on his website at Mitch album dot com. And
(40:17):
I want to further say thank you for the work
you've done both for the people of Michigan and the
people of Haiti with all your philanthropic work, and thank
you for what'sman, I think an amazing conversation.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Well thanks, I've really enjoyed talking to you and I appreciated.
Happy holidays to everybody in your audience.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Thank you to my guest Mitch Album. You can learn
more about his new book, The Little Liar on our
show page at newtsworld dot com. News World is produced
by Gaingish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is
Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for
the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to
(40:57):
the team at Gingers three sixty. If you've been enjoying
newts World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and
both rate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
listeners of newts World can sign up for my three
freeweekly columns at gangwischree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm
Newt Gingrich. This is newts World.
On this episode of New World. Author, screenwriter, philanthropist, journalist,
and broadcaster Mitch Album is an inspiration around the world.
Album is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction,
which have collectively sold more than forty million copies in
forty eight languages worldwide. He's written eight number one New
(00:28):
York Times bestsellers, including Tuesdays with Maury, the best selling
memoir of all time, which topped the list for four
stray years and celebrated its twenty fifth anniversary on twenty
twenty two. He's also written award winning TV films, stage plays, screenplays,
a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and a musical. He appeared
(00:52):
for more than twenty years in ESPN and was a
fixture on the sports reporters through his work at the
Detroit Free Press. He was inducted into both the National
Sports Media Association and Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, and
was the recipient of the Redsmith Award for Lifetime achievement.
So with that introduction, I am really pleased to welcome
(01:16):
my guest, Mitch Album, and he's joining us to discuss
his new novel, The Little Liar, which is now available
in bookstores everywhere. Mitch, welcome and thank you for joining
(01:39):
me on New World.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
That's a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. How
did you get into writing accidentally?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I was a musician and that's all I ever really
wanted to be. Never wrote anything while I was in
high school or college. I just wanted to work in
the music business, and I did that for a few
years in New York. Wasn't really getting anywhere and worked
at nights mostly, and so during the day I had
time free. And I was in a supermarket one day
(02:06):
and picked up one of those giveaway newspapers that they
have there, and they had a little thing in the
bottom right corner that said, we could use some help
with our newspaper if you have time. And since I
had some time, I went down there, and I think
I was the youngest person in the office by about
seventy years, and they gave me an assignment that night,
and I'd never written anything, and they gave me an
(02:28):
assignment to cover a parking meter's hearing. And all I
knew about journalism was all the president's men, which I
had seen, like a lot of other people in the movies,
And so I got myself a pad and a pen,
and I went there and asked a lot of direct questions,
and then I guess I had just read a lot
of newspapers in my life, and I knew that you
(02:49):
start with that sort of general paragraph that sums it up,
and then you have a quote, and then you expand it.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So I wrote the story, and the next.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Week when I went back to the supermarket, I picked
up the little paper that they gave out, and there
was my story on the bottom of the front page
and had my name on it. And I got that
little tingled in my stomach, and I've been a writer
ever since.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
How did your family react to your name in print?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Well, my father always wanted me to be a lawyer
or a doctor, and so he hated the idea that
I was going to be a musician. And he tolerated
it because he loved me and he was a good
man and a good father. And then after a few
years I said to him, you know, I think I'm
going to get out of the music business. And I
could see he was trying to hide the smile on
his face, and he said, well, all right, if you
(03:34):
feel that that's the right thing, you know, what are
you thinking of going into and I said writing, and
he said writing, that's the fire to the frying band.
And so he wasn't too crazy about it for the
first few years, but eventually he came around, and I
think eventually by the time I was writing a newspaper
(03:56):
column and then wrote a book, he thought, it's maybe
he'll be able to make something of himself.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I have to ask you before we leave your famed
musical career. You played in the Lucky Tiger Grease Stick band. Yeah,
do you want to tell us all a little bit
about I think this was in high school, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
In high school? It was like a Shana Nah band.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
We greased our hair back and we sang the songs
of the nineteen fifties and the early sixties and do
wop music, you know, and it was a lot of fun.
We played all around high schools and bands and concerts,
and I never had to worry about dancing in high
school because I was always playing in the band, you know,
which there was an easier way to meet girls than
(04:35):
asking them to dance. And many years later, when I
got out of music, just to put full circle on it,
I joined a band of writers with Stephen King and
Dave Barry and Amy Tan and Ridley Pearson, Scott Tureau,
James McBride, kind of a who's who of a lot
of writers. And we've been together now for twenty five
years and honestly new this band is worse than my
(04:57):
high school band.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
So so it performs below the standard of the Lucky
Tiger Grease Stick band.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yes, yes, exactly, Yes, that's hysterical.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Now. I have to say one of the things I
was intrigued by you actually ended up in Crete playing
in a taverna as its singing Elvis Presley and Ray
Charles songs. What was that like? I would think it
must be pretty wild.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Well, I ended up there quite by accident. And I
was over in Europe after college and doing the backpacking
thing before I came back to New York to try
my life as a musician, and I ended up in Athens.
I entered an ad for a piano player wanted on
Resort Island and didn't even know what it was. And
they gave me a plane ticket and flew me over
to Crete. And I walked into the place and the
(05:43):
guy said to me, are you the piano player? I said, yeah,
I said, sit down, start playing. I didn't have any music.
I didn't have anything, and I just sat down at
this piano and started playing piano, which I could do.
And then after he listened to me for a little while,
he took me down to Verner, the nightclub, to negotiate
the deal. And while we were there, he said, can
you sing? And I said, well, I could sing, and
he said, well, go sing with the band and I said,
(06:04):
I can't sing Greek music. He said, just go sing
with the band, or you know, I'm not going to
give you the job. And so I went to the
guy at the band and whispered in his area. I said,
do you know any American rock and roll music? And
he said Elvis Brizzidy and I said, yeah, okay, Elvis Presy.
He says blue sweit Choose. I said, okay, I can
do blues sweit choos. And you know, the lights were off,
and you know that song kind of starts cold, you know,
(06:26):
without any music. So it was like one, two, three,
and then the lights go up and I go one
for the money, two for the show, like that, and everybody's.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Mouth just dropped open. For about the next three minutes.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I became Elvis Presley, and I was kind of swinging
around the whole club.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And dancing and everything.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
And by the time I finished, I got a standing
ovation and the nightclub owner said, I'm hiring you as
my singer and my piano player.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And I got the job.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
And I was there for about seven months, and if
I was smart, I would have just stayed there the
rest of my life, But like a fool, I wanted
to get back to New York so I could starve.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
What was life in Creek like, Oh, it's magical.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
First, well, back then, Crete wasn't developed like it is now.
And I was near this fishing village called Agios Nikolaus,
and I used to be able to ride a bicycle
into town or run into town. And then I just
stand on the corner by the fishing area there where
everybody was in their boats. And they knew me because
you know how many guys on the island of Crete
in that corner of it sing Elvis Presley music. And
(07:20):
so they would pull up in cards and say, oh, hello, elders,
get in the car, Come on, I give you a ride,
do you know, And so I was like the king
of the island. You know, everybody knew me, and the
food was fantastic, the water was you know, turquoise blue,
and the people could not have been nicer.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And many years later, you.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Know this new book I wrote, The Little Iris, set
in Greece, and part of the reason is because I
lived there when I was younger, and I knew a
lot about it and wanted to set a story there.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
You really had quite an eclectic early part of your life.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I did, and then I ended up a sports writer,
which has nothing to do with any of it.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Did you love sports?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
No? Not, particularly when I got into journalism. After I
worked at that volunteer paper that they gave out in supermarkets.
That helped me get into Columbia Journalism School in New
York City. And while I was there, I needed to
pay my tuition. I was working as a piano player
at night, you know, trying to pay my tuition, and
they had a job at the Sport magazine and so
I went over there and I you know, started writing.
(08:17):
And then when I graduated, I wanted to get into
magazine writing. You know, I wanted to be like Tom Wolfe.
I wanted to write long, big magazine pieces. But all
my clips were sports clips, and so every time I
would apply for a job, they would end up giving
them over to the sports editor and saying, hey, this
guy writes sports.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
And so eventually I ended up.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Getting offered a job as a sports writer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida,
and I thought, well, I need the job, I'll take it.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And I've been in sports ever since.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
And I found that I could actually write a lot
of human stories, a lot of stories about pathos and
emotion and things in the sports world because it's a
great backdrop.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
You know, you've got victory.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
And defeat, and you know people working their whole life
for ten seconds. And it turned out to be a
great training field for the kind of writing I would
end up doing later.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
While you were doing that, as I understand it, you
encountered Maury Schwartz, who was a former college professor who
was dying of als or lou Gerrigg's disease. What led
you to decide to write Tuesdays with Maury?
Speaker 3 (09:25):
You know, it wasn't really a book thing, to be
honest with you, Maury was an old college professor of
mine who I was very close with in college. I mean,
he wasn't just a guy I took a class with
I took every class he offered. I majored in sociology
because of him. We were kind of like an uncle
and a nephew. Really, you know, we sat around campus
and ate together. I went to his home, and then
(09:45):
when I graduated, you know, I promised I would stay
in touch, and then I didn't, you know, became very
self absorbed and very ambitious and working my way up
the sports writing ladder, and I just sort of forgot
about him.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Shame on me.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
And then sixteen years later I saw him accidentally on
Nightline with Ted Copple, talking about what it was like
to die from Luke Garritt's disease. That's the only way
I found out that he was even sick, and so
I was very embarrassed by that, and I called him
up and figuring I would just make one call to
ease my conscience, and one call led to a visit.
I figured one visit would ease my conscience. And the
(10:21):
first visit was so unbelievable. You know, he was so
calm about dying, and he was so content with how
he had lived his life that when I flew home
that night, I realized, like he was seventy eight and dying,
and I was thirty seven and perfectly healthy, and he
seemed more content with his life than I was. So
I began to go back the next Tuesday, the next Tuesday,
next Tuesday, and all the tuesdays he had left in
(10:43):
his life to try to find out what he knew
about life that I didn't. And the book only came
about as an accident because he told me one time
that the thing he feared the most wasn't a disease
and wasn't anything physical. It was that he was going
to die and leave his family all this debt, because
he was in debt for all his medical bills for
dying for two years.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
And so he said, I'm going to die twice.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
First time I die, and then on the other side
of the grave, when I realized, my family's going to
have to sell their house and I'm going to be
the cause of it. And so I only got the
idea then to maybe write a book to help him
pay his medical bills. And I privately went around to
all these different publishers in New York trying to find
somebody who was interested in it, and I said, I
just need enough money to pay his bills. I think
(11:28):
it's really interesting story an old man talking to a
young man about what's important in life, right before he dies.
And everybody said, no, everybody boring. You're a sports writer.
It's depressing. Nobody's going to want to read it. And
I honestly I would have given up newt if it
was for me, because I had so many no's, But
(11:48):
because it was for him, I kept pushing and pushing
until I found one publisher who was willing to publish it,
and just a few weeks before Maury died, they agreed
to do it, and I was able to go to
Maury and tell him give him the money to pay
his medical bills. And I said, here, you don't have
to die twice, you know, once is enough for me.
I always said that was the end of Tuesdays with more,
(12:08):
because I had finally learned to do one nice thing,
you know, for this man who had done so many
nice things for me before that. But of course, then
after he passed away, I wrote the book very simply.
I was figuring to go back to my sports writing career,
and they printed twenty thousand copies of it total. I
thought i'd have them in the trunk of my car
for the rest of my life, you know, giving them
(12:29):
out to people when they drove. Hey you want to book,
you know, come by for Christmas and empty out my trunk.
And it just caught on in some way and got
bigger and bigger and bigger. But it was totally an accident.
But that book sort of made you, oh yeah, well
that only made me. It turned my life around. I mean,
you know, I was an ambitious, one hundred hour a week,
(12:52):
you know, sports writer, and from that point forward, instead
of people coming up to me and saying, Hey, Who's
going to win Super Bowl, they would come up and say,
my mother died of cancer. And the last thing we
did was read Tuesdays with Maury Together. Can I talk
to you about it? You know, and your reaction is
quite different than Who's going to win the Super Bowl?
(13:13):
And you start to realize the pain that people walk
around with every day and every airport and every place
you're meeting them. Someone's missing, somebody, mourning for somebody, grieving
for somebody, worried about somebody. And I heard so many
of these stories and my world began to revolve around
that kind of thing. And I never wrote a sports book. Again,
(13:33):
everything I've written since has really kind of been a derivative,
even fictionally, of the lessons I learned and Tuesdays with Maury.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Even though that was a huge success, it took you
six years to write your next book.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Well, I was kind of frozen because all the people
who didn't want Tuesdays with Maury now all they wanted
was Wednesdays with Maury, you know, chicken Soup with Maury
and Venus and Mars and Maury and you.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Know like that.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
And I said, oh no, I'm not going to do that.
You know, I don't want to turn it into a franchise.
And you know, everything that happened, I wrote, there's nothing
else to say about that book, and well, come up
with something, and so finally I said, well, I think
maybe I'll try a novel.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
And they said, oh no, that's a stupid idea. That's
a terrible idea.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
No, no, no, you know everybody who writes nonfiction thinks
they can write a novel and don't do it. I said, well,
but yeah, but you said the same thing about Tuesdays
with Maury.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
You said that was a stupid idea too.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
So I think fortunately because I had been rejected once before,
I wasn't afraid to go up against the rejection the
second time.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And I knew in my heart that I would.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Never find a subject that would please Tuesdays with Moury fans.
If it was a nonfiction subject, they would all say, well,
whoever this guy is, isn't as interesting as Maury. So
I just went the other way and wrote a novel
about a man who dies and goes to heaven and
meets five people from his life. And it was called
The Five People You Meet in Heaven And not would.
It became a really really successful book, and my career
(15:04):
as a fiction writer was created.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Haven't written a fandom of books myself to launch two
consecutive New York Times bestsellers, one in fiction one and nonfiction.
That's really pretty remarkable.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, I think if I had thought about it, I
probably would have been too scared to do it. But
you know what they say about when you're younger and
taking chances, you're not afraid of what you might lose,
And so I thought, well, what do I got to lose?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
And it worked out.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
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(16:27):
So then you came back with for One More Day,
which actually debuted at number one on the New York
Times list and spend nine months on the list. What
triggered that? Why did you write One More Day?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I used to talk to my mother periodically when I
was writing in the mornings. You know, I'd pick up
the phone if I had a little break and with
just dollar number. And you know, my mom we had
a great relationship and she's really encouraging to me. You know,
she was the opposite of what my dad. You know, well,
my dad said, don't be a writer, don't be writer.
My mother said, you do whatever you want to do.
If it's going to make you happy.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Do it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I thought to myself, one day, I'm not going to
be able to, you know, make this call, like what
will be like if she's not here? And I said,
I know what I'm going to feel. I'm going to say, like,
oh no, just give me one more day back, and
I'll say everything that I should have said.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Wrote a book about a guy who loses his mother
and his life kind of goes downhill, becomes alcoholic, and
you know, kind of goes back to his hometown, little
hometown where he grew up to kill himself and he fails.
And when the son comes up, he goes back to
his old abandoned house, having failed even a killing himself,
and walks into the house and discovers his mother's living
(17:37):
in it as if nothing ever happened, as if she
never died, and she's making him breakfast and he gets
this full day, one full day back on earth with her,
and he's able to sort of say all the things
that he didn't and kind of figure out how his
life went wrong, and she sort of helps him.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
And it ended up being.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Ironically the last book that my mother read, because she
suffered stroke right after that and couldn't read or talk
anymore after it, so I was glad that I dedicated
it to her, and the timing of it worked out
to be the right thing.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
What's fascinating about your career is, in addition to writing
both fiction and nonfiction, you've had four of your books
turned into movies.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
That's an interesting experience, especially when you're one of the characters.
Oprah Winfrey made a movie out of Tuesdays with Maury,
and she invited me to come to the set, and
I said okay, And I went there one day and
they were filming a scene and I looked at it
and it was like they had recreated Maury's office and
there was Jack Lemon playing Maury and Hanka's Area was
(18:40):
playing me. And I got there just as they were
about to film this scene and they said, you know,
all right, everybody quiet, you know, action, And I heard
Jack Lemon saying, well, Mitch, you know, this is what
happens when you die, Mitch all these lines that were
from the book. And it was surreal, because, you know,
it was like watching my own life right in front
of me, you know, with two actors who I knew
(19:01):
very well. All of a sudden, they were using our names,
and one of them looked a lot like Maury, and
you know, they made Jack Lemon up to look like
Moury and I never went back to the set, you know,
like it was kind of spooky.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
But they did a great job.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
And Jack Lemon ended up winning the Emmy for that
and Hank his area and the movie and all that.
And I remember Jack Lemon when he got nominated for
the Emmy. I called him up and I said, congratulations.
You know, I think you're going to win because you
did a great job. And he said, thank you, thank you.
Then I teased him and I said, just remember if
you win, don't forget the writer, because they always forget
(19:36):
the writer. You know, they thanked their dog catcher and
they thanked the woman next door or whatever they do.
And he said, okay, okay, okay. And so of course
he ends up winning. And when he went up to
make his acceptance speech, the first thing he said was,
you know, I spoke to Mitch Album months ago about
this and he said, don't forget the writer.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
So I'm going to say it thanks to him. You
know this we wouldn't have had any of this if
not for him. So it was very, very very sweet.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
You know.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
That was my first experience in your movies, your books
becoming movies. And then they made one out of the
Five People You Meet in Heaven, which I wrote, and
that was a surreal experience because these things that are
in your imagination, like I had. There was an amusement
park was the backdrop of the book, and I created
the whole amusement park from my imagination. And then you
walk onto this set that they built and it looks
(20:24):
just like your imagination made it look, only they created
it from scratch. You know, the name of the pier,
the rides, all the rest of it, which are things
I made up, and it's right in front of you. So,
as I say, it's sort of a surreal thing to
see something come to life in a movie.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Was it a challenge to take fiction that you had
written and then turn it into a script.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
From shooting script, it is, you have to lose most
of it. People don't realize, you know how deep a
book is. People always saying the movie wasn't like the book.
And I always say, if you made the movie exactly
like the book, like each scene that you have in
the book was actually seen in the movie. The dialogue
in the book was the dialogue, the movie would be
one hundred and fifty hours long. So most of what
(21:05):
you do is just cut and you cut, and you cut,
and you cut and you cut, and then you really
have to get down to the essence of what the
book was about. And I think in some cases other
people can do that better than you can.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I wrote three of my movies.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
We have some other ones that are being done now,
and I'm just as comfortable with somebody else writing it
because it's really kind of a different thing.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I'm currently watching a series called The Offer, which is
the making of The Godfather, and Pujo, who'd written this
extraordinary book, has the same problem because they hire him
to write the movie script. He's never written a movie script,
and he doesn't know how to do it. And it's
fascinating to watch have that whole sense of the complexity
of As one of the guys said, this is about
(21:46):
a series of snapshots. You know, you got to go
through the book and figure out the right snapshots, because
that's all you got time for.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
I'll tell you something that John Voight played Eddie in
The Tuesdays with Maury, and he taught me a great
lesson once like that. I had written a scene very
much like the scene in the book where he confronts
his father in heaven and his father isn't talking to him,
and he says something to him, you know, like talk
to me, Dad, you know, come on, dad, talk to me,
you know, forgive me Dad, And John Boyd says to me,
(22:15):
can I ask you something? I said, yeah, I said,
why do you have me saying this three times? I said, because,
you know, like I did in the book, it's really important.
He says, let me say it once and I'll do
the rest on my face, And I thought, uh, that's
the difference between movies.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
That's really good. That is a great line which I
will keep now. Beyond all of this, which is really
quite amazing, you also became a playwright, which has its
own kind of discipline and rules and things that are
different than either a movie or a book.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah, much different playwrights. That's where you want to go
if you want to feel important, because the writer is king.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
In the stage world. The writer is just accessory.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
In the movie world, you're lucky if you get invited
to the screening. But in the playworld, the playwrights words
are you know, first of all, it's all about dialogue.
And I had great opportunity to write the play of
Tuesdays with Maury with Jeffrey Hatcher. I didn't know anything
about writing plays at that point, but I had learned
from him and from some other good play rights. They
(23:19):
said that Herb Gardner, the wonderful playwright of a Thousand
Clowns and other people like that. He took me in
and kind of became a mentor, and he said to me,
all of theater is about somebody wants something from somebody else.
Just synthesize it down to somebody wants something from somebody else,
and that's the essence of every great play and everything.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
And I've always kept that in.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Mind when I wrote Tuesdays with Maury with Jeffrey Hatcher,
and then I wrote a number of plays afterwards as
a result of it. And it's a very dialogue heavy thing.
You know, nobody cares. You don't write what something smells like,
or what the wall looks like or anything like that.
It's just people talking, and that's its own kind of discipline,
own set of rules.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Just further expand your amazing range of talent. You're also
a songwriter and lyricist.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Well, that goes back to my music days. I wasn't
very successful when I was trying to be a musician.
But when you don't try and you get into some
other field, suddenly you find out like musicians like hanging
out with writers. And I ended up befriending a lot
of guys through our terrible band that I've told you about,
the rock Bottom Remainders, including Warren Zevon, a guy who
(24:30):
did were Wolves of London and all the rest of it,
and he ended up asking me to write him a
song one time, which I did and he recorded it.
I've ended up having songs and movies that I've done,
and I've had much more success as a musician once
I decided not to be one than I had when
I was trying to be one.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Your newest book is very very timely in that The
Little Liar is the first one you've done set during
the Holocaust. Why did you decide to write about the Holocaust?
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Well, I didn't really decide to write about the Holocaust.
I wanted to write about truth. And the book is
narrated by the voice of Truth. It begins with you
know you can trust the story you're about to hear.
You can trust it, because I'm the only thing in
this world you can trust.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I am truth.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
And it tells the story of a little eleven year
old boy living in Greece who's never told a lie
in his life and a little girl in his village
who loves him, and when the Nazis invaded, they find
out about his honesty and they decide to use it
as a weapon, and they trick him into standing on
(25:51):
the railroad tracks and telling the people who get into
the trains that they're going to someplace good and new.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
They're going to have jobs and homes and.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Everything's going to be fine, and thinking that he's telling
the truth and that if he does this, they'll let
him go back to his family. He does this for
a couple of weeks until on the very last train
he sees his family and this little girl that he
loves shoved into the box car, and he finds out
that these trains are actually going to Auschwitz and the
concentration camps, and he realizes that the first lie he's
(26:21):
ever told in his life is going to be the
worst lie he's ever going to tell in his life.
And the book follows him and the girl that he loves,
and his family and even the Nazi who tricked him
for the next forty years, and shows the ramifications of
that one lie on all their lives, how it changed him,
the girl, the family, the Nazi. And it's kind of
(26:43):
a parable about truth and forgiveness because he spends the
rest of his life trying to be forgiven for what
he was tricked into doing, and his family tries to
find him, and so does the girl to forgive him,
but their lives have so changed that you know, it
takes decades for them to find each other again. Didn't
really set out to write something about the Holocaust or
even about events of today, but it turns out that
(27:05):
it's pertinent to both.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
You put the book in Greece. Why'd you pick Greece?
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Well, as I told you, I lived there for a
period of time as a nightclub singer and a piano player,
and so I knew more about Greece, probably than the
average guy who lives in Detroit does, which is where
I live. And a lot of people don't realize that
the Nazis even invaded Greece, that the Holocaust came there,
and they certainly don't realize that Thessalonica, which is a
(27:30):
city where I set the book, was actually the largest
majority Jewish population of any city in Europe. Everybody thinks
it would be in Poland, or in France or something
not true. Thessalonica had close to like thirty seven percent
was Jewish before the war, and within three years was
(27:51):
wiped out, just totally eliminated. And I thought, if I can,
in twenty twenty three tell a story about the hollow
cost that people didn't know, it only goes to show
you how vast and awful that event was, and that
there's still things that we need to be hearing about,
even at a time when there's very few people left
(28:12):
alive to be able to share those stories.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
It's amazing. And I think the way in which you
have the whole story narrated by truth itself, it really
does in some ways take you back to Tuesdays with
Maury and the whole notion of seeking a larger meaning
and seeking something like truth and love which transcends normal
human behavior.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Well, I always remember that Maury said to me before
he died that one of the things he regretted the
most in his life was an argument that he had
with a friend of his that crumbled their friendship.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And he started to cry.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
When he told it to me, and he said, you know,
I found out a couple months ago that he died
of cancer, and I never had.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
A chance to make it up to him. And he
started to weep and just weep.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
He said, why did I let that nothing conversation separate us?
All I wish is that I could hold his hand
and tell them what a great friend he was, but
I never will. And he looked me kind of square on.
He said, Mitch, if there's anybody you care about in
your life who you're fighting with or feuding with, let
it go.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Just let it go.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
He said, forgive everybody everything, and then forgive yourself, because
when you get to the end of your life, you're
going to wish that you had done that. And I
took that very seriously, and I've tried to live my
life that way, never holding grudges, and anybody that I
care about, if I get into something, I resolve it,
because you never know.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
When you don't get the chance, the next day they're gone.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
And so in a little liar, you know, forgiveness becomes
a big part of the theme and what is truth
and what is forgiveness if not sort of seeking the
truth of what happened and what went wrong. So in
some ways, The Little Liar poses the question of, you know,
what's the biggest lie you ever told and what would
you do to be forgiven for that?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Lot and alcoholics anonymous, seeking reconciliation and forgiveness for the
things you've done to hurt others is a very significant
part of getting your act together and being able to
live without addiction. So in that sense, The Little Liar
you've touched on a central core of human beings. What's
also fascinating is you have a podcast called The Tuesday
(30:21):
People and you've been doing it for four years. How
often do you do it and what's your focus?
Speaker 3 (30:26):
So we do it every week on Tuesdays. The reason
I decided to do it was as we were getting
close to the twenty fifth anniversary of Tuesdays with Maury,
somebody asked me, well, is there something that you can
do differently, you know, write something for the book or whatever.
And I thought about it. I said, you know, Tuesdays
with Mary's pretty well known. It's not a whole lot
more that I can say about it. But then I
(30:47):
realized that I had all these tapes from my conversations
with Maury that I had never really shared with anybody,
and so I thought about the audio medium, and I thought, well,
why don't I do a podcast where every week I
share some of our conversations and we review those lessons.
But as seen through the lens now, I'm a lot
closer to Mary's age than I am to mine back then,
(31:10):
and I am sort of, you know, taking his role
as the teacher now but using his words. And so
we're able to play all these different clips because we
recorded all of our conversations, and it's been very sweet
for me to listen to that, you know, because I'm
listening to myself from twenty five, twenty six years ago,
and my voice still sounds similar, younger, a little higher
(31:32):
like up here.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
But the way I.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Converse and the way that Maury teases me and I tee,
there's a lot of laughing and there's a lot of teasing,
you know, along with the life lessons. There's a lot
of crying that you hear Maury do. And I was
just going to do it for like six months, but
it just keeps going because there's so many tapes, so.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
People can go to where they get podcasts. Put in
the Tuesday people.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, Tuesday people.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
That's great. So one last language is in the middle
of all your creativity, you also are very deeply committed
to helping other people, both in Detroit and in Haiti.
Could you chat a little bit about what you do
and why you doing?
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Sure? Well.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
A lot of this also stems back to Tuesdays with Maury,
when Maury said to me one time, what do you
do for charity? And I said, what do you mean?
He said, well, what do you do for people in
your community? I said, I write checks? And he said, well,
anybody can write a check. You've been given a voice,
and you need to use your voice for something more
than just a grandizing yourself. I never forget that, because
(32:37):
who uses the word a grandize in a sentence except Maury.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Started my first charity that year, which was a scholarship
fund for kids to study the arts in Detroit, and
then I began to get a little bit more deeply involved,
more to be involved than In two thousand and six,
they had the Super Bowl here in Detroit, and I
read a story about a Super super Bowl party for
homeless people, which I couldn't understand what the heck that was,
(33:04):
so I looked into it and it turned out it
was a euphemism for getting all the homeless people off
the streets in Detroit and putting them into this big.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Shelter so that they wouldn't bother the customers.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
And then on Monday morning, right after the Super Bowl,
they were going to kick them out back out into
the street, and I thought, this is just really cruel,
and so I went down to a homeless shelter and
spent a night there to write a story about what
it was like to really need a shelter and how
why you can't give that to people and then just
take it away from them. And while I was in
line at the shelter for the meal, this guy in
(33:36):
front of me looks, turns around and looks me up
and down. He says, aren't you Mitch Album. I said yeah,
and then he looked me up and down again. He said,
so what happened to you? And you know, first I
laughed and he was dead serious. Then I realized, well, yeah,
I guess you know, he probably never expected to be
on this line either. So I was very taken with that,
(33:57):
you know, like it was one of those moments that
kind of stayed with me. And I wrote a column
about it, and I asked people to help give money
to just keep the homeless in that shelter at least
until April when it warmed up. So I was seeking
sixty thousand dollars, and within a week I had three
hundred and twenty five thousand dollars just from people sending
(34:18):
in five and ten and twenty dollars donations, and so
I had to do something with it, and so I
looked into it, and I formed this charity called Say
Detroit Super All Year Detroit instead of Super one Weekend.
And it's grown from that in two thousand and six
to it's now a multimillion dollar operation that handles ten
(34:39):
different operations, all of which we've created here, everything from
infants to five days old up to senior citizens. We
opened the first medical clinic for homeless children in America
was here in Detroit.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
We operate that. We operate a.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Rec center after school for three hundred kids that has
a digital learning center of recording studio football fields in
the most dangerous neighborhood in Detroit. We even have a
bicycle factory where we create jobs refurbishing or building bicycles
that we then give out to people in Detroit because
transportation here is such a challenge, so people can't get
to work or can't get to school, and so we
(35:13):
provide free bicycles. So I've done all that and that's
grown into something quite big. And I take my role
in my hometown here of Detroit very seriously, and I
think I've been blessed. A lot of people's most common
question is why do you stay in Detroit? Why do
you stay in Detroit? I can't believe you live in Detroit.
You know why you're still there. I love it here
and I'm very proud of being from here. That's my
(35:34):
involvement in Detroit and in Haiti. I operate an orphanage
in Haiti that I've been operating since twenty ten, and
I'm there every month of my life. For about seven
to nine days of every month, I spend there running
the orphanage, and we.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Have currently sixty five children.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
We always have about sixty sixty five children, and as
they graduate, they get college scholarships. I've got twelve of
them right now in university here. Michigan and one in
medical school. Haiti is just a remarkable and sad place
on many levels. It's the second poorest country on Earth.
It's the poorest here in the Western Hemisphere. It is
(36:12):
lawless right now and without government. We have to take
armored cars just to get to the orphanage from the
airport and have bodyguards with us.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
This is a topic I'm very fascinated by. We have
been in Haiti off and on since nineteen twenty three
and we haven't been able to fix it. It's a
human tragedy and it has predatory behaviors that makes life
miserable for everybody who's not predatory. The military's intervened several times,
(36:41):
nothing gets improved. What's your gut instinct, and since you
have a personal knowledge of the country, what has to
be done so that Haitians can have a decent life.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Well, first of all, they have to make education available.
And it may sound simple, but you have to pay
to go to school in Haiti, and that's a device
that the rich use to keep.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
The poor down.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
You can't raise up an educated class of people if
nobody can afford to go to school. And every time
a politician comes along promising to make school free, somebody
in power undermines them and make sure it doesn't happen.
So right from the very beginning, they have to make
sure that people get educated. And then you have to
somehow find a way to get a leader there that
(37:25):
isn't corrupt or corrupted by the previous leaders, because corruption
is absolutely endemic to Haitian government. The people are remarkable.
They're resilient. The kids are amazing. We have children who
have been abandoned, left under trees to die, you know,
left in holes in the ground and muddy fields, no
birth certificates, no record of who they are. We have
(37:47):
to give them names and make up birthdays. And yet
they have a joy for living and a resilience and
a faith that is unparalleled. And I wish I could
explain to people why it's important to help out in Haiti.
And you know new because you're an educated man in government.
We ran Haiti for fifteen years, We wrote their constitution,
(38:13):
we kept their money in our banks. We have a
history there, we have an obligation there. And it's not
just some little island off the Florida coast, so to speak.
And it's only seven hundred miles away from us, and
yet the way people live, the life expectancy there is
like twenty years less than here, just because of the condition.
So I wish that our leaders were more dedicated to
(38:36):
doing something there. Unfortunately, you know, it's not a lot
of political benefit to helping Haiti. Of course, if China
suddenly decided to come in there, or Russia or whatever,
we'd be there in a hurry. Witness what happened just recently. Well,
with all these gangs. We have five people living with
us at our orphanage who have to live with us
because they had gangs walk into their homes with guns
(38:57):
and say get out now, no clothes, no anything, get out.
This is our house now and they have no place
to go, so they live with us. The country lives
under that kind of fear and control of these gangs.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
I think it's one of the great tragedies of our time,
and it ought to be fixable. But to fix it
you would have to defeat evil, and we're not very
good right now at doing that.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
No, I wish there was a formula that I knew
how to do that. So I always say I can't
fix Haiti, but I can fix a tiny little corner
of it, and that's why I'm there and I will
be for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
If enough people take on the desire to be helpful
that you have both in Detroit and Haiti collectively will
eventually produce a better planet with better living conditions. Mitch,
this has been fascinating. You've had a remarkable life that
has sort of unfolded before you. I can kind of
sense that you kept drifting forward and the next thing
(39:54):
would open up, and then the next thing. So I
really want to thank you for joining me. I want
to and mind our listeners that your new novel, The
Little Liar, is available on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere,
would make a great holiday gift. I encourage everyone to
pick up a copy. You can read more about Mitch's
work on his website at Mitch album dot com. And
(40:17):
I want to further say thank you for the work
you've done both for the people of Michigan and the
people of Haiti with all your philanthropic work, and thank
you for what'sman, I think an amazing conversation.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Well thanks, I've really enjoyed talking to you and I appreciated.
Happy holidays to everybody in your audience.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Thank you to my guest Mitch Album. You can learn
more about his new book, The Little Liar on our
show page at newtsworld dot com. News World is produced
by Gaingish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is
Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for
the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to
(40:57):
the team at Gingers three sixty. If you've been enjoying
newts World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and
both rate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
listeners of newts World can sign up for my three
freeweekly columns at gangwischree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm
Newt Gingrich. This is newts World.
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