Author, Finding Happy: A User’s Guide to Your Life, with Lessons from Mine
This week on “Ira’s Everything Bagel,” Ira has an inspiring conversation with Peter Samuelson—philanthropist, producer, and author of Finding Happy: A User’s Guide to Your Life, with Lessons from Mine.
In this uplifting episode, Peter distills the meaning of life into a single, powerful paragraph and shares why he crafted his book with short, digestible chapters—perfect for today’s fast-paced world. He opens up about his life-changing work with First Star, helping teenage foster youth build brighter, more joyful futures.
Peter explains how his passion for mentoring stems from deep personal conviction and sharp pattern recognition that helps him guide young adults through life’s turning points. Originally intended as an autobiography, his book morphed into a self-help guide for young readers—fueled by a year of 5 a.m. writing sessions and a desire to blend real-life lessons with actionable advice.
He talks candidly about the risks he took, the importance of daring yourself to experiment, and how those leaps of faith led him to joy. Peter reflects on the groundbreaking reality that, for the first time in history, young people may possess more information than their elders—and why applying critical thinking is more important than ever.
From confronting the flaws of the foster care system and cultivating resilience, to the moment of epiphany that launched his philanthropic journey, Peter’s stories are both heartening and thought-provoking. He also shares how his background as a film producer shapes his philanthropic impact—and ultimately, what he believes is his true purpose in life.
Peter Samuelson is a serial pro-social entrepreneur, known for blending media and compassion to drive social change. He is the co-founder and president of First Star, which operates seventeen high school academies on college campuses for youth in foster care, and the CEO of PhilmCo Media LLC, which produces empathy-driven commercial films. Peter co-founded the Starlight Children’s Foundation in 1982 to provide psychosocial services for seriously ill children, which inspired his next initiative: Starbright World, the first avatar-based social network for seriously ill teens, co-founded with Steven Spielberg. He later founded First Star in 1999, EDAR (Everyone Deserves a Roof) in 2005, and ASPIRE in 2013, a media training program for non-film school undergraduates. Alongside these ventures, he has produced 27 films, raised four children, and remains deeply committed to improving the lives of society’s most vulnerable.
The first in his family to attend college, Peter earned a Master’s in English Literature from Cambridge on a full scholarship before moving to Los Angeles. He began his career as a production manager and later produced a diverse range of films, including Revenge of the Nerds, Tom & Viv, Wilde, and Arlington Road. He was a founding board member of Participant Media, known for socially impactful films like An Inconvenient Truth and Spotlight. From 2012 to 2013, Peter served as the founding managing director of the Media Institute for Social Change at USC. Today, he continues to balance his film work with philanthropic leadership, including holding a U.S. patent for a mobile homeless shelter. Peter lives in Los Angeles with his wife of thirty-five years, Saryl, and remains a tireless advocate for abused and neglected children.