S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman on today's show. Author Mitch Albom is out with a new book. I spoke with him about that and what motivates his work. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. Nearly 30 years ago , the book Tuesdays with Morrie captivated readers with its sincere exploration of life , its lessons , and its meaning. Through conversations with his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz. Author Mitch Albom book became a sensation and remains a bestseller even today. Other books. Albums written include The Five People You Meet in Heaven , Finding Chiku , and The Little Liar. His newest novel is called Twice and it's all about life's second chances. He'll be talking about it at Point Loma Nazarene University next Monday , October 27th. But he is joining me now to give us a preview of that conversation. Mitch , welcome to Midday Edition.
S2: Thank you for having me on the program.
S1: So glad you're here. So okay. The main character of twice is Alfie Logan. He's an unusual he's got this unusual power to go back into time and do things over again.
S2: And it gets to a point where it's too late for them to make the change. So the regret just sort of sits in and lays on them very heavily. So I thought , well , I'm going to write a book where someone actually has that power and then explore if it's really everything that it's cracked up to be. And as you can imagine , sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't.
S1: Well , you did add limitations to this power and they are some pretty big ones. Love and death.
S2: Uh , but. Well , look , anytime you're going to introduce time travel into a book , you have to set up the rules because people start comparing it to other time travel stories. Is it back to the future ? Is it , you know , midnight in Paris ? What's the deal ? So in mind , it's pretty simple. He , Alfie , has the ability to do anything in his life once more , but he has to live with the consequences of his second try. He can't go back and do it again and again. He can't prefer the first one. Whatever happens the second time , he's stuck with. And then as he gets older , he goes through his teenage years kind of doing what you would think he would do. You know , fixing the missed basketball shot or the embarrassing comment to a friend or something like that , but when he becomes a man , he finds out that there's one caveat to the power , and that is it doesn't work with love. So you can't. If somebody loves you and you decide to go and try somebody else. Go back in time and see if somebody else was better or whatever. Uh , that first person can never love you again. They can be in the world. You'll know them , but they can never feel the same way. And I did that because I wanted to separate out love from a basketball shot. You know , it's not the same. And the book is really kind of a kind of a fable about how important love is and how how , you know , love is everybody when it comes to relationships , kind of likes the new car smell , but new car smells fate. And if you go chasing that for the rest of your life , you're going to you're going to find yourself very unhappy.
S1: You know , Mitch , when I look at your writing it , I feel like you've got to be a person who does a lot of reflecting To come up with these things. Did you think about your own life when writing about Alfie's regrets ? Sure.
S2: I think I've done a lot of reflecting or other people have done reflecting for me. Ever since Tuesdays with Morrie , a book I wrote in 1997. You know , that book became something much bigger than anybody could have anticipated. And pretty much everybody who came into my orbit as a result of that book or the movie or the play or the other things about it , was reflecting , you know , looking back on their life , looking back on , you know , what that book was the story of a man who was dying from Lou Gehrig's disease. An old professor of mine , and told me what really mattered in life , that once he really knew what , that he was going to die. And we kind of did this last class together. And in that subject. So reflection has always been , you know , something in my books and I try to actually pick a theme before I pick a plot or a character and kind of say , well , what am I going to explore with this book ? What's the theme going to be ? And then once I decide , I think it's a worthwhile theme that people , other people think about as well as myself. Not just me , but other people. Then I kind of create the plot and create the story. So in this case , as I say , I wanted to sort of explore the grass is always greener concept. And that's how then I came up with the plot and the characters. But yes , reflecting , of course , I think about all the things that are in my book. That's what enables me to have a have a take on it , you know , have a point of view. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Well , and you just mentioned Tuesdays With Morrie , which was released nearly 30 years ago.
S2: A student and a teacher , whether it be a formal student and a teacher , or a grandfather and a grandson or a parent and a child , or an older brother and a sister. And Maury was in that book. You know , the sort of quintessential wise old man who was reaching the end of his life. And I was kind of the quintessential , confused , maybe misdirected young person whose values were a little askew and needed some help. And I think as I've traveled around the world and talked to different , you know , peoples in different countries , I find that that's actually a pretty common , uh , dynamic in many cultures around the world. The , the , the older sage person and the kind of confused young one. And so , uh , whether people pick it up because they're on one side of that equation or the other , it seems to have resonated with people , and it gets passed around , and a lot of people give it as gifts. It's taught in a lot of school systems and universities , uh , hospice groups use it , funeral groups use it. Uh , celebration of life groups use it. So I don't know. I you know , I don't. That's about the best answer I have. But sometimes being in the middle of it , I'm. I'm as mystified by it as anybody else.
S1: Hey , it helps people to reflect on life and the things that they should , should appreciate. You know , it's it's good.
S3: I hope so. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Well , you know , before you began writing books , you worked as a sportswriter. In fact , it's a job you still do today as a sports columnist with the Detroit Free Press.
S2: I wasn't really an accident nose guy. I didn't write statistics. I would just as likely write about the person who finished dead last as the person who finished first. And I'd find a lot of sideways stories and and human interest stories. So sports to me was just I mean , I wasn't particularly crazy , you know , sports fan when I was younger or anything like that. I wasn't a a geek. I didn't keep scorecards at home or anything like that. I would have , you know , that's where my first job in journalism was. And if my first job was in business writing or or , you know , I don't know , some other section , I probably would have tried to find the human interest stories in those sections. So I kind of fell into sports writing , and I've always tried to use it to bring home things about the human condition. And then when Tuesdays with Morrie happened , and suddenly people wanted me to write books that weren't about sports , I've pretty much done the same thing. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. And is that kind of how you , um , approach all of the hats that you wear because , you know , you're an author , sportswriter and musician philanthropist. So how do you juggle all that ? Do you compartmentalize it or does it. Does one thing flow into another and into another and into another.
S2: Well , you compartmentalize your time. Because otherwise you you you'll be running an orphanage while you're writing a book or writing a book while you're running it or , you know , it just there's kind of two different things. But in terms of your mind , I mean , you know , everything I do , I try to consider people , you know , and even when I write books , I mean , that might be my business , but not would I ? I don't need to do it for for money at this stage in my life. So if there's not some good lesson to be learned from it , I don't think it's going to be inspirational or help people. I won't write it. Um , and it's the same thing with my charity work , or work within Haiti with an orphanage or things like that. That's I just try to think about people , particularly children. Um , as I get older , it's most of my time is spent with children. Um , but I think as long as your mind is kind of always oriented towards how can I be of help or how can I , you know , make life better for people in some way. Then writing books isn't all that different from , um , you know , broadcasting or doing running a charity or anything like that. You just kind of keep your philosophy in mind and you bring it to all these different hats , as you say. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Well , you mentioned running an orphanage , uh , which is also one of the things you do in the home for children is in Haiti and called half Faith Haiti. Um , there is a vibrant Haitian community here in San Diego and in the region , really San Diego , Tijuana region.
S2: Every month I went there right after the earthquake that killed 3% of Haiti's population in about 45 seconds. So you can imagine how how tragic that was. And I got involved with an orphanage there and within a matter of a few months , ended up inheriting it. It's kind of a long story , but I never had kids of my own. My wife and I didn't have children , and I kind of ended up volunteering to take it over temporarily. And and the guy who had been running it disappeared. And that was that was the end of temporarily. And so I've been running it ever since. And I made every mistake you could make at the beginning. But I've learned and we have over the years admitted and had come through more than 100 kids , and we have 60 at any given time. And they go through. They come from the worst of circumstances that you can imagine. I mean , poverty that is not really not really imaginable here in America. You know , living in holes in the ground or being abandoned under trees to die or being left at malnutrition centers. And nobody comes back for you not having a birth certificate , not having a name , no vaccines , you know , and these are children who we bring in. Give them a home and give them love and give them medicine and beds and food and education. And we have a very , very fine school that we've worked on for a long time that teaches four hours in English and four hours in French every day. And so far we've had um , 22 graduates of our school who have all earned , uh , full college scholarships in the United States. And two of them are in medical school , uh , because they cherish education , which is a very , very rare thing in Haiti. And only 1% of patients ever go to college. So I'm very involved with with the kids. I consider them my family. And and , um , you know , it's a very large family now. Uh , but , um , that's a huge part of my life and will be until the day I die. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Wow. That's wonderful. Thanks for putting in the work.
S2: Well , the kids are are. I mean , you're welcome , but , I mean , the kids are the answer and reason to do all of it. Absolutely.
S3: Absolutely.
S2: Anybody who knows knows those children the minute they meet them , they they , you know , they want to come and and and help out. And I think kids inspire that kind of , um , that kind of. Action.
S3: Action. Yeah.
S1: Yeah , absolutely. It's a and they are resilient. Um , and you know.
S2: Yes they are. I was not aware that San Diego had that community. I do hope I'm coming coming out there to speak. Uh , and I hope that some of them will come hear me , because I'd love to talk to them. I do in the in the presentation. I do talk about Haiti and the and the kids and , uh , we've had well , we adopted one of our kids who had a brain tumor. Unfortunately , she died , um , a few years ago. I wrote a book about that called Finding Chika. And now we have another little one who came to us when she was six months old , and she weighed £6. She'd had nothing to eat but sugar water. Uh , and we were able to , fortunately , get her to the States and get her on a very fast nutrition program that saved her life. And , um , and she's now it's now three and a half years later and she's still with us. She calls us Mommy and daddy. So , uh , it's quite been quite an experience.
S1: Yeah , well , you know. Earlier this year , you appeared at the Writers Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University. You shared some of the struggles you faced getting Tuesdays with Morrie published. And I know there's a lesson in here about being persistent.
S2: Uh , I wanted to write that book to pay Maury's medical bills. That was the only reason. Um , I'd never written any book like that before. And it showed when I went around to the publishers , because they all told me they didn't want it. Not interested. Boring. You're a sportswriter. It'll be depressing. You don't know how to do it. Uh , and if it was just for me , honestly , Jade , I would have probably just given up. Because sometimes , you know when your motivation is just for your own success and enough people tell you it's not going to work , you search for something else that you think will. In this case , there was no alternative. This was the only way that I could think of to raise the kind of money that he needed to pay his enormous medical bills , several years worth of bills. And so I kept pushing and I kept pushing. And eventually we convinced the publisher , who gave us just enough money to pay his medical bills. And I gave it to Morey. And and I wrote the book basically , you know , almost just out of obligation because , you know , we had taken the money to pay his bills. And so I did it without aim towards career or or popularity. I just did it from the heart. And when I finished , I thought , all right , well , I did one nice thing for this man who had done so many nice things for me in my life. Um , and I was planning to return to my life as a sportswriter. And then and then , you know , the book took over and took me over and took care of. So , you know , there's there's a lesson to be learned from being persistent for the right reasons. And I always find it , at least me personally , I always have more energy when I'm doing something for somebody else than if it's strictly just for me. Hmm.
S3: Hmm.
S1: That's great. And you're headed back to San Diego yet again , as you mentioned earlier. Tell us about what you've got in store this time around.
S2: Well , I'm going to talk about the book twice and the themes of it and the idea that , uh , life could be better if only we could do it over again. And there's many moments in the book , twice where there are sort of lessons about that whole thing , including a time where , uh , Alfie asks his grandmother has the same power. How come we only get to go back twice ? You know , why can't I do it again and and again ? And she says , Alfie , if you kept getting second chances , you'd never learn a damn thing. And that's one of the themes that I talk about , about how valuable our mistakes are and how we really all do get second chances in life. It's called the next minute of your life. The next minute of your life is your opportunity to take everything that you have learned and every mistake that you've made , and every scar that you've had from those mistakes and turned it into something better. You don't need to erase the first one because you've erased the first one. You won't learn anything. Uh , people ask me , you know , with this book , now it's come out. It's a pretty common question in in conversations or interviews , what would you do again ? Is there anything in your life that you would do over if you had Alfie's power ? And I say , of course , you know , there's 30 things I could rattle off right now that I wish I hadn't done. I wish I could undo , but if I had to trade in the way I changed as a result of them , or what I learned as a result of the mistake , then then no , I would say no thank you , because all of those things kind of contributed to , you know , the tapestry of of who I am and who I get to become in the future. And so I hope to get people to kind of think that way. And I read from the book and , and , uh , tell some stories about my own life because I've had kind of a twice existence. Jade I mean , if you look at the first half of my life , actually , I've had like a thrice existence because I was a musician before I was ever a writer , and that was a whole different life. And then I became a sportswriter or whatever. And then Tuesdays with Morrie happened , and it's a whole different world , and charity and Haiti and Detroit and things like that. So I try to use my own life as a kind of example about how there are many right turns in your life that happen as a result of your mistakes. And that famous John Lennon quote , you know , life is what happens to you while you're busy making plans. I really think that that's true. And , um , so it's it's a fun night and it's a fun presentation. A lot of video , a lot of A lot of photographs and shared stories and funny things and a chance to meet everybody afterwards. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Wow. Bestselling author Mitch Albom will be appearing at Point Loma Nazarene University next Monday , October 27th , and will include a link to that on our website , kpbs.org. Mitch , thank you so much for being here.
S2: It's been a pleasure. Jade , thanks for talking to me.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning.
S4: In to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
