Rob Schwartz on Life's Greatest Lesson

Living a life in full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by the nonprofit I founded, the center for Global Initiatives. The center is an all volunteer organization so there are no salaries and thus all tax deductible donations can go to the work. While our key country partner is in Tanzania, our work is global and generally focused in the areas of education and healthcare. We also help others to get their nonprofits started or augment others project based initiatives. It's our goal to open source humanitarian intervention and to help make it easier for others to do more good in the world. We are proud to have been ranked a great nonprofit every year since 2011 and to have achieved a Platinum level rating by Guidestar Links. In this episode's show, notes will take you to published articles on our outcomes, a number of helpful tools and downloadable resources which are all free always. Please Visit us at CenterForGlobalInitiatives.org and be sure to watch our video at Patreon.com DrChrisStout to learn more. Thanks. Welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. Over 18 million copies of one of the most famous memoirs of all time, Tuesdays with an Old Man, A Young man and Life's Greatest Lesson, written by Mitch Albom, have been sold since its 1997 publication and to this day it remains on many a college's required reading list. After not seeing his former professor Maury Schwartz for over 16 years after his graduation from Brandeis, Mitch met with Maury on 14 Tuesdays in 1995 as part of his profession Professor's final class called the Meaning of Life. Maury was aware that Mitch's book was being written, but did not live to see its tremendous success as a book and as the basis for an Emmy Award winning film starring Jack lemmon as Maury. 28 years after Maury Schwartz passed away, his son Rob Schwartz has edited his father's last work and posthumously published what has become a best selling new book, the Wisdom of Maury Living and Aging creatively and Joyfully, Rob is a journalist and entrepreneur having Founded a number of companies both in Japan and the US and held executive positions in others. He's produced numerous film and music projects with international teams, and his areas of expertise include the entertainment industries in Asia, the US And Europe. His projects often have special emphasis on music, film, online business development, and developing musical artists careers. In addition, Rob is the Asia Bureau Chief of Billboard. He's appeared on Good Morning America, Nightline, PBS NewsHour, NBC 10 Boston, and in WebMD, Psychology Today, Reader's Digest, and People Magazine. Rob is currently one of the producers of onetopia, a benefit music festival. Rob, welcome to the show. It's great to have you on.

Thank you so much. I feel sad that I have to say one thing immediately so people at Billboard don't get angry. I am no longer the Asia Bureau Chief at Billboard. I left Japan, so I don't really write for Billboard anymore. Sorry. We should correct that.

Gotcha. Okay, well, good, good. We will keep the Billboard people happy with that. Thank you. Thank you for that correction and my apologies. So I want to discuss your work and your background and of course the book and your parents. Could you maybe start us off with what took you Asia and your work there as a founder and your work in production?

Absolutely. And it's funny because what took me to Asia is also I have a story entwined with not the publication of this book, but my first experience with this book, which is now called the Wisdom of Maury, which is a manuscript that my father wrote in 1989. I guess we'll leave that story and I'll just talk about going to Asia. But I was at home with my father while he was writing the first part of this book. And that was sort of the last time that I ever lived at home. So I actually went to Asia in sort of the late 80s and did a big trip around many Asian countries. Japan, India was in Tibet, a lot of different places, China, Thailand. And then I decided I wanted to live in Japan. I had spent some time in Japan and made some good connections. So sort of beginning of 1990, I moved to Japan. I had always had a long interest in Asia and Eastern thought. I studied philosophy in university and was very much interested in history and philosophy from Japan. And China really stood out and of course India as well. But when I moved, you know, Japan was really a great place to move to. The economy was really, really, you know, one of the strongest in the world. And it was easy to get jobs and make money and it's a very easy place to live. Japan. Right, because everything is so clean, so incredibly safe.

Right.

And especially at that time, the money was really good. It's quite different now, actually, because the yen is really weak right now. So if you're earning yen these days, you're not doing great. But those days, and I had wanted in Asia, so it was the perfect fit for me. And, you know, I do relate this to my dad as well, because he read very widely, very, you know, great range of thinkers and a lot of Eastern thinkers as well. And I even have books today that, that come from him that are, you know, by Eastern thinkers from Japan and China and India and people commenting on that stuff and all sorts of teachers and thinkers.

Wow. And then. So how long was your time in Asia? Was that kind of back and forth or was it kind of all in a block or what was that?

Yeah, I was in Japan for 30 years. Moved, as I said, about 1990, and I left in 2021.

Wow. Wow. Okay. Well, good. Well, welcome back. So, thanks. Are you based now out of California or where. Boston or where are you these days?

I'm now based in la. Initially, I moved back to Boston when I left, which is of course my hometown and where my father lived the last 40 or so years of his life. They set up shop before I was born and my mother was still alive. I spent. One of the reasons to move back to Boston was to spend the last six months of her life with her. So that was a strong reason. And to complete this project and to finish it. It's much easier to do it in Boston, obviously, since there was people there and the arch, as it were, were there. Now they're with me here in California. But at that time I had everything in Boston.

Yeah, I would imagine even just kind of the vibe of it would feel a little bit more comfortable and familial and family like. So I'm going to just take a quick little pause. There may be some people that don't know or maybe they just need a reminder. Your father was the beloved subject of the classic Tuesdays with Maury, as we talked about, but he's also a professor of sociology and social psychology for over 30 years at Brandeis before he retired age 70 and sadly being diagnosed with ALS. He wrote on a variety of topics, but my research says, and correct me if I've got this as a hiccup, but he really kind of co authored with psychiatrist Alfred STANTON A groundbreaking 1954 book, the Mental Hospital, which really kind of made him a superstar in psychology and me as a clinical psychologist. I'm Very familiar with that book as a classic. And then that also didn't hurt. It helped him get a full professorship at, at, in his first university position, full time professorship there at Brandeis. But he was also, which I really respect, was dedicated to social justice and valuing human beings, which I think is, you know, comes out in his work. So with all that, you know, kind of going on, what was it like growing up in the Schwartz household?

Right, you got the history pretty much exactly correct. Before I answer your question directly, I'll make a few comments on what you said. Okay, you got it exactly right. The mental hospital was a gigantic watershed in social psychology and made him a little superstar. And that's why he was able to get the full professorship at Brandeis with tenure immediately, his first university position. Before that he was a researcher and a writer. I mean, of course he had a PhD from the University of Chicago, which is extremely prestigious institution, as you well know, but he had not held any university positions, assistant professorship or any of that. So, yeah, that was pretty incredible even back then. And as you say, I didn't realize you're a clinical psychologist. That's fantastic. As you say, the book is extremely important and was used as a textbook for psychologists for decades and decades. I don't think it is anymore. It's pretty much in the past now. But yes, clinical psychologists still know of the work, which is fantastic. And yeah, I mean, that. That really set the tone for his whole career. Growing up in the Schwartz household. Yes. I mean, both my parents were intellectuals. Both My parents had PhDs. My mother as well, also in social psychology and sociology, both of them. And yeah, I mean, I would say that, you know, when you grow up, it's hard, always hard to say how it's the same or different than anybody else, because you don't know how any.

Right, right.

Else grew up.

Probably didn't talk about the weather a whole lot at dinner.

Right, right. I would assume that our upbringing, myself and my brother was. Was perhaps a tad more intellectual than other people's. We certainly did discuss big topics over the dining room table. And as you say, my father was really committed to social change and social responsibility. So there was a lot of politics as well discussed, you know, when I was. The big upheavals of, you know, the early and mid-70s, you know, of course, the end of the Vietnam War and the resignation of Richard Nixon. I remember my father watching the Senate hearings, the Watergate Senate hearings, religiously, you know, for days and days on end and that sort of thing. So, yeah, it was a particular kind of upbringing. My hometown is Brookline, Massachusetts, which is this very sort of intellectual, student filled town right on the edge of Boston. A lot of famous people have come out of Brooklyn, including it houses the birthplace of John F. Kennedy and. Etcetera. But, And you know, this is how we live. And I would say the thing that stood out the most, you don't think like, oh, we're having an intellectual discussion as a child, you just have that discussion. But I think the thing that stood out the most, and I think I probably noticed this compared to my friends, fathers or families, is that that my father was extremely affectionate. And I didn't necessarily see that among other of my friends, fathers and stuff like that. But as I mentioned, you know, it's a little hard to tell the differences between yourself and other kids when you're growing up. You're just a kid. In retrospect, I would say that, you know, we did have a lot of long conversations over the dinner table. And it was also sometimes, you know, those families, the kids suffer because the fathers, the parents have such high academic expectations. And I have to say that my parents did not put those pressures on us. And I was pretty happy about that because I was kind of like a little rebellious kid. And since both of my parents were academics, you know, I thought, well, I'm not going to try really hard at this. You know, that's there.

Yeah.

Not that I didn't enjoy school. I have a interesting schooling history, if you want to hear it.

Yeah, please.

Okay. So my brother decided that he wanted to go to an alternative school. This is the 70s. And I was in Brookline public schools. And you know, I was like maybe, you know, nine years old or something when this happened. So you know how nine years old kid. Kids are. My brother was going to the special school, so I had to go to it too. So for three years I went to this sort of alternative school and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called the Fairweather Street School. And let's say the curriculum was pretty loose. It was not a public school. We did not have a standardized curriculum. So I'm not sure if that was good or bad for me, but it was an interesting experience. Then I reintegrated into Brookline public schools, which was probably a good idea. Public schools. Pretty. Pretty good, yeah. Right at the top of the list in Massachusetts and nationwide as well. But yeah, as I said, I was kind of a little bit rebellious and decided that I didn't want to try too hard. That also actually filtered all the way through to college. I decided that I wasn't going to go to college in the Northeast because, you know, both of my parents were at prestigious universities in the Boston area. So I decided I had to get out of there. So I actually went to college in the. In the Midwest.

That's it. Where did you wind up going?

I went to Grinnell College in Iowa.

Nice. Oh, very nice. Well, still very prestigious recognition. Absolutely.

Very small. Very small, but prestigious school. Great education. Yeah, we really enjoyed. All my friends and I really enjoyed being there. I just had an. What do you call it?

Reunion.

Yeah, reunion, Exactly. With. In June at the school.

Nice. Nice. Well, you know, it seems like, like you said, you know, we don't all know what each other's dinner table conversations and things are like. But one of the things, too, in my research, so I'm going to use you as my de facto fact checker. But your mother and father also co authored a book, Social Approaches to Mental. The Mental to Mental Patient Care, back in the early 60s as well. So it sort of seems like there's this. This collaborative family collab aspect. Maybe it's in your DNA because you've kind of, you know, kept that tradition up now with your production of the Wisdom of Maury. So maybe this is a good segue into shifting into talking about the book a little more.

Sure. That's interesting that you should point out that, because I have to say that I never thought about that, despite the fact that not only did my parents co author a book, I add two essays into my father's manuscript, which is the whole production is now titled the Wisdom of Maury. One of the essays is about my dad, just giving some background information because people are really interested in him. And the second essay is about my mother. And the reason that I put that essay in is because not only did they co author a book, but my mother collaborated with my father on all of his academic work, all of his books, including the really famous one that we just talked about, the Mental Hospital. She was a collaborator on that, edited it, and she told me much later, which is why I put this essay in, that she actually wrote most of the book in the actual words because my father had great ideas and was a really inclusive thinker, but writing the actual words was somewhat hard for him. And Alfred Stanton, the other author of the book, wasn't really involved in that aspect of it. So my mother was actually a strong collaborator on the Mental Hospital, but that was 1954, and she was not given credit for it.

Wow. Wow.

And there are other Books. So they did three books. And the second one, I think gives her credit as an editor or in association with or something. And by the third book she's a co author.

That's good. Times change over that decade, right?

54 to 60, around 1918, 68.

Yeah.

So as you say, times change and. And yeah, the way of handling things changes. But my mother was a big collaborator, collaborator with my father and his editor. And there's so many different aspects away. We could approach the Wisdom of Maury in that relation. One of them is that she helped me edit the Wisdom of Maury because she had edited my father's work so much. She edited about 10 pages of it and said, this, this is how I would do it. She didn't say to me, this is how you have to do it. She said, this is how I would do it. So, you know, it gave me a good template to think about how to edit and how to move forward with it. There's many, many stories connected with this book and most of the stuff that you said is factually correct. I want to emphasize a few things because some reviewers have got it wrong about this book. The Wisdom of Maury viewer said that I put it together from my father's notes or something like that. That's completely incorrect. This was a complete manuscript that my father wrote from 1989, which is the summer that. The last summer that I lived at home before I moved to Japan, until about 1992. And he wrote the manuscript from the first word to the last word. He never had anybody edit it, but he did try and send it out and get it published. And he was in that process when he got ill. So of course he put it in a drawer and said, you know, when, when I feel better, I'll come back to this. And of course, this, you know, led to the als, which led to his passing. And he was never able to publish it.

So I wondered about that because it wasn't, you know, in some of the things in doing background, you know, I saw where you would like one. This will be, this will be good. We'll be like really straight, you know, setting the record straight. Here. You, like, there's one thing where you had come back, you had like stopped work. You had kind of, you know, were collaborating, working with him, you know, whatever that meant, you know, crafting the, the work of it. And then, you know, then he got sick and then, you know, it's sort of like, I presume you went back to Asia, etc, and life, you know, life carried on and Then he passed, did. Was it just sort of like one of these found treasures in the drawer kind of thing, or was it sort of like, gosh, I remember he and I talked about this book. I wonder whatever happened to it. Or maybe tell us about that.

Yeah, I mean, you've got it more or less right. So first of all, I wouldn't say that I was collaborating with him when he was writing it. This book, as some of your listeners may know or may not know, is essentially aimed at people, let's say over 55. It's about remaining vibrant and joyful while you age and, you know, get older in life. I was a young man at this time, so I wasn't the target audience, but nonetheless, my father loved to sit down and we always, you know, talked and had long conversations and he would bounce the ideas off me and ask me how, you know, how I think this will be received and what do I think about this or that. And so we had a lot of discussions about the book. I wouldn't say that I was collaborating, he was writing the book, but we were just discussing it. And this was over a three, three month period that I lived back at home before I moved to Japan. So then, as you note, I moved to Japan and I would come back. I came back a lot when my father was ill. I spent probably half my time in the US when my father was ill. But the book was, of course, not a subject of discussion at that point. He had put it in his desk drawer. And then you alluded to the story. Years after he passed away, I used to come home, visit with my mother, stay for a couple of weeks, and as you introduce me and noted, I was a journalist. So I would write my pieces sitting at his desk and then, you know, send them off to Japan. And I was writing for mainly Japanese publications, not exclusively, but mainly. And then, yeah, one day I just opened his desk drawer because my mother kept his office exactly as it had been when he was alive with all of his books, all the wall hangings, all of this stuff. So it looked exactly like it looked while he was alive. And I pulled open the drawer and there was this big bound volume with a big black cover. And I mean big. We're not talking a regular sized book, we're talking, you know, big, bigger than letter sized cover. And I was like, what's this? And I opened it and of course, as soon as I saw the front page, I remembered what it was and I knew exactly what it was because I had talked to my father so much about It. I hadn't thought about it since the time that I left to go to Japan until this time, which was easily 13 or 14 years later and probably seven or eight years after my father had passed away. And then, of course, immediately I thought, like, wow, we have an opportunity to publish this now, since Tuesdays with Maury was such a huge success. This was right at the end of the run of Tuesdays With Maury. And I'll say a few things about that. I mean, you. You introduced it beautifully. But I'll say a few things that people may not remember or have heard. Yes. Sold in excess of 18 million copies. I think that's actually an old figure. Probably so. Has sold more than that now.

I believe it.

And it was number one on the New York Times bestseller nonfiction hardback list for five consecutive years. Gosh, Rob, not knocked off of number one for five years. I mean, I have a clipping from the New York Times that says Tuesdays with Maury, you know, number one year weeks on list 200. Wow. I know. It's mind blowing, the whole thing.

Yeah. Well, and then Jack Lemmon plays your dad. What was that like to see?

Yeah, I mean, I wish I had had more contact with that. The Jack Lemmon playing my dad is actually tied in to how the book became a bestseller. And I like to tell this story because it's got a little quiz in it. So you're going to get a quiz question.

Okay. All right.

When Mitch wrote Tuesdays with Moria. Oh, yeah. There's one nuance. As you can tell, I studied philosophy. I'm a journalist. I like to get the nuance exactly right. In your introduct. What point was I going to make about that? You said, I forgot now what it was.

It'll come back.

Maybe it'll come back to me, but. Oh, right. In your introduction, you said that my father was aware that Mitch was writing the book. That's not exactly incorrect, but it's not exactly correct either. The idea for Mitch to write a book didn't even come about, as you said. He met my father for 14 Tuesdays consecutively. The idea to write a book didn't come about till probably about the 8th or maybe even 10th Tuesday. So he was aware that Mitch was going to write a book, but he never saw a word of it. Mitch didn't even start to write the book until my father had passed away. But right at the end of my dad's life, they got the news that a publishing house was interested in it. So he did know that he did know that. So where was I on the original story?

Jack Lemmon, maybe, or.

Right. I got a quiz coming to the book as being written. Not only Jack Lemmon. Is that when Mitch published this book in 1997, which you correctly stated the year it was not a hit, nobody paid attention.

Really?

Yes. This is the nuance that is really funny. And the following year, like a whole year or close to a whole year later, one person found this book. And this person was absolutely instrumental in kickstarting the whole Tuesdays with Maury phenomenon and the whole Maury phenomenon. And this was an extremely powerful person, as you can imagine. Can you guess who they were? Think 1997. Who has one of the most powerful TV shows? I'll give you some hints.

Okay.

Publishing industry, television industry, a very public figure. This is not a behind the scenes producer. This is someone who had a Book of the Month club.

Well, it wasn't. It wasn't Oprah back then.

It was Oprah.

Really? Even back then.

Okay, Chris, always go with your instinct. Okay, Oprah. Wow. Oprah found this little book, Tuesdays with Maury, loved it, put it on her Book of the Month Club, had Mitch on her TV show. The book skyrocketed to number one bestseller. And you know, Oprah's a very savvy woman. Not only did she have her have Mitch on her show, not only did, you know, she put it on her Book of the Month Club, but her production company bought the rights to make a TV movie about this book before it was a number one bestseller. Oh, my God. She's very clever. So that's why, for example, it was a TV movie and not a theatrical release would have. Which made. It would have made much more Sense. By about 2002, after it had been five years on the bestseller list, it would have been a gigantic blockbuster of a movie and probably made hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. But Oprah contracted it to be a TV movie. And the TV movie was actually made right smack in the middle of the time that it was a bestseller. I think the TV movie came out in 2001. Jack Lemmon played my father. Hank Azaria played Mitch. I thought Jack Lemmon did a fantastic job. You know, you can always nitpick. Maybe he didn't move exactly like my father. He didn't dance. There are scenes of my father dancing. And as people who love Tuesdays with Maury will know, my father loved to dance. But I don't think we had any video of my father dancing. So Jack wasn't able to imitate his moves. He had to do it from his imagination. There are so many things about it that are really sort of stunning. The most stunning thing that I didn't find out until years later that the famous Academy Award winning Jack Lemmon is from Newton, Massachusetts, where my father have a house and live the last 30 years of his life. Now 15. 15 years of his life, Newton, Massachusetts. Wow. Just like that. Just blew my mind when I found out he's from Newton. And this Tuesdays with Maury is Jack Lemmon's last credited. He won a Golden Globe for the performance and he passed away about a year after it. So I was never able to catch up with him and, and talk with him about it. But yeah, I thought he did a fantastic job. I will give you a few notes about the movie in just in case any of your listeners go back and dig it out. I think you can probably find streaming somewhere.

Yeah, I'll do some research and put a link in if we can find it.

So.

Yeah, but tell us, tell us the backgrounders.

So as I said, Oprah licensed it and it was really a made for TV movie, which meant that they felt that they had to play up the melodrama and Mitch's life. So there are many things in the movie which are fictionalized, which are absolutely not true to life. Mitch wrote a play which was performed in New York and is performed all over the country and all over the world. And I can talk to you about that, which I've done Q and A after performance of the play many, many times. And it's actually being performed in New York right now, Tuesdays with New York.

No kidding.

Yes. I mean, the run might have finished, but last time I looked, it was being performed on a big theater in New York. And so there's a lot of fictionalized things in the movie. I can point them out if you want. And just as an aside, I have to say, you know, Mitch has been absolutely incredible to my family and we're still very close to this day. And he gave my mother control, or rather sort of not control, but veto power. He gave my mother the script and said, there's anything in there that you don't want, you can veto it. And by him doing that, he was unable to himself control the script. The production company basically said to him, one person can have veto power. And he gave it to my mother out of respect to her if there was anything that she didn't want to be in there. Yeah, because, you know, my mother was quite private person, so she was not Interested in stepping into the limelight of Maury and doing interviews and talking to people about it. So, you know, that was very, very generous thing for Mitch to do. And there's many other instances of Mitch being very, very generous to my family. Obviously, you know, just writing the book in general act for us. But, I mean, he tells this story often, so I can interject this. The reason that he decided to write the story was because the medical bills for ALS basically drained all of our family money. And Mitch wrote the book so he could split the. The royalties with my dad, Rob.

I had no idea. Oh, my gosh.

He mentions that in. In interview, so I don't feel bad.

Oh, I. I just feel like we are, like, uncovering things that just, you know, should be. So. I mean, I. I try to do a good job of, you know, digging and looking under the hood and things, but these are just. I'm just blown away by these kind of previously unknown, to me, at least, aspects from things. I bet there's a number of people in our audience, too, that these are just. And I have to say, too, so heartwarming and touching. I mean, thank you.

Yeah. Well, Mitch has been wonderful to us. And actually, obviously, since, you know, this is my dad and I have, in so many ways, you know, a huge part of the story. There are tons and tons of details that I can tell you. One that I like to share is that I said there was no video of my father dancing. So Jack Lemon didn't have any, you know, reference point for that. But there is a lot of video of my dad in general, and there is a lot of video that I shot of my father once he got ill, because we knew, you know, he's not going to be around forever, and how nice would it be to have videotape? So I have hours and hours of videotape of my father talking to his friends and, you know, discussing life. And that's kind of how the whole Tuesdays with Maury thing started. I'll tell you the whole genesis of it, which is that my father got ill, and he started talking about what it's like to be dying, what's really valuable in life. He started to hold little discussion groups, and one of the. His colleagues at Brandeis had a strong connection with the Boston Globe. Of course, the Boston Globe was a pretty powerful paper at that time, and they sent this wonderful human interest reporter named Jack Thomas, who just passed away in 2021. And I wrote an appreciation of him in the Boston Globe, and they sent Jack Thomas to our House. And Jack talked to my father. He wrote this huge two page spread in the Boston Glob, like two full newspaper page spread of my D, which I think it was titled. Professor uses his own death as a fine as his final lesson.

Oh man.

But get this, this is how serendipitous it is. So that story, you know, spurred some things locally. He was on the local PBS station, et cetera. But there was a senior producer at Nightline, another man who's been incredibly generous to our family and you know, incredibly supportive, named Richard Harris. He was a Washington based senior producer of Nightline with Ted Koppel, the news magazine show that some of your listeners. It's actually still on the air. It was incredibly important show back then. The leading news magazine show in on air. And Richard was, is from the Boston area and still got the analog version. This is back in the day 1995 to his house and he saw the article by Jack Thomas and he suggested to Ted Koppel, why don't we have this guy on our show? And Mitch saw that show, the first one. And that's how he came back and met my father. So it was this events that led to Tuesdays with Maury being published. As you correctly stated in your introduction, Mitch had been a student of my dad's, actually a favorite student of my dad's. And he recounts those stories in Tuesdays with Maury and had no contact with him for 17 years. I think 78 he graduated and 9, 5 they got back in touch. So it's actually a little bit less than 17 years because he came in March or April of 95. But yeah, they had had no contact whatsoever for 17 years. And that's how Mitch learned that my father was ill and that, you know, he, he was going to die pretty soon.

Wow. It's just I, it's sort of like a, you know, the, the Ted Koppel connection, the Jack Lemmon in movie of the week connection, the Oprah Winfrey connect. I mean it's just sort of like all of those kinds of things in very fortuitous. You couldn't have designed that, you couldn't have made those things happen. I mean I think it just again, there's some kind of karmic universal kind of thing not to get woo woo about it, but just such a good people doing good work, caring about one another. And again that's kind of the, it seems like the fabric and the ethos of both of these books, you know his.

Absolutely, absolutely. So I'll tell you one other tidbit I was leading up to it, but I forgot to include it. So I shot a bunch of video, as I said, of my father. And I have all that video of him talking to his friends. And after he passed and Mitch was writing the book, Mitch asked me to send him that video, so I did. So some of the scenes in Tuesdays with Maury are based on the video that I shot that Mitch wasn't even actually present for, which, of course, I was overjoyed that he used the video that I shot at this point.

So is it possible, like, would. Would all that video? I mean, is it like. I don't know, I was just thinking out loud, like, to make a document to talk about.

Yeah, I've thought about it, and I've actually produced documentary. You gave a very detailed introduction of me, but I've done a lot of things. So one producer, and I'm actually working on a documentary right now. Not where I'm the director, but I'm the producer. So I have to get the team together and get the money together. I've thought about it, I've looked at the footage. It's not really very high quality. I mean, I feel like there's a documentary possibility. There's also possibility that I could write something about my dad. And that was sort of my initial idea. My initial idea was that I was going to do two books. This one that my father wrote, which is now, of course, titled the Wisdom of Maury, and my own book. And I actually interviewed a lot of my father's friends and colleagues starting around 2005. So a long time ago, maybe even a little earlier than that. I interviewed a lot of the time who have passed, since passed away. And you realize that, you know, my father. My father was quite old when I was born. You know, this. This stories that we're talking about are for my dad are very far in the past now. You know, it's going to be. This year is going to be the 29th anniversary of his passing. Right. Pretty much all of his colleagues are gone. And I could talk about specific ones if you want. Some of his students are still around, and I met a couple of them recently. Now they're, you know, they're in the target range of this book.

Right, right.

Getting up there. But I interviewed a lot of people and I've thought about writing my own book. We'll see if that's a project that I undertake. You know, I want to give sort of a filler picture of my dad, which is one of the reasons why I love talking about the wisdom of Maury. And just incidentally, I alluded to it earlier. I've done a lot of Q and A after the play of Tuesdays with Maury because I love to talk about my D. And people are so overjoyed to see the play and then hear actual stories about Maury, and people have lots of questions. So I really love talking about my dad. And I think, you know, writing the book would be a great experience, but it would be a lot of work to transcribe the conversations and try and put a book together. It would definitely not be a biography. Right. I don't have enough biographical material. You know, I have some, but I don't have enough for a book. And I have to tell you, since you talk to book authors all the time, I do not understand how people write biographies. I mean, you're reading this biography of some guy who lived a hundred years ago, and on the page, it's written like it was a sunny Tuesday and Bob was thinking about going to a cafe. How do you know what this guy was thinking?

I know. I agree.

I don't know if they're fictionalized or what, but the point is that I was. Would. It would be impossible for me to write a biographical book on my father just because I don't have enough information. And this includes the fact that I interviewed my mother extensively about my dad, and I have those interviews recorded. And I interviewed my father's brother, whose name is David Schwartz, and they were very close, and I can talk about him if you like. I interviewed him three or four times about my father. And they're growing up. And my father grew up in poverty in New York City, and I have lots of stories that, you know, my uncle told my father's brother. But it would still be impossible for me to piece together a year by year narrative.

Yeah, yeah, it does sound like you've got a lot of good source material. But, yeah, the stitching together, I mean. Yeah, I totally agree with the whole. You know, I get autobiographies, but biographies, I think, you know, do have a lot of poetic license, I think, with them. So. Well, you know, and it almost seems like. I mean, I appreciate the time, the era that this was written, and I have to say, I mean, it seems so contemporarily poignant as well. I mean, maybe these are kind of timeless considerations, but I had a guest on my show a while back, Michael Clinton, and he had done a book called Roar. And it really talks about sort of like he doesn't like the word retirement. And you know, the various chapters in our lives. And he kind of conceptualizes things like by decades, you know, your 50s, your 60s, your 70s, your 80s. And then like how, you know, your father talked a lot about in this book, you know, around ageism. And I don't know that that was a very public, talked about kind of thing at the time that he was writing it, but man, it sure seems, you know, square today about, you know, in so many other ways, you know, the 60s, the new 50 and 70's the new 40 or, you know, whatever. So can you maybe talk about that, like with his life and his reflections in the context of ageism and that phase of life?

Absolutely. I mean, this is something that I say all the time and you know, I fervently believe, obviously I'm biased, but, you know, you see it as well, this book was written, as I said, from 1989 to 1992. And when you read it, you absolutely feel like this could have been written yesterday.

No kidding.

There's no sense of like, oh yes. I mean, even my father uses newspaper clippings, as you probably remember reading the book. He uses all different types of materials and that was on purpose by him. So it's not just his narrative voice, it's like all different things. He uses poetry and newspaper clippings and magazine articles and quotes from other books because he wanted to bring other people's voices in talking about the subject which he's talking about, which is remaining vibrant and joyous while you age.

And.

And despite the fact that he's using a newspaper clipping from 1992, the narrative sounds like it could have been written yesterday. And I agree with you 100%. People weren't really talking about ageism and how ageism is one of these prejudices in our society that we need to get rid of. Like all of the other prejudices, you know, racism and sexism and all of those prejudices we need to drop and realize we're all just human beings. We all have fundamentally the same wants and desires and experience as a human being, or at least should have the same experience in terms of treatment from society. But that's another story. But the point is that very few people were talking about ageism in those years. And that's one of the major themes of this book. It's so much so. One of the major themes that my father coined a term that he thought put more of a fine point on ageism, and he called it age casting. And the term, he developed it from the, the film term typecasting where an actor shoved into one role and that's the only role they're allowed to play. Like you're the bad guy. You're always going to be the bad guy in every, you know, film that you appear in every TV show and that's it. And of course, Hollywood used to be much more like that than it is today. And age casting means that people over a certain age are just shoved into this role of elderly person or retired person. And you don't have a role in society now. You don't contribute. Your role is to sit in the corner and do nothing or tell cute stories that nobody really cares about or something like that. And he thought that was just so crazy and so wrong that people, you know, who are over a certain age, they have so much experience of life and so much insight into how things actually work, how the human mind actually work and how people actually behave that they can share with younger people and say, like, oh, maybe consider this angle when you're doing X, Y and Z, you know. So he thought the idea that an elderly person was shoved off and told that you don't have a role and you, this is what you do now is nothing essentially was so crazy that he felt he had to create his own term for it, which was age casting. And he writes about that, you know, early in the book, he coins that term and he explains it.

I think that's so befitting and you know, how was it for you? Because, okay, here's a stereotype that you can kind of again, level set. Me being in Asia, my thinking is, and especially Japan, the cultural norm of respecting folks, you know, your elders and is was maybe, I don't know, I presume it still is. But certainly at the time you were there and the time that your dad wrote this book was very different than what a Western culture would look at in terms of respecting elders and the wisdom aspects and things. What was it? I mean, that seems like a lens that you would have a keen understanding of looking at those cultural differences as well. Can you speak to that of your experience?

Absolutely, yeah. What you say is 100% true. All different cultures that I traveled through, I've spent a lot of time, I lived in Japan, I spent a lot of time in China, and I spent a lot of time in India as well. I would say that's true for all three of those cultures. But the issue is there, and you know, these are massive, you know, long standing cultures we could talk about for hours and hours. But the issue is there that somehow this Western idea, or it may not even be a Western idea, just may be sort of an economic reality has creeped in that after a certain age, you know, you're no longer economically viable. So actually the retirement age in Japan is very young. A lot of companies make people retire at 60. Now. There's all sorts of ways around this. And powerful people become consultants and people who are very successful become consultants for companies that they were, you know, full time employees of, et cetera, et cetera. There's all sorts of stories I could tell you about Japan, but it's not like they don't have their own issues around ageism. In terms of the workplace, in terms of society, I would say for sure, elderly people are shown more respect than in our society. And there's also a lot of other reasons for that. Traditionally, Japanese didn't live in nuclear families the way that we do in the us the whole family would live together with grandpa and grandma and, you know, everybody under one roof. And that's going to, you know, obviously give the kids much, much more exposure to their grandparents than maybe we have in this country. But yeah, in general, what you're saying I think is absolutely correct that that elderly people or people over a certain age are shown a lot more respect than they are in this country. I'll tell you one story about Japan that kind of chokes me up up because it's sort of a tragedy that that sort of has a quasi happy ending, which is that there is a whole class of people in Japan that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. This is a tangent, but I think your listeners will enjoy it.

Please.

That and that class of people are called nuclear bomb survivors. Oh, yeah, yeah, a little bit heavy. Nuclear bomb survivors. People who survived the nuclear bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese word for them is hibaka. And for a long time these people were ostracized because there was, you know, there was no knowledge. You know, people don't really understand how people at the time experienced things. When the atomic bomb was dropped with the bombs were dropped in Japan, nobody knew anything about radiation or any of that in this country or in Japan. So people were fearful that these people were contaminated. I mean, this is years afterwards that people were contaminated, that if you got close to them, you yourself would get irradiated or you would die or you would get cancer or something like that. That. And it took years and years, but there was this movement probably started about the time that I got to Japan, let's say 90, and got much stronger later. On of honoring and celebrating these people as the ultimate survivors. And, you know, expressing it really chokes me up. A lot of love and respect for the them. And that's sort of, you know, evidence of. Of honoring your elders. But in their case, it took, you know, years and a real understanding of, you know, radiation and what was going on and their experience to come to a point where they could be honored and sort of loved.

Yeah, I see what you mean about getting choked up. I mean, I can just picture that. Oh, God.

My.

My gosh. So. And they've, you know, got a, you know, the whole other kind of stigma around that as well, too. So.

Yeah, they certainly used to. I think it's. It's disappeared a lot.

Wow.

And a lot of groups. I mean, I could talk about that for a long time because I was involved with it to a certain extent and of course, it was ongoing while I was there. President Obama, when he was in Japan, met the head of. Of the nuclear bomb survivors, the Hibakusha group, and that was a huge moment for them.

That is just so touching. Gosh. I mean, it's sort of a thread throughout this conversation, throughout the, you know, multiple generations of you and your family's lives. So, you know, one of the things your dad talked about in the book was like, the importance of living and aging creatively and joyfully. And I liked just maybe the juxtaposition of the words of living and aging. It wasn't like, you know, that those are. And not, you know, like they weren't linear in the sense of, well, once this, then this, you know, happens. And once that happens and this happens, it's all kind of part of being. Being human. And I want to get into how he talks about that aspect too, but can you speak to that about, like, the. The ethos around that, the living and aging creation, creatively and joyfully that he. That he speaks of?

Sure, sure. I mean, that's the whole thrust of the book. Right. As you say, that's the subtitle of the book and that's the whole thrust of the book. So I have to talk about the book as a whole and also in specific parts to answer that question. We can sort of break it down.

Great.

But I would start out with. The first thing is the reason why my father wrote this book. And there was. There's kind of a dual reasons that both fit together. Initially, my father was, as you said, a professor at Brandeis for 35 plus years, close to 40 years. And when he was 65, I think the University suggested that he retired and he declined. And when he was 68, the university suggested he retired and he declined. And when he was 70, the university demanded that he retire. This no longer happens with professors. But at that time 70 was the age after that you couldn't be a full professor. This is no longer the case at universities. But so he was forced to retire at age 70. And that's when he realized that society viewed him as an elderly person and he didn't view himself that way at all. You know, my father was incredibly vibrant, incredibly alive. He loved to dance, he loved to have conversations with people, he loved to eat. He was just one of these people that was full of life. It was really bursting out of him. And the idea that he was an elderly person is not how he viewed himself. He was around students who were 20 years old all the time because he was at university undergraduate classes as well as graduate classes. And so he had to come to terms with the fact that people thought of him as elderly. And he realized that he wasn't comfortable with it and he had to investigate within himself. You know, as we discussed, my father was a social psychologist. So he was also always investigating himself, what his true feelings were and how he actually thought about something. And you know, we get into lots of stories about that. And he realized the reason he wasn't comfortable with it was because of ageism. Because he had inbuilt ageism and society had so much ageism in it and that he felt that this was so incredibly wrong headed. He felt he still had so much more to offer society at age 70 that people should think that, you know, now his career is over or whatever was ridiculous. So that's what motivated him to write the book. Book. And his initial idea was, well, I want to combat ageism, but I also want to write a book for people of this age to, to let them know that there's absolutely like age is just a number. There's absolutely no reason to think that you can't be, you know, the happiest in your life in this time period. So one of the motivations was let me think about the things, things that stop people from being happy in later life and let me attack those things and break them down and analyze them and show people ways around them. And since you've read the book, you know, my father analyzes all sorts of different things, some of which that are not, you know, happy things. Not everything is, you know, rainbows and unicorns. Right. I mean, have a lot of challenges in life. Right. He analyzes for example, regrets. And what do you do with regret? We all have regrets. And how do you deal with that? And how do you use those constructively? I love people who tell me they have no regrets. I basically say you either have no feelings or you're lying to yourself. Nobody lives a perfect life. Yep, we all have regrets. We all would have wished we had done something differently in a. Different. In a situation in the past. Right. All of us, none of us are perfect, you know, beings that always act in the perfect, appropriate way all the time, you know, so basically, he analyzes all of these different things, and he's really saying that you can live life joyously and vibrantly at any age. And these are the things that are standing in your way or may be standing in your way. Let's talk about them, let's analyze them, let's look at them, let's pick them apart and hopefully find a way through to make you live a happier life. So that is absolutely the theme of the book. And those two themes run through it. He's constantly, since you've read the book, you know, this, trying to reinforce the idea that age doesn't matter. He constantly is weaving stories through the book of the guy who's 95 and has just graduated from college and plans on becoming a doctor. I know, I know stories like that. Just to let you know, yeah, this guy may not make it to being a doctor, but that's not the point. The point that he's actively engaged in life. He's enjoying himself. He's doing what he wants. He has purpose, he has meaning. He has, you know, he's constructively engaged with the world. And that's what my father is suggesting in any way, whatever that means to you. He doesn't mean you need to go back to college or you need to get more education or this or that. You know, he says whatever it means to you to be constructively engaged in the world, that's what you should pursue. Right. But he constantly is dropping in stories and newspaper articles and magazines. Believe me, the research for this book to act on all these citations was pretty.

Yeah, I can imagine. Well, and also kind of a connecting thread throughout chapter to chapter is having this. The attitude of hope versus fear as we age and as we progress. And he also talks about. Maybe this is what made me think about the.

The.

The living and aging part of it, but the then, now, and in the near future that we all kind of live in these three time tenses. Could you maybe unpack that? Like what. What you. What he means by that what your take on that is.

Right, right. Well, I mean, I say this about a lot of the things that he's written, not that they're unoriginal, but, you know, lots of people have discussed this. These ideas. And this one, I mean, I think the way my father writes it is, you know, beautiful. But certainly I feel. Because this is my own personal interest, and I feel it's important as well. I feel I have to point out that this is something that spiritual teachers talk about all of the time. And when I say spiritual teachers, I mean, you know, from all different traditions talk about, you know, we're constantly living in the past, thinking about what we did or how we would have done it better or worried about the future. You know, is this gonna happen? Am I gonna have enough money for this? Is, you know, am I gonna get sick? Something bad is gonna happen in the future. And ignoring the present that we live in. In fact, we're always in the present, but we're always ignoring it. It's really like an incredibly ironic part of being alive and contemporary life. I do think that something that has developed within the last couple of hundred years. Right. A few hundred years ago, people lived a completely different lifestyle, live much closer to the land. They thought about getting up and, you know, planting the seeds that day and. Which is both good and bad. But, yeah, the. The idea that people don't really enjoy and don't really fully participate in the presence of present of their life is definitely one idea that my father is presenting in the book.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard of it. Also, like, maybe from a clinical perspective of the depression is the thinking about the then and the past, and anxiety is thinking about, you know, the worry in the future aspect, and then being able to maybe get in a perspective of more mindfulness and being, you know, living in the now. I mean, it's hard. Almost becomes sort of cliche. But, I mean, I think there's really a very healthy aspect of that in the context of how we live our lives and how we interact with each other and whatnot.

Yeah. Let me just interject here. I absolutely agree with you 100%, and it has become cliche, but that doesn't mean that we're any closer to achieving it.

Fair point. That's right. I'm.

You know, this. You'll. You'll notice this is my. My particular, you know, viewpoint and thing that I'm particularly interested in, but I want to point out that word mindfulness. That is a Buddhist word. That is a word that's introduced to our dialogue and our thinking through Buddhist teachers from Japan and from India, you know, with meditation. And of course my father talks about meditation as well in this book and we can talk about that. But you know, that that is a word that is introduced to our culture and our way of thinking from the East.

Yeah.

Mindfulness.

Yeah, yeah, well. And thankfully so, so one of the pardon me sections, I want to pull another quote from that I just really kind of, you know, touched me and I think it also kind of sets a stage around the, the whole ageism aspect that, that he points out. And it's, you know, reminders. Maybe not everybody realizes this or everybody everybody knows thinks about this day in, day out, but that a lot of the aspects of other people, famous names that would be out there who aged well, and I'm not going to list them all but Freud, Picasso, Arthur Rubenstein, Einstein, etc. Those kinds of folks, I don't know if they dealt with. With ageism or what that was like, but it seems like now to quote it says they aged well primarily because they were passionately committed to their art, music, philosophy and projects and concede to themselves as pursuing a higher purpose. And I found that a lot like thinking like Arthur Brooks work and a variety of other people that are writing in these kinds of areas that purpose, passion, contribution. Morgan Housel talks about in the context he has a book called the Psychology of Money. But he talks about the ideal retirement is feeling like I may not have my day job or whatever age it is that I am, but I still am vibrant. I have a lot to offer to others. I have a lot to offer, offer to the world, you know, and, and I'm not just, you know, I'm not done yet. And I felt like again, kind of your, your father telegraphed this, you know, with his book as well, that these are now kind of common and showing up in a variety of kinds of places. But he was really, I think maybe perhaps ahead of his time with that about.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I think you've hit the nail on the head and you know, it's exactly that, that if you have some passion in life, life, especially if it's your work that you can continue to do. If you talk about an artist like Picasso, you know, nobody stopped him painting at age 89.

You gotta retire.

Nobody would think of telling an artist you're too old to paint now, but a teacher, you're too old to teach. That's sort of a common thing. Right. But if you realize that's a fallacious idea. That's a stupid idea. We should just discard that then, you know, maybe if the university forces you to retire, then you go teach at, you know, know, some other school or adult education program and stuff. I've known lots of people that have done that. I had a wonderful teacher. I took a course in medieval cathedrals in Europe, and it's just absolutely fascinating. The history, of course, it's completely intertwined with the history of Europe and the history of religion in Europe, and they were absolutely fascinating. And I learned so much. And this guy, I don't know what his background. I think he had been a university professor, you know, and they had forced him to retire. And now he was teaching this. And it was so wonderful to have this guy, you know, and he was pretty elderly, but. But he was a wonderful teacher and incredibly knowledgeable. Right. And that's the thing, you know, as long as you have your passion and your work, it doesn't really matter. Well, it matters to some extent, but. But you can overcome how society tries to. To, you know, push you away from it and. And you can continue to do what you want to do, even if it takes a different shape or a different form. And you're exactly right. I mean, that's exactly what my father is talking about. That is one aspect of it. There's many other aspects. As you know, since you've read the book, there's many suggestions that my father gives people to live vibrantly and, you know, joyously, and that's one of them. You know, find a sense of purpose. Find. Find. Figure out what you really want to do. The way he puts it is figure out what really interests you. There's a lot of people in the world who's. The job that they did to earn money didn't really interest them. Right. And he's talking to those people, like, figure out what really interests you and then pursue that. Whether it's take classes, whether it's study it, whether it's art that you can just create on your own. Whatever it is, whatever really interests you, you pursue that. And that is going to keep you vibrant and joyous. That's one. There's about six different sort of strands of advice that we can go through, and that's one of them. Find out what interests you.

Well, I know, like, I'm going to bounce around in the book, but like, chapter nine, it makes me think of, like, it's titled becoming the best person you could be, you know, so, I mean, it's sort of like the. The door is open it's not, the door is closed, you know, as we age and as we, you know, progress on and I like what you just said. I mean, a lot of times people, you know, your work, like, how can I say this? Like, I seem to be hanging around with a lot of folks that are pre retired, recently retired or long time retired. And some people, you know, I think maybe it's a difference and maybe it's just me being nuanced, but it's sort of like some folks are happy to be done with their job and other folks are like not happy to be done with their career, you know, and it's sort of like, I guess it depends on, you know, how engaged you were, what it is that you were doing or, you know, whatever, you know, that that work is. But you know, and even just personally for myself, I mean the where I am at life right now, I feel like I can kind of double down on the kinds of things that I find enjoyment with. I do enjoy, you know, like I run a non profit, so that's very satisfying for me. I feel like I've got a little bit more time and bandwidth to be able to devote to that. But what are some of the things that you might give, you know, just from personal experience, from, you know, the, the wisdom of Maury for listeners of, you know, what if they find themselves that maybe that kind of a crossroads, that could be some advice or some things that they might try to try, try on and see if it fits for them.

Sure, sure, absolutely. As I said, there's about six, six pieces of advice in the book that all have, you know, chapters or they're woven through different chapters and when we can just list them out, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And, and throughout the entire book my father says, like, these are just ideas. If this doesn't work for you or doesn't feel right for you, discard it and you know, try something else in this book. But I think that a lot of these are very universal. Maybe I'll start with the two that are a little bit less universal, then we'll go on to the ones that I think would apply to everybody. But my father started out with two things that are kind of contradictory and I wonder, it's not exactly like, you know, step by step in the book, but I feel like these are early in the book and you wonder if this was his thought process evolving. But the first thing that he sort of realized when he started to talk to a lot of people who were over a certain age, he held interviews for this book and, you know, read a lot. And he was really surprised that people, some people over a certain age, sort of got very dour and serious and he thought that this was crazy. You know, my father was this incredibly vibrant person who loved to laugh, loved comedy. And he said humor and laughter is so important in our lives to keep, you know, what feels better than when you're laughing, you know, so pursue what you find humorous and make sure you integrate it in your life and try and laugh as much as you can. And you know, this is unusual advice, right? On aging or whatever, but I think it's wonderful advice. And that's where he starts. And then, so that's the first one, then the second one is kind of like the almost the exact opposite. He said one way to calm down, to relax and to focus your energy is something we alluded to earlier is meditation. And he thought meditation was extremely important for people over a certain age so that they could calm down, forget your fears, forget your anxieties as you talked about and forget your regrets and just do, you know, there's different kinds of meditation, breath meditation or what have you, didn't really matter. And of course, he wasn't associating this with any religion or anything like that, just pure meditation. And of course that's something that's come to be, you know, thing in the west, it doesn't have to be associated with any kind of religion or something like that. And in fact, there have been studies, pretty widespread studies that show that seniors who meditate, on average, I can't remember exactly what the figure is, live something like five years longer than seniors who don't meditate. So it's clearly an effective technique.

Right? Right.

So then after that he moves into the things that he thinks are sort of more applicable in society. Of course, one of them is, as I said, he says, find what interests you and pursue it. And this is, you know, a specific piece of advice. It's also a larger piece of advice and like, don't withdraw from society. You know, become involved in society, whether it's taking a class or, you know, investigating one thing that you can find other people are interested in the same thing. And this feeds into the next piece of advice, which he says that the most important thing in your life is your relationships with people, certainly your relationships with your loved ones, with your family, you know, with your colleagues or your ex colleagues, with your friends and also wider society. You know, he encourages you to go out and meet new people and create new relationships. And certainly, you know, if he's saying pursue your interest could mean take a class. Then you're going to meet new people, or at least you're going to meet people who are interested in the same thing you are. So those two to fit together. Well, in that sense, he's also saying you should strengthen your relationships with the people closest to you. And if there's blocks in those relationships, if you're having problems with those relationships, then you need to work it out. And yourself, as a clinical psychologist is very familiar with that field. And so was my father. Right. So that's. We're up to four or five things. The last one is he was a little bit vague about it because he wanted to be. Because it's somewhat controversial in our society. But after all of those things he said at a certain point he thought it was really important to develop what he called a spiritual connection, whatever that means for you. He was not imposing any religion. If you want to pursue this established religion or that established religion or something that's more abstract, all of that was great for him. But whatever a spiritual connection means for you, pursue that and try and strengthen that. So those are sort of like the broad spectrum of all the things that he talked about. I wonder if I forgot. Let's see if I forgot any of them.

I have a list. I think you hit them all.

I think I got them all.

That's good. Well, you know, and we've talked about psychology and psychologists and stuff. I want to pull in. And another one speaking of that, in the book, he quotes Harry Stack Sullivan. And the quote is, everyone is much more simply human than unique. And then one of the things that your dad's known for saying is, is stay human. Can you explain what he meant by that for listeners?

Sure, sure. Yeah, that. That's a big one. I think that you're, you know, you are alluding to it and, and have it. Have it, you know, basically in the right framework. For him, stay human meant, as I just said, stay connected to other people. Stay connected inside yourself to what makes us human. So if that's of course, our emotions, our ability to love, our ability to communicate, you know, in a very deep way with other people, I think that that's what he meant by stay human. Particularly, of course, our ability to love, our ability to form strong relationships with people, whether it's our family, our friends, you know, new people in our life. But. But staying connected to other people. You know, people who become isolated and, you know, live by themselves without any human connection. There's just so many studies have been Shown that those are the people who are not, one, gonna live a happy life and two, not gonna live very long.

Yeah. Yeah.

When you have vibrant relationships, and studies have been done on this, when you have vibrant relationships and more people in your life and more love in your life, you are going to live, on average, longer. It's just, it's just, you know, a biological fact.

Social creatures.

Yeah, exactly. We are social creatures.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, what. What would you think? I, I. You've been very generous with your time. I have a few more questions if you're.

No problem.

Good for time. Okay. Awesome. What do you think? I mean, this is kind of a personal question, but what do you think your dad would say about the book being published now?

Oh, I think he would be very happy. I certainly would be very happy. So the history is, as I laid it out, he tried to get the book published. A lot of people have asked me this question, like, why didn't your dad publish this book when he wrote it? And people don't realize that my father was not famous in his life. He was a beloved professor at Brandeis University, and he did do little talking tours of groups that were related to Brandeis, and he actually even appeared, you know, very occasionally on a TV show, talking about something related to his field, which is social psychology. But he was not famous. He certainly wasn't famous as an author writing a general book to help people. As you know, this book is not an academic book. We talked about the three books that my father, author, previous to this one were all academic work that are not really accessible to a general paper.

Yeah, exactly.

This is a general book that is accessible to everybody. He's speaking to everybody in society when he writes this book. And he really wanted to communicate these ideas which we've been talking about for the last hour, about remaining joyous and vibrant, remaining connected to people. And, you know, that's why the interviews with Mitch are so affecting, because he had so much he wanted to communicate that he felt he really had something to tell people that could help them. And that's the case with this book. He really felt like he had something he could tell people that would help them be more happy and more joyous and more vibrant. And. And so to continue the story, he tried to get it published, and he couldn't find a publisher. I have to tell you, my father didn't know anything about the mainstream publishing game. So, you know, you're very well informed about it. You'll know that if you want to get a book published by a major Publisher, you need an agent. You can't send your manuscript out to a publishing house. They won't read it. Right. That's just the way that it is. He didn't even know that. Right. As far as I know, he never even thought about an agent. He never even considered getting an agent to represent him, a book agent to represent him. So, of course he didn't get anywhere trying to publish this book. He wasn't a famous author. And, you know, it was a disappointment to him that I'm sure that he felt like this in some way was the summary of his life's work. And I actually. You alluded to it when you introduced me. I actually wrote an article for Psychology Today, the magazine, which is online. If you search Psychology Today and my name, Rob Schwartz, you can find it and probably my father's name as well, Maury Schwartz, where I string together all of his life's work, from the early articles he published in academic journals to the mental hospital, to the later works, to this, and show that there's a through line all the way through it. And it's about trying to, to create stronger bonds, more caring and loving bonds between people. In some way, he's trying to do it in an academic way. In some way, he's trying to do it in a mainstream general way, as with this book. But there's a through line there. And I quote different things that he's written and show the themes of different things that he's written. So, you know, he really felt like this book was the summation of all of his understanding of what it meant to be human. And I'm sure that he would be overjoyed that it's being published now.

What a good feeling that must be for you, Rob. I mean, gosh, what a wonderful thing for a son and a father to have that experience. So you and I talked off mic about that. I'm a admitted book design nerd and I do want to talk about that. This Hardcover edition, it's beautiful. I mean, I monkey with it. Like, I took the paper bound cover off of it and was nicely surprised to see that there's like quotes on the back of it and, you know, the same kind of color scheme with the different letters and stuff and whatnot on that. But, you know, each chapter opener is printed in ink with a little subtle, colorful effect and you've got a script font for your notes and colored callout boxes. Walk us through that. How did you come up with these? Just love design effects and really engaging for the reader.

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I'm really happy to say that basically every single design idea that you just pointed to and more in that book were my idea.

Bravo.

I suggested to the art director from the publishing house. The publishing house is Blackstone. It's a little publisher with a big imprint. They're not one of the major ones, but they're actually very powerful in the industry. And the art director was so generous, and I think she understood what I wanted. And basically she took aboard every single one of my suggestions. So I wanted it to stand out from other books, and I wanted people to feel like they were having some personal connection with my father. So there's certain things that I did. For example, changing fonts and some of the pages that look hand written. You know, my father includes, like, letters or thoughts. And I really wanted them to feel like, oh, these are really the thoughts of Maury Schwartz. This is not just some guy writing stuff. This is actually something he thought at one point he felt and he put down in on paper. And I also wanted it to look, you know, if, you know, the book Tuesdays with Maury, you know, the design concept there is very plain. You know, it's gray cover. I wanted it to look as different from that as possible because I didn't want anybody to feel like. Or trying to ride the coattail. Somebody's going to mistake this book for that one. I say these two books, you know, they're like bookends because they approach the same subject matter. Tuesdays with Maury, of course, is written in a completely different way. Mitch's writing style, you know, very succinct, very to the point, very short sentences. My father was an academic. He writes long sentences. He writes analysis. So the way the two books are written is almost opposite, but they're approaching the same subject matter. What does it mean to be human? What is going to make you happy? Those are the things that my father is analyzing in both Tuesdays with Maury and the wisdom of Maury. So I feel like the real bookends. But I didn't want people to feel that somehow I was trying to imitate Tuesdays with Maury. So I wanted it to look as different as possible. That's why we have the so much color in the book. And it also is representative of my father's personality, which was so colorful, so full of life. I'll tell you one aside, which is, I don't know. I tell this story because I guess it bothers me a little bit, but it's also hilarious. So, as you notice, there is Color, literally color in the book that runs through the pages, on the chapters. Like, you know, orange or red or pink or what have you. And early online, you know, reviewer people write reviews of the books on, you know, Amazon.com or goodreads or what have you. A person who had gotten, like, one of the first copies of the book wrote, oh, my copy is defective. It's got these colored pages. I'm trying to put color in the book. It's not a defective.

Yeah, it's a feature.

It's not a bug exactly. It's a feature that you're supposed to enjoy. I don't think most people had that reaction, but it was just. I was dumbfounded by that.

Well, I had the right reaction. It's so neat. And I also have to say, too, I've read and enjoyed other books and just sort of pined for photographs because, you know, you kind of picture these and that. And thank you for putting them in. It's just. It's lovely to kind of, you know, have the mental image or whatever, or like to have read a chapter and, like, I'll come back to a book and thumb through it. I'll go through it backwards, I'll go through it forwards. I'll, you know, look at my little margin notes and whatnot. And. And I just find myself with your book when I've gone, you know, back and forth with, you know, prepping for this, of just, you know, kind of lingering on the photos, you know, and imagining, you know, having a conversation with you and seeing you and seeing you with your, you know, dad. And it's just. I don't know, it's just. It's very touching. It's just very heartwarming to do that. And I don't know why more authors don't do it. And for you to, too.

Yeah. Coloring. Thank you for that. And I think that you can tell, you know, from what you just said that this was important to me, and somehow, you know, people feel connected to my father. I can tell you so many stories. You know, Tuesdays With Maury, as I mentioned earlier, wasn't written until after he died. So anyone who read Tuesdays With Maury and didn't know of my father before then, never met him.

Right.

But I feel so. People feel so connected to him.

Yeah.

I've had so many discussions all over the world, and I actually want to talk about the international aspect of Tuesdays with Maury, so we can wind back to that in a second. But all over the world, people have come up to me and told me how meaningful Tuesdays with Maury was for them when they find out that I'm Maury's son. How meaningful Tuesdays with Maury was for them and how, you know, how it touched them. And I've had people burst into tears, more than one, you know. And so I realized that my father really is meaningful for people. So I want. Wanted to include photos of him. And of course, as you say, this is a father son project. So I put photos of us together as well. But, you know, we have a whole. We have family albums of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of photos of my father's life. And I thought that, yeah, I thought that people would enjoy them.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, let me tell you one, one thing, just because again, this is stories that I love and I think you'll find it surprising. So as we talked about earlier, there's a play of Tuesdays with Maury and the book itself has been translated into over 40 languages. So it is really all over the world and not just, you know, Europe, but it's in like, I think it's in five or six different Indian languages. And of course, they speak English in India as well. So also the English version, but it was a huge hit in China and many other places. But let's talk about China for a second. So China's a pretty complicated situation, and I won't go into too much detail, but, you know, there's Taiwan and then there's mainland China. And it was a professor from Taiwan who was living in the United States who found the book, loved it. He was a professor of theater. So he licensed the play, he brought it to Taiwan, and he performed it with famous Taiwanese actors who. Taiwanese actors who are famous tend to also be famous in the mainland. Massive hit. He brought it to the mainland and it became a massive hit. There was also the Chinese, the Mandarin language, and also Cantonese language versions of Tuesdays with Mori in the mainland already, which was a pretty big hit. But the play has been a fantastic hit in China. It's been performed over 250 times at the most prestigious theaters in Beijing and Shanghai. And I'll tell you a little story because this is a personal story that just you know, absolutely blew my mind. So I went to China in the 90s, and then I didn't go for a while, and I went back in 2012 to cover a story for Billboard. I wrote a lot about the Chinese music industry for Billboard. And my last day in this 2012 trip, where I hadn't been in China in 14 years, I guess I saw a poster for the advertisement of a play that was being performed. And that play was Tuesdays with Maury. And it was being performed like a week. It was opening like a week after I was leaving China. And I was like, what the hell is going on? So I had to do a lot of research. I actually went through Mitch and his agent because they're the ones that license the play internationally. I finally got the story, which is the story that I told you. This Taiwanese professor of theater had licensed it and brought it to Taiwan and brought it to China, and it had become a hit in China. I made a connection with this guy. I made a connection with the production company that put on basically just one production company has done it like 300 times now. And I appear at Q and A in Beijing and Shanghai more than five times in each city for audiences of more than 3,000 people.

Oh, my God.

China's just like. There's so many people in China and people just so attentive and so interested. To hear what I had to say and to make a connection with Maury through me is just a mind blowing experience. Get this. It was such the extent that I appeared on stage with the actors who were playing Mitch and Maury when the play wasn't even being performed. People just came to hear us talk about it.

Oh, my gosh.

Isn't that crazy?

That's lovely. I mean, it just goes back to what we were saying earlier. You know, there's just such a. A core of humanity with this. You know, what people resonate with, what people need. You know, it's just. Oh, and it's. And it scales across cultures, obviously, and it scales across decades, obviously. So.

Oh, well, listen, I'll give just one addendum to that if you want to read more about that story for the. I think it was the 20th anniversary of the book. I believe it was the 20th anniversary of the book. Richard Harris, who I mentioned previously, the senior editor at Nightline, wrote an article about in the Boston Globe about the international reach of Tuesdays with Maury. And he talks about it in all these different cultures and he talks about it in China and he interviews me and there's stories about me in China. So there is actually an article out there that you can find in the Boston Globe written by Richard Harris, about the international national reach of Tuesdays with more.

Yeah, and the longevity of it, too. I mean, gosh, that is just wonderful. Well, I want to circle back and talk about a couple things about you I know in my research. So again, Clarification here you're producing what I think is the first global benefit festival dedicated to mental health. And you've. I've saw and are seen and listened to on Spot. Spotify, a channel. I don't know exactly what Spotify calls that, but tell us about that. What's. What's going on with that. How that.

Absolutely. It's not the first. I mean, global is a difficult word. I think, you know, everything is global these days. But there have been other benefit festivals for mental health. We're hopefully planning to do something bigger and yet more global reaches more people. And also, you know, since I have such strong Asia connection that has more Asian artists. But it's called onetopia. O N E T O P I A the website is up onetopia.com the benefit festival is scheduled for May of 2025 in Las Vegas. I'm working with the. There's. I'm not actually the founder of that. There's a founder whose name is Evan Claassen. He's a entrepreneur, a German entrepreneur and also musical artist who's based in Dubai and his passion is mental health. Obviously, it fits with my mission as well. And talking about my father. And I'm also, as you know, a music producer and film producer. So we decided to work together on this. There's a third producer who's based here in la. The three of us are a team. We're trying to put this together. We're actually having a big introductory party pretty soon here in Los Angeles. Of course, I live in LA now. And yeah, it's going to be a benefit festival for mental health. We feel that there's kind of a mental health crisis in the world and certainly in this country, and people who need, you know, mental health help are not getting it. And we're sort of not acknowledging that we have very serious mental health issues in this country and around the world. So we want to bring that to light. We want to have lots of different information and education at the festival and we want to funnel all the money to mental health groups and to mental health projects. We started a foundation, a nonprofit foundation also called onetopia. And, you know, all of us are working volunteer. None of us are taking any money to do this. It's just a project that we're passionate about. And yeah, please look for more, you know, on onetopia or go to the website onetopia.com and. And this should be happening about a little over a year from now in Las Vegas.

I'll put that in the show. Notes, for sure. And hey, pardon me. Also, just any of that promotional stuff or any things upcoming or whatever, just shoot me any kind of content. I've got a monthly LinkedIn newsletter that I'd be happy to put that in. We've got a pretty popular community on Facebook for our nonprofit. So I'd be happy to. To, you know, just as these things come up or people want to learn more about it, just, you know, shoot me whatever content and links. I'll be happy to share those on all the.

I want to talk about one other thing. This is just sort of more, I mean, similar along the same lines, but a shot in the dark because I'm, as I mentioned, I'm a filmmaker and I'm producing a documentary right now, and it's actually a Holocaust survivor story, a very, very touching story of two children who. Who were ripped from their family and put in French Nazi prison camps and saved from those prison camps by French families that smuggled them out independently, brother and sister as infants, smuggled them out at the risk of their own life. And it's the story of how they survived and also how they were reunited with the families that saved them later. So, yeah, it's a very powerful story. But, you know, raising money for documentary is very difficult. So if there's anybody out there who feels like they want to help fund a documentary or know somebody or has a connection, you know, I'll give you an email address. People can write to me. People can also write to me through the website wisdom of Maury. WisdomofMori.com is my website. We have a Contact Us sheet there. It will definitely come to me, but I'll give you an email address. You can put in the notes that can write if they want to get involved in either onetopia or the Holocaust survivor documentary, which is called Coming Full Circle. But, you know, we're always looking for collaborators and people who would love to, you know, get involved or just support us, you know, monetarily or whatever.

That's great. Good. Yeah, do share that. I'll put. Put all these things in the show notes as well, too. So. So, you know, Rob, we've covered a lot of ground. This has been great. Are there any other areas that we haven't discussed that you'd like to share as we close out?

Let me think. I think we got it all. I mean, as you know, I love talking about Tuesdays with Maury, just because it's such an incredible, incredible phenomenon and the international reach of it. We touched on that. I'm trying to think,

Yeah, we've got a lawnmower going by my place right now. Oh, maybe, maybe that's, maybe that's.

I thought you were playing me off.

No, no, no, it's like, yeah, it's, it's, it's lawn day, I guess here, so. Well, listen, Rob, I, I want to thank you so much for being on, for sharing your stories and your perspectives and I mean, it's just really, you know, the work that you've done I think is really kind of an inspiration to us all. I'm excited about onetopia as well too. And just, you know, you're a blessing and a gift to this world with your work and what your family has done as well too. And thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you so much. I'll say one thing at the end. So once again, the book is called the Wisdom of Maury. It's available in bookstores across the country. You obviously can order it and you can go to, you can order it through our website if you like. We don't take any money for that. That's just a click through which is the wisdom of Maury.com and what I ask people is if you find it meaningful for you or if you find it helpful for you, please write a review online because they really help either at Amazon or Goodreads or Barnes and Noble. All of these places have online reviews for certain books and you know, if you could share your story of how it helped you, you, it's really, it's really great for us to be able to have that online.

Oh, here, here. Yeah, I think that's a nice way to feel, feel being a part of that community and, and you know, those are just good stories to share. So awesome. Well again Rob, thank you so much for your generosity of spirit and of time today and I look forward to seeing what comes next, my friend.

It's my pleasure.

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