- [Announcer] Funding for ""Overheard with Evan Smith" comes from Hill Co Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, Christine and Philip Dial, Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication, EllerGroup.com, Diane Land and Steve Adler, and Karey and Chris Oddo.

- I'm Evan Smith.

His 19 books have sold 42 million copies worldwide.

Eight were number one "New York Times" bestsellers, including "Tuesdays With Morrie," the bestselling memoir of all time.

His latest novel is "Twice."

He's Mitch Albom, this is "Overheard."

(light music) A platform and a voice is a powerful thing.

(audience applauding) You really turn the conversation around about what leadership should be about.

Are we blowing this?

(upbeat music) Are we doing the thing we shouldn't be doing by giving into the attention junkie?

As an industry, we have an obligation to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold everybody else.

- [Crew] Two.

- This is "Overheard."

(audience applauding) - Mitch Albom, welcome.

- Thank you.

- Very nice to have you here.

- Nice to be here.

- Congratulations on the book.

- My pleasure.

- It is a book about second chances.

- Yes.

- About do-overs, or mulligans, right?

Being given an opportunity to go back and do something differently in your life.

Why did you decide this was the book you wanted to write?

- Well, I think as you get older, you meet a lot of people, or become a person, who spends a lot of time on regret and what they should have done.

And I wanted to write a book that explores that whole grass-is-always-greener thing, so I said, "Well, why don't I create a character who actually has the ability to go back and do anything in his life a second time over?

Would it really be better?"

And I thought that that was an interesting idea to explore.

- Yeah, certain conditions though.

It only works in certain cases.

And there are things that you have to know if you do it.

Explain that.

- Well, all time travel books have to have a set of rules.

- Of course.

Right.

(audience laughing) - And my- - Since we're making something up, - Right, well yeah.

- we can just make up anything.

- Yeah, yeah.

My rules are, you have to live with your second try.

So whatever happens the second time, there's no going back to the first one.

And one caveat, it doesn't work with love.

And in fact, it kind of works the opposite.

If you have someone who loves you, and you decide that you wanna go back and try somebody else, then that first person can never love you again.

- You don't get a second chance, in that sense.

- Well, they'll be in the world.

You can talk to them, but they can never love you again.

- They can never love you again, yeah, yeah.

Did you write this book because you want a second chance?

Or was there a something in your life that you thought to yourself, "You know what, I'd like to have a second chance"?

- No, I actually, for the personal part of it, is that I have learned greatly from my second chances, and that I actually wanna show that the mistakes that you make are the things that lead you to do better.

So if you were to ask me would I wanna have second chances, well sure.

Naturally, I'd love the correct mistakes that I've made.

But if you said to me, you had to unlearn what you learned from those mistakes, I would say, no thanks.

- Probably not worth it.

- Well, it's not a question of worth it, but you don't evolve.

- Yeah, right.

- If you keep getting, one of the characters says to Alfie, "If you keep getting second chances, you won't learn a damn thing."

- You won't learn a damn thing.

- Yeah.

- To me, that was the most important line in this book, because it really caused me to think about, you know, actually there is an aspect to this that makes you better.

- Yeah.

- Right, if you kept getting, if you kept having an eraser on your pencil, essentially, - Right, right.

- right, you wouldn't, you wouldn't learn.

- A hundred percent.

- Yeah.

- And I'm walking proof of that.

- A book like this, you've now written so many books, so many successful books.

How long does it take you to write a book like this?

- Well, I always say it takes about a year and your entire life.

- Yeah.

(audience laughing) - It takes a year to sit there, but it takes a lifetime to think it up.

- Yeah.

- And so, you know, you can't dismiss all the thoughts that have germinated until you get to the point of doing the book.

But physically sitting in front of a computer, or whatever you type on, for me, it's a year.

- This is an idea that you've had for a while, or relatively.

- No, awhile, awhile.

I wanted to do it.

I'm very blessed, Evan.

I don't have writer's block.

I have the opposite.

I have way too many ideas.

A drawer full of ideas, books I wanna get to.

And when I do the math on my life, unless I get to live to about 212, I'm not gonna be able to get to all the books.

And so it's a question of which one I wanna do next.

- So let's actually do your origin story, and then I wanna talk about the books, if that's okay.

So you were born and raised in New Jersey?

Did not come from a family that had anything to do with the work that you came to do later.

- Nope.

- Say something about your, about your parents and about how, what you were thinking about as a kid growing up, you might wanna do.

- I wanted to be a cartoonist.

That was my first love.

I drew cartoons all the time.

And then I wanted to be a musician.

I had no thought about writing ever, as a kid or even as a college student.

But I learned how to be a writer at my family's dinner table.

And you people say, "Where did you learn to be a writer?"

I would sit around, we had a big extended family, and Thanksgivings would come.

And the uncles and aunts, some of them from the old country, would start telling stories, and all the other kids would disappear.

But I somehow loved to sit at the table and listen.

I would just, like this.

And I noticed a difference between my aunts and my uncles.

My aunts would always get bogged down in the details.

They'd say, "So it was 1945.

Ah, no, was it '44 or was it '45?

When was Shirley born?

Was she born in '45, or was it?"

(audience and Evan laughing) And the uncles would go, "Ah to hell with this, alright!"

And then the uncles would tell the war stories, you know.

"So there we was, we was coming over the hill, see?

And it was dark, and the bombs were droppin'."

And then I would say, I said to myself, "That's how you tell a story."

That's how you tell a... So I learned from them, and I think I always had an innate ability to tell a story.

I just told it in comic books or music.

- Music, right.

- And then eventually, became a writer.

- You were a creator, what you would've called - Yeah, I always - be called today.

- Wanted to be creative.

- You wanted to be creative.

So you went to Brandeis University?

- [Mitch] I did.

- And then you came to Columbia Journalism School for graduate school, and then business school.

- [Mitch] Well, in between, I worked as a musician.

- But in between, right.

- My first job in music, real job, was overseas in Crete, on the island of Crete.

I got a job singing and playing piano in a little nightclub in Agios Nikolaos, a fishing village, which was so remote that I think when I sang like, Elvis Presley songs, they thought they were originals, you know.

(audience laughing) - They were your songs.

- Yeah, yeah.

Which I was perfectly fine with, you know.

And I had a bungalow on the Aegean Sea, and I got paid in cash in American dollars, and I got all the food I wanted.

All I had to do was just play some piano and then sing with the band.

And if I was smart, I would've stayed there my whole life.

'Cause to this day, I still haven't had a job that was as good as that one.

- Pretty fun.

- But I had to come back to New York to try to make it as a musician.

And I lived, you know, a life of poverty and trying to write songs and sell them, and nobody bought them.

And while I was doing that, as a musician, I walked into a supermarket one day, and they threw a newspaper in my cart, and I looked at it, it was a free newspaper, and they said, "If you have spare time, we could use some help putting out the newspaper."

- What was the paper?

- "The Queen's Tribune."

- And it was Flushing, New York.

A weekly.

- Weekly free newspaper.

And so I went down there, and they gave me an assignment the first day I showed up.

I'd never written anything.

And they said go cover this parking meters, board meeting or something.

And I went and I just listened.

I asked a bunch of tough questions, like Woodward and Bernstein, (chuckles) you know?

"Why are you raising the parking meters?"

And I wrote a story based on, you know, mimicking newspaper stories.

I'd never written anything.

And the next week when the newspaper came out, it was at the bottom of the front page.

Which, first of all, shows you how little news happened in Flushing, New York that week.

- In Flushing New York.

- But also, I must have had some ability, you know, because it made the front page.

And I had that little tingle that you get when you see your name, that you've created something with words.

- Right there, yeah.

- And I be, you know, that kind of hooked me as a writer.

- Yeah, first job you had out of graduate school.

You freelanced for awhile.

- I freelanced all over the world in sports, and (laughs) got a, didn't wanna be a sports writer.

I wanted to be a Sunday magazine writer.

Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese and all these guys, that's what I wanted to do, those big takeout stories.

But I had been working at "Sport Magazine" to pay the rent, and so all my clips were sports.

So there was a job, and the editor and publisher, they don't tell you what paper it is, but there was a job for Sunday magazine writer.

I said, "This is it.

I'm gonna get this."

- Like a feature writer.

- Feature writer.

So I sent off all my clips.

And I'm waiting and waiting and waiting.

And I was over in Finland covering the track and field world championships for track and field news, and I get a phone call.

And the phone rings, I pick it up, and it's (imitates static).

And they said, "Hello," is this Mitch Albom," I said, "Yeah."

"This is Fred Turner, I'm the sports editor with the 'Fort Lauderdale News and Sun Sentinel.'"

I said, "Yeah?"

"You know that Sunday magazine job you applied for?"

"Yeah."

"You didn't get it."

(audience laughing) I said, "You called me all the way over here in Finland to tell me I didn't get a job?"

He said, "Well, the guy who was interviewing for that, he saw you wrote a lot of sports stories, so he gave 'em to me, and I think they're pretty good.

I'll give you a job in sports."

I flew home, I took the job in sports, I've been in sports ever since.

- It's a job.

- Yeah.

- And so, just a little bit of time there before you go to Detroit.

You go to Detroit in '85.

- [Mitch] Yeah.

- A loved sports columnist at "The Free Press" goes to another paper, and there's an opening, and they hire you to replace him.

That's 1985.

- That's correct.

- Right, so that's 40 years ago.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - Yeah.

Writing about sports.

- Thanks.

- I mean, look.

(audience laughing) Look, here's the thing.

You're old enough to remember, and I am too, when the newspaper business was a real business to be in, right?

We know that we've seen the closure of a lot of newspapers.

There are very few reporters.

There aren't even very many columnists at these papers anymore, right?

- I loved it.

It's not what it used to be, but I was thrilled by it.

And I worked in it, maybe to my detriment, I threw myself into it.

And, you know, I wrote five, six days a week.

I'd write two columns a night sometimes.

And I really cut my teeth.

It taught you a lot about writing eventually for books.

But I also lost myself for a stretch of time in that world.

And you know, I was on ESPN lots of time.

I'd lived at Bristol, Connecticut for three days a week for a stretch to be on there.

I did radio, I did music.

I worked 150 hours a week just trying to make, I never said no to anybody.

And kind of went on like that until I was 37.

And then kinda had a life-changing experience that sort of bifurcated my life, which is part of why I wrote "Twice," because I have lived the twice existence myself.

- Let do the book.

So it was the Schembechler book was '89.

Then you wrote a book about Michigan High School football team.

- No, Michigan College basketball, - College basketball team.

- "Fab Five."

- Pardon me.

In '93.

- Yeah.

- And then in 1995, you see Morrie Schwartz on television, on "Nightline," right.

- Yeah.

- Tell the story.

- Well, Morrie was a beloved college professor of mine.

I took every class that he offered - At Brandeis.

- at Brandeis.

I majored in sociology because of him.

And I promised him upon graduation that I would always stay in touch.

We were more like a nephew and uncle, really.

And then I broke that promise, every day and week and month, and year, for 16 years while I was so busy chasing my tail and trying to be so successful.

And then I flipped on the "Nightline" program one night, and he's on with Ted Koppel, talking about what it's like to die from Lou Gehrig's disease.

- He has ALS, right.

- I didn't even know.

And I went to go see him in what I thought would be a one-time visit.

And I was so taken with how he was dying.

He was so content with how he'd lived his life, and even his dying, even though he couldn't move his legs, could barely move his arms, needed someone to wipe his rear end for him.

But he said, "I'm like a leaf that's about to fall off the tree.

I'm becoming more colorful in my final days."

And I flew home that night saying, "You're 37 and healthy.

He's 78 and dying, and he seems 10 times happier with his life than you are."

And I started to go back, and it turned out to be every Tuesday, every Tuesday, - Every Tuesday.

- every Tuesday for all the Tuesdays he had left.

And we did this sort of one last class together, and what's important in life when you really know you're gonna die.

It wasn't supposed to be a book.

- Well, I was gonna say, I don't know that it originated as a book, right?

- No, no, no.

It was, it was just two people talking.

What happened was, he told me that he was in debt for his medical bills.

And that his biggest fear was that once he died, his family was gonna have to sell their house to pay the bills.

He said, "I'm gonna die twice.

First time I die regularly, then I die when I'm in the grave, and I find out what I'm costing my family."

And it was the first time in my life, to be honest, that I decided to do something strictly for somebody else.

I said, "Well, maybe I can write a book, and pay his medical bills."

I didn't tell him, because I didn't wanna fail, in case... I went around to publishers in New York, I told 'em about this idea.

Almost every one of them said, pfft, boring, dull.

You're a sports writer.

One of 'em said, "You don't even know what a memoir is.

Come back in 20 years, maybe you'll know"- - Speaking of second chances, I bet they'd like that one back.

- (laughs) Yeah, there are a few.

- There were (laughs) probably a few.

- There were a few who did say that to me later.

But we found one publisher a few weeks before Morrie died, and they gave us just enough money to pay his bills.

And I went to Morrie and I said, "Take this money.

Pay your bills.

Don't die a second time."

And for me, that was always, like, I always say, "That was the graduation of 'Tuesdays With Morrie,'" 'cause I had learned to do something nice for somebody else, not just for me.

But of course, it was just the beginning of this change in my life, and the beginning of "Tuesdays With Morrie" for everybody else.

- Book is published in '97.

And there's an opportunity for Oprah Winfrey to talk about your book at some point, and it gets on the bestseller list.

And I had to look this up twice, Mitch.

It stayed on the bestseller list for 205 weeks.

- Yeah, about four years.

- Four years.

And it didn't go to number one for like, six months.

- No, in fact, I mean, you know, everyone acts like "Tuesday With Morrie" was supposed to be some kind of success story.

It was not.

- Most books, when they get on the bestseller list, they debut high, they drop.

- And start to drop.

- And then they disappear.

This was as atypical as it could be.

- Mine didn't appear.

It was, first of all, they released it in August, which is such a great time for a meaning-of-life book, you know.

Everybody wants to take it to the beach, you know.

(audience laughing) And they printed 20,000 total copies.

I thought I'd have 'em in the trunk of my car for the rest of my life, and I'd be giving 'em out to people.

And it just, it was something, Evan, that wouldn't happen today, because there were a lot of independent bookstores back then.

And they just sort of, people started handing it to, handing to, handing it to someone.

And they said, "Read this, try this."

And it started slowly, slowly, slowly slowly.

The Oprah thing was not, she didn't pick it as a Book Club pick.

- Right.

- She, she- - I think we're used to later Oprah waving her magic wand over authors.

- No, it wasn't that.

- And that was not the case.

- No, this was already October, or November, and I got a call saying, "Would you come and be on Oprah's show for the last five minutes of the show?"

Because it was Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was the main guest, and they wanted one little throw-on at the end.

And I went, (chuckles) I did that.

I remember, 'cause I walked out, I'm not very tall.

And I came out, she has these giant chairs.

And I came out and I sat in the chair, and my feet didn't touch the ground.

(audience laughing) And the whole time I was with Oprah Winfrey, I was just trying to like, move, you know, (audience laughing) so I wouldn't look like Edith Ann from "Laugh In," you know, like, a little chair.

And so I really don't remember anything that she asked me.

It went by (snaps) like that, and then it was over.

And I do remember on the way out, she said, "Hey, by the way, I'd like to make a movie out of this book.

Would that be okay?"

And I was like, "Yeah, okay."

You know, sure.

I didn't even really get that.

And then I remember when, just as we were leaving, I took my wife and her sisters, we all, 'cause Oprah Winfrey, you know, ya gotta bring your wife.

And she was in Chicago, so we drove there.

And we were, we only went back because they gave out coffee mugs.

And they gave me one, and my wife and her sister said, "You think we could get coffee mugs?"

So (laughs) we were actually going back to see if we could get more coffee mugs.

And the president of her company calls down to the desk and says, "Is Mitch still here?"

And they said, "Yeah, he's here getting coffee mugs."

And they said, "Come upstairs."

So I go upstairs to the president of Harpo, and he says, "I watched your little segment."

You know, it was just taped.

"This is kind of an interesting book.

How many copies do you have," you know.

And I said, "Well, they printed 20,000."

He goes, "Oh my God, you're gonna need way more than that."

- He knew.

- He knew.

He said, "You're gonna need way more than that."

And I said, "If I call a number in New York, and hand you the phone, will you tell them?"

- Will you say that, right.

- And that's what I did.

And I called the publisher and I gave it to him.

He said, "This is president of Harpo, and Mitch just did the segment, and you're gonna need 250,000 copies," whatever.

And they said, "Thank you very much."

And they printed 5,000 copies more.

(audience laughing) And sure enough, as soon as that- - Never been so happy to be wrong, right?

- Yeah, but the problem was, as soon as that thing aired, all the copies were gone, and it was three weeks before Christmas.

- Could you have.

- So that wasn't good.

- Could you ever have imagined, bestselling memoir of all time, a phenomenon.

- No.

Of course I couldn't.

- Still to this day, it's the thing that everybody knows you for.

- Yeah, but you know, there's some cosmic things to this, Evan, because I mean, I know for everybody else, "Tuesdays With Morrie," it's a book, and it's, I know it's around the world, and it's been translated.

But for me, you know, it was such a life-changing thing.

First of all, it was my time with Morrie.

You know, that was private, and that was us.

But then what I noticed happening, was people, you know, I was on ESPN so people knew my face.

But people used to stop me in airports, and they would say, you know, "Hey sports guy," you know, if they'd remember me.

You know, "Hey man, who's gonna win the Super Bowl?"

And I would say, you know, "The Patriots!"

And I'd go up the escalator.

Because at that time, that was the answer all the time, was the Patriots.

- And it was mostly right.

- Yeah, it was right.

- Yeah.

- And then after "Tuesdays With Morrie," about a year after it had been out, I began to notice that people would come up to me and they would say, "You're Mitch Albom, right?"

And I said, "Yeah."

He said, "Well, my mother died of cancer.

And the last thing we did was read 'Tuesdays With Morrie' together."

"Can I talk to you about it?"

- Oh, wow.

- And you can't go, "Patriots," and go up the escalator.

(audience laughing) You have to stop and listen.

And Evan, I have stopped and listened to that conversation, not a hundred or a thousand or even ten thousand, but tens of thousands of times.

And what it does is it sensitizes you to how many people are suffering, and how much grief is there is in the world, and what is really important.

And I think that Morrie, that's what Morrie knew I was missing in my life.

And it changed me.

You can't talk to thousands and thousands of people about sadness and grief and loss and not be changed.

And I've never written a sports book since.

And all of my books have taken on some kind of flavor from "Tuesdays With Morrie."

So for me, that's what it's about.

- You get pigeonholed unfairly, I think.

"He writes about death."

(Mitch laughs) Right?

"Tuesdays With Morrie," "The Five People You Meet in Heaven," and the series of books that followed that "For One More Day," all that stuff, these are all books about death.

You have said, actually, "No, these are books about life."

- Hundred percent.

- They're books about life.

- You wanna read a book about death, read some of 'em about serial killers.

They kill somebody every three or four pages.

They rip their heart out, they slice their throat.

In my books, maybe there's one death.

It's usually a half a page.

And the rest of it is all about the ramifications of that, but what we learn from.

So yes, I do like to think I write about life and hope and inspiration, but sometimes there's a death in the book that gets your attention, you know.

And you remember that old poster, you know, like, "Sex!"

And then under you see, "Now that we have your attention."

Well, it's a little bit like that.

You know, if you really wanna talk about what's important in life, first remind people that it doesn't go on forever, and then you'll get their attention.

- You have chosen to spend a lot of your time today giving back to people.

You have been successful, but you see it as your responsibility.

You created a philanthropy in Detroit called, SAY Detroit Super All Year.

- All Year.

- You're helping people with things like health and education.

You're thinking about how you can give back to the community.

You have an orphanage in Haiti, right, Have Faith Haiti, that you and your wife have spent a lot of time thinking about.

And how do we give back?

We've been successful.

How do we make sure that we create opportunity for others?

Not everybody does that.

- Well, I was admonished by Morrie, who said to me, "What do you do for your community?"

And I said, "Well, what do you mean?"

He said, "Charities, helping people."

I said, "I, I guess I write checks."

And he said, "Well, anybody can write a check."

- It's passive, right?

- "You've been given a voice.

And you need to use your voice to do more than aggrandise yourself."

And that year, 1995, I started my first charity, which is called The Dream Fund in Detroit.

It was a scholarship fund to help underprivileged kids study the arts.

And since then, I have tried to use my voice for those things, and I have found, I have found, Evan, that, you know, there was a, there was a very instructive moment with Morrie.

I noticed when people would come visit him, they would always try to cheer him up.

The door would close, they'd go in, they'd say, "I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna cheer him up 'cause he's dying."

And they would come out in tears.

But they would be crying about their love life, their divorce, their job, their whatever.

And they'd say, "I don't know what happened.

I went and tried to cheer him up.

But after a couple minutes, he started asking me questions.

I started opening up.

Then he started asking, and I really started opening up, anyway.

And you know, I tried to cheer him up, but he ended up cheering me up."

So I went into him and I said, "I don't get it.

You're dying.

You've hit the mother load of sympathy.

You've got ALS.

Why don't you just let people comfort you?"

And he said," Mitch, why would I ever take from people like that?

Taking makes me feel like I'm dying.

Giving makes me feel like I'm living."

It is the most profound single sentence I've ever heard, and it- - "Giving makes me feel like I'm living."

- Yeah.

Even rhymes, so you can remember it easily.

- Giving.

(laughs) (audience laughing) - But I have so found that to be true.

Because I took for a big part of my life.

And the second half of it has been way more about giving, and it has been remarkably better.

- Yeah.

- And more rewarding.

And so yeah, I do spend most of my time on the things that you said.

I go to Haiti every month.

I have- - Every, You go, stop.

You go to Haiti every month.

- Yeah, for the last 16 years.

- Literally.

Yeah.

- We operate an orphanage there.

We've had over a hundred kids come through it already.

And these are kids come from the worst kind of poverty, Evan.

Kids who live in mud holes, kids who have been left under trees to die.

And someone picks 'em up, and takes 'em to the police, and the police say, "What'd you pick 'em up for?

Now we have to do paperwork."

You know, kids who don't have birth certificates, don't have vaccine records.

We have to invent names and birthdays.

But we give them love, and we give them food, and we give them a bed, and we give them a great education.

Four hours of English and four hours of French every single day.

And we have had 22, now have graduated from our school.

- Yeah.

- Every single one has gotten a college scholarship, and two of 'em are in medical school.

And it is about second chances, you know?

So I have seen what happens when you give a child a second chance.

- Right.

- And it, it is what I am most interested in in my life.

- It all ties together.

Just a couple of minutes left.

You have been, as I said, at the business of writing columns for the newspaper for 40 years.

- Yeah.

- You've written all these books.

You continue to be a radio personality in your community.

Like, you're going at this like, full speed.

And yet at some point you're gonna decide you wanna stop.

When?

How soon?

Have you thought about it?

Have you thought about whether there's another pivot to make in your life?

Or are you just gonna continue down this path?

- Life made a pivot for me.

Three and a half years ago, we were brought a little girl who weighed six pounds at six months.

She'd had nothing to eat but sugar water in her life.

And we didn't think she would make it.

She couldn't open her eyes, she couldn't move, and she fit in the palm of my hand.

And we raced her home, put her on a nutrition program.

And that little girl is now our daughter.

And so she's three and a half.

So I don't have any options of stopping.

I have, first of all, I gotta raise her.

And I've already done the math on how old I have to be to get her outta high school, how old I have to be (audience and Evan laugh) to get her outta college.

If she gets married young, I wanna be there.

So I have no intention of stopping.

I love what I do.

I love creating, and I love the platform that it gives me to call attention to needy people in my city and needy children around the world.

Why would I wanna stop that?

To play golf?

You know, I hope to keep doing this, and, you know, hopefully if I kick off, it's right when I finish the last sentence of a book, as I'd hate to die with three paragraphs to go.

You know, that would be bad.

(audience laughing) - It would almost be worth dying, rather than going through the editing process.

(Mitch laughing) right, exactly.

Hand in the book - That's one good way to avoid the editing process.

- And then die.

It is.

Are are you working on another book now?

- I'm always working on another book.

You know, I just, I don't wanna talk about it, but I'm always working.

Every two years, we've decided I'll just put one out every two years.

It gives me enough time to focus on the charities and focus on the other things.

And get them out to the vagaries and demands of the book business.

- You know, this would be a good movie.

- It's already becoming, I mean, this was the first book that I've ever had that was purchased for a movie before I finished it.

- Is that right?

- Yeah, Netflix, well, there were a bunch of people, but Netflix won this bidding thing, and I said, "Don't you wanna see the end of it?

It's, (laughs)."

"Well, no, it's good.

We can take it."

So Paul Weitz, who's a wonderful director and writer, has already written the screenplay for it.

He did "About a Boy," and many other films.

And he really gets it.

And yeah, so it's gonna be a fun effort for him.

- Well, it's an irresistible concept.

- Thank you.

- How great to get to sit with you for a little while.

- Oh, it's been my pleasure.

- Really enjoyed it.

Please give Mitch Albom a big hand.

- Thank you.

(audience applauding) - Congratulations on all your success.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

(audience cheering) - [Evan] We'd love to have you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at austinpbs.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, Q&As with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes.

- I've written the screenplays for some of my movies, so I've been involved.

But there's a famous thing about Hemingway.

He said that, you know, "If you're gonna have your books turned into movies, you should run to the Nevada-California border.

Take your manuscript, throw it over to California and run the other way, because that's as close as you're gonna get to having any influence on it."

- [Announcer] Funding for ""Overheard with Evan Smith," comes from Hill Co Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, Christine and Philip Dial, Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication, EllerGroup.com, Diane Land and Steve Adler, and Karey and Chris Oddo.

(light music)