Mitch Albom

Was there a particular seed for you?

What were you wrestling with when you kind of came up with this idea?

Yeah.

I mean, one of those second acts we know very well.

You were a sports writer for a very long time or just for the first half of your career.

And then you had this fateful interaction with an old college professor, Maury, who was dying of ALS.

Was that kind of a second chance as well?

Yeah.

I mean, it's so amazing because really, I mean, when you look at the totality of almost every book that you've written after Tuesdays with Maury, they all tie back in a very direct way to a lot of the lessons that are written in that book.

You know, it also—you wrote that book at a time when baby boomers in particular were starting to face their parents' mortality.

You kind of gave—

You gave people a script on how to have those kinds of conversations with their parents or their loved ones who were nearing death.

And I was curious, when did you begin to realize how profound of an impact the book was having?

You know, I want to ask you about that time period when you were really being celebrated for Tuesdays with Maury.

You won this very prestigious honor, the Red Smith Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2010.

And

When that happened, there was some criticism that rose up during that time.

Some called your work feel-good fairy tales fluff, and others said it was verging on being emotionally manipulative.

And I wondered, do you ever struggle when you write about real grief and real death and this line between moving—

people and manipulating them?