Mitch Albom Is A 'Walking Example Of A Second Chance'
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest today is Mitch Albom. It was 30 years ago that he wrote Tuesdays with Maury, a tender, true story about the lessons he learned from his old college professor, Maury Schwartz, who died of ALS. The book became one of the best-selling memoirs of all time, with its simple but profound reflections on living. and that experience set Albom on a path he's walked ever since, writing stories about love and loss and the search for meaning in the face of mortality.
What inspired Mitch Albom to write his new novel Twice?
His latest novel, Twice, starts with a question most of us have probably daydreamed about. What if you had the power to redo any moment of your life? In the book, a man named Alfie is born with the ability to go back and relive any moment he chooses. But with every second chance comes a cost. He can't change matters of the heart, and he can't stop someone from dying when it's their time. Since Tuesdays with Maury, Albom has written eight bestsellers, including The Five People You Meet in Heaven and The Stranger in the Lifeboat, many of which have been adapted for stage and screen. He's also been a sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press for over 40 years. But those visits with Maury didn't just shape the writer Albom became.
They also changed how he moved through the world. Maury once told him that giving makes you feel more alive than taking. a lesson Albom took to heart. He runs nine charities in Detroit that supports veterans, students, and people in need of housing and medical care. And for the past 15 years, he's also operated an orphanage in Haiti. Mitch Albom, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you for having me.
Okay, so Mitch, in this book, Alfie has this incredible ability. He can go back and relive any moment of his life. And he uses it in the way that we all would expect to use it if we had this power, especially when he was a kid. He used it to stop bullies, to impress girls. But as he gets older, this power becomes more complicated. What drew you to write about the darker side of this kind of fantasy?
Yeah.
Probably just getting older. I think when you're younger, if you want to try something different, you do. You want to switch your career, you do it. You want to switch who you're dating, you do it. You want to move to another country, you do it. But I noticed as people get older... concrete settles a little bit more and it's harder to just switch out. And so those would-be switches start to turn into regrets. And then they start to turn into that question in your head, if only I had taken that job, if only I had moved to that country, if only I had picked that different person to marry. And so I realized that this is probably a pretty universal theme.
What are the consequences of reliving moments in life according to Twice?
And I wanted to explore what would happen if you actually had the ability to do that and not to time travel 15 different times and do it over again. That seemed kind of pointless. But you get one more crack at it. Would that second crack... really be better, or would it just bring with it a whole new set of circumstances? And as Alfie gets older, that's what he starts to discover. And then he also learns of one particular caveat with the power that he didn't know about, and that is that it doesn't work with love. And if you turn your back on a true love to try to go find somebody else, that person can never love you again. They'll be in the world, you can know them, but they'll never feel the same way about you.
And so this power comes with that consequence as well. And of course, as you can imagine, since I'm a writer, he has to make a very fateful decision at one point in the book, and I'll sort of leave it there.
So the rules are clear. You can't make someone love you twice. There's also a second rule here. You also can't change when a person will die. So basically, love and mortality are the two unchangeable forces. What made you choose those particular limits?
Well, mortality... That was easy because you can't change mortality. And in fact, he discovers this at the beginning of the book when he first discovers his power because he's eight years old.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:31
2
What inspired Mitch Albom to write his new novel Twice?
0:31–2:53
3
What are the consequences of reliving moments in life according to Twice?
2:53–5:08
4
How did Mitch Albom's relationship with Morrie Schwartz influence his writing?
5:08–9:29
5
What lessons about love and mortality does Mitch Albom explore in Twice?
9:29–12:30
6
How does Mitch Albom's work in Haiti reflect his values?
12:30–15:02
7
What unique challenges does the character Alfie face with his power?
15:02–16:28
8
What emotional experiences shaped Mitch Albom's perspective on life and loss?
16:28–43:33
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Fresh Air
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