Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Does Dinner with Joe DiMaggio Make You Street Smart? with Dr. Rock Positano

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

This week, Anthony talks with acclaimed author Dr. Rock Positano about his new book, co-authored with his brother John Positano, Street Smart: The Primer for Success in the New World. From the streets of Brooklyn to the halls of Yale, Rock stresses why having street smarts and making the most of any lucky break life gives us are the keys to success.  As the man who knew legendary baseball player Joe DiMaggio best in the last decade of his life, he then shares candid stories about the Yankee Clipper, from his marriage and undying love for Marilyn Monroe, to his carefully managed image and private life.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures and entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're

enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punch. so let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. As much as I encourage people to be academically smart and certainly well read with this podcast, being street smart is just as important, arguably even more so. My guest today, Dr. Rock Positano's book, teaches us exactly how we can all become street smart people. With lessons straight from the streets of Brooklyn to memoirs from the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci and Ariana Huffington, we all need to listen up. So joining us now, now on Open Book is Dr. Rock Positano. He's a medical pioneer, a medical genius, actually, in all things. He's an associate professor at Yale University, and he's an author. He's written

two terrific books. The one we're going to talk about mostly is Street Smart, the primer for success in the new world. He also wrote a fantastic read, Dinner with DiMaggio, which I've given out that book. I've given out both your books, Doc. So dinner with DiMaggio, every Italian I know gets a copy of that book. And your street smart book, I try to give out to all the graduates and all of our interns here and so forth. Now, you co-authored the book with your brother. And you wrote the last book with them, right? Am I wrong?

Yeah. You know, Anthony, John and I were always a very good one-to punch. We were two nice street kids that grew up in a really cool part of Brooklyn and had the advantage of having that sense of community where we all learned how to work with each other, how to sort of navigate situations, navigate the streets. And John and I have always worked together on projects. and we have a few good things in the works, but the DiMaggio Project and the Street Smart project was really a lot of fun to do. So why author a book on Street Smarts?

I know the answer, but I want you to tell the crowd. Well, you know, Anthony, this is a situation. I mean, you know, it's a different world today, okay? One of the things we realize is that the new definition of success is survival. Because look what we went through with the last few years with the COVID epidemic. And I think what's happened is that a lot of the kids that are out there today, who were either under 20 years old or 25 years old. Many of them didn't have the type of exposure that you and I or my brother John had growing up,

which was to be faced with very difficult circumstances that were very unusual, to be able to navigate a situation, make a plan, and be able to hopefully figure it out. And I think the book was really, it's really written more for today's youth, the kids that are out there today. And of course, to me, anyone who's a youth is someone who's under 35 years old. So I think that's what makes this kind of special. And of course, you know, it's not a self-help book, though, that I want to make clear.

You know what I'm saying? It's not a self-help book. I mean, there are hundreds of those books written by many people that you and I both know, okay? This is more of a, like, a Bible or a new type of a situation where there's like a playbook. And this is a playbook that hopefully could be adapted to many people's situations out there. All those life experiences in the book, Doc. I mean, that's what makes the book so great. I mean, you're learning by observation, right?

Like how many of us have to learn by observation? You and I are both readers. You know, when I'm reading about Joe DiMaggio, I'm living vicariously through your stories, but I'm also learning about him, his morality, how he thought about people, how he treated his friends, the respect he had for himself and for others, right? And that's what you're sort of doing with Street. But you put a selection of vignettes of your buddies in the book, men and women, that articulate how they got to where they are.

and there's wisdom in there that you can't get from a academic. You can't get from a classroom. Oh, yeah, and this is, you know, Anthony, this is the classic university without wall scenario. I mean, again, growing up as we did, being outside, interacting with people, I mean, is a very unique education. But I think the biggest thing that we found with all of the participants, including yourself, of course, and we were very fortunate to have you written a very, very interesting,

strong subject, was that intuition, instinct, these are. are things that tend to be the central theme between all of our participants, okay? And you may want to know, well, how did you pick all of these different types of people? Well, I said, basically, John and I sat down one day, Anthony, and we said, look, let's think of all the people we could put together that would never want to sit down and have dinner with each other at the same table because of the differences of opinion. You know, you have conservatives, you have liberals, you have people who are in the middle, etc. But the one common denominator, the one common theme, really centers around instinct. And this is something that you as a highly successful business person would appreciate, is that sometimes you have to learn to use your instinct. These are things that are not learned or taught at Harvard, Yale, Brown, NYU, etc. But these are things that you pick up from your interactions with people who are outside of the classroom. And that was the beautiful thing about Street Smart is that we wanted to be able to sort of take the concept and bring it out to people because we're really concerned. I mean, about our youth being competitive. I mean,

you look at all these other countries. You look at China. You look at the, you know, overseas. You look at the, you know, the Russian population. And a lot of these kids, they're tough kids, you know, and these are people that have overcome a lot of issues and a lot of horrible circumstances. And what I'm concerned about is are our kids up to the task? And we both know it's not about how you compute a formula. It's about how do you interact, you know, how do you live? How do you learn how to negotiate with people. And many of these, the things that we spoke about really our base, as you had mentioned, Anthony, on the fact that I had a very privileged relationship with Joe DiMaggio. And what people don't realize about DiMaggio, he was the ultimate street

smart guy. He wasn't just a phenomenal ballplayer, a phenomenal physical specimen in terms of his athleticism, et cetera. This man was brilliant, brilliant. I mean, he could run any company. I'll never forget one time we went down to Wall Street, and Dick Grasso at the time, I believe, was the head. And Joe was teaching the people in the Wall Street boardroom, things about investing. I'll never forget that. And one of the guys turns to me, and he says, how does he know so much about this thing? I said, well, look, this man is a brilliant man.

He knows business. He knew entertainment. You know, he knew, obviously, sports. He knew relationships. And being around Joe really helped to stimulate the fact that I saw Joe, had a street smart that he grew up when he was growing up in San Francisco, that we were able to develop as we grew up in my case or my brother Johnny's case in Brooklyn. So I think in many respects, DiMaggio was an excellent, excellent, you know, role model in so many ways, not just as an American

hero or Marilyn Monroe's husband or 56 game hitting streak or, you know, nine World Series championships, but as a human being, you know, one of the things was that the street smarts that John and I grew up with, was it really enabled us to get that type of a relationship with Joe because Joe didn't stand for too much BS. I mean, he was a very tough guy, but, man, you know, Anthony, he could spot a problem from a mile away. And of course, you think about today's baseball players, okay? Joe always felt that more games are won and lost in between the ears, mental mistakes, mental errors. You know, we saw that only recently with some of our local baseball teams where mental errors come into play. And of course, that also is where our focus comes from being street smart. So I,

I think having that type of experience, Anthony, makes a big difference. But you've applied it to your medical practice, though, as well, right? I mean, you said so to me once, you treat the patient, not the test, you look at the clinical situation and you make an evaluation, less is more. You try not to do anything too invasive to somebody. This is really all from your upbringing and your streets more. It's more than from a textbook, right? Yeah, well, look, you know, look, Anthony, a lot of people could learn a lot of different techniques. I mean, there's only, there's a lot of ways you could read an x-ray or an MRI or a CAT scan or whatever.

But we found one of the things that we've always tried to apply here in our practice at the hospital was making you personalize, which means you're not, in my case, you know, we have a foot and ankle practice here at special surgery. I mean, I always tell people this feeling I have is that, you know, you're not just a foot and an ankle to me. There's a person attached to that body. And I think really part of our upbringing, you know, being kids growing up the way we did, taught us to interact and learn how to work. work with different types of people from different backgrounds, different beliefs, different thoughts. And look, you know, Anthony, nobody's perfect. I mean, you and I both have experience no matter sometimes how much we try to take the high road. People will always try to lowball us or try to

take us down or, et cetera. But one of the things we do learn is our ability to interact effectively with people from all different types of backgrounds. And I've done that very well, you know, in our practice here at the hospital. And I mean, I could honestly say I have very, very few people. that I dislike that wound up not being in our practice after a while, but a big part of that has to do with, as you know, in your business, interpersonal relationships, which is key. There's to always say that, you know, anything when you're dealing with success is 80% interpersonal, 20% academic. It's the same thing. Your ability to deal with people, as you have very successfully done, has a lot to do with your ability to know how to interact with people from different backgrounds. And it doesn't mean

you're necessarily going to like these people or agree with them, but it doesn't mean you can't in this case, interact with them in an efficacious way or in a way where you're able to do your job. Well, I love the book for so many different reasons, but I want to talk about luck for a second because I often think about it, but I thought you quantitatively and qualitatively assess the role of luck in life. Tell us a little bit of that. Everybody has to have a little bit of a lucky break. You got a lucky break, didn't you rock? I know I've gotten several lucky breaks. Tell us a little bit about luck and its role in life. Well, you know, Anthony, you know, I guess our Jewish friends call it Mazel.

Italians call it Fortuna, all right? But I think the important thing about luck is that we have control over our ability to create a lucky situation, which means I don't believe in this thing where you walk out one day and, you know, you say a prayer the day before that something good is going to happen to and suddenly it happens. I believe that everything is set up from an internal perspective. We make our own luck. we create our own opportunities. It doesn't always work out that way. We don't always do it for that reason. But the way we, again, the way we interact with people, the way we interact with situations, in many respects, creates our own luck, et cetera. So I don't believe in pure, pure luck, okay? I don't. I do believe there's a small percentage of it, obviously, but I think people who are successful,

like the people that we were very, very fortunate to have participate in our book, These were people that basically said they used their instincts to create their own luck, which of course led to other types of things. So, again, that's what we mean. John and I mean more about when we're talking about qualitative and quantitative. But it's a big part of how we sort of deal with people and how we sort of set a situation up. Doc, can you smell it on somebody?

And let me do what I mean by that. Can you smell the Savile affair, the success? Let's meet a young kid, even if they're a patient of yours or you're teaching at Yale or interacting with somebody at dinner. Can you smell it? Can you smell it on somebody? And you know what I mean by the smell? Like they got it. And so what is it? What are you picking up from your intuition? You know, Anthony, that's the street smart. That's the sixth sense that we learn how to develop when we're out there. They do not teach that in the classroom. I'm sorry. I don't care what school you go to, where you've been trained, who you've trained with. That comes from experience. That means that comes from stepping on landmines,

from getting your legs blown off in situations. That comes from being in a foxhole with somebody where things are going wrong and you're able to sort of hang in there and work a problem through or to survive, et cetera. But the answer is yes. I mean, it's an instinctual thing. I could tell immediately what a person's vibe is.

I walk into a room. I'll shake their hand. I pretty much, and I don't say this in a bad way, I could size somebody up right away. And very, very rarely am I wrong, okay? And I use the term, do I smell it on them? I definitely smell it on them. I think that's a big part of what makes a street smart education, meaning being out there, interacting with nice people, but also bad people, you know, learning

from experiences, learning what doesn't feel right. You know, I remember like yesterday when I was 10 years old, not feeling a good situation about someone I was interacting with. And like 40 years later, I had the same feeling about someone and I turned out being right. But the instinct, like you said, that smell factor is definitely there. There's no question about it. This is all stuff that I, you know, I have so much respect and I admire you so much. And you're my doctor. You're my son Nick's doctor. You're all my friends' doctors.

And even though you're like at hospital special surgery for medicine around podiatry and a surgeon, I rely on you for everything. And I call you when I got like a hiccup. I like, all right, let me call Rock, you know. But you got all these people that do that with you. So let's talk about some of the people that are in your book. And thank you for including me, by the way. You gave me an opportunity to tell a little bit of my upbringing. and my story. But you've got Dr. Tony Fauci in the book. Representative Peter King, another friend of

mine, Ariana Huffington. Tell us about some of the people. Why did you pick them? What did you think they had to add to the street smart narrative? Well, again, I think a lot of it, Anthony has to do with the fact that these are people who have been unusually talented and usually capable and usually successful. Maybe not by our standards sometimes. Obviously, we may not agree with some of the things they may say or do, et cetera. But I mean, they all had that same mojo, you know, that, that ability to be able to navigate hostile waters, okay, and to seize an opportunity and create an opportunity. And you know, and you look at someone like Dr. Fauci, for instance, I mean, scientifically, you know, the man is still brilliant. I mean, he came from a very, you know, good

upbringing, you know, his parents were pharmacy reps and owners in the old neighborhood, so to speak. Ariana came from a certain type of a background that was a foreign background with a European flair. Peter King, as you know, is our, and I mean this in a nice way, he's our, he's our backyard guy, the guy that we used to hang out with. And I think the reason why we chose some of these people was because of the fact that they were successful, but not necessarily in your typical conventional ways. So again, defining success, as we said earlier, is now survival, because this is what we need to be able to prepare for, which is why it's so important that as parents, you know, Anthony, we're all protective. I'm sure you're very protective of your kid. I mean, we never want, you know,

I hate to say this, we never want our kids to go through what we went through, okay? But what I'm really asking you, you know, you're a successful parent and a successful person in many respects. I mean, are we really helping these kids by protecting them from all of the landmines and the, you know, the potholes that we had to endure during our lifetime, okay? And I think that's really what the concern is here is that we need to alert our parents. I mean, the people who come before us or are the people that we were basically raised with, okay? How are we able to enable them to help these kids, to be able to learn how to develop some of these instincts, okay? Because they are instinctual. Okay. There's no question about that. Doc, I've always been dying to ask you this,

and now I'm going to get the opportunity to share with all my listeners. You could have been anything. You're talking about DiMaggio, but that's you. You could have been an executive at of these companies. You could have been running a CNN or a Wall Street company. Tell us about you and your love for medicine and would drew you into the practice of medicine. Well, look, I think when I was growing up, Anthony, I was very, very active with people. I, you know, I used to run for political office. You know, I was the only premed at NYU that one higher office. And the reason why is because I think it had to do with the ability to work with people and to serve and to make a difference. And I think there's nothing more rewarding or personally satisfying them to be able to help someone

who has a physical problem of some type. That is the most empowering reward you could ever get. You cannot put a price tag on that. And I think what always endeared me and brought me in was that connection of being able to listen to someone who may be in trouble and helped them to figure out what needs to be done. Okay. And I think that was the allure. I mean, I was a little. the business world as well. When I came out of Yale, I started a company at Sony under Jeff Sagansky at the time, who was the executive vice president for Sony Corporation, called Sony Health and Entertainment, okay, where we were basically talking about all the things that you're seeing now, about, you know, these virtual, like, bicycle rides when you're on your Peloton bike, you're going

through the glaciers. This is all stuff that we were working on back in the early 1990s, okay? But you know what? There was a certain lack of satisfaction because at the end of the day, this was becoming more about a corporate thing, making a ton of money for a huge company and less about interacting with people and really making a difference in their life. So I think that's really the big difference here, is that when you are a healer, when you are one-on-one with someone, when you're able to help them, which most cases were able to do it, sometimes we don't do it or we don't do it maybe as well as people would think we would like to do it. There's something very powerful about that. In my case, you know, I had a lot of inspiration, too. I was always,

always enamored with Leonardo da Vinci, which is really the basis of our practice here at Hospital for Special Surgery. It's based upon using the foot and the ankle as the foundation for everything, like the lower extremity, the knee, the hip, the back, the neck, the shoulder. And Da Vinci was able to think out of the box many, many, many years ago. And he was able to show how being able to help a person in one area such as a foot and an ankle, which is so important, is able to help the person be active and mobile and et cetera. out. Because, you know, Anthony, quality of life is based upon the ability to do things that are important. And as doctors, you know, we've all concurred that the two most important things for quality of life

is number one and number two, the ability to see and the ability to walk. So I think in that respect, too, that's what also drew me to to a fun ankle practice because I realized how important being able to walk from point A to point B was. So, again, that was something that also has to do with our upbringing, because when we were out in the street, we realized that the ability to, to get from point A to point B was so invaluable. There's something else there, though, right? Let's go to Da Vinci for a second. And medicine is proving this.

There's a mind-body connection, right? The mind is not separated from the body. The mind impacts the health of the body, and the body impacts the health of the mind. There's a holistic thing going on. But there's something magical about the foot, though. Am I wrong? I mean, it is tied into the other organs.

It's tied into the brain. Tell us a little bit about that. This is one of the things that you've said to me, and again, fully disclosed on one of your patients, you don't like operating on people's feet because of that connection. Do I have that wrong? No, you're totally correct. And what people, again, don't realize is that, you know, with all the types of orthopedic surgeries that could be performed in any type of a hospital, we're talking about knee replacement, spinal fusions. The most difficult in terms of outcomes are foot and ankle operations.

And the reason why is not because the technique of our colleagues isn't top, top notch. it's because of the nature of what the foot and the ankle has to endure. It is by far, as we said, the foundation of the body. So, you know, it's one of those situations where once you change that architecture, Anthony, as Da Vinci taught us, you're changing everything, which means, you know, your foot may look better. You may be able to, you know, to place your foot inside a Manolo Blonic high heel, okay? But what's really happening is that, is that foot really working to serve the rest of the body? So what I found, and that's where the Joe DiMaggio connection came in,

it was that I can remember having dinner with Joe on so many occasions. And him complaining to me that, you know, he lost five years of his career because he had a heel spur operation that he sure never had. And he, in many respects, you know, inspired me, along with Da Vinci, to go into this area of specialization. Because, you know, he said, from an athletic point of view, if your feet don't work, you're really in trouble. And I think the importance here is that the foot is the first part of the body,

that makes a contact with the ground. It's also, I think, a spiritual thing. I think it's one of the things you mentioned. Da Vinci always felt that the foot was attached to everything, okay? And also, if you look at, you know, not that I'm trying to get biblical on this, but if you look at, like, the history of religion, I mean, the foot is very symbolic, you know, people would wash your feet to show signs of affection and love and respect and, you know, gratitude and loyalty. And I think there's that also connection, too, where, you know, the foot has a, in many respects, a mystical quality about it. And, you know, people have said, well, gee, you know, do you believe in reflexology? And, you know, as you know, reflexology supposedly has to do with different parts of your arch, Anthony, being connected to different

body parts. Well, you know, you don't know. And many years ago, there was a Nobel laureate here at Rockefeller University named Professor Paul Greengaard. And Paul and I spoke about this. And Paul felt that there was a connection neurologically with the foot and how it how it sort of connects with all parts of the body. And I had pointed out to him that, you know, the foot is so well connected to other body things that, yeah, there is a spiritual as well as a physiological component to it. So, you know, that was one of the funier situations I was involved with when I had this Nobel laureate telling me that, you know what, I think there's something to a divinci did say about the foot and the ankle. So in many respects, that's one of the reasons why so many people now hold this part of the body in such high esteem. Well, you know, I love to talk to you. I could talk to you forever. I want to go to dinner with DiMaggio for a second. Sure. There's so many great stories in that book. You know, somebody says to me,

well, why would you read Dinner with DiMaggio? I would say, well, it's a book about friendship. Ultimately, that's what the book is about. It's a book about how to be a friend, what is a true friend, and how do people interact with each other at the highest level. I don't want to ruin the book for people because I want people to go out there and buy it. But let's talk about Muhammad Ali for a second. Right. And Marilyn Monroe. if you don't mind. Two people that are in that book and their interactions with the Yankee clipper. Well, look, I mean, people didn't realize that Joe was a tremendous boxing fan. And he had a tremendous amount of respect for Muhammad Ali. And I had asked him at one point,

you know, I had had a family member that was killed in Vietnam. Okay. And Joe and I were talking about boxing. And he brings up Muhammad Ali. And I say, you know, Joe, I really don't want to talk about Muhammad Ali. You know, this is a guy that didn't go to war. And of course, at that time, I didn't know half of the reasons why he was an objective for the right reasons, because if there's a religion, his beliefs, et cetera. But, you know, DiMaggio says to me, Doc, you've got it all wrong. If you're going to be a professional person, you cannot judge a person and their ability and their craft based upon your personal beliefs. Okay. And he says, I know you may have issues with Muhammad Ali because of your cousin. However, your framework of how you're judging him as a professional is all wrong.

And I thought about that. I said, you know, he's right. So I apologize. He said, you know, Joe, you're right about that. And then he went into how Muhammad Ali did so many wonderful things for kids, for inner city kids. And he gave me a whole different perspective. But he basically, in a nice way, Anthony, he slapped me in the side of the head. Okay, basically it's like sitting at the dinner table with your uncle, your father.

And suddenly you get whacked. You know what I mean? And he was right. I've been there, Rock. I've been there. You know what I mean. Yeah. Okay.

I'm sure. I'm sure you and I have gotten. been whacked by friends and relatives, not just relatives. You know what that feels like, okay? But I think what I was saying, I developed a whole much more profound respect for Ali. After Joe put it in a perspective of that, you need to separate whatever personal feelings you may have, whether those personal feelings are justified or not, from looking at a person's professional behavior.

So there's no question about that. That was one of the lessons of dinner with DiMaggio, Joe basically teaching me that you need to be careful what criteria you use when you're judging a person in their profession and what impact they may have on other people, et cetera. In terms of Marilyn Monroe, look, I mean, Joe was amazed with her. I mean, Joe, one of the things Joe would always say was that people didn't realize how brilliant she was. You know, Anthony, she could read a script and memorize the whole script like in like two hours. I mean, it was kind of funny because, you know, everyone has this impression that she was, you know, maybe not the most highly intelligent person, which clearly was not the case, you know. And Joe had a

tremendous amount of respect for her because of her craft. She was that talented. She had an amazing ability to assimilate information, to memorize it, et cetera. And it was kind of funny because Joe would tell me that many times Marilyn would bring a script home and Joe would read the script first. Okay. And many times Joe would tell her out that, well, I don't think this is a good script for you, you know. But the funniest, though, was one morning, Anthony, where Joe and I are having coffee at this restaurant, which is no longer there on Madison Avenue called Gardinia, which was on Madison between 67 to 68th, and he starts talking to me about movies and about, you know, actors and actresses. So he turns to me and like, it was like something like really surreal.

He says to me, well, you know, Doc, he goes, I was married to two actresses. So I'm saying, no, you're kidding me. Really, Joe? He goes, yeah, I was married to this gal named Dorothy Arnold. She was a show girl. And then I was married to this nice gal named Marilyn Monroe. And I'm like sitting there saying like, you got to be kidding me. But in a funny way, because, you know, he didn't assume anything, but he had an immense respect for people who were in the arts field. I'll never forget this. You know, one of the times, you know, we went out with some of the, some artistic people. One of them was Woody Allen.

Woody Allen had a crazy thing for Joe in terms of respecting him as a ballplayer and his, it was his idol. And Woody and Joe were sitting at the table talking. And Joe is telling Woody, who was the director of this film, who was the, you know, the assistant. And then Joe gets up to go to the men's room. And then Woody says to me, goes, you know, rock. I don't believe how much Joe knows about movies. And then I had to remind him to us. So, look, Woody, Joe was married to two actresses.

But his knowledge, though, of the arts and movies was really amazing and phenomenal. So going not to digress, but his love for Marilyn Monroe was unbelievable. And you could see that the man always had a lot of pain. Anytime she would come up, he would have that, we used to call it, you know, the 2,000-yard stare where you could just see he would just disconnect. And it was horrible. It was horrible. You could clearly see, you know, he was totally, totally in love and devoted to her. And, you know, which was a horrible thing for him.

You tell some beautiful stories in the book. It's really one of the great books about friendship and relationships. Now I'm at the point in this podcast, Dr. Rock, where I read out five words, okay? Something's going to come to mind. I'm going to say the word and you respond. You ready? Shoot. Mindset.

Way of living. It's important, right? They have the right mindset, right? Very. Always. And dealing with success and fitness. failure, you're going to have the right mindset. Am I right, sir? Always. Always.

Luck. You create your own luck. But we all have to have it, right? We all have to catch that break somewhere, right? Look, we all need the little break every once in a while, Anthony. No question about that. Success. Survival. Yeah, amen. The new definition of success is survival. That is so good, Doc. That is so good. Experience. Hard work. Take nothing for granted. Don't take the easy way out.

Right. Do the work, right? You got to do the work. Right. No, there's no shortcut. We both know that, right? There's no anointing from the top of the mountain that suddenly Anthony, you wake up one day and you say, wow, I'm so much more intelligent than I was yesterday. It doesn't work that way. If I say the word DiMaggio, you say what? Class. Class. Perfection. He really was something else, though, right? Impactably dressed. You know, Anthony, I've seen so many people and there was only one person that could literally stop a room debt. It was Joe. We once were in Beverly Hills, we went into one of those fancy, Monday night places. I forgot what it was. And I'll never forget, we walked into the restaurant, and inside that restaurant was Gregory Peck, Jack Lemon, you know, Joan Collins, I mean, the who's who of Hollywood. And we walk into that restaurant and it went dead silent. You could not hear a pin drop because he had that type of an effect on people. I'll never forget the owner saying to me,

you know, Doc, we have a lot of, you know, famous people that come into this restaurant. But I've never seeing a room go completely silent and frozen than tonight when you brought Joe DiMaggio in here. That's the type of an effect this man had on people. I remember him. I mean, I didn't. Unfortunately, I wish I knew you, Dr. Rock, in the 90s, you know, when Joe was around. I mean, I saw him out one night at a fundraiser. And he was so kind to the people that came up to him at that fundraiser.

You know, I think my self-confidence grew as I got older, Doc. You know, I was in awe of Mr. DiMaggio, so I didn't go over there to say hello to him. You know what I mean? I wish I did, but he was so kind to the people. I just remember watching him handle the people with a level of kindness, you know? Well, you know, he had that ability, though, again, to be able to transcend all of these things. He could be with a president of the United States one minute. He could be with a 10-year-old kid the next minute.

You know, he could be with, you know, a Wall Street Titan the next minute. And to watch him navigate from one situation to another was an unbelievable master class. and that was one of the things that we were exposed to. And I would ask him. And he said the same thing. He goes, look, Doc, when I was growing up in San Francisco, we grew very poor. I had to learn how to navigate from place to place. From place to situation.

So again, I mean, but what made him so special was that he could just transcend and just go from one situation to another without any problems, effortlessly, flawlessly. And that was the amazing thing about it. And by the way, one of the things about hanging out with Joe, Anthony, was that I knew who he would like and equally important, I knew who he would not like. That was important. You know, I could tell right away, uh-oh, this is trouble, this is trouble, you know. Right. Yet I could tell, like you said, you know, you used that term earlier, you could smell it on someone. Well, after hanging out with Joe for all those years and going to literally, you know, thousands of breakfasts, lunches and dishes,

I got assent right away of who he would like. Right. Which by the way, Anthony, didn't mean this is a person who I wouldn't necessarily like or dislike, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, no, he was a particular. You wrote about it. Doc, what's next? What are you going to write about next? Well, you know, Anthony, I, you know, we do a lot of work here. You know, as you know, my son joined the practice. He finished up his program at Yale. His name is Rock also, which is maybe a curse for him, poor thing, because, you know, he's a really super smart, hardworking kid. And we're working on some really, really great research projects that involve foot and ankle, that involve non-surgical interventions. Because we really feel we're about 25 years ahead of our time. Not him, obviously, because he's a lot younger than

I am, but we started this whole movement of non-surgical many, many years ago before most groups did. And actually, our practice at HSS was the first non-surgical foot and ankle practice, probably in the world. And again, we could thank Mr. DiMaggio for that, which is why part of our center is called the Joe DiMaggio Center, because, again, what ended Joe's career was a foot surgery that should have never happened in the first place. So in many respect, we used that experience as our ability to connect with the public. And don't get me wrong, Anthony, when someone needs an operation on a foot or an ankle after all non-surgical things are not successful, look, we tell people, listen, go see our colleague down the hall. You need surgery, period.

But I think, though, you know, DiMaggio taught us that the importance of ambulation in terms of your daily lifestyle, your quality of living, your quality of life. And in his case, athletic performance, it's the most important part of the, one of the most important parts of the body. We agree, Doc. I'm looking forward to your writings. I'm looking forward to coming to see you. I'm very grateful to you. You've written two amazing books. The first one was dinner with DiMaggio. And the one out right now is Street Smart, the primer for success in the new world. Doc, thank you so much for joining us today on Open Book. Anthony, you're a great man. And listen, again, you've done wonderful things. And at the end of the day, when the book is written, people are going to be really appreciative of all the great things that you've done. That's sweetie. It means a lot to me coming from you. You know that. Let's face it, you've earned that distinction. You come from great people, great family, the right work ethic.

And let's face it, you're loyal to your friends, which is the most important thing. Amen. Well, amen. I say the same thing about you in Spades. See, if you were there right now, I'd be hugging and kissing your dog, right? Like us Italians do to each other, right? We actually mean it. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, of course. Listen, it's a pleasure and honor to be on the same stage with you. As Dr. Rock said, we've got to take advantage of our lucky breaks. How many times in our life do we see an open? a favor granted, something that happens to us, a bit of kismet to open the door for us. You know, about two years ago, my daughter came to me disconsolate about her career, thinking about giving up, thinking about a professional career other than singing. And I said, well, why do you take a few more auditions, dig in a little.

And low and behold, she's now starring in Europe and a few Broadway musicals. It probably sounds like I'm bragging. I'm not mean to be bragging. We know how hard it is to break into things. But the number one thing that we have to do in our lives is never give up. And that's Dr. Rock. His street smart wisdom is second to none. I enjoyed reading his book because there are vignettes in that book from people who have risen in that classic American story, from rags to riches. I remember the first time I had to be street smart. I'm going to tell this story quickly. It was January of 1981. And so I'm really dating myself. I was 17, 43 short years ago. My uncle gave me a address in Harlem to drop off a motorcycle. And this was a rough neighborhood at the time. This is the time of the very famous line, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning. A lot of these dwellings

were blown out, uncomfortable, high crime rates, high drug use. I showed up a little after 10 p.m. at Park Avenue at 128th Street, myself, my Doberman Pinscher, and my uncle's van in a 1971 Honda. The bike was worth $400 bucks. Three kids came over to the van and said, what do I have in the van? I was scared out of my mind. But being street smart, I showed him the dog. I showed him the dopment. That backed them up a little bit.

Five minutes later, into a very healthy economic conversation, they became clear they weren't getting the bike from me unless they paid up. They had $360 on them. The bike was $400. Now, I was making $3 an hour at the time, and I explained to them. My uncle was very cheap. There was just no way they were getting the bike for $360. I was leaving with the dog and the bike.

They said, give us 20 minutes. I said, okay, 20 minutes later, they came back with nickels, dimes, and quarters. They had broken into an old-fashioned soda machine, and they gave me $40 worth of nickels, dimes, and quarters. I took that plus the $360 and paper dollars back to Port Washington with me. Lots of lessons there, lots of street smart lessons. One, I didn't need to be that scared. Two, we're all basically the same.

Calm down. but three, I held my ground and I got the money for my uncle. But man, it was a nerve-wracking situation. It's something that I don't share often, but Rock Positano makes me think of that story. Thank you so much for joining us today. Hello? Ma, you're ready to come on the podcast? Yeah, why not?

My guest today was a doctor by the name of Rock Positano. He's an Italian man, a surgeon and a podiatrist. He grew up in Brooklyn, but he went on to Yale University, and he's now at the hospital for special surgery. He's probably the best foot doctor in the country. All the athletes go to him. What's the name? His name is Rock Positano. Oh, wow.

Okay. So he's Neapolitan. That's a plus. That's a Neapolitan. Yes, he is from Positano. That's correct, Ma. He's got a beautiful picture of Pocitano in his office. But he says that he went to Yale, but he really learned.

more from the streets of Brooklyn. Do you think that you sometimes learn more in the street, Ma, than you do in those schools? You're a perfect example because you know how to deal with every type of human thing. And our neighborhood was medium class. And there were kids that were a little bit cuckoo, you know, and there were kids that were fine, and there were kids that were like us. And I think it was a variety of people and you learned how to deal with everyone. And you had an uncle that's all you got to be afraid of anybody and that's stuck with you. Yeah, definitely part of it is living without fear, right? Right.

But it's also recognizing that the people that we grew up with, they're no dumber than the people that grew up in rich families. Am I wrong? I feel there were some very smart kids in my neighborhood. They may not be doing what I'm doing, but that's more related to their financial circumstances or their parenting. Oh, my children are very smart. Yes, my course.

And handsome and good. And handsome and good looking, right? Well, but they feel blood for real. Oh, my God. You're just unbelievable. You're unbelievable. I don't have a nose like a doorknob, no? You don't have a doorknob nose, and the other two don't either, even though their nose is straight, but it doesn't have a doorknop tip.

Okay. You're really, really unbelievable, Ma. It's unbelievable. I leave all this stuff in so that we can remember you by all your craziness. Okay, so let me ask you this, Ma. What? My uncle who ran a motorcycle. shop. Was he street smart?

Very. Tell me why. First of all, the motorcycle business, you made all kinds of people. He had Forbes, Bowie Joe, then he had the people that didn't have money who owed him money. You know, he had all kinds of people going through the shop. And I used to ride a bike when I was 30 years old. Yes, you've said that a number of times. Yes, I do know that.

I miss it. All right. So let me ask you this. From a street smart evaluation of life, what does it take to really be? become successful. Ultimately, Ma, what is it about? Good education. Okay. Number one. Number two is to be worldly and accept people for what they are, which I think you're talented to do that. And I'm not trying to blow smoke because it's the truth. You could go to someone that has absolutely nothing and look at them as rich as you. Well, they are. I agree with that. Yep. And that's my honest to God feeling about that. So it's a pretty simple

formula, right? Get educated, treat people kindly and stay at it, right? Don't give up, right? Don't give up. What else, ma? What are you going to do for your birthday? What's up to my children? Oh, the pressure's on me. All right. Let me go to my app. Maybe we can order some McDonald's and have DoorDash bring it over to the house. Well, I like McDonald's once in a while. No, I know you do. You like junk food like me. Yeah, we're junk food eaters. I know that. I'm kidding, Ma. Don't worry. I'll take you out someplace nice. All right. Love you. And I also bought you two Super Bowl numbers off that big grid, okay? So pay attention on Super Bowl Sunday.

I don't know. I don't know how to do that. So you're going to have to pay attention. All right. No problem. I love you, Ma. I love you very much. All right. Bye. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. You can also text me at

plus 1, 917, 909-2996. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.