The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Wisdom of Morrie: Living and Aging Creatively and Joyfully by Morrie Schwartz

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

The Wisdom of Morrie: Living and Aging Creatively and Joyfully by Morrie Schwartz https://amzn.to/42BycFu From the eponymous subject of the beloved classic Tuesdays with Morrie comes an insightful, poignant masterpiece on staying vibrant and connected for life. Who am I really? What have I done? What is important and meaningful to me? What difference does it make that I have lived? What does it mean to be truly human, and where am I on that scale? Morrie Schwartz, the beloved subject of the classic, multimillion-copy number one bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie, explores these questions and many more in this profound, poetic, and poignant masterpiece of living and aging joyfully and creatively. Later life can be filled with many challenges, but it can also be one of the most beautiful and rewarding passages in anyone's lifetime. Morrie draws on his experiences as a social psychologist, teacher, father, friend, and sage to offer us a road map to navigate our futures. A great companion to Tuesdays with Morrie or the perfect introduction to Morrie's thoughtful philosophies, The Wisdom of Morrie is filled with empathic insights, stories, anecdotes, and advice, told in Morrie's reassuring, calm, and timeless voice. Let The Wisdom of Morrie be your guide in exploring deep questions of how to live and how to love. The hardcover edition of The Wisdom of Morrie has a beautiful interior design: each chapter opener is printed in ink with a subtle ombré effect.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the chrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. Thank you. Thank you very

much everyone have a seat we certainly appreciate you guys coming by thank you for being here as always we're in our 14th year over 1400 episodes and we're heading to 1500 we can't even keep up what's going on so if you're not sharing the show out uh shame on you shame on you oh yeah just you in the back there over there whoever are, wearing the white shirt. No. We love you guys, but we're pumping out a lot of great stuff. I think later tonight we have the captain of the USS Teddy Roosevelt, I think, Theodore Roosevelt, that was on, it was on the show and he wrote a book

called surf something. And, uh, we talk about his, uh, being relieved of command at COVID. And when he walked off the ship, his, uh, his crew stood and, uh, praised him and gave him a standing ovation and chanted his name when he left. And we have some interesting stuff that came

out of that. Cause if you remember, that was a whole kerfuffle back then. Uh, some other great stuff we just had, I think on Monday, someone from the U.S. Department of Justice on. So you might have heard some rummings about what they're up to. They're always up to something, that Department of Justice. But there seems to be no other crime in the world. So basically what we're selling here, people, is if you haven't referred to the show to your family or friends or relatives,

I'm applying guilt upon you to go forth and recruit people to subscribe to the Chris Foss Show. Goodreads.com, 4chesschrissfoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrissfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrissfoss, the big LinkedIn newsletter, and TikTok, where we're trying to be cool, and it's not working. Today we have an amazing gentleman on the show. He's come here to tell us about a book about his father, and it's called The Wisdom of Maury, Living and Aging Creatively and Joyfully.

Boy, do I need this book because I'm 55 now. Came out April 18, 2023 by Maury Schwartz and his son, Rob Schwartz. He's on the show to talk to us about it today, and it's going to be very insightful. We'll get a little into Maury and who he was here in a bit, and we'll hear it from Rob's mouth. But Rob is the son and editor of his father's book on aging titled Wisdom of Maury. He has many years of experience as a journalist film and music producer and entrepreneur he's founded a number of companies both in japan and the u.s don't worry don't worry gotta why i flubbed that

flubbed the whole sticks line there and he held executive positions and others he's produced numerous film and music projects with international teams. His areas of expertise include the entertainment industries in Asia, the U.S., and Europe. His projects often have a special emphasis on music, film, online business development, developing musical artist careers. In addition, he's been reporting for Billboardboard magazine in asia since 2007 he's also one of the producers of one topia a benefit music festival slated for may 2024 well we probably wait that's next year huh wow is it going 2024 okay well i'm just keeping up here rob welcome to the show it's wonderful to have you thank you so much wow that's some introduction yeah you well you've got a lot going

on there. There you go. I was just thinking, I was thinking like, May? Wait, that was last month. And I'm like, 2024? And that's actually been revised. We're probably going to hold it in August 2024, so more than a year from now. I'm still back in 2022.

So welcome to the show. Give us a.com where people can find out more about you on the interwebs, please. Well, for this book, Wisdom of Mori, the Wisdom of Mori, we have a website, wisdomofmori.com. For the festival that you mentioned, the benefit festival, which is going to be a huge music event for mental health, all the profits, all the money will go to mental health groups, is onetopia.com. That's O-N-E-T-O-P-I-A.com. And yeah, those are the two main sites right now. There you go. So give us a 30,000 view overview of the book. Sure. So this is an interesting book because my father actually wrote it between 1988 and 1992, so quite a long time ago, after he retired from being a professor at Brandeis

University, where he was pretty much universally loved by his students. And then he was kind of forced to retire. I can tell that story. Back in those days, when you turned 70, universities were like, you're out the door. But it's not like that anymore, right? So since he was forced to retire, he was like, wow, you know, I never really thought of myself as an elderly person, but it sort of foisted on him now. So he was thinking about what was important in, you know, aging. And he wrote down a lot of ideas and he came up with this manuscript and then he got ill. And that journey is described in Mitch Album's Tuesdays with Maury, which is a gigantic bestseller, 18 million copies, five years on the bestseller list. So that was actually written after the book

that we have now, The Wisdom of Maury. But this book is just being published now. It sat in his desk drawer for a long time. And then I discovered it, rediscovered it and realized like, wow, I should really get this out. There's a lot lot of great ideas there's lots of examples and stories about people who you know who are doing all kinds of incredible things at different stages of their life so it's really inspiring book there you go what and evidently this really struck a chord uh you know tuesdays with maury uh conversations and and uh some of his is the right word idioms? Or some of his- Aphorisms.

Aphorisms. Aphorisms. There you go. And so why do you think that struck such a chord with so many people? Well, I mean, you know, to put it really bluntly, my father was very insightful. He was an academic, but he didn't let like sort of academic jargon, you know, filter through his thoughts. He really had very clear ideas, very clear values, really valued all the people around him. And, you know, he communicated that really clearly.

I mean, Tuesdays with Maury is a very slim book. I don't know if you've read it or not, but you could read it in a day. It's literally that kind of book you can fly through in a day. And Mitch wrote it that way on purpose, which is great. He was very smart about it. And it really, you know, took off. The current book, Wisdom of More, is a lot more of a deeper dive, right? The thoughts are much more fleshed out.

There's like, you know, a lot of writing and stories. And he uses newspaper articles and stuff. But basically, I think, you know, if I'm going to put it really simply, my dad uses newspaper articles and stuff. But basically, I think, you know, if I'm going to put it really simply, my dad's ideas speak to people. They understand what he's trying to say, and he's really trying to help people. You know, that was kind of his whole deal in life. He was a sociology professor, but he was also a therapist. He co-founded a group in the Boston area for personal growth, which was called Greenhouse in the 70s. And, you know,

he really, his life mission was really to help people. There you go. So, what was, let's talk about his upbringing, what shaped him and what maybe contributed him to have that sort of slant or look in life? Sure. Well, actually, it's funny you should ask that question because there was one incident in his childhood, which really did shape his personality. So my father was raised in New York City, struggling family, but actually doing kind of well in sort of the early 20s. They were able to open a candy store. And my grandmother was an educated person from Austria. And she had like a degree from the back in the old country.

And even though English was like her third or fourth language, she was teaching in the public school system. And she was like doing all the books for the candy store. And she was instrumental in running it. And very sadly, she got tuberculosis. And she died when my father was eight years old. So that losing his mother at such a young age really had this gigantic impact on him and made him incredibly sensitive to the suffering of other people. And that was

sort of the theme throughout his life to identify, to empathize with everybody. You know, as you well know, we all have our own struggles. You think somebody has a perfect life, but you have no idea what they're going through. We all have our own struggles. And that's the modern world. And my father was really attuned to that because he lost his mother at such a young age. And then they lost the candy store and they became really like desperate and they had to leave Manhattan and go and live in the Bronx. And, you know, they were really dirt poor for a long time.

So my father had that experience. He's also kind of American, you know, success story. He raised up from the lowest rungs of society to be a, you know, respected professor at university. So he really jumped up in the social mobility, as they say. There you go. So as a son, what was it like growing up with him? Tell us a little bit about your story. This is funny because I, you know, when your dad is your dad and, but I had always had these students coming up to me. My dad was a professor at Brandeis telling me like how amazing my father was and how lucky I was to have him as a dad. And when you're a kid, you know, when you hear that sort of thing, you think like, yeah,

sure, whatever, dude, you have no idea, right? But in retrospect, as an adult, I realized that they were actually correct. He was an incredible father. He always showed up. He was incredibly loving and supportive. I mean, I can barely, I don't think I have any memory of him ever being angry. I mean, I have a couple of stories that maybe it's like, okay, he was not pleased with me at some point. But yeah, I don't really ever even remember him getting super angry. I mean, there was a balance in my family. My mother was the disciplinarian and he was the, you know, the guy to take good times.

So that, that did happen as well. But no, I mean, he was a wonderful father, really, really wonderful. And, you know, it was really important to him to be there as a dad. What did, did he have those sort of, you know, things that he would think and impress upon you guys that were in the Tuesday book and in the book that you wrote, or you edited of his, or was that something that shaped you when you were young? Oh, for sure. For sure. I mean, that's a really long story, right? Because he was my father for a really long time. You can tell a kid something and a kid is going to be like,

oh, whatever. You know, certainly he's impressing his values on you, but as a kid, you're going to be like, oh, whatever. You know, certainly he's impressing his values on you, but as a kid, you're going to try and think of, you know, I'll come all the way. But as you get older, you realize the stuff that he's saying is pretty wise, and, you know, it would be a good thing to pay attention to it. But for sure, for sure, the way he raised me was, you know, imparting the values that he thought was important,

always thinking about the people around you, always taking care of them, never judging them. You never know what journey they're on, you know, always being polite. I mean, these were values that I was raised with that a lot of our society has lost, right? Wait, you're supposed to be polite to people now? Exactly. I know it sounds so strange, doesn't doesn't it i'm especially with online people are so rude like i can't deal with it at all like okay twitter's the worst but even facebook instagram well instagram is not so bad because it's all images but uh you know what i'm saying the online comment sections is just horrible you know it's like yeah we've been on youtube for like i don't

know 15 16 years or something like that yeah i'm used to all the comments on right i mean don't read the comments basically you do a great show don't bother reading the comments because there's going to be somebody who's got something nasty to say you know that the funny thing is we get checks from youtube so i always is like you know when people want to insult me i'm just like you just pay me like five cents to insult me like how how dumb is that well that's great for you you're getting the last yeah i'm like like go ahead knock yourself out make some more comments but you gotta wonder what is that person getting out of it the guy who writes the nasty comment about your show where you're trying to like you know inform people you're trying to entertain people you're trying to do your best you're not trying to hurt anybody what is that

guy getting out of it who's writing a nasty comment to you like i don't i don't get it i do not understand i don't know you know i mean he's living in his mom's basement uh and uh he's he's never seen i'm not gonna do that joke um but uh yeah he's probably uh still he's still got his virginity in place so deepak chopra uh wrote a good plug for the book um give us some of the highlights of of uh some of the top five secrets your father had yeah so basically we can break this book into two sections and in some ways this is really aimed towards aging people. But in another way, there's a lot of fantastic advice for anybody of any age. So by two sections, I said, as I kind of explained in the introduction, my father never thought of himself as an aging person. And then

after he was forced to retire from university, he was like, wow, that's the way society sees me. And he wasn't super comfortable with that. So he had to investigate his own mind, like, why am I not super comfortable with this? And he realized, like, how deeply ageist our society is, like, old people should just like go off and like die somewhere and, you know, not do anything. And this is just a ridiculous idea, right? People over a certain age have a lot of life experience, a lot of wisdom, a lot of stuff to share with people. So that was the first part of the book was sort of exposing ageism and the psychological impact it has on people who are aging. And he even created a, what would you

call it, like a coinage, his own word, which he called age casting, which comes from typecasting, the movie phrase typecasting, where like age casting, which comes from typecasting, you know, the movie phrase typecasting, where like age casting is pushing old people into certain roles, like you go sit on a park bench, and that's all you can do, right? And that's just as ridiculous as typecasting an actor is. So that was the first part of the book. Then the second part of the book is he has a lot of really practical suggestions for how to live more creatively and more vibrantly if you are aging. And like I said, I think we're all aging. A lot of these suggestions can apply to a lot of people because I think you're well aware, we kind of have a crisis in our society

these days of like, people don't have meaning in their life. They don't know how to connect to other people. Despite the fact we're so connected digitally, we're really disconnected personally from people, right? So there's a lot of suggestions in this book. Some of them are, you know, more for aged people, but I would say pretty much all of them you can apply to anybody. So for example, you know, figure out what interests you. Like people need to be told this in this day and age. Figure out what interests you and pursue that. Don't just sit there and say like, I like trains or whatever. I like movies. Investigate it.

Figure out how you can get involved with it. Join groups. Make connections with other people who are interested in the same thing. And make friendships with people. Don't sit in your basement and do nothing. The more people you talk to, the more friendships you make, the richer your life is going to be. I mean, it sounds totally simple, but people actually need to read this and think about this in this day and age. And then there's a whole list.

I mean, I could list off five or six things for people to do. If you want, we can run through them all right now. Sure. I mean, okay, so that's one. We'll piece it up. Yeah. Pursue what interests you and explore it and get involved in it and make new friends. Get involved with new people in your life.

Getting involved with new people is always going to make your life richer. Along those lines, my father says, focus your energy. If you're thinking about a thousand things at once, you're going to be distracted and you're not going to be happy. Focus your energy on what's important to you, whether it's your family, whether it's your new interest, and pursue that. In the same way, and this is kind of somewhat different but similar, in the same way, if you focus your mind, particularly through meditation, you're going to be more calm. So meditation is a fantastic technique that, you know, doesn't have to have anything to do with religion. It's just mind training. You don't have to think about it in any sort of mystical, weird way. It's just mind training. And my father,

you know, took up meditation back then in the seventies when it wasn't even popular. And yeah, he was, he was doing it way back then. And, uh and uh you know it just helps you focus your mind and stay calm and obviously that that can be used for anybody from any age but i'll tell you there are some incredible studies there's this one study of seniors that that said what did it say people seniors who meditate on average live 7.5 years longer than seniors who don't meditate. Isn't that incredible? Yeah. I better start meditating for sure.

These studies are out there. You can find them. Another way to keep calm and all that stuff that meditation gives you, like you said, stay away from stupid people. That's a little hard to do nowadays. See, that's really hard to do in our society. I mean, I know you're making a joke, but you can even expand it. Not only stupid people, but annoying people.

There's people out there that are just annoying, right? And a lot of times we can't avoid them. I never meet them. We need to find out a way to stay calm. I never meet annoying people, but I'm told that if I'm the smartest one in the room, it's probably me, So maybe that's true. Wait.

Well, I envy you if you never meet annoying people. Well, that means it's me, right? I don't know. I don't find you so annoying, but, you know, there are a lot of people out there. So let me see. There's meditation. I'm going to run through all the rest of them. I think I have a few more.

Let's see. Yeah, that's pretty much the main. Oh, and this one is a little bit more tricky because it's so sort of controversial in our society. But my father, he was aging. I mean, he wasn't part of any one religion. He wasn't religious in that sense. But he said, you should develop a spiritual connection in whatever that means for you, whether it's a traditional religion, whether it's something, as long as it has meaning for you, it doesn't matter what other people think. So like on top of all that, try and develop a spiritual connection, because he thought that was very important for people to feel fulfilled in their life. Definitely.

I'm an atheist, so we just worship Satan and, you know, and whatever. I know you're making a joke, so we just worship Satan and whatever. Yeah, I know you're making a joke. We don't worship Satan. We could talk about this for a long time because I studied philosophy, so we could have some banter. I mean, you're an atheist, but I'll bet you feel some connection to everything else that's out there, whether you have a name for it or not. The universe, yeah. Yeah, exactly. The universe. And Sn, yeah. Yeah, exactly, the universe. And Snickers bars.

Yeah, absolutely. And pizza. And comedy, obviously. Oh, yeah, well, that's bad comedy, but non-funny comedy that dies pretty much, yeah. And this is good stuff. You know what's interesting about these axioms that your father had is they're timeless in a way. I read a lot of Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Seneca, and other things.

And I'm so amazed how a lot of this stuff was written back in at least 10 years ago or so. A thousand years ago. A thousand years ago or whatever. And, uh, you know, before, after that whole snake thing in the tree and, uh, the two naked people. Um, but, uh, it's amazing how much what they wrote back then and probably a lot of what your father covered, you know, these, they're just these simple life axioms that, that are so definitive and, and they're timeless, you know these they're just these simple life axioms that that are so definitive and and

they're timeless you know right like like you know sometimes he's Seneca and I'll be like was was he on Twitter yeah no I mean I totally agree with what you're saying and I've read all that stuff too because I studied philosophy particularly S. It's interesting you should mention him because he is very much in line with what my father said. Well, you know, he's like, live a quiet, serene life. Don't go looking for trouble. That's kind of his thing, right? But there's a lot of philosophers that are very important. But yeah, I agree with you. I think that it's timeless stuff. And I think that basically my father wrote this book and really to try and address what keeps people from being happy. Because I think there's a lot of things. You have to remember my father was a

social psychologist. So his fuel was like psychology and what are people's troubles, you know. And he wrote really important academic work way back when, but this book was really written for everybody. So there's no academic jargon in it. Nothing like that is very direct. And he uses a lot of stories, stories from other people, newspaper articles and stuff, because he's trying to inspire people. He's trying to be like, you can have, you know, all of this too.

It's not just some guy off there. If you've turned 80 years old, there's absolutely no reason to think that your life is over. You can do whatever you want. You can start a new career. You can do whatever, you know? I'm trying to get my mom. She's, she's 80 now. I'm trying to get her to go out and run marathons and stuff. She's got two new knees. So, uh so uh i think she can she's like the bionic woman wow well i mean that's physically that's real challenging but i'm sure she can do it if she puts her mind to it i don't think she's gonna do that but but she is pretty she's she's pretty unstoppable like i mean just she she'll do like you know just anything i remember one time she

called me and she goes she goes i'm climbing up the tree to to prune it or something and i was like what do you mean you're climbing with the tree you know and she goes i got a ladder up against the tree and i knew the tree she was talking about was like a thin tree so it wasn't like a thick tree that could hold the ladder very well and even then you're like whoa whoa whoa you, whoa, whoa. You've fallen a couple of times. She's, she's pulled a few suicide moves to see how far she can dive off, off steps and stuff. And fortunately nothing's, everything bad has really happened. But, uh, you know, she's just gotta keep an eye on it.

She still thinks she's 20 running around. So, right, right. Well, you raise a good point that, you know, you have to know your physical limits. You have to know your physical. So I think, I think marathons are out, but you know it but it's important i mean you know all the things that she does you know i see all the gardening she does and all the work she does in her backyard and stuff and i'm and me i live in vegas so everything's zero escaped so i don't know you

go out and you put a drop of water on each plant you know once a week and that's about it you don't you don't even wall the lawns or anything. And so I see all the work she puts into it, and I'm just like, she's just a zero escape, just mow that whole backyard down. But she, you know, it keeps her active, and she loves it, and she likes working on it. That's fantastic, yeah. You know, that's one of the, I think there's a thing about old people too, is in there that I heard years ago that if you don't find something to do with yourself shortly after retirement, you tend to die off. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

It's kind of like thinking, you know, the muscle, the brain is a muscle. It's like use it or lose it. It's like a foreign language. Use it or lose it. Your life is like that too. If you don't use it, if you don't do anything, it disappears. You die. So it's almost imperative that you develop new interests,

that you put yourself out there. And I'll tell you one other thing that my father was really interested in. Again, this is whatever it means to you. You don't have to, like, think about it one way or the other way. But he's like, get involved with your community. See what you can do to help your community, even if it's being, you know, a crossing guard for kids on the street or working in the community center or whatever it is. Get

involved with your community and whatever moves you to help your community because it's just a great feeling to help your community and people are going to be appreciative of what you're doing. And him being a psychiatrist, psychologist? Well, he was a psychologist and a professor of social psychology. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that probably gave him a lot of insight to issues people were having and challenges they were having and all that stuff. Absolutely. Absolutely. It did. Yeah. And I mean, we won't talk too much about the academic stuff because it's not really relevant here, but he wrote this really important academic work in the 50s, which actually kind of defines his life work. So I'll tell you

about it very briefly. He wrote this book called The Mental Hospital, which was this study of a mental hospital and became this watershed work, which psychiatrists and therapists use for decades in training. And what he discovered was that the human relationships in any institution or basically in anybody's life are so important, not only like my relationship with you, like the patient's relationship with the doctor. Obviously, that's going to be important. But he found like if two nurses were fighting,

that would have like a big effect on the patient, even though they weren't fighting with the patient. So like what you surround yourself with, the relationships around you are going to have a big effect on you, whether or not they're directly your relationships or not. So basically the wider message there is choose your situations and the people around you carefully. But this book was a huge success, and it's how my father became a full professor at Brandeis just immediately without going through all the process of it. And it really kind of defines his life work in some way. There you go. And how did you find this manuscript?

Because, I mean, it had never come out yet before. That's right. Was there a discovery process? Is there something where you find it in a box in the upstairs attic? Sure. I'll tell you the whole story. It's a bit long, so you have to bear with me. The reason why I like to tell this story is because I was going back and forth between Asia and Boston, where my parents live.

I had been traveling. And then one summer in 1989, I was in Boston for like three months and I talked with my father. It was while he was writing this book. So I got all of his ideas. I, you know, I knew what he wanted to say and we had talked all about the stuff. And then I moved to Japan and I stayed there. And of course I went back and forth while my father was ill, but I was living in Japan. I developed the journalism career and the entrepreneurial career that you alluded to in the beginning. And after my father passed away in 95, my mom kept the house, kept my father's study exactly as it had been. And I used to go back and forth, sit at his desk, write my magazine and newspaper articles. And one day, yeah,

one day in the early 2000s, I can't remember exactly when it was, 2002, 2003, I just pulled open a desk drawer and there it was, like bound, like with a big cover on it. And as soon as I opened it up and started looking at it, I knew exactly what it was because I had talked to him about it. If I had never talked to him about it, I would have been like, what the hell is this? But I knew what it was. I knew that he had written it. I knew the ideas that he was trying to get across. And after Tuesdays with Maury, which was such a huge success, I knew we had an opportunity to publish this. So of course, there was a lot of editing and a lot of stuff I had to do. And my mother was heavily involved. I added a couple of essays into the book, and one of them discusses my mother's role in getting the book published

and my father's role in general. There you go. Team effort, family effort. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, hopefully it's as successful as Tuesday the 2nd. From your lips to God's ears, as they say. And it'll inspire a lot of people. I mean, that's the real priceless value of this work and all that good stuff.

Anything more you want to tease out of the book before we go? Let me think. I mean, like I said, I think there's a lot there. And, you know, I think it's not such a thin book. So I think in some ways it might intimidate people. But I want to tell people it's really easy to read read and my father uses lots of stories from the real life real life people and newspaper articles and stuff and it actually is a real joy to read so i think that yeah it can really help people i'm really excited that we've gotten it out there and now thank you for for

helping me publicize it you know there you go and thank you for, for helping me publicize it. You know, there you go. And thank you for coming on the show and telling us about it. I'm probably going to need it because I'm 55. Right. And, uh, you know, I just wake up every day and it's spin the wheel and choose your pain.

Basically. It's not too bad. You seem pretty, pretty hooked into what you're doing. You have a passion. So that's, what's important. It's mostly the coffee.

Pretty much. It's all an act. It's all. Yeah. It's devil's important it's mostly the coffee pretty much it's all an act it's yeah it's devil's doing a podcast i love my podcast that's the only thing i love out of all the companies uh you know i i i started building companies when i was 18 out of all the people would come up to me in my companies they'd be like you know it's so great you do something you love and i don't love this i like being the ceo yeah the guy i like being the innovator i like being an investor where i own these companies and and i make them work and i i kind of like the juice of that i mean you could pay me you could just give me a ceo or

something i'd probably do it for free but my podcast is the first and only thing i've ever found that i really love to do there you go and i would and it's it's you know they say a lot of entrepreneurs i talk to they find what they love to do and they're go. And I would, and it's, it's, you know, they say a lot of entrepreneurs that talk to, they find what they love to do. And they're like, I would do this for free. And this is one, the one thing I would do for free.

I love it. And I love the guests like yourself that come on and the things I learned, I got a front row seat to ask questions that, uh, you know, I see guests that are on TV and stuff and news print. You'll allow me to, uh,

to say a couple of other things because you gave me that wonderful introduction as an entrepreneur. So let me talk about just briefly a couple of projects. So one thing we haven't mentioned is I have an online VR concert creation platform where we're setting up a platform where bands can perform in the virtual world and we have some amazing technology it's called mosh pit m-o-s-h-p-i-t the website is moshpit.live we're going to launch it very soon and one of our uh sort of goals unlike other guys who are doing virtual concerts with you know massive stars we're going to try and put the tools to do this in the hands of everybody.

So smaller bands from all around the country and all around the world can use our product and get their concert out there, get their music out there with amazing visuals. And we have incredible sound. The guy who founded the company is actually an Emmy award winning, sorry, Grammy award winning sound engineer in Los Angeles. So he's really concerned with amazing sound. So that's Mosh Pit, moshpit.live. And as you also mentioned, I'm working on this benefit concert, this benefit festival, One Topia. It's going to benefit mental health. We're going to try and educate people about mental health. We feel there's a mental health crisis

in this country. And so you can go to OneTopia.com. It's going to be held in the summer of 2024. And hopefully, you know, you'll hear a lot about that. Lots of big, big stars will appear and help us get the message out. There you go. I'd laugh because we need more help for mental health. I think all of us pretty much need a good psychiatrist. We'll reach out to you again, man. When the show is, when one dopey is going to come out. There you go. There you go. Yeah.

We, after, after COVID in the last two or three years, we, we all need a, so we all need a psychotherapy pretty much. Some of us more than others. Uh,

I won't name names. Uh, so there you go. And I, I'm probably on that list too as well, but, uh, this looks really cool.

This mosh pit, uh, dot live. Yeah. Um, my one cool, this moshpit.live. My one friend, Robert Scoble, is a big leader in all things VR and AR. And what do you think of that new Apple thing that came out? I think it's more AR than anything. Right. I haven't seen the Apple headset yet.

It came out a couple of days ago. I mean, certainly the thing that's been holding VR back, sort of everybody knows this, is the price, right? You've got to buy a headset that costs three grand or four grand, then it's not going to proliferate that quickly. And I think the Apple headset is pretty expensive. So I'm sure it looks great, but I think we need a product that's a little cheaper than that to get it in people's hands i mean mosh pit.live it's also going to be in 2d you can just watch it on youtube or whatever but that's not the way we want people to watch it in vr and really experience it so you need the headset for that

obviously there you go yeah i mean i mean anything looks good at 3 500 bucks i mean yeah let's hope the uh it's crazy but you know if anybody has the ability to really make something mainstream it's apple i mean they you know i they say podcasts i remember we were doing podcasts for a long time and and it seemed to fade off and i'm like well maybe this is dying and there was lots of other stuff youtube was really rising and. And I'm like, well, maybe just videos, more thing. And then, uh,

Apple came out and like, we're going to do podcasts and, and cover them more and make an app for it and shit. And I was like, yeah, that's great, man. And all of a sudden I was starting to get these emails and stuff blowing up.

And we, we, we, we really hadn't produced anything for about two years. And all of a sudden I started getting these emails. Like, what's going on? People are downloading the podcast? Like, it's all, like, old content.

It was interesting and kind of funny, I suppose. But I was like, what? Yeah. And then it just got out of control. And I was just like, well, we better go do something over there because somebody's listened to something yeah and they just they just brought it back to the forefront now it's you know it's huge but uh uh you know this is this is an apple uh a commercial but you know we do know that i mean basically all of the major innovations that are really defining our life now were pushed

forward by apple of course there's a ton of other companies that are equally as important now, but Steve Jobs created the smartphone, really. And Steve Jobs created iTunes, which is the first online music library. Before that, it was all pirated and only certain people were participating in it. Steve Jobs did all of these things. Apple did all these things. Today today the company is quite different but the effect that it's had on our life in the last 20 years is really immeasurable and podcasts i mean that was an apple thing too you know yeah they they brought it all back man it's it was it was it was slowing down and it was you know people and it really seemed like youtube was taking over and then as soon as they launched that app and stuff like like it just came out of nowhere.

We're just like, what the fuck is going on? And for a long time I was just like, is somebody on drugs? Why are hundreds of people downloading this two to three, four-year-old episodes? I was like, what's going on? And then finally I just had to

go, hey man, let's do it. Anyway, thank you very much for coming on the show, Rob. We really appreciate it, man. It's been a lot of fun. Oh, I appreciate it. I'm going to say once more, the wisdom of Maury, living and aging creatively and joyfully, I really think it can help a lot of people. And I encourage people to check it out.

I also had a lot to do with the design of the book. So I tried to make it as colorful and engaging as possible there's a lot of color in the book there's a lot of unusual things in the book parts of it look like it's handwritten i wanted to make it real personal people could get a feel for my dad because there's so much you know love for him and goodwill for him from tuesdays with maury so this is real insight into his mind if you wanted to get to know more of his thoughts this is the book for you there you go well it's wonderful to have you on available 8 april 18th 2023 the wisdom of mori living and aging creatively and joyfully i always have to put the dates on stuff because people on youtube 10 years from now five years now will be like that's an old book dummy it's not new and i'm

like did you look at the date yeah yeah we we used to put the prices on our reviews and on books and stuff and it's available for you know 1995 and then some guy like two years from now i'll be like it's on 199 and i have this on you moron right right like that video's 10 years old dude yeah you'll love this tuesdays with maury sold so many copies that you can buy it on like amazon use for like a dime now i'm not exaggerating sounds like my book uh well thank you very much for coming on rob we certainly appreciate it uh thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortunes chris voss linkedin.com fortunes chris voss. YouTube.com Fortuness Chris Voss. And for the sure

to your family, friends, and relatives, make them feel guilty and shame them if they don't subscribe to the show. I'm just kidding. Don't do that, people. It's not nice. And go to TikTok. Help us out over there because we're trying to be cool and we're clearly not. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.