Tony Mantor's : Almost Live..... Nashville - Peter Samuelson: Finding Happy: Every act of empathy creates waves that never end

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Peter Samuelson shares how his transition from successful film producer to nonprofit founder has led to his greatest happiness and inspired his new book "Finding Happy." • Produced iconic films like "Revenge of the Nerds" and "Wild" • Co-founded Starlight with Steven Spielberg to help seriously ill children • Created First Star to propel foster youth to college success • Started EDAR (Everyone Deserves A Roof) providing mobile shelters for homeless individuals • New book "Finding Happy" combines life lessons with film industry anecdotes • Identifies three levels of happiness: short-term (immediate pleasure), medium-term (security), and long-term (helping others) • Believes creating "ripples on the pond" by helping others leads to lasting fulfillment • Teaches Random Acts of Kindness classes where foster youth get to donate money to causes they care about • Emphasizes the importance of empathy in healing societal divides • Advocates for embracing failure as a necessary part of success • Notes the powerful connection between foster youth and music due to its portability "Finding Happy" releases June 10th through Simon & Schuster and will be available in hardcover, paperback, audiobook, and e-book formats.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

in the entertainment industry has enabled me to work with a diverse range of talent. Through my years of experience, I've recognized two essential aspects. Industry professionals, whether famous stars, or behind-the-scenes staff, have fascinating stories to tell. Secondly, audiences are eager to listen to these stories, which offer a glimpse into their lives and the evolution of their life stories. This podcast aims to share these narratives, providing information. on how they evolved into their chosen career.

We will delve into their journey to stardom, discuss their struggles and successes, and hear from people who help them achieve their goals. Get ready for intriguing behind-the-scenes stories and insights into the fascinating world of entertainment. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Almost Live Nashville. Joining us today is Peter Samuelson.

He's known for producing iconic films like Revenge of the Nerds and Wild. He's also co-founded, charities alongside the legendary filmmaker Stephen Spielberg. He's a fantastic storyteller with the heart of an advocate. He's just written a book entitled Finding Happy. He has such great stories to tell and we're truly delighted to have him here. Thanks for joining us. Well, it's a pleasure and I think this could be a very interesting conversation. Yes, I certainly agree and I'm looking forward to our conversation. Now, if you would, give us a little update about what you're doing and your current project.

So, I'm two things. I'm a film producer with 2,000 films under my belt. That's how I've raised a family and paid the mortgage. Then I've taken the same toolkit laterally across to founding charities. One of them with Steven Spielberg, that's Starlight, that makes seriously old children. happier and mitigates their pain. First Star propels high school-age foster kids into colleges and universities. Edar is a single-user homeless shelter on wheels, and then there's, there are other ones as well.

So one of them, First Star, I've done so much mentoring of teenage kids. In the case of First Star, they're all in foster care, so they're abused or neglected, but I also do other mentoring where the kids are not in foster care. And I realized that two years ago that I had pattern recognition because the same two dozen topics seem to always come up where the kids are perplexed. I started getting up at five o'clock in the morning and writing a self-help book. And I did one topic per chapter. I found that I was using anecdotes from my own checkered career as a film producer to illustrate what I was trying to convey to be helpful in the life lessons, kind of what I know now that I wish I knew when I was 18. So I finished it about a year ago

and somebody introduced me to a book agent and the next thing I know is like a bidding war going on. I should be so lucky. And Simon Chuster got it in a rather handsome deal and it comes out to June 10. What you can see there, my graphic design skills could be written on the head of a pin. However, I did the first version of this, and what I did was to create a word cloud where the prevalence of the stuff that is addressed in the book, the more prevalent it is, the bigger the font. So the big words are all the big things, kindness, love, social media, mentors, life, health, success, etc. But then you get down to the little ones, which are about school and daring to do and how to deal with your parents and education generally.

It's turned out, honestly, vastly better than I had expected. And we're off to the races. That's great. It sounds like it's really off to a great start. Publisher made me buy 600 copies of my own book because I said I want to donate them to the foster kids in First Star. And they ship them all around the country and also in the UK. We've got 12 academies at big universities in the United States and three in the UK. Have you got any response back yet?

I've started getting feedback. The publisher told me I was stupid, but I've actually put my email address in the book. The compromise was that you have to read the book because it's kind of buried near the back. But I've started getting emails and it's completely clear to me, very gratifying that it's a helpful book for young adults. And I guess our hope is that the buyership will be older adults who care about younger adults, parents, grandparents, uncle Phil, auntie Sheila, a teacher in a high school, a lecturer in a college, whatever. Maybe it's a life transition kind of a book.

And that's honestly, Tony, it's not much more, well, it's a bit more complicated than that, but it's on, I've finished recording the audio, what a, I'd never done anything. like that. So you sit in a booth for a week, six hours a day reading the damn thing. And there's a guy called Paul on the other side of the glass. And about every half hour, he says, do you mind going back to the beginning of that paragraph and do that one again? So it's on audio book. It's on paperback, in hard copy in bookstores and also online, you know, Amazon and so forth, all the dot-coms. There's also a Kindle version, electronic version, and that's what it is. That's great.

Sounds like you've got all the bases covered. I think you're headed in the right direction for sure with that. The hilarious thing last week is I said on the family Zoom with my young adult kids, I said, your dad's book is going into Target. That's the latest retailer that Simon and Schuster are placing it with. And there was a silence, and my son, Jeffrey, said, where are they going? going to put it in the store in Target? And I said, I have no idea, Jeffrey, wherever they want to put it. And he said, well, I think you should tell them that its natural place is between the condoms and the

plastic cutlery. And I said, I will pass that on. I think that might be its highest and best positioning. That's great. So what led you to do all this? Like you said, you've had a great career in film. You've done so many things. What gave you the passion to do this? Did it just come to you? Or was it something more personal? I think it's personal. My philanthropic work gives me joy. I'm not saying that making over two dozen films doesn't give you some joy, you know, to stand at the back of a theater and listen to an audience laughing at your comedy in the right places or screaming at your scary film in the right places, which doesn't always happen. That has, you know, creating stuff is good. Sure it is. Actually, when I look at my life, what has really given me the greatest

happiness is lifting up young adults through my seven non-profits. It realized I can put even more ripples on the pond if I write it down. And so I did. I totally get it. I mean, I'm here in Nashville. You're going to be on my music podcast, but I also have another podcast, this about mental health and autism. Ah, so the publicist, from the publisher, Kim Weiss. I was going to be on the autism one. And I said, oh, goody, because actually I feel as though through first star and to some extent Starlight, I've worked with a lot of kids somewhere on the spectrum.

You know, I can have a proper discussion about that. Well, we could actually probably do both eventually. Well, I think you should do whatever you want. I mean, I could talk about music or I could talk about autism. Yeah. The beauty of this is it's about your life and what you're doing with your book. Yeah. It's about putting the word out there that not only are you successful in the film industry, but you're doing all these other great things as well.

The great thing is the work that you've done with the film has also helped you and giving you the ability to help the people around the world like you're doing. Yeah. I think our paths are similar because for the last, 30 years, I've been working with a lot of singers here in Nashville. Some are well known. Some are building their career. So like you, I've used a lot of my connections that I've known around the world to help me build my podcast in order to be able to help people that need the help. So I think you're doing a great thing the way that you're doing it. Well, yes, and let me mention also,

one of my two best friends in the whole world is David Haspel and, Much to my chagrin, having lived in L.A., our whole joint adult lives, he falls in love late in life with a lady who said, I love you, yes, I will marry you, but you have to move to Nashville. So he now lives in Nashville. Really? That's awesome. Yeah. And I don't remember the last time I met him face-to-face, but we Zoom. That's awesome. Now, you brought up the UK. I've got a good following of people that listen to what I do over there as well.

Well, I mean, in the UK, we have, there are 12 of the first star academies across the United States, and there are three in the UK. And I'm actually going over at the end of July, beginning of August, because we've got the residential in Emmanuel. How about this for a full circle? Okay. I was the first in-family scaredy cat kid who got a full scholarship to go to Emmanuel College, Cambridge and read English. and at the end of July, I am there for the residential of First Star, the foster kids, the look after kids, at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. I mean, it's the most wonderful full circle moment in my life.

And also, we have a summer residential and a, you know, full year as well. University College London, they have a sign over the front door, rated number one in the UK. I don't even know if that's true, but it's a pretty highfaluting university. And then the University of York, STEM-focused. So it's an amazingly successful new paradigm, which I think I would never have had the nerve to propose it and then kind of nurture it and make it happen and raise the money and partner with all these different universities. It wasn't a film producer because we're constantly trying to get people to do things

they don't want to do. And it's all in storytelling, you know? Yes, 100%. since storytelling is where's that? My podcast, why not me? I believe in people telling their stories, so that way the listener can either relate to it or learn from it. Yes, absolutely right.

And let me say this also about autism. I think society has not been kind to call them minority groups who are different. And I think a good example is people who are somewhere on the spectrum. And absolutely, there are cases where it is a serious affliction causing some misery and stuff that has to be dealt with. But I think a vastly larger number, especially the young adults, which is the ones I've met, they march to a different drummer, absolutely true. But I think in many ways they excel. I think that society does no favors.

You know, it's a bit like you get to a certain age and you say, oh, I see, I'm supposed to be slowing down, am I? Because of my chronological age. Well, to hell with that, you know? Absolutely. I'm working at the moment with Molly Matlin on a film. Oh, yeah. I love her. Award winning, you know, feminist actress and she's going to direct a film, which is like a six-part miniseries about the history of civil rights.

in the deaf community. And it's been an enormous revelation to me to realize that most people who are not deaf think, oh, those poor people, they can't hear. And yet, when you actually pal around and get down to ground zero with the reality of being deaf, first of all, it's a whole community with splendid and wonderful stuff in it. Yes, that's so true. You know, you add one or two ASL interpreters on the zooms and this and that. I've pledged, as the producer, God help me, because I've got to actually come through on the pledge, that we will hire in front of the camera and behind the camera the highest possible sensible percentage of death and hearing impaired people that we can swing a cat at and find and I don't care if they're in the union, we'll get them into the union and so on and so forth.

It's a shared passion, which I think I'm now like honorary death community, and I'm really kind of passionate about it. All the films I make now have to have a social agenda. We've got one film in my company where we're partner with the World Wildlife Fund, and that's wonderful. And we've got another one that's about the whole point of the film is to persuade people who know that there is a mentally unstable potential mass shooter, something about it before it's too late.

It's very awkward to do that. And what if I'm wrong? and I ruin his life and so forth. And we're in the dialogue right now, not only with the experts on the issue of the psychology of young adults who may or may not be about to do some appalling need, but also the organizations, you know, like Brady and like Sandy Hook. I don't know what will happen with either of those, but we love them.

Yeah, that brings me to something that I think that we might have in common. When I first started my autism podcast, I knew nothing about it. Then I expanded it to include mental health. I knew nothing about that. The more I spoke with these people, the more I heard the stories, the more I learned, and the more I realized that there are bad people in this world. But if I hear something that happens, I find myself wanting to know more. Are they truly bad people? Or are they just people that the system just failed them?

Did that happen to you at all? Yeah, I absolutely did. And I also think if you said to me, quick, what is one word, actually, three words, that you, Peter, believe are the root of almost all evil in the world? I think lack of empathy would be very high up there. I think what's going on at the moment, I'm very centrist. I have one foot in left and one foot in right. and how demagogues have been able, autocrats have been able to lead people by the nose into hating people who are different. I think it may at this point be a gene, you know, unfortunately, 150,000 years of human beings.

We did an interesting thing a couple of years ago. We went as a family to Perigord in France. And one of the more interesting things is we went down into the prehistoric, stone age cave system. I was absolutely shocked with sort of the revelations of it. Very low ceiling, very dark, scary is all heck, and then you add on to that. It's freezing cold, and they were hungry and just scared of everything. And then you imagine the cave leader said, it's all the fault of those people over the other side of the valley. They dress different, they look different, they act different.

they want our food, they want our women, they want everything. You don't have to be scared of them, but it's quite rational for you to hate them because they want what is rightly yours. Follow me and I will keep you safe. That is so seductive, but actually what underpins it is they've been sold a bill of goods, which has caused them to forget their empathy. and I'm not talking about one political direction or the other. I think both polls have got it completely wrong and are down rabbit holes, almost cults, or definitely cults. And I think the way out of it, if there is one, and I, you know, I'm alarmed.

I think we have to find a way of bridging the gulf of otherness. I think shared empathy, you know, realizing when you actually sit down to have lunch, these people are not very different than me. They may worship differently and they dress differently. However, they'd actually like to be left alone to raise their kids to build a life for the ones they love. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you. My podcast at first was autism, awareness, acceptance, and understanding.

Now I've expanded and re-branded it to embracing. So I feel that you can't embrace something until you understand it. And bottom line, if we can't learn about people, have some empathy for them, then it will be difficult to find that common ground that we so badly need. Yeah, I think that you have that exactly right. And what I've tried to do in the book is actually to define happiness, and I believe it comes in short term, medium term, and long term, then to create pathways to get to it. Yeah, that makes sense.

So short-term happiness, I think, is a big tub of chocolate ice cream. Medium-term happiness is a future supply of chocolate ice cream, but long-term happiness is nothing to do with ice cream or chocolate. I think it has to do with lifting up the world. A great Jewish rabbi 850 years ago, my mother-in-law actually, told me that I needed to go and read my monadies. And he, so much was clear after I read it. He's the guy who did the pyramid of giving, you know, where the 8x of giving is to give anonymously and with leverage.

Like, teach the man to fish, don't just give him fish. And the bottom of the pyramid with little value is just give him fish and put a big sign on the wall that says, what a wonderful donor you are. But the other thing that he did, which was, it made all the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up, is he said the highest level of the human soul, which he even gave the name, it's called the Nishuma. And I thought, oh, my grandparents used to say, oh, so and so he's got the Nishuma. And I knew that that was good, but I had no clue. I had no clue as a kid what it meant. He says the highest level of the soul, the Nishuma, is, it's like a membership society of people who feel. in their heart the empathy that makes them need to work to make the world a better place.

And what he writes is when two people who have this Nishuma thing meet for the very first time, they feel as though they have known each other a thousand years. They say to each other, Hineni. That's Hebrew. It means, here I am. What shall we do together? meaning what deeds of wonderment shall we conspire to lift up the world with? And, you know, people misunderstand.

They get kind of irritated because they think the Jews think of themselves as the chosen. Actually, being the chosen people is a pain in the dairy air. It's not that you were chosen to have space lasers and all that nonsense or privilege or run banking or all those nonsense lies. You're chosen because you have to. lift up the world. What he said is, and if you do that, you will meet some really fine people. And I thought, well, hot damn, he's right. Well, the old saying is that no two people intersect without there being a reason behind it. Yeah. Who are the fine people that I know in my life?

They are people I do philanthropy with. I couldn't have done. I may have invented the seven non-profits, but they'd be nothing. If I hadn't had dozens and hundreds and in one or two cases, thousands of volunteers, I didn't raise a billion dollars plus in Starlight. I just led it. And several thousand other volunteers help do all of that and make seriously all children happy. So I believe that the way you find happy, kind of what you want on your tombstone, if one cares about, that. I just heard a really, there was a British comedian called Spike Milligan that in the 1950s and 60s with the best thing written on his tombstone, whatever cemetery is buried in. You had them put there. I told you I was ill. I like that. But more seriously,

I think what you want to do is to create ripples on the pond. Yes. As you lift up, especially a young adult, which is kind of my focus, they will grow up to be splendid, and they, in turn, will raise a healthy family and help other people and yet more ripples out on the pond. Pretty soon is a very big pond, and what Maimonides says is, that is where you find eternal life, because all of us have a beginning, a middle and an end, eventually we die. I have no idea what happens after that. But if you put into the life force and put yourself out and volunteer and so forth, there are many advantages that you have for your own life.

I miss how I met my wife, for example. You meet wonderful people. But in addition, the life where you live through whom you lifted up and then whom they lifted up and whom they lifted up, it is ripples on a pond. and the amazing thing is, is very real. It's as real as the one with the beginning and middle and an end, but it's better because it never ends. Yes, absolutely.

The old saying of the footprints that you leave behind in the sand, and then, of course, there's always the one that the major waves by the time they get to the beach always started with a ripple effect that started in the middle of the ocean. So small things like that can grow into large, large things and leave tremendous effects. Yeah, you know, the thing about the butterfly beats its wings. Yeah, there are just so many of those sayings, and they all lead to one thing.

The more you do, the more you help others, those things are the ones that keep growing and growing because the ripple effect started and then it winds up helping so many. Yeah, there is a, there are only two classes that I feel qualified to teach to the teenage foster kids at our 15 programs, academies, across the country, videography, because that I know. But the other one is called random acts of kindness and pay it forward. What I do is I say, okay, let me ask you a question. And I'm teaching it normally to 10th graders in a group of somewhere between 30 and 60,

depending on whether it's one cohort or two cohorts, depends on the site. And I say, okay, you're walking along the sidewalk and there's an old lady lying face down fast asleep in rags. Do you, A, stop and put a dollar under her arm, or B, do you wake her up and give her a dollar? Or C, do you not give her a dollar and just walk straight on by and don't even look at her? Then I say, why do people make one choice or the other choice leads to a conversation about the golden rule that's in 170 world religions and it's the sense of fairness, empathy, balance in life. You know, the reason that I invented everyone deserves a roof, edar.org,

is I came out of a restaurant and there was a homeless guy who kind of accosted me and I gave him five dollars and sort of basically ran off to my car. And I was then so angry with myself thinking, you know, got everything, he doesn't even have decent clothes, why am I scared of him? What kind of nonsense is that? So one of my life lessons in the book, but also something I've done in my life is, if you're scared, lean into it. If it won't kill you, it will kill you or might kill you, don't do it. But if it isn't going to kill you, just do it. It's the Nike thing. If you just sit in the middle of an envelope, you know, in the dark, you'll never amount to anything. But if you have a stick or a pencil, poke with it, and sure, occasionally you'll go through the envelope with the

point of the pencil, but then you can say, oh, I guess I will never be a concert pianist, and you then have the choice, especially as a young adult, and this is one of the values of going to college, you can pivot, and you can say, all right, well, so what else interests me? Let me do that. What is my plan A? What is my plan B? What do I have to study to pursue both of them in parallel. So in this class, we talk about the golden rule. And then I say, who can tell me what is the second law of thermodynamics? And usually in a class of 30, maybe three have ever heard of it. And I make them tell us. And they say, well, it's entropy. It's in any closed system. And I say, stop. What is a closed system? They usually say things like the engine in your car. And I say,

yep, that's absolutely a closed system. If you don't oil it, it won't turn over. And I say, but what about a family? Can that be a closed system? They say, yeah, you have to nurture your family or you won't have one. And I say, what about a planet? And they say, absolutely, if we don't take care of the planet, you know, it'll be 140 degrees in the shade. And the level of migration will climb over any height of wall. So we need to worry about those things. And then I say, well, you want to come tomorrow, because something shocking is going to happen to every one of you. Oh, yeah. I say there's a donor in Dallas called Mort, and he's donated money,

and every single one of you is going to receive $200. And they say, seriously, we're going to get $200, and I say, no, you can't keep it, but you have the honor of writing a 300-word essay to whom or to what you want it to go. These essays are, I can't tell you how wonderful they are. My name is Jose. I'm adding $10 of my own because that makes $210, which is three times 70. And it's $70 down at the shelter for dogs and cats for them not to euthanize one animal. And I'm going to save three dogs because the last time I was down there, I looked into the eyes of a puppy that had been very badly beaten.

And I saw my own eyes because I was very badly beaten as well. well, love Jose. Or how about this one? My mom did some very bad things and now she's in prison for another two years, seven months and three days. They always know exactly how much longer. And I know she hates the shampoo. So I'm putting the money in her prison account so that she can buy better toiletries because I love her. She's my mom. We actually do it. And the kids are in my eyes, they are a foot taller. What we're doing, we're giving them agency. We're giving them control of something, then we make them go back. We all go back. I'm the homeless guy. Did he buy the shoes? Or did he buy a big bottle of brandy? You know, philanthropy's complex, sometimes it doesn't

work. That's the kind of lesson that is in the book. Also teaching that failure is not awful. Learn from failure. It is a necessary part of success. You can't raise money in Silicon Valley from venture capitalists, unless you can coherently and truthfully answer the question. Tell me about when you failed and what did you learn from it? Right. Absolutely. It's amazing. I just had this conversation about failure with a person just yesterday. We were discussing it and I said, really, there is no failure. As long as you keep going, you didn't fail. It just didn't work the way you planned it. What you did is you learn knowledge so that way you can keep going, even. evolving by not making the same mistakes and hopefully get where you want to be.

Exactly right. Let me also mention that there's this amazing then diagram between teenagers in foster care and music, both the appreciation of music and the making and writing of music and lyrics. I couldn't work out why such a high proportion of the kids, you know, ninth through 12th grade, are so into their music, like beyond any other group of kids I've ever, met. And the answer is, because it's portable. Whether you wrote it or somebody else wrote it, you can take it with you. And to be a foster kid is to be moved around like a cardboard box.

And it's demeaning and it's disgusting. And usually the social worker says, here's a glad bag, put your stuff in it. I'll pick you up at 8 a.m. and you're moving to a new placement. Why do I have to go to a new placement. Well, because we need the bed here and we've got one for you. But where is it? Well, it's quite a ways away. It's 50 miles. Do I have to change schools? Yes. It's a discombobulating life to be in foster care. That's where music overlaps with what we do. Most moving moments ever, bar none in my life, have happened because of music in the academies. So, for example, we had a talent show, a little bit ago at one of our university programs, and they were sort of 10th and 11th graders,

and they're singing a song, or they're doing spoken word, some thing they've written, or they're reading a poem, or two of them are doing like a improv ballet kind of a thing. And down comes Catalina. We're in the Northwest Auditorium, which is raked, bleacher seats,

seats, I don't know, 300, and there were probably 200 adults sitting there watching. And one by one, the kids are doing their thing. And then down comes Catalina, and up comes the playback. And she's like a deer in the headlights. She's scared, and she cannot get the first note out. And I can see, Karina, the director of the academy, is getting up. She's going to go down and sort of walk her off. And then an amazing thing happened.

The grown-ups had nothing to do with. In her cohort is a kid who's also, I suppose, 15, or was 15, and he's the size of a linebacker. I mean, he's a huge kid. We'll go far in football. And he lumberes down there on the stage, and he plants himself with his back to the audience, and we can no longer see Catalina. And there's whispering. And then two girls from the same cohort.

They go down, and then there's four of them. Then there's eight. Then there's 12. and then there's 15 and then there's 20. And all of a sudden, the entire cohort of 30 kids are in a kind of scrum. We have no idea what they're saying to each other, whisper, whisper, and we can't see Catalina. And then a hand on the outside, which means turn on the playback. Thank God the playback engineer had the presence of mind to start it from the beginning.

Up comes the music and out of the middle of this scrum, completely invisible. comes this little voice of Catalina, and the more she sings, well, by the end of the song, she sounds like Beyonce, and she's belting it out. The audience, I can't tell you, the audience, couple of hundred people, everyone stood up. There were people crying and cheering, and it was just extraordinary. And the kids were like, they didn't know what to do. So they put their arms around each other and they came off the stage as one group. And I thought this is one meaning of what First Star does. And if you are unfortunate enough to have been born without a functional family, despair not because in First Star we will help you bond to a level of fierce loyalty that is

absolutely as fierce as any sibling by birth. Our kids, when they become alumni, they remain through the alumni program. And also, when it's not through the alumni program, they love each other. And I think one of the things I've learned from first start, and it's in the book, is you have to have unconditional love in your life. You've got to be appreciated for who you are. And I don't think you can move forward with any ease without. that. So that's another thing the book is about. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, this has just been great,

great conversation, great information. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and tell the story of what you're doing. Tony, thank you very much. You're the best. I appreciate it. Thanks again. Thanks for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the show. This has been a Tony Mantor production. For more information, contact media at plateaumusic.com. com.