‘Morrie’ Writer Mitch Albom On Second Chances

This week on Shortwave, the internet is obsessed with inflammation. And yeah, it is true. Inflammation is at the heart of nearly every disease in the body. But it's also the body's natural response to danger. So who really needs to be worried about it?

Find out on Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Today we begin our end-of-year retrospective, featuring some of our favorite interviews of 2025. My guest today is Mitch Album.

It was 30 years ago that he wrote Tuesdays with Maury, a tender, true story about the lessons he learned from his old college professor, Maury Schwartz, who was dying of ALS. The book became one of the best-selling memoirs of all time, with its simple but profound reflections on living. And that experience set Album on a path he's walked ever since, writing stories about love, loss, and the search for meaning in the face of mortality. His latest novel, Twice, starts with the question most of us have probably asked ourselves What if you had the power to redo any moment of your life? In the book, a man named Alfie is born with that gift to go back and relive any moment he chooses.

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