What One Father’s Story Teaches Us About Courage and Humanity | Robert J. Wolf | 170

What if the key to fighting hate wasn’t politics or arguments online, but one courageous story that makes you feel what’s at stake?

In this powerful episode, Amanda is joined by guest, Dr. Robert J. Wolf, retired radiologist and author of Not a Real Enemy: The True Story of a Hungarian Jewish Man’s Fight for Freedom. Robert shares his father’s miraculous survival as a Jewish man in Nazi and Communist-controlled Hungary, his family’s multiple escapes, and how those 20 “impossible” miracles eventually led to a new life and medical career in America.

Amanda and Robert explore how his decades in medicine, a near-fatal health scare, and the discovery of his parents’ manuscript shifted his own mindset about purpose, time, and what really matters. Through stories of resilience, integrity, and redemption, Robert shows why antisemitism isn’t just “history", it’s a present danger that affects everyone, and why indifference is never neutral. This conversation is for anyone who wants to understand history on a human level, feel inspired to use their voice, and remember that one story can change how we see the world.

💡 In this episode, listeners will discover:

 ✡️ How Robert’s parents survived the Holocaust and Hungarian Revolution and rebuilt life in the U.S.
 🩺 Why ninth grade and a role model father led him into a 35+ year career in medicine
 ⏳ How a sudden heart condition forced him to ask, “Do I want to die at a desk or truly live?”
 📖 The unbelievable way he found his father’s autobiography and turned it into an award-winning book
 🧠 Why indifference is more dangerous than disagreement and how prejudice shows up in subtle ways
 🕯️ How teaching Holocaust history and sharing his father’s story became his way of fighting antisemitism
 🧱 The core messages of the book: hope, integrity, resilience, and redemption in the face of hate

⏰ Timeline Summary:

[1:03] “I’m just a guy”: who Robert is at his core, his love for sports, food, history, and his mission to fight antisemitism
[2:25] Growing up in Detroit as the child of Holocaust survivors and one of only a few Jewish kids at school
[5:09] The ninth-grade moment that sparked his desire to go into medicine 
[7:58] A life-threatening heart condition, being “on the wrong end of the needle,” and rethinking time as the only true commodity
[10:29] Discovering his parents’ manuscript and how he began turning his father’s autobiography into a biography between radiology cases
[12:57] Agents, rejections, and the eventual “bottom of the ninth” acceptance from a Holocaust specialty publisher in Amsterdam
[20:24] Using the book to educate about antisemitism
[22:47] Key themes: hope, determination, fear, resilience, redemption and why kids today are afraid to send their children to school
[24:02] The “20 miracles,” how readers respond to the book, and why some say it should be a movie
[28:47] Why nobody who knew him years ago would have predicted he’d write a Holocaust book and why it was “better late than never”

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To Connect with Robert: 

📖 Not a Real Enemy: The True Story of a Hungarian Jewish Man’s Fight for Freedom
🌐 robertjwolfmd.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 0:35 Who Is Robert Wolfe
• 2:25 Growing Up As A Child Of Survivors
• 5:12 Choosing Medicine And Radiology
• 7:20 Burnout, Illness, And Rethinking Time
• 10:36 Discovering His Father’s Manuscript
• 13:00 Shaping The Book With A Co‑Author
• 15:08 Publishing Breakthrough And Mission
• 17:20 Antisemitism, Memory, And Public Debate
• 20:24 Why The Story Had To Be Told
• 22:20 Lessons, Resilience, And Redemption
• 24:04 Future Books And Broader Life Lessons
• 26:12 Values, Role Models, And Tolerance
• 28:28 Rapid‑Fire Word And Final Five
• 36:10 Closing Gratitude And Calls To Connect
• 38:20 Host Sign‑Off And Takeaways

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Mandarins and Mindset Podcast. Here you'll find both monologues and interviews of entrepreneurists, coachists, healerists, and a variety of other people. We're your host Amanda Russo will discuss her own mindset and perspective, and her death mindset and perspective on the world around us. Mandars and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.

SPEAKER_03: 0:29

Welcome to Mandarin's Mindset, where we explore the power of shifting your mindset to shift your life. I'm your host, Amanda Risa, and I am here today with Robert Wolfe. And Robert spent 35 years in radiology and is the author of Not a Real Enemy, a biography of his father's survival as a Jewish man in Hungary under Nazi and Communist War. Thanks for joining me.

SPEAKER_01: 0:55

Thanks for having me, Amanda. Much appreciated. Very honored.

SPEAKER_03: 0:58

So who would you say Robert is at the core?

SPEAKER_01: 1:03

Well, I'm just a guy. I'm just a guy. I practiced radiology for many years, 35 years. I've lived half my life in New England, half my life in Michigan, and the last five or six years in Florida. I retired from radiology after 35 years. Also lucky enough to go to medical school, University of Michigan, and Tufts for undergrad in your neighborhood, Massachusetts. I miss the area, I miss the people. But besides fighting anti-Semitism with the book Not a Real Enemy, I like all kinds of things. Sports and music. And I'm a FODI, and I love golf and fitness, history, travel, education, investing. I like talking about even the old religion, never hurt anybody. So I try not to get too deep, but the older you get, the more you think, and the more think about how things are right and wrong. And you realize the difference. And you also realize how time is short and it's our only commodity in the end. But uh I'm trying to spend my time here doing the right thing and doing my little battle, and that's uh fighting hate anti-Semitism. So right now that's my vector. But I love meeting new people. That's part of it. People like you, other hosts, people at book talks, book presentations, uh, while educating and try to get people to buy into uh what do we have to do to stop all this violence and nonsense and hatred and anti-Semitism.

SPEAKER_03: 2:18

Now, can you take us down memory lane a little bit? Tell us about your upbringing childhood dynamic.

SPEAKER_01: 2:25

I was born in Detroit. Both my parents were survivors of the Holocaust in Hungary and the Hungarian Revolution. They came to the United States in 56 and 57, ended up in New York to Providence, to Boston of all places. My dad redid his OBGYN residency at the Meth Israel in Boston, which is amazing because I couldn't get into any Harvard affiliate in any specialty that now I don't maybe even back then, but uh yeah, I ended up redoing his OBGYN residency in the 50s, into the 60s, and then he came to Detroit in 1962, where I was born, and then raised in a small town called Mount Clemens, about 12 miles away. It was a great place to live. Grew up as a kid. I was bar mitzvah there. I was part of an Orthodox synagogue, and I was one of the last two bar mitzvahs in there. They tore it down and went up an assisted living and built a new synagogue in 75. It's still up there, but I was one of three Jewish kids in my high school. Our high school was about 40% uh African American. But I never felt racism, never felt anti-Semitism. Keep picking on each other. There was a lot of that. Usually the younger kids, the smaller kids would get picked on, but it was about being not known or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But by the time we graduated, there was a lot of respect between sports and intellectual property and the fact that just being nice people, just understanding each other. And we played a lot of sports and we did all that, and there was a lot of trash talk and BS. But we left it on the field. You know, we didn't protest on campuses and things. And whatever's happening now on campuses, thank God it didn't happen when I was going through college and med school, because education is a privilege. So medicine's been my life. I've been married and stepkids, step-grandkids. Like to keep my mind, I like to engage with other people. I think that's a part of what I do. It's what my parents used to do as well. Not just affiliate with your own type of people. And and and that's a bit key too. Besides educating about what's happened in the past and how to not repeat it, it's nice to like with a dog. I know you're an animal lover, so I have a beautiful Hungarian vigil. Her name was Tinda, and she was my best friend. She was like my kid sister, and I used to take her cruising and we used to play football with her great dog. So I love animals. And I've had cats in the household, and I think you're a cat lover. The difference between us and killers as a radiologist, as a doctor, our job is to preserve life. And we appreciate the beauty of the cell, the beauty of the anatomy and the other body. The hater, chillers, you know, they don't think twice about chopping somebody's head off or killing cats or whatever the case. No, October 7th, and even 60, 80, 100 years ago. 2000 years ago, even.

SPEAKER_03: 5:09

Now, you mentioned you were all about medicine. So did you know pretty early on that you wanted to go to school for ludiology?

SPEAKER_01: 5:18

Great question. Yeah, ninth grade. I wasn't great about science in junior high, but I don't think it was taught quite the way it should have been. But right in ninth grade, when I'm when we came to the physiology and when we learned about the different parts of the human and seeing how my dad was as an OBGYN, how respected he was, how much he loved his work. Definitely a hero of mine and a role model. So I've noticed about ninth grade that I wanted to go into medicine. I didn't want to do OBGYN. I wasn't ever crazy about that specialty. My dad loved 10,000 babies in the Detroit area, by the way, so a form of redemption. And you'd never know after everything he went through, no sign of PTSD, just jovial and jolly. And I love to go on rounds with them. Sometimes we can bring the dog. And I just admired him. And then, you know, later on, I volunteered in the physical therapy department and had to work as a janitor for a summer and then custodian, I guess we recall. And nurses A and volunteer and all this in the emergency room. And then I learned to really love it. And so I guess it was the only thing for me, at least back then.

SPEAKER_03: 6:15

I mean, you spent 35 years doing it. So you must have enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01: 6:20

44. Well, there's burnout. I mean, I was part-time, I retired just at the end of last year. I had an unfortunate illness last year, which caused me to think hard about do I really do I want to die at a desk or do I want to try to live some kind of a retirement life? So, and 35 years is a long time in. But the last 20 or so it's been part-time. So that's 44 when you conclude four years of college, four years of medical school, and a year of internship. The radiology, which I did at Brown University, and I was at Yale to do neuroradiology. And they wanted me to stay, and I'm 30 years old now. I'm like, I've been indentured servant long enough. It's time to go out and make a living. But it was quite flattering that they asked me to stay out and do uh neurointerventional fellowship, which is a highly intense subspecialty. You actually give people strokes and and put people in and kill people, but try to save them. These are the life-threatening illnesses in the brain and in the spinal cord. And it just wasn't for me, that's a mistake. But 30 years old, they've been married, and it's time to move on and try to make a living. But for the most part, yeah, I liked it. Um, calling weekends was always tough. Sitting in a dark room alone on a Saturday or a Sunday all day or at home with cases, but you got used to it. And if I have to do it all over again, I guess I kind of do the same. Although I would have considered business school, I suppose. A lot of doctors go to business school now because medicine, unfortunately, is not just a science anymore, it's a business. It's got so many facets to it, insurances and all kinds of things that make it more complicated.

SPEAKER_03: 7:45

Yeah, no, that makes sense. No, that's a deep question that you asked yourself. Do I want to die at a desk or do I want to enjoy retirement?

SPEAKER_01: 7:58

And we have no control. Like it's not time our only commodity. I mean, we talk about stocks and bonds and real estate and crypto, but in the end, time is our only commodity. So you try to use it wisely. This is my way of giving back to the community, which I highly recommend. It's very gratifying and it's the right thing to do. Spend more time with your family, write a book, read a book, travel more. If you don't like your job, go part-time if you can. Change rectors, do something different. And for anybody, you know, make your own decision, and we're all different. We all have our own experiences, of course. But read time is desirable. I advise anyone to I know all the lot of people work hard, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's part of what made our country great. But take time off and smell the roses and just enjoy your coffee, buy your neighbor a cup of coffee, anything, little thing, actual kindness like that can make a difference to somebody's life.

SPEAKER_03: 8:48

No, I completely agree. But that's a deep question that came to you. Is what how did that come to you?

SPEAKER_01: 8:56

Well, when you almost when I almost died last year, truthfully, I had congestive heart failure in the atrial fibrillation, and we still don't know what caused it. And we caught chicken or the egg. I'm out of that now, saying, God, you never know. I mean, I've been saying I'm on the I'm on the wrong end of the needle. And uh, it was a profound experience for me that being on the wrong end of the needle and having to suffer and being scared about your life had a very profound effect on me. So that's why I decided to slow it up. I mean, maybe I'll go back to it. And I'm still working hard with this book thing. And that was my other profound change of life, was when I discovered my dad's autobiography, turned it to a biography, and realized everything that he had gone through. But there's no way my dad or mom in Hungary had what I had last year, they wouldn't have survived with all the medications we have now and the procedures we have. He actually, my dad had rheumatic fever as a kid, and there were no antibiotics back then in the 20s. So we ended up with microstenosis, uh narrowing one of his valves in his heart. And uh, he needed two surgeries for that, plus open heart surgery. So, in addition to his four escapes and 20 miracles and his story before he even came to the United States, my dad underwent two open art surgeries and survived too. So uh things it's it's quite profound when you you know, my dad had retired after all of that, too. I mean, open art surgery is a big thing. He went back to work after the first one, but after the second one, it was time for them and to say, you know, you try to slow it down and do some travel and snowbirding, as they say, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03: 10:20

Well, that makes a lot of sense. No, you mentioned when you discovered your father's autobiography. How did you discover it?

SPEAKER_01: 10:29

Great question. My mom and dad, so in the 70s, when they finally got established, they wanted to work in Boston. They actually wanted to stay in the Boston area, but there were no jobs in the 60s. So they came to Michigan in 62, and then it slow took a long time for them to be friends. But in the 70s, my mom and dad collaborated and wrote his autobiography. They wrote the stories as though they had happened the previous day, you know, clean and crisp, and they could smell the smells, you could taste the food, the way the table was set, you could feel the fear, the cold, all of that. And so they wrote the stories as though they happened the previous day. So paper and pencil to typewriter to computer, and then flash forward, my dad died in 1997, unfortunately. My mom in 2016, and then a friend of a historian, friend of the family in Michigan, handed me the disc and said, You really need to read this sometime. And I didn't think much of it at the time, plus I was busy taking care of my mom's affairs. Then I retired for a year, and now we're back now. We're in 2018, and a friend of mine in Michigan said, Can we give you some help? Can you read x-rays and ultrasound from home part-time? And so, you know, never burning your bridges, and so it was a nice invitation. I wasn't doing it for the money, and you know, well, spending money doesn't hurt. I worked and it brought me to the desk. It actually brought me to my dad's story between cases on the left screen. We have two screens as radiologists. Left screen is the patient cue, right screen are the images between cases. The left screen was my dad's autobiography, and I dictated it into a biography. And that took about a year. We were almost going to self-publish, and I was clearing agents and publishers and this and that. It didn't, it failed. But then I thought, let's get a couple of interaters. And they happened to be good authors, book coaches, and one of them ended up being my co-author, Janice Harper. So she took a year and change and did the research and the homework, and she really turned my dad's biography into something special. Because the way I had it was just A to B to C, you know, from dad was born here, he did this, and she changed it around, you know, uh in and out of order stories, parallel and converging stories, letters to and from home conversations really helped me turn it into a nice novel. And if it weren't for her and the rest of the team that has helped me with social media and YouTube channel and website and just about everything else technologically, it's all about the team. I wouldn't be here talking to you if it weren't. And the book wouldn't be as successful as it was if it weren't for that team.

SPEAKER_03: 12:47

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 12:48

Now yeah, six-year projects, 2018, I'd say, and oh, nine years now, right? So you know the book's been out a while, but I didn't know you uh when it came out.

SPEAKER_03: 12:57

Now you mentioned you thought about self-publishing, then it didn't awoke and you decided not to.

SPEAKER_01: 13:02

In fact, that's a great question. So when we when Janice and I were done with the book and we queried, she helped me vet out the proper agents and publishers. So we had a short list of about 12 or 15. Most of them we didn't hear from, which is often the case. But the last one, Amsterdam Publishers, Bottom of the Night, Shoot Spring Catch, she took it and she took the project, she took the book on. So we were lucky that way. And now it's Liz Beth, she's in Amsterdam. Holocaust-related stories is all she does. Ours is there's and they're all unique in their way: music, dancing, or food, or work, or for slavery camps, different countries that were affected by the war. And in our case, multiple escapes. Dad was a four-time escape artist, plus she covers common story, too, and two wars. So it's very unique. And like I said, 20 miracles in the story. Anybody that reads this book says, well, a lot of people say it should be a movie because it's so miraculous. And never just beyond the escapes, within a day when the publishing company got a hold of the book. The next day she was on the phone with me, and the next day we were signing a contract. It's amazing how that works. The lesson there is never give up because in the end. And I'm not giving up now because we're trying to fight anti-Semitism. It's still out there, but I'm trying to find ways in which people can help me and you have stopped the violence in the streets in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe. On the college campuses, let's talk about this. You and I have nothing to do with Gaza. My dad certainly had nothing to do with Gaza, and he was just abused because he was Jewish, and his parents were killed because they were Jewish, and six million other Jews, and not to mention disabled and LGBTQ. Well then when I see in the United States, African Americans and LGBTQ talking against Jews, of like, you guys gotta realize that if you're gonna allow Hitler and the and that fascist regime, they don't understand that you were next. And even Muslims, the same thing. If you're part of the supreme white race, you'd be on the list too. It's just, I guess Jews were number one on the list. And now it's been sparked up, unfortunately, by October 7th, even though anti-Semitism's been around for a long time. It goes back to the Old Testament, I mean, Exodus, truthfully. But even Egypt gets along with Israel now and many other Arabic countries. So it's those rogue countries that are to try to disrupt a nice order that could be in the Mideast and elsewhere. I mean, Ukraine. Hopefully peace soon with it with all of that. How much can you fight? How many bodies need to go? How many people gotta die before you're not a martyr when you're using other bodies and other people's children? That's another way they had drones flying drones essentially with people on them, and what a disaster that was. And some of these young kids deny 911. They 9-11 didn't exist, and as some deny the Holocaust, and we they're American targets. Jewish people died, Christians, Asians, African Americans, Muslims, not to mention the collateral damage, the costs, the inconvenience. We know what security now, everything. What it's like to fly in a plane, it's brutal. Thank you very little. But it's part of unfortunately part of our growth and part of our awakening, that's the right word.

SPEAKER_03: 16:01

Yeah. What made you decide to write the book?

SPEAKER_01: 16:07

Well, when I first read the book, I probably read the manuscript about 30 years ago on editing. And didn't think much of it. I remember his first escape, his first at four. But I don't remember a lot of he would remind us of four slaver camps, and whenever we had a family fight, he would say, You Americans are so spoiled, and this and that. And so he would use that and he would describe what happened to him. But I I didn't really know much about what happened the first half. I was like, but when I did read this story, I thought it's just too amazing. This needs to be shared with the world. It doesn't need to be on a disc or sitting on my computer. This needs to be shared with the world. And my motivation was right there. It was clear that my parents wrote this as though they knew I would do this. And don't you hate it when your parents are right? That's that's they just knew, and also what they knew that anti-Semitism would be a recurring theme again and again. And it's just it was so true. So the message was clear from page one, and it was easy motivation. I just couldn't let it sit on a disc.

SPEAKER_03: 17:04

What made you decide to woke with the publisher?

SPEAKER_01: 17:09

You want to try to make it like a movie in a way. You want to enhance the reader. If you just lay out facts and details, nobody's going to be interested in that. It's just another family story. But if you bring the characters alive, if you make the book such that the reader not only empathizes with the main character, but also puts themselves in their place. That's what we tried to do. That's what Janice really helped me do. Amazing job. The conversations and just a lot of homework, a lot of time. Photographs and research and calling historians and recruiting historian professors to write testimonies and read the book and all of that. So I just the whole project. You sometimes don't think about it. And you have good days and bad days too, by the way. You know, you're gonna have like when I found out what happened to my dad's grandparents when how they perished at Auschwitz, I had to walk away from the project for like a week or more. I just had I had to stop and think. These are my 50-year-old grandparents that I never met. And you don't think twice about it. Because I did get to meet my other grandparents once or twice. They lived all over the world, all over Europe, so it wasn't like every day. And I know a lot of families like to be around the kids and the grandkids nowadays, and it should be like that. But because of the war, because of my mom's parents got divorced too to help save the family name. So they split up and no hard feelings, I don't think. But her mom ended up in Israel with her stepdad. There's stories about them helping my parents get out of Hungary. And then my mom's father ended up in London and the United States before that, even, and ultimately California. So he got remarried too. That would be part two of the book, is what happened to them once they got to the United States and the struggles then. But it'd be a shorter book, and it would still seem like a cakewalk compared to the first half of their lives for sure.

SPEAKER_03: 18:52

That makes sense, though, about making it come alive more as opposed to just being another family story.

SPEAKER_01: 18:58

I'm glad we did it that way. And it took a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of effort, a lot of editing, co-editing, beta readers, all kinds of details that you wouldn't even think would be. And this is just one book. It's not like I wonder about you know Stephen King and Mitch Album and some of these prolific writers. They write six, five, five, six, twenty books. I don't know how they do that. It's one is hard enough. But I guess maybe once you get on that train and you get used to it, you're brilliant enough, you have ideas. And I heard some of these professional authors, you know, have little teams of editors and writers that help them write these books too. I don't want to speculate. But yeah, it's a tough business. And it's challenging, and it's a good thing for people to challenge themselves and not just sit on their laurels. You're athletic, I think you like to work out if I'm right. It's nice you get in the weight room and you try to do that extra five, ten minutes, you try to do that extra 10, 20 pounds, and you want to that extra half a mile walking or running or whatever it is to do. And that's kind of what writing's about. It's not as physical, but mentally and spiritually, you want to make things better. I I didn't want this project to be some half-ass crappy thing that I put out. I want it to be as good as it could be. So from the book covered to the testimonials to the way we market while getting the message across.

SPEAKER_03: 20:12

No, that makes sense. Now, how do you think the book could help people understand anti-Semitism?

SPEAKER_01: 20:24

Well, I'm just trying to educate about the perils of it all. So those that are rooting, I'm not saying for Gaza, I'm I want them to work it out in a drill course. I mean, whatever happened, it's awful. People want to deserve to have their heads chopped off. Whatever happened 60, 80, 100 years ago is going on now, and tomorrow, and during 9-1-1, it's that thing. The sad thing is how people find different ways to maim each other, to kill, to torture each other, to persecute each other. And that's the sad thing. Starvation is a common starvation is a common theme. My dad starved, and as you know, many people died of starvation or were found or rescued at the end of the war, that were starving to death. And pestilence is a big thing too. These poor people that are still prisoners or that are still trapped. Who knows what their health is? Poor dentition. They're dental, no dental work. God forbid you get a pebicitis or something. Malnutrition, like if you get pneumonia, they don't take you to the hospital, you're not getting antibiotics. Back then, they didn't even have that stuff. And my dad is a forced laborer, he was defenseless. Uh, Jews were considered too inferior to fight in the military, so they were part in the paramilitary, they were slave laborers. But yet they got shot at by Russian planes as they went by. The war was still going on, World War II. Different ways to torture, different ways to maim, different ways to punish each other. It's got to go away. And I want to educate in the classroom. You know, I've done a hundred, this is my 112th podcast. I've done 25 TP and radio interviews, 38 book presentations, and I've done, included in that is two two-day book signings at the Holocaust Museum in DC. And we sold about 200 books in those four days. And it was great. It's not about the number of books you sell, but it's about talking with the families and the kids and educating them. Truthfully, I could do that every day if they let me, but you know, every other authors have to take their turn. I love the interested families and tourists and meeting these people from all over the world, even Australia and Canada and Europe, who are interested in the subject and enough to discuss it and say, you know, what can we do that to make things better? So a little corner of it is educating and trying to tell people about the perils of what's going on, what happened then, and how it could happen to any one of us, too. And people need to realize that what happened to my dad could happen to anybody. He can't take anything for granted.

SPEAKER_03: 22:39

No, that is so true. What would you say are some of the most important messages in the book?

SPEAKER_01: 22:47

Well, in our book presentations, and if you have connections, including in Massachusetts, I'd love to do a book presentation or two up there. Um they are building a new Boston Holocaust museum in Boston, as we that would be great. And I'm in talks with the Oyster China and Yale, one of my alma maters. So I'm underrepresented in the weekland, considering I have my life there. But the messages are clear. My dad had integrity for one thing. We talk about hope, we talk about determination, we talk about fear, we talk about resilience, uh, and ultimately redemption with my dad being a successful doctor and delivering babies. There's all of that. And then, of course, the messages of why prejudice is wrong, why racism is wrong. Uh, and we regurgitated too much. You circle back to this point where, and I see this all the time, like ladies yelling in New York, you know, why do I have to worry about my kids? Why do I have to worry about my kids going to school every day? Why do I have to fear for my kids? And it's not just terrorists or people that hate the Jews, it's also these crazy people that are doing shootings at schools. And you know what I'm talking about. And that's one of the reasons I never have my own kids, I suppose. But that's that's the thing about it. I mean, it's just just realizing the difference between right and wrong.

SPEAKER_03: 23:57

Wow. So it's it seems like there's a lot of lessons as a whole in this book.

SPEAKER_01: 24:02

A lot of lessons. The 20 miracles alone. Like if you don't believe in God or some type of God, you might after reading this book, because nobody gets this lucky all the time. You know, they can't roll the dice that many times in a row and win. Well, maybe in crap she can't. Yeah, it's like roulette, black or red, just so many. And my dad got double crushed too. But yeah, it changed my life. I mean, and people that have read it, and that makes my day. When people read the book and say, boy, has that changed my outlook? Especially kids that I knew uh in high school that were friends of mine, or I thought they were, and said that they were covertly anti-Semitic, and then they said, and they're apologizing in the after the fact that I had no idea you were. You know, you should hear the names we used to call each other, but like I said, we left it on the football field. We have a lot of bad names for each other. It wasn't like we're protesting or coming at each other with guns and knives, but we left it on the turf, on the basketball court. And that's the difference between having a friend and an enemy, really. Not everybody's gonna be your friends. You have a lot of colleagues and associates and people that you care about, but in the end, as you get older, you know, you're gonna screen out more and more people and maybe have less friends. I guess I'm probably do the opposite. I mean, I consider you a friend now since you invited me, you know me a little bit better, and vice versa. And then we're just getting a point across. And I hope you have a following that that is interested in the book for one. And if we're lucky enough to get a book conversation or a presentation up in your area that people would be interested in pretending.

SPEAKER_03: 25:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 25:23

Happy to meet people, happy to sign books, happy to talk about this all. Uh although, you know, you get burnt out from this too. It's not like I said, I'm a happy guy. I tried it. It's you know, you get all this stuff on your shoulders, and it's you still try to keep a positive, uh positive zing to it.

SPEAKER_03: 25:38

I get that. I agree. Now, was this the first book that you've written?

SPEAKER_01: 25:43

Yeah, first. It might be the only, but I have a few others in mind. Part two of my dad's story, which should be, I have no idea what the title would be. The Team Irvine part two. I don't know. It'll be a shorter book, maybe 100 pages, 150. It brings up another point. This book's about 400 pages. And how do you put a guy's life into 400 pages? I mean, how do you do that? I just got the ISBN number. I've got this idea in my head. I've had it for years. The things they don't teach you in med school, that would be part autobiography, part humor, part autobiography. Teach the kids about pre-med and medical and residency, taxes, insurance, burnout, partnerships. You can go investing. You can go on and on. And those would be short chapters. You can be kind of a fun book to do it. I've got it all in my head. That's one of those. But I'm gonna be working so hard with this. And the fourth one would be how to invest in the bear market. I mean, I'm not an MBA, but I've been investing for 30 years and uh Red Barons and Investors Business Daily and Value Line. I watch C everyday. Believe me, I'm no more than 95% of Americans who are investing. That would be a nice little short paperback to like on a layman's way of how to invest in the bear market. Of all of those, by far, this book would be the most important. And those are just like fantasy books for me because I can't imagine spending the next six, 10, 15 years just doing this writing and editing and sending this and that and pitching and getting ghosted. That's the worst thing, getting ghosted. In this path, one a guy recently, John, great podcast host, who I got from another podcast host, uh, Kim from Michigan too, which is pretty cool. But he said he thought that the uh opposite of love is not hate, it's fear. And I'm like, okay, I agree with that, but to me, the opposite of love is apathy. The opposite of love is indifference. When you let things go uh wrong, then maybe it's a combination of things. You know, it's uh love versus poverty, love versus abuse. There are a lot of words that probably be opposite. And I'm trying to stay on the love side, and I don't want to be corny about it or romantic. I mean, I've been romantic back in the day. Maybe I've given that up too, but the point is that we still need to care about each other and respect each other, uh, religious or otherwise, different territories, different countries. Why don't we get along? And the sad thing too is that people follow the wrong people sometimes, like the Kanye and all that, BS and his buddy with the sex trafficking. Well, why don't people talk and follow MLK and Gandhi and Moses and Noah and Jesus? I'm not even Christian, and those are more my heroes. Why don't you know? And those people where their message got out to some, but they didn't get the complete message out. And a lot of them got murdered because the people hate that much that they're willing to kill people that are promoting peace. And that's so crazy. It uh it's so hard to it's so hard to wrap around that. I just don't get that, you know. It doesn't make sense to me.

SPEAKER_03: 28:30

I get what you mean. No, I'm just curious, but I tend to ask to anybody I speak to who has written a book. But prior to you finding your dad's autobiography, did you ever consider writing like a book in general?

SPEAKER_01: 28:47

Great question. If you knew me seven years ago, you'd say this guy would never do that. My mom gave me Holocaust burnout, and she had to write in college. A med school, you had to write art as a papers, and also as a resident and a fellow. It was a little way of brown nosing, I guess, but also was partly required. But you wanted attending to see you on different platform other than just clinical work. So we wrote then, but it was always under the auspices of a professor who would edit it and he would redo it. My name might be on the article, but never a book. So if you knew me as between the Holocaust and writing a book at all, you'd say this guy would never do this. You know, maybe I did it too late, maybe not. My mom with the Jewish guilt could say, you know, you couldn't with the Hungarian accent, forgive me, you couldn't do this, but you're still alive, which that's what you would probably say, but it's never too late to do the right thing. And hopefully, if you believe in heaven and mom and dad looking down, they'll say, Wow, that's so hard to believe. And hopefully they're happy with that. That I've try to share the message that they've been doing for years. And I want to talk about my parents, too. They're like me. They like to meet people, they did Hungarian gulag parties. They knew people from all over the world. They loved to travel, they engaged people, they love the Eastern Europeans, they loved the Greeks, they loved the Holocaust. Survivors, but uh they had African friends and Indian friends and South American friends, and just tremendous how they engaged with people. We definitely need more of that too to help us get along a little bit better. And Detroit was a good mixed melting pot for that, as is Boston, as is here in southern Florida. I love the mix here. I love a mix of people. Mexican, South American, Haitians, Jamaicans, Dominican Republic, people from all over that are it fascinates me. So as long as you're not trying to threaten me or kill me or tell me that I can't practice my religion, I'll give somebody the respect that they deserve. And you know, if you're if you're gonna be a friend. And another point is everybody's got a story, like somebody might be having a bad day. So before you judge somebody on a day where you know, you're not sure if you like them or not, or you don't have to like somebody, but just try to appreciate maybe you can tell by their behavior. They're crying, they're laughing excessively, they're angry, they're driving crazy, whatever the case might be. So we need to understand each other too. We all have bad things for sure.

SPEAKER_03: 31:00

That is so true. I think that's a great point. You might meet somebody and they might be off. But you know what? I think it's better late than never that you wrote the book. And I have faith that your your mom is thinking that. Better late than never.

SPEAKER_01: 31:13

I hope so. It's never too late to do the right thing. You know, with October 7th, maybe we'll say the opposite. I mean, sometimes it is too late, but in the end, as part of this vector change and as part of this improve your life if you can and make your life more fulfilling, it's never too late to do the right thing.

SPEAKER_03: 31:30

That I completely agree. Well, Robert, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01: 31:36

Well, thanks for having me on, Amanda. I appreciate you. The breathing goddess, Mandar's mindset. I love that. Um, I posted about our talk today, but I just do a little silly poem and that kind of thing. When you release it, I always uh post about it again with more cotton words. You seem like you've got a good handle on your mind and what you do.

SPEAKER_03: 31:58

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 31:58

I'm impressed because you're quite a bit younger than me. So uh and you know, but adulting is okay, you know, and uh it's good to adult, and we need more of that too. Please reach out if anybody's interested in podcasts, uh book presentation, Zoom, and anything just to doing what I'm doing here. Not a real enemy. The true story of ungarried Jewish man, spites for freedom, and it sure is. Website robert j wolfmd.com. I've got a nice YouTube channel. I've got somebody helping me buff that up and can reach me on socials. By the way, I reached you on socials, Amanda. So please feel free to reach back out. You got a great profile. LinkedIn, X Meta, Instagram, all those. Please share. And if you like the book, please feedback welcome, just a review. Anything helps. So any little thing can help fight anti-Semitism and create friends. And that's one of the best things, by the way, about doing this is meeting great people like you. And literally every day, whether it's in person or online at a book talk or by Zoom or a podcast, it's great. Meeting people that actually care, they give a you know bleed, they give a beep. So that's the best part of this project.

SPEAKER_03: 33:01

I get that. I get that completely. And I will link all of that info in the show notes for them to connect with you. Now, have you heard of a man named Jay Shetty?

SPEAKER_01: 33:12

No, but Shetty's kind of a common name. I came across in the medical world quite a bit.

SPEAKER_03: 33:18

He's got a podcast called On Purpose. He's uh written a book on the speaker, but he ends the podcast with two segments, and I've incorporated his two segments. He's an amusement person, and I just he was just ending segments and I give him credit.

SPEAKER_01: 33:34

But yeah, fire it up. Let's see what you got.

SPEAKER_03: 33:36

What is one word someone who was meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as?

SPEAKER_01: 33:43

Dedicated.

SPEAKER_03: 33:46

What is one word that someone who knows you extremely well would use to describe you as?

SPEAKER_01: 33:54

Loyal.

SPEAKER_03: 33:56

What is one word you'd use to describe yourself?

SPEAKER_01: 34:01

Moron. Oh my god. That's a tough one, let me think. In German? Is that the right word? I don't know. That's a bad word.

SPEAKER_03: 34:12

There's no right or wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 34:14

Oh, I know. And there's so many words in the that's I I can't think of it. It's hard to describe yourself in one or two words, but I I like the challenge.

SPEAKER_03: 34:22

One word that if someone didn't like you, agree with your mindset would use to describe you as a clown.

SPEAKER_01: 34:31

But probably worse. I've been called a clown recently, so that's why I thought it was hard to believe that somebody called me that, but they had no idea my purpose. Kind of weird, but probably worse than that. I a word that I don't want to say unless I know you a little bit better.

SPEAKER_03: 34:46

Okay. What is one word you're trying to embody right now?

SPEAKER_01: 34:52

Acceptance.

SPEAKER_03: 34:56

Second segment is the final five, and these can be answered in a sentence. What is the best advice you've heard or received?

SPEAKER_01: 35:07

You can learn something from every case. Now we're talking about radiology, but we're gonna expand that so you can learn something from every person, you can learn something from every professor, that kind of thing. No substitute for experience. It's a kind of and I say it all the time, no substitute for experience.

SPEAKER_03: 35:23

What and the worst advice you've heard or received?

SPEAKER_01: 35:28

There's been a lot, but it's usually about trying to make money, try to do things for money. Just say that. My dad used to say it's not bad advice, it's actually good advice. Don't do it for the money, he used to say. So anybody who's trying to tilt me towards doing radiology or whatever else for the money, it's that advice. I would say that to anybody, you know. I mean, we all want to make a living, we want to be comfortable, but do something because you like it too.

SPEAKER_03: 35:52

What is something that you used to value that you no longer value?

SPEAKER_01: 35:57

Indifference. I was probably a kid who didn't care. All I cared about was going through life and getting my job done and not caring about other things, and now I'm on the opposite side of that. Indifference is a problem for me.

SPEAKER_03: 36:12

If you could describe what you would want your legacy to be, as if someone was reading it, what would you want it to say?

SPEAKER_01: 36:21

That my dad's story is so compelling, intriguing, fascinating, relevant, that it actually changes my way or their way of thinking about other people and the issues in life that are important. I'm not saying all the issues just decide that if we don't have peace and tolerance and acceptance, then it's gonna be just a house of cards that everything else is gonna fall apart too. So that's something that when they read this, including myself, and accept and appreciate what we have in this country and the free world before it goes away.

SPEAKER_03: 37:03

If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01: 37:09

And I want to know why Thou shalt not chill. I mean, thou shalt not kill. Only God gets to decide when you or I die or anybody else. I don't think it's up to any other person. So that's my explanation for it. But there are so many important laws, of course, but thou shalt not chill would be the number the number one. Thou shalt not steal, that's the next one, but you know, and of course, honor the I'm the Lord your God, honor you shall have no other God before you. I mean, I'm just quoting the Ten Commandments, but if I had to pick, hey, obviously, thou shalt not chill.

SPEAKER_03: 37:45

Well, thank you so much for speaking with me, Robert. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01: 37:49

Thanks, Amanda. I appreciate you and thank you so much for your time. Pleasure meeting you. I'm honored you had me. Keep up the good work.

SPEAKER_03: 37:57

You as well. Thank you so much. And thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Me and Yours Mind.

SPEAKER_02: 38:10

In case no one told you today, I'm proud of you. I'm voting for you. And you got them. As always, if you enjoyed the show, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five star rating. Leave a review, and share it with anyone you think would benefit from that. And don't forget. You are only one nine step shift away from shifting your life. Thanks guys, until next time.