Join Joel Waldman and his mom, Karmela, as they have a frank and moving conversation about Life & Death, inspired by Joel’s book Surviving the Survivor: A Brutally Honest Conversation About Life (& Death) with My Mom: A Holocaust Survivor, Therapist, & My Podcast Co-Host.
About the Book
Holocaust survivor and licensed therapist Karmela Waldman shares brutally honest advice about life and death—often deploying brutally sharp wit—with her son and podcast co-host, Joel Waldman.
Karmela Waldman is an eighty-something psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor. Her son, Joel Waldman, is a successful broadcast journalist. After a discontented Joel chooses to leave his network-news job, he gets a crazy idea for the next step in his career: What if he and his elderly mom did a podcast together?
The two embark on creating a show together and name it Surviving the Survivor. Things get off to a bumpy start as the lovingly dysfunctional mother-son duo struggle to figure out the art of podcasting on the fly—sometimes feuding, sometimes laughing, and finally mastering the format and watching Surviving the Survivor break out as a wildly popular true-crime hit.
Along the way, the two discover things about each other that they never knew. Joel is stunned to learn that Karmela survived World War II by hiding in a boys’ Catholic school. Karmela also sheds light on the emotional struggles she endured when Joel’s older brother, Rami, died of an incurable illness. She’s also struggling with the inevitable loss of her husband of sixty-three years, which she describes as the most difficult experience of her life.
Mastering podcasting is one thing; figuring out the meaning of life is a challenge of an entirely different order. In real time and “on air,” mother and son engage frankly and movingly with each other for the first time as adults, discussing child-rearing, aging, illness, death, and the secrets to enjoying life no matter how complicated it gets.
About the Author
Joel Waldman is the co-host of the hit true-crime podcast Surviving the Survivor and an Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist who worked most recently as a Washington, D.C.-based correspondent for Fox News, covering national politics from Capitol Hill. He has also worked as an investigative reporter for Fox 5 in New York City and for TV-news programs in West Palm Beach, Miami, and Tucson. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, Ileana, and his three children, Vida, Zizi, and Judah.
About His Mom
Karmela is best known as Joel’s mom (Joel wrote this). But, she’s so much more! A graduate of the University of Geneva, Karmela went on to get her masters in Social Work at Rutgers University. She’s both a licensed marriage therapist and Holocaust survivor. Hence, the podcast’s name, Surviving the Survivor.
As a 4.5-year-old girl growing up on the border of Yugoslavia and Hungary, she was separated from her parents as the Nazis invaded Europe. As there was an ominous knock on her front door, she ran on foot from her house and was hidden by a nun in an all-boys Catholic school until it was safe to re-emerge more than 8 months later. Karmela was reunited with her mother Vera, however, her father Latci wasn’t so lucky as he was led to the Auschwitz gas chamber.
Karmela dedicated her life to raising her two children, Arden and Joel. And, she’s now reaped the rewards basking in the glory of her 8 grandchildren (9 if you include Joel’s dog). Her only grandson came courtesy of her Joel back in 2019. Karmela was married to her true love’s kiss, Roy, for more than 60 years. She screamed at him at least one time a day for those 6 decades.