At the end of my show in Princeton, NJ last Friday, I took questions from the audience. The final question was from a Princeton undergraduate, who asked how to deal with the stress she and her fellow students are feeling in our current dystopia.

I shared some advice that my grandfather gave me.

Max Osterman, born in Latvia in 1890, was six months old when his family moved to Brooklyn.

In many ways his life was the embodiment of the American dream. He put himself through law school, became a sales executive for a company on Long Island, and, with his wife, Hannah, raised my mom and her sister on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Max was a man of few words, but these are the ones he lived by:

“Every day, take a walk, read a book, make a friend.”