IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson · Higher Ground

Follow your Instincts with Henry Winkler

December 24, 2025·1 hr 3 min·6 clips

Henry Winkler shares how he read his first book at 31 due to dyslexia, yet became a bestselling author.

First, there is the Fonz. Michelle and Craig give the old character his moment, laughing about what that swagger meant when they were younger. Henry says praise like that from someone who watched him for years could almost send him home happy. The teasing helps. A Vineyard Vines shirt, the little whale, and Craig trying to explain it all loosen the room before things get more serious. Henry talks about listening. Reading is still hard, so he learns through his ear, and dyslexia, as he says it here, does not really leave. That makes acting a strange choice on paper, which the hosts catch right away. Scripts are the job, and the page has never been easy. Henry's answer is practical. He writes the lines again and again, reads the script again and again, marks it in yellow, and waits. By the eleventh show of a series, the work can start to feel physical, as if the words have finally moved inside him. Then the conversation turns back to the role that changed his life. The hosts are clear that it changed theirs too. Before that happened, Henry was still scraping forward. He had a master's degree in acting, got into one college out of twenty-eight, applied to Yale School of Drama, and remembers sitting in the bottom three percent academically. He was making one hundred seventy-two dollars a week in repertory, then trying to find work in New York. Commercials kept the engine running: supermarkets, Sanka coffee, American Airlines, and The Lords of Flatbush all sit in the story before California enters. The advice was simple. Stay in New York and be known there, or go to California and be known to the world. By the end, the room softens. They call him wise, mark his eightieth birthday, and sing from the classic birthday song into Stevie Wonder's version.

As heard by us

A warm, funny conversation that turns the Fonz story into a lesson in persistence.

Henry Winkler comes off as warm and easy to listen to, and the conversation settles into a pleasant, lightly funny rhythm before it gets back to the Fonz.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Hear Henry Winkler turn the Fonz into a story about effort, dyslexia, and learning by ear.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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