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Norman lear the veteran writer and producer behind such hit TV shows as\\xa0All in the Family\\xa0and\\xa0The Jeffersons, died last week at the age of 101. Back in 2015, Anna Sale, host of the podcast Death, Sex and Money interviewed Lear\\xa0at his luxury apartment in Manhattan. He told\\xa0Anna he\\xa0wanted to make sure his kids would never be "desperate for a dollar"\\xa0\\u2014 but what "desperate" meant has fluctuated\\xa0along the way. "I guess now it\\u2019s 60 billion," he deadpanned, adding, "That\\u2019s a joke."\\xa0

Lear\'s own childhood had a degree of desperation: When Lear was nine, his father, Herman,\\xa0was sent to jail\\xa0for selling fake bonds. Lear\'s mother scrambled to make ends meet. "My mother tried to warn him," he said. "But nobody ever told Herman anything."\\xa0When his father returned from prison three years later, tensions remained high. "I used to sit at the kitchen table and I would score their arguments," he says of his parents. "I would give her points for this, him points for that, as a way of coping with it."

Lear has been married three times, and has six kids \\u2014 ranging in age from 28 to 77. That range of ages\\xa0has presented its own challenges. "My middle daughter was ... hoping, wishing, trying to be pregnant," he says. "And her dad is suddenly married to a younger woman, and in a year\\u2019s time or less,\\xa0she\\u2019s\\xa0pregnant. That was not an easy time."

He spoke about the lessons he\\u2019s continued to learn over the years, how he\\u2019s managed to bring his family closer together despite their differences, and what he\\u2019s anticipating for the final stage of his life.