Uncorking a Story

"Most Holocaust memoirs start in camps. This one begins in a Chinese restaurant." — Todd Diamond

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ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Todd Diamond is an advertising copywriter turned memoirist, born in Queens, New York, who delivers narratives that are unapologetically raw and darkly humorous — a reflection of the borough that raised him. His book, Pass the Trauma, Please, is a comedy-drama memoir that tells the story of his 95-year-old father David Diamond, a Holocaust survivor whose long-buried secrets started spilling out over Mongolian beef and double scotches at their regular Chinese restaurant dinners. When his father's one editorial demand was "don't be afraid to slip in a few jokes" and "you're no Elie Wiesel," Todd took that as permission to write a Holocaust memoir that refuses to behave — one that uses humor as a Trojan horse to carry in the horrors. Mike and Todd talk about inherited trauma, Studio 54, Zionist justice in seventh-grade home ec class, the art of reverse circumcision, borrowing money from a Manhattan madam, and why the toughest client Todd ever had was his own father.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. The Chinese restaurant as confessional booth. Todd's 92-year-old father began dropping long-buried secrets about his Holocaust survival during their regular Chinese dinner outings. That booth became a Jewish confessional — and the origin of the book.

2. Humor isn't a gimmick, it's inherited. Todd's father demanded the book not be "another Holocaust memoir" with long descriptions of ghetto smells. His survival mechanism was humor, and it became a non-negotiable editorial demand. A researcher from the Poland Museum in Warsaw told Todd this was the first time she'd ever interviewed someone who could talk about his most dramatic past and still make her laugh.

3. The Holocaust memoir that refuses to behave. Todd approached the book as a branding and positioning exercise — treating it as a challenger brand in a crowded market of solemn testimony. The goal: reach readers who might otherwise feel Holocaust fatigue while never diminishing the history.

4. Trauma is genetically inherited. Research from Mount Sinai shows trauma can be genetically passed to children of Holocaust survivors, altering biology and behavior. Todd recognized his own dissociation, addictions, hypervigilance, and anxiety in the findings — though he admits growing up in 1970s Queens with friends who "looked like the cast of The Outsiders but now look like the cast of The Sopranos" probably contributed too.

5. A father-son memoir told while the father is alive. The book evolved from just David's story into an intergenerational memoir — father and son, first and second generation — braided together. Todd describes it as "Vito and Michael Corleone, if they were Jewish."

6. A life beyond the camps. David Diamond was arrested by the Gestapo at 12, smuggled medicines for his physician father, was a slave laborer on a German farm, and a teen soldier in Israel's War of Independence. He then came to America, borrowed $50,000 from a Manhattan madam to open a pharmacy next to her brothel, and sold more condoms than any other store in the country.

7. A bar mitzvah 80 years late. At 92, David finally had his bar mitzvah — the rite of passage stolen by the Gestapo. He crushed his haftorah, surrounded by family and friends. For David, it was an act of defiance: "Hey, you Nazi bastards, I'm still here."

8. Bypass agents, find your niche. Todd went straight to Fig Tree Books, a publisher specializing in the American Jewish experience, after agents quoted six-month timelines he couldn't afford with a father in his 90s. His advice to aspiring writers: look for niche publishers who align with your story.

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GET THE BOOK

Pass the Trauma, Please: My Father's Not-So-Depressing Holocaust Memoir about Love, Loss, Laughter, and Legacy by Todd Diamond

Amazon: https://amazon.com/Pass-Trauma-Please-not-so-depressing-Holocaust/dp/B0DTZW3X4F?tag=rettocasgra-20

Barnes & Noble: https://barnesandnoble.com/w/pass-the-trauma-please-todd-diamond/1146882261

Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/54587/9781941493335

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CONNECT WITH TODD

Website: https://todddiamond.net

Instagram: @pass_the_trauma_please — https://www.instagram.com/pass_the_trauma_please/

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CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST

Mike Carlon | Uncorking a Story

Website: https://uncorkingastory.com

YouTube: @uncorkingastory — https://www.youtube.com/@uncorkingastory

Instagram: @uncorkingastory — https://www.instagram.com/uncorkingastory/

Facebook: Uncorking a Story — https://www.facebook.com/uncorkingastory

TikTok: @uncorkingastory — https://www.tiktok.com/@uncorkingastory

Twitter/X: @uncorkingastory — https://twitter.com/uncorkingastory

LinkedIn: Uncorking a Story — https://www.linkedin.com/company/uncorking-a-story/

SUBSCRIBE & LEAVE A REVIEW — It helps more readers and writers find the show!

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncorking-a-story/id563636205

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5HZiAEtFlhAzk60Z4eAkhY

RSS Feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/uncorkingastory

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Uncorking a Story is produced by Mike Carlon. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

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HASHTAGS

#UncorkingAStory #PassTheTraumaPlease #ToddDiamond #HolocaustMemoir #MemoirWriting #WritingCommunity #AuthorInterview #BookPodcast #InheritedTrauma #IntergenerationalTrauma #HolocaustSurvivor #JewishMemoir #DarkHumor #WritersOfInstagram #BookRecommendations #AuthorsOfInstagram #Podcast #NonfictionBooks #FamilyStories #FatherAndSon

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"Even though we're so diverse, we're all the same. We're all longing for the same thing — to belong, have a purpose in life, to understand why we are here on this planet." — Sonia Daccarett

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Sonia Daccarett is a writer and communications professional born in Colombia to a Christian Palestinian father and a Jewish mother. She holds an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a master's in international and public affairs from Columbia University. For more than two decades she worked on strategic communications for corporate and nonprofit clients. Her debut memoir, The Roots of the Guava Tree: Growing Up Jewish and Arab in Colombia, explores identity, belonging, and coming of age against the backdrop of 1980s Colombia. Mike and Sonia discuss how a casual memoir-writing class turned into a book, the challenge of writing childhood scenes in the voice of a child, navigating a multicultural identity in a homogenous society, and why she wanted to offer a first-person account of what ordinary Colombians endured during the country's violent 1980s.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. A book that wasn't meant to be a book. Sonia enrolled in a memoir-writing class during a quieter chapter of her life, fell in love with the genre, and accumulated pages before realizing the recurring themes — identity, diaspora, family — could form a cohesive narrative.

2. Retraining the writing brain. After two decades of press releases and corporate communications, Sonia had to relearn scene, dialogue, and narrative writing — breaking free of the "five W's, tell it all on one page" mindset.

3. Writing in the child's voice was the breakthrough. The manuscript initially felt flat when told entirely from her mid-50s perspective. Switching to first person as a four-, six-, or fifteen-year-old brought the memories alive — though it meant extensive rewriting.

4. Rediscovering parents as complex people. One of the book's biggest gifts was moving beyond the unidimensional way children see adults and understanding her parents and grandparents as people navigating their own immigrant struggles.

5. A utopian experiment in identity. Her parents deliberately raised their children without religious labels or ethnic identifiers — a noble dream that left Sonia feeling identity-less in a society that expected you to know who you were.

6. A hidden diaspora. Most people don't know that a large Christian Arab population emigrated from the Ottoman Empire to Colombia in the 1910s, or that Jewish communities thrived in Latin America. Sonia wanted to broaden mainstream narratives about where Jews and Arabs live.

7. Colombia's 1980s through ordinary eyes. Beyond the Netflix portrayals of Pablo Escobar, the book offers a first-person account of what civil war between government, guerrillas, and cartels felt like for everyday families — the kidnappings, the fear, the impossible choices.

GET THE BOOK

The Roots of the Guava Tree: Growing Up Jewish and Arab in Colombia by Sonia Daccarett

Buy on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4aYCCx1

Buy on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/54587/9781647429409

CONNECT WITH SONIA

Website: soniadaccarett.com

Instagram: @soniadaccarettauthor

CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST

Mike Carlon | Uncorking a Story

Website: uncorkingastory.com

YouTube: @uncorkingastory

Instagram: @uncorkingastory

Facebook: Uncorking a Story

TikTok: @uncorkingastory

Twitter/X: @uncorkingastory

LinkedIn: Uncorking a Story

Subscribe & Leave a Review — It helps more readers and writers find the show!

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncorking-a-story/id563636205

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RSS Feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/uncorkingastory

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Uncorking a Story is produced by Mike Carlon. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

#SoniaDaccarett #RootsOfTheGuavaTree #Colombia #Memoir #JewishIdentity #Palestinian #MulticulturalIdentity #Diaspora #LatinAmerica #Colombia1980s #ImmigrantStory #MemoirWriting #AuthorInterview #BookPodcast #UncorkingAStory #WritingCommunity #Nonfiction #CulturalIdentity #JewishAndArab #BookRecommendations

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"I'm convinced that these experiences that we have, where we feel so alone, that there's a huge portion of the rest of the world who's feeling the exact same way at any given time. And it's so important to see those things reflected so that we just don't feel like there's something wrong with us." — Anne H. Putnam

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Anne H. Putnam is a writer, editor, and teacher with an unending interest in the stories that shape our humanity. Her first memoir, Navel Gazing: One Woman's Quest for a Size Normal, was published in the UK and Commonwealth after she wrote it as part of a master's degree in creative nonfiction — never imagining it would actually be published. Her latest, Make Do and Mend: A Breakup Memoir, explores love, loss, and self-discovery with raw honesty and humor. It's the story of the end of her seven-year relationship and first engagement — a breakup that propelled her into therapy, across an ocean, and through a decade of emotional excavation before the book finally found its shape. After years of agents who loved it but couldn't figure out how to sell it, Anne chose to self-publish — and put serious investment into making the book indistinguishable from a traditionally published title. Mike and Anne talk about backing into a publishing deal at 28, writing 200,000 words before finding the right 80,000, the courage (or compulsion) behind vulnerability on the page, pushing back on editorial feedback, the stigma of self-publishing, and why the compost pile is a writer's best friend.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Nothing is wasted — it all goes on the compost pile. Every word you write that doesn't make it into the final book becomes fertile ground for what comes next. Anne wrote 200,000 words before landing on the 80,000 that became Make Do and Mend.

2. Vulnerability isn't courage — it's compulsion. Anne doesn't experience sharing her story as brave. She has an unquenchable thirst for being understood, and memoir is the form that lets her explain herself fully. The vulnerability is the point, not the obstacle.

3. Structure helps, but free-falling teaches you something too. Her first book was written in a master's program with deadlines, workshops, and authority figures. The second was just her, alone, for a decade. Both approaches produced books — but the unstructured path required far more trust in the process.

4. You can push back on your editor. Anne's editor wanted her to be meaner about her ex. She resisted, choosing instead to present situations and let readers draw their own conclusions. Your name is on the cover — make choices you can stand by.

5. Traditional publishing is driven by capitalism, not quality. Agents and editors loved Anne's work but didn't know how to package or market it. Once your writing clears the "good enough" bar, the rest is about what publishers feel is safe to sell — something outside your control.

6. Self-publishing is a legitimate path. Anne invested in professional editing, a book coach, and a quality cover to ensure no reader would know the difference. The goal isn't sales volume — it's connection with readers who need the book.

7. It counts. Borrowing from her swimming routine: if you got in the swimsuit, it counts. If you got to the parking lot, it counts. Building the routine — showing up — matters more than any single session's output, especially for writers with ADHD.

GET THE BOOK

Make Do and Mend: A Breakup Memoir by Anne H. Putnam

Buy on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0i6jjwZu

Buy on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/make-do-and-mend-a-breakup-memoir-anne-h-putnam/357d18d27975bf58

CONNECT WITH ANNE

Website: https://www.annehputnam.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ahputnam/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annehputnam

Substack: https://annehputnam.substack.com/

CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST

Mike Carlon | Uncorking a Story

Website: https://uncorkingastory.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@uncorkingastory

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uncorkingastory/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uncorkingastory

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@uncorkingastory

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/uncorkingastory

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/uncorking-a-story/

SUBSCRIBE & LEAVE A REVIEW — It helps more readers and writers find the show!

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncorking-a-story/id563636205

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5HZiAEtFlhAzk60Z4eAkhY

RSS Feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/uncorkingastory

Uncorking a Story is produced by Mike Carlon. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

YOUTUBE HASHTAGS

#MakeDoAndMend #AnneHPutnam #BreakupMemoir #SelfPublishing #MemoirWriting #WritingProcess #Vulnerability #CreativeNonfiction #NavelGazing #BodyImage #IndieAuthor #WritingCommunity #AuthorInterview #BookPodcast #UncorkingAStory #WriterLife #SelfPublishedAuthor #Heartbreak #Healing #NonfictionBooks #BookRecommendations #WritingAdvice #IndiePublishing #WomenWriters

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"Any pain that you have — when people meet those pains and collect them back into themselves, they experience incredible power and wisdom and compassion and capacity. For that reason, I consider trauma to be a treasure." — Lillian Eve Moore

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Lillian Eve Moore is an author, executive coach, and self-described "psychonaut" whose new book draws on over 20 years of trauma-informed work. Her mother's schizophrenia ignited a lifelong quest for mental health solutions that actually work — a search that led her far beyond traditional psychiatry into ancient spiritual practices, somatic work, and eventually to founding Mindlight, a personal development company she's led since 2018. Her book, Treasure Hunting in the Underworld: A Guide for Healing and Claiming What's Yours, was born from the death of her stepmother and lays out a practical framework for navigating the hidden domain of the psyche — what she calls "the underworld" — where our traumas, patterns, and repressed memories live. Mike and Lillian talk about the gap between what people need and what mental health can provide, the role of love as the one element that truly heals, psychedelics versus traditional medication, and why your deepest fear and your biggest dream are almost always connected.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Your tiger and your dream are connected. Lillian's lifelong fear of mental illness — her "tiger" — drove her toward her dream of self-realization and an incredible career helping others heal. The thing you fear most often points directly toward your purpose.

2. The underworld isn't the enemy. The "underworld" is Lillian's term for the psyche — the subconscious, the unconscious, the hidden parts of ourselves. It's not something to run from. It's a reservoir of creativity, power, and authenticity waiting to be reclaimed.

3. Trauma is treasure. When people meet their pain and integrate it back into themselves — rather than hiding it behind a wall — they unlock energy, wisdom, compassion, and the capacity to live bigger, more rewarding lives.

4. Love is the healing element. Regardless of the modality, the thing that heals is loving attention. Everyone has access to it — even if the access point is as small as a favorite tree, an auntie who was kind, or the feel of your sheets.

5. Healing is a proportions game. Can you conjure enough well-being, love, and happiness to hold space for a dose of pain? If yes, you can heal yourself. A practitioner helps manage the dosage.

6. Old practices deserve more respect than new ones. Spiritual traditions — the Vedas, qigong, breathwork, scriptural wisdom — are far older and better studied than 100-year-old psychiatry. Lillian built her framework by pulling together the best of what she found.

7. Amp up your dreams. When you feed your dreams and make them vivid, you gain the fortitude and courage to face your demons. Don't dumb them down to avoid what scares you.

GET THE BOOK

Treasure Hunting in the Underworld: A Guide for Healing and Claiming What's Yours by Lillian Eve Moore

Buy on Amazon: https://a.co/d/5jrcJ5Y

CONNECT WITH LILLIAN

Website: https://hello.lillianevemoore.com/podcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asklillianevemoore/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lillianevemoore

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lillianevemoore/

Podcast: The Deep Shift (Apple Podcasts, Spotify)

CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST

Mike Carlon | Uncorking a Story

Website: https://uncorkingastory.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@uncorkingastory

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uncorkingastory/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uncorkingastory

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@uncorkingastory

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/uncorkingastory

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/uncorking-a-story/

SUBSCRIBE & LEAVE A REVIEW — It helps more readers and writers find the show!

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncorking-a-story/id563636205

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5HZiAEtFlhAzk60Z4eAkhY

RSS Feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/uncorkingastory

Uncorking a Story is produced by Mike Carlon. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

YOUTUBE HASHTAGS

#TreasureHunting #Underworld #LillianEveMoore #Mindlight #TraumaHealing #MentalHealth #SelfHealing #InnerWork #Psychonaut #EmotionalMastery #ShadowWork #SelfAcceptance #TraumaRecovery #Psychedelics #Spirituality #PersonalDevelopment #ExecutiveCoach #AuthorInterview #BookPodcast #UncorkingAStory #WritingCommunity #SelfHelp #Nonfiction #BookRecommendations

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"This is a cautionary tale about how extremism and fascism can creep up on us. It always begins with hate speech and dehumanization... from verbal violence, it's a very short leap to physical violence." — Dr. Georgette Bennett

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Dr. Georgette Bennett is an award-winning sociologist, widely published author, former NBC News correspondent, and founder of both the Tanenbaum Center for Inter-Religious Understanding and the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees — which has mobilized more than $660 million in humanitarian aid. Her latest book, Half Jew, Full Life, tells the extraordinary story of Holocaust survivor Gary "Pips" Phillips, a distant relative who became a surrogate father to Georgette after her own father's death. Pips was classified by the Nazis as a Mischling — half-Jewish — yet voluntarily embraced his Jewish identity at the very moment it could be fatal. Mike and Georgette discuss Pips's four arrests and three escapes, the Nazis who unexpectedly saved his life, the challenge of writing a third-person memoir from psychiatric recordings, and why this story carries urgent lessons about identity, denial, and the creep of extremism.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. A Holocaust story unlike any other. Pips was a Mischling first degree — an Aryan mother, a Jewish father — who voluntarily chose to be Jewish by becoming a bar mitzvah the very week the Nuremberg Laws were enacted. Almost nothing has been written about people in this category.

2. Nazis both persecuted and saved him. Pips was arrested four times and escaped three times. In key moments, individual Nazis — motivated by love, lust, or personal connection — intervened to save his life, complicating the black-and-white narrative of the Holocaust.

3. Survival was his career. Living underground in Berlin among 6,500 Jews who went into hiding, Pips navigated a world where you couldn't buy food or rent a room without papers stamped with a "J." Every day was a question of where to eat and where to sleep.

4. Psychiatric tapes became the primary source. Pips recorded his life story across dozens of sessions with his psychiatrist. Georgette had them transcribed while he was still alive, giving the book an authentic first-person voice despite being written in third person.

5. Trauma never fully heals. Pips's wife Olga, an Auschwitz survivor, processed her experience through silence and ultimately took her own life in 2005. Pips's own trauma surfaced decades later as severe palpitations with no physical cause.

6. Identity is a lifelong negotiation. Pips spent his entire life seeking acceptance as a Jew despite never formally converting. The title Half Jew, Full Life comes from his own declaration: "I don't want to be a half Jew. I want to be a full Jew."

7. A cautionary tale for today. The book traces how extremism begins with hate speech and dehumanization, and how denial during that phase allows violence to escalate — a pattern Georgette sees playing out in the present day.

8. The American Dream, chapter two. After the war, Pips arrived in America as a waiter and bicycle messenger and ended up co-owning the largest photo agency in the world, hobnobbing with celebrities like Natalie Wood and Raquel Welch — never having owned a camera.

GET THE BOOK

Half Jew, Full Life by Dr. Georgette Bennett

Buy on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4v8qrFD

Buy on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/54587/9781949846744

CONNECT WITH GEORGETTE

Website: https://www.bennettny.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgette-bennett-764786184/

CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST

Mike Carlon | Uncorking a Story

Website: https://uncorkingastory.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@uncorkingastory

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uncorkingastory/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uncorkingastory

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@uncorkingastory

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/uncorkingastory

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/uncorking-a-story/

SUBSCRIBE & LEAVE A REVIEW — It helps more readers and writers find the show!

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncorking-a-story/id563636205

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5HZiAEtFlhAzk60Z4eAkhY

RSS Feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/uncorkingastory

Uncorking a Story is produced by Mike Carlon. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"Just because the path of motherhood might not happen for me, it doesn't mean the nurturing goes away. I still want a seat at the table for how kids are raised." — Danielle Frank

About This Episode

Danielle Frank traded Hollywood red carpets for red wine — and now she's poured both passions into her debut book. After launching her career in entertainment publicity at Miramax International, where she worked on global film campaigns and rubbed elbows with A-listers at Cannes, Venice, and Berlin, Danielle pivoted into the luxury wine and spirits industry, spending 22+ years at Bacardi and Moët Hennessy. Her book, A Wine Lover's Guide to Parenting: The Fine Art of Wine & Whine Management, is a satirical, adults-only survival guide written in rhyme that blends wine terminology with parenting wisdom. Despite not being a parent herself, Danielle — a self-described "auntie extraordinaire" — brings a sharp, loving outsider's perspective to the comedy of raising kids. Mike and Danielle talk career pivots, the storytelling parallels between film and wine, game show obsessions, Billy Joel, and why you should never let your kid ferment.

Key Takeaways

1. It's all storytelling. Whether selling a film at Cannes or a bottle of wine at dinner, Danielle sees the through-line: you're creating a narrative that evokes feeling. That insight carried her from Miramax to Moët Hennessy.

2. You don't have to be a parent to care about parenting. Danielle wrote the book as a proud aunt and keen observer. Her "outsider with a front-row seat" perspective gives the humor its edge — she witnesses the triumphs and tantrums, glass in hand, no carpool duty required.

3. The book sat in a drawer for 14 years. Danielle wrote it over a decade ago but only published it last year. Her motivation: "If I go on my deathbed and I've done nothing with it, it's going to plague me."

4. Wine doesn't have to be intimidating. Every chapter uses real wine terminology — fermentation, varietal, mulled wine — and gives the definition in a fun, accessible way. It's wine education wrapped in comedy.

5. Don't let your kid ferment. Fermentation turns sugar into alcohol — something sweet into something harsh. The parallel to raising kids with manners writes itself, and Danielle's rhyming chapter on the topic is a showstopper.

6. Don't leave anything on the table. Danielle's life advice: you have one life to live, so go after things. She quit a toxic PR job without a backup plan, pivoted industries, and finally published the book she'd been sitting on — all by trusting the leap.

Get the Book

A Wine Lover's Guide to Parenting: The Fine Art of Wine & Whine Management by Danielle Frank

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Wine-Lovers-Guide-Parenting/dp/1967598061

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-wine-lovers-guide-to-parenting-danielle-frank/1148414693

Connect with Danielle

Website: daniellefrankauthor.com

Instagram: @createagreatstory

Facebook: Danielle Frank

Connect with Your Host

Mike Carlon | Uncorking a Story

Website: uncorkingastory.com

YouTube: @uncorkingastory

Instagram: @uncorkingastory

Facebook: Uncorking a Story

TikTok: @uncorkingastory

Twitter/X: @uncorkingastory

LinkedIn: Uncorking a Story

Subscribe & Leave a Review — It helps more readers and writers find the show!

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncorking-a-story/id563636205

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5HZiAEtFlhAzk60Z4eAkhY

RSS Feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/uncorkingastory

Uncorking a Story is produced by Mike Carlon. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"It's about family, it's about traditions, it's about a sense of place. Italy is more than just food and wine. It's a feeling, it's an experience."

— J.A. Marz

About This Episode

J.A. Marz is a healthcare marketing strategist turned novelist whose Tuscany-set fiction has struck a chord with readers who love Italy as much as he does. His debut novella, Ciao, Amore Mio — The Tale of Gabby and Gio, follows a restless travel writer who arrives in Italy chasing stories and finds something far more personal at a family-owned agriturismo called La Terre Felice. The sequel, It's Sauce, Not Gravy!, debuted as a #1 Amazon Hot New Release in Tuscany Travel and digs deeper into memory, mystery, and what it means to fight for a place that feels like home. Mike, co-host Laura Nozicka, and John talk about the pull of Italy, career pivots from boardrooms to bookshops, the great sauce-vs-gravy debate, and why the best stories are rooted in a sense of place.

Key Takeaways

1. Write what you know — and what you love. John combined his three passions — Italy, golf, and writing — into a single story. He had the first and last chapters in his head for 10 years before the middle finally came together.

2. Italy is a feeling, not just a destination. The slower pace, fresh food, family-first culture, and sense of La Dolce Vita offer something Americans rarely experience at home. John tried to put readers in that feeling, not just describe the scenery.

3. Childhood memories are creative gold. John wove real family moments — his grandfather calling him "Prince of Wales," Sunday dinners, his grandmother's cooking — into the fabric of both novellas, giving the fiction an authentic emotional core.

4. The marketing of books is harder than writing them. Coming from healthcare marketing, John expected the promotional side to be familiar territory. Instead, he found that getting traction for a creative work is "10 times harder than marketing healthcare."

5. The sauce-vs-gravy debate is real — and it makes a great title. John chose It's Sauce, Not Gravy! knowing it would spark conversation in Italian-American circles. For his family, it was always sauce, meat or no meat.

6. The sequel deepens the story's themes. While the first book centers on love, loss, and family, It's Sauce, Not Gravy! explores legacy, connectivity, and the tension between wandering and finding home.

7. Book three is on the way. Set more heavily in Rome, it will lean into the city's art history — Michelangelo, Bernini, Caravaggio — and a more mature version of Gio. Expected in 2027.

Get the Books

Ciao, Amore Mio…The Tale of Gabby and Gio by J.A. Marz

Buy on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/J-A-Marz/author/B0DRLGWSJW?tag=rettocasgra-20

It's Sauce, Not Gravy! by J.A. Marz

Buy on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Its-Sauce-Not-Gravy-Ingredient/dp/B0GHGSZCJZ?tag=rettocasgra-20

Connect with John

Website: https://jam3strategicmarketingandpr.com

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmarzano1/

Connect with Your Host

Mike Carlon | Uncorking a Story

Website: https://uncorkingastory.com/

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Uncorking a Story is produced by Mike Carlon. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

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"Memory without responsibility is just nostalgia. We have to really be responsible — responsible adults — and make sure that the world doesn't forget what happened."

— Doron Keren

About This Episode

Dr. Doron Keren joins Mike to talk about his grandfather Ignacy Chiger's Holocaust memoir, Beneath the Lightless Sky, newly translated into English and published by Amsterdam Publishers. The book is a firsthand account of survival under two totalitarian regimes — first the Soviets, then the Nazis — in Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine). At its center is an extraordinary escape: Ignacy led his family and a small group of Jews into the city's sewer system, where they survived 14 months in total darkness. It's a story of impossible choices, a father's determination to save his family, and the unlikely redemption of Leopold Socha — a Polish Catholic sewer worker and former thief who risked everything to keep them alive.

Key Takeaways

1. A memoir born from memory alone. In 1975, Ignacy Chiger typed his entire Holocaust memoir on a Polish typewriter during a visit to New York — from memory, with no notes — and passed away six months later.

2. Two books, two perspectives. Doron's mother, Krystyna Chiger, told her story in The Girl in the Green Sweater (2008) — a child's-eye view. His grandfather's memoir offers the perspective of a 33-year-old father making life-or-death decisions.

3. Survival required becoming a chameleon. Ignacy made himself indispensable to both Soviet NKVD officers and Nazi SS commanders by reading people, procuring goods, and navigating impossible situations.

4. The escape was an engineering feat. Ignacy remembered watching Italian POWs build the sewer encasement as a boy, then calculated the exact angle to dig a 20-foot tunnel through three feet of concrete — with no room for error.

5. Redemption came from an unlikely source. Leopold Socha, a common thief turned sewer worker, struck a deal to help the group — then continued without pay when the money ran out, seeing their survival as his path to forgiveness.

6. Humanity persists in the darkest places. In the sewer, Ignacy wrote plays for the group to perform — a way to pass time and feel human in conditions no human should endure.

7. Never Again is Always. Doron's message is that the capacity for atrocity lives within civilization itself, and vigilance must be constant — not a one-time declaration.

Get the Book

Beneath the Lightless Sky by Ignacy Chiger (edited by Doron Keren)

Published by Amsterdam Publishers — Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Series

Buy on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4cLd6f8

Buy on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/54587/9789493418578

Related

The Girl in the Green Sweater by Krystyna Chiger with Daniel Paisner

In Darkness (2011) — directed by Agnieszka Holland, nominated for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

Connect with Doron

Website: https://www.yellowdarkness.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beneaththelightlesssky/

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/beneaththelightlesssky

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beneaththelightlesssky

Connect with Your Host

Mike Carlon | Uncorking a Story

Website: https://mikecarlon.com/

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Uncorking a Story is produced by Mike Carlon. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"I really wanted to know about the numinous. I went to Burma to sit with a master. I got my master's degree. I did all kinds of things looking to find out what happened. And then I came back to realize that yes, in fact, I knew — I touched death. I saw death." — Sally Dukes

About This Episode

Sally Dukes joins Mike to talk about her memoir, drummer girl: A Story of Life After Death. At age three, Sally underwent open-heart surgery to treat a congenital heart disorder — and during the procedure, she had a near-death experience that would shape the rest of her life. The nickname "drummer girl" came from the way her heart beat so loudly before the surgery. What follows is a lifelong pilgrimage — from New York to India to a forest monastery in Burma to a Greek island — all in search of understanding what happened in that operating room. It's a conversation about near-death experiences, the healing power of writing, resilience in the face of trauma, and the courage it takes to finally tell your own story.

Key Takeaways

1. Writing has always been her voice. Sally describes herself as "not very verbal" — writing was always a better form of expression, from high school journals to the memoir itself.

2. A near-death experience at age three shaped her entire life. During open-heart surgery, Sally experienced a dark tunnel, a brilliant light, and an overwhelming feeling of love — an experience she spent decades trying to understand.

3. The surgeon's elephant became a powerful symbol. When young Sally's nightmares wouldn't stop, her surgeon drew an elephant on a yellow notepad and told her to hang it over her bed. The elephant — keeper of memories, remover of obstacles — became a recurring motif in her life and her book.

4. The memoir was built from a lifetime of journal entries. Sally's younger self gave her older self a gift — decades of writing that, when collated, all pointed to the same search for truth.

5. Resilience matters more than the trauma. Sally hopes readers focus not on the trauma in her story, but on the resilience — and on the message that death is nothing to fear.

6. You don't need to look outside yourself for answers. After traveling the world seeking confirmation of her experience, Sally ultimately realized she already knew her truth.

7. Writing the book was cathartic — and freeing. Sally describes the process as "coming clean" — finally sharing a story she'd never told anyone, and feeling liberated by it.

Get the Book

Drummer girl: A Story of Life After Death by Sally Dukes

Published by Koehler Books, March 17, 2026

Buy on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G693CTC5/

Buy on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/54587/9798897470525

Buy on Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/drummer-girl-sally-dukes/1148920173

Connect with Sally

Website: https://www.sallydukes.com/

Connect with Mike

Mike Carlon | Uncorking a Story

Website: https://mikecarlon.com/

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Uncorking a Story is produced by Mike Carlon. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"On the outside, I too looked like a pretty picture. Inside, I was dying. I had so much pain and shame and suffering. Pretending isn't enough to make it go away." — Andrea Leeb

About This Episode

Andrea Leeb spent decades building a life that looked perfect from the outside — nurse, attorney, MFA graduate, happily married. But behind that picture was a secret she carried since she was four years old. In this deeply honest conversation, Andrea tells Mike about her debut memoir Such a Pretty Picture, which chronicles her survival of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father, her complicated relationship with the mother who looked away, and the long road to finding her voice. She also talks about surviving the 2004 tsunami in Thailand, how the Me Too movement gave her the courage to finally write the story she'd sworn she'd never tell, and why healing is never a straight line. Andrea is donating all of her book royalties to the UCLA Rape Treatment Center and RAINN.

Key Takeaways

1. She survived a tsunami — and it changed everything. In 2004, Andrea and her husband survived the Christmas Day tsunami in Thailand. That brush with death made her realize she needed to stop treating writing as a hobby and start treating it as a calling.

2. She swore she'd never write this story. For years, Andrea outlined the book and then told herself no. She wrote fiction, essays, anything else. It wasn't until her father passed away in 2017 — the same year the Me Too movement began — that she finally felt free to tell the truth.

3. Her mother caught the abuse and went blind. When Andrea was four and a half, her mother walked in on the abuse, screamed, passed out, and developed hysterical blindness for a month. Andrea blamed herself. Her mother never left her father.

4. Forgiveness and letting go aren't the same thing. Andrea never forgave her father, but she did let go of the anger — a distinction she says was essential to writing the book without creating monsters. She ultimately forgave her mother.

5. The title came from her editor, not from her. Andrea struggled with the title through every draft. Her publisher found a line in the book where Andrea's mother looks at a childhood photo and says, "Such a pretty picture" — a perfect encapsulation of the beautiful surface hiding the chaos underneath.

6. Pretending works until it doesn't. Andrea kept her secret for decades and appeared fine — until a stranger touched her on the subway and she unraveled. Her message to survivors: you can heal, but you have to get help. Pretending won't make it go away.

7. She's giving away every dollar. All royalties from Such a Pretty Picture go to the UCLA Rape Treatment Center and RAINN. What started as a mission to help one person has grown into full-time advocacy, including board work and policy efforts.

Get the Book

Such a Pretty Picture: A Memoir by Andrea Leeb

Amazon: https://amzn.to/47NPt3M

Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/54587/9781647429942

Connect with Andrea

Website: https://www.andrealeebauthor.com/

Instagram: @andrealisaleeb

Threads: @andrealisaleeb

Connect with Mike

Website: https://uncorkingastory.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@uncorkingastory

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Subscribe and Leave a Review — It helps more readers and writers find the show!

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncorking-a-story/id563636205

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Uncorking a Story is produced by Mike Carlon. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.