As Told To Daniel Paisner

Television director, filmmaker and author Adam Nimoy, the son of actor Leonard Nimoy, knows what it means to grow up in the chilling shadow of a famous father. He also knows what it means to tell a helluva story, and he does so in the pages of his new memoir The Most Human: Reconciling with My Father, Leonard Nimoy.
The book explores the author’s complicated relationship with his father and reflects on how it informed his views on marriage, parenting, addiction and recovery.
A graduate of Loyola Law School, Adam Nimoy started his career working in entertainment law, before becoming a filmmaker, ultimately directing dozens of network television shows—some of them, he allows with self-deprecating good cheer, “sublime”, and some of them “eminently unwatchable.” He also directed the documentary “For the Love of Spock,” which was originally conceived as a collaborative venture with his father shortly before the actor’s death in 2015.
Adam also taught writing, directing and acting at the New York Film Academy, and filmmaking at Beit T’Shuvah, an addiction treatment center.  
“Whether you’re a Leonard Nimoy fan, a Trekkie, or from another planet,” writes noted rabbi and social justice advocate Shmuly Yanklowitz, “you are sure to find this vulnerable, brave, humorous, and intimate story about Spock, the outer limits, a father-son relationship, and teshuvah (recovery and repair) deeply moving.”  
Learn more about Adam Nimoy:
Website Instagram Twitter Please support the sponsors who support our show:
Ritani Jewelers Chelsea Devantez's I Shouldn't Be Telling You This Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog  Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton Everyday Shakespeare podcast A Mighty Blaze podcast The Writer's Bone Podcast Network Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order  Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

Michael Franklin is the co-founder and executive director of Speechwriters of Color, a community of expert and aspiring communicators helping to give voice to leaders at every level of the public, private and non-profit sectors. As a proud partner of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, the organization has placed dozens of candidates in both full-time and contract roles as speechwriters across the Biden-Harris administration.  
“We are definitely understanding and realizing the power of words to make a difference,” Michael says.  
As the founder and chief thought leadership officer of Words Normalize Behavior, a Black- and Gen Z-owned and certified LGBT Business Enterprise, Michael has developed a reputation as a leading communications strategist, working with clients in higher education, political advocacy, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, sports and entertainment.  
Michael’s commitment to telling stories through coalition building, targeted outreach and inclusive communications practices has its roots in his commitment to public speaking and debating.  While a student at Howard University, he was the inaugural HBCU Speech and Debate League National Champion in both Parliamentary Debate and Extemporaneous Speaking and helped to lead the school’s debate team in 2019’s “Great Debate” against Harvard University. 
Learn more about Michael Franklin:
LinkedIn Website Twitter Instagram Please support the sponsors who support our show:
Ritani Jewelers Chelsea Devantez's I Shouldn't Be Telling You This Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog  Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton Everyday Shakespeare podcast A Mighty Blaze podcast The Writer's Bone Podcast Network Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order  Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

Ellis Henican—New York Times best-selling collaborator, Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist, and popular television news pundit—had perhaps the coolest side-gig of any of our podcast guests to date. He provided the voice of “Stormy” in the adult animated television series “SeaLab 2021,” which ran on the Cartoon Network for four seasons. 
This spring, he’s also provided the “voice” for books by former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (What Would Reagan Do?); legendary actor Tom Selleck (You Never Know); and, high-stakes hostage negotiator Mickey Bergman (In the Shadows), marking him as perhaps the busiest ghostwriter of the publishing season. 
Ellis’s other collaborative credits include Home Team, a New York Times best-seller written with New Orleans Saints football coach Sean Payton; In the Blink of Any Eye: Dale, Daytona, and the Day that Changed Everything, with two-time Daytona 500 winner Michael Waltrip; and Doc, with former All-Star pitcher Dwight “Doc” Gooden. 
For 20 years, he wrote a thrice-weekly column in New York Newsday, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize for the newspaper’s coverage of the Union Square train wreck.
Join us as Ellis reflects on his mid-career pivot from the newsroom, the lessons he’s learned writing on behalf some of our most influential athletes, actors, and politicians, and how it happened that a veteran journalist found his way to becoming a cartoon character. 
Learn more about Ellis Henican:
Twitter Instagram Facebook LinkedIn Please support the sponsors who support our show:
Ritani Jewelers Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog  Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton Everyday Shakespeare podcast A Mighty Blaze podcast The Writer's Bone Podcast Network Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order  Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

“Celebrity memoirs have always been my favorite book genre,” reflects podcast guest Chelsea Devantez, the Emmy-nominated writer, comedian, director, and host of the celebrity book club podcast “Glamorous Trash.” “That is what happens when your nearest bookstore growing up is a Wal-Mart. That was my fate.” 
Chelsea is just out with a celebrity-adjacent memoir of her own, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This (But I’m Going to Anyway), from Hanover Square Press. It’s a book that might surprise her loyal podcast listeners, or viewers who know her from her work as a television writer for shows like “Not Dead Yet,” “Girls5Eva,” and “Bless This Mess,” or as the head writer for the Apple TV+ show “The Problem with Jon Stewart.” 
The book is wildly funny in spots, but harrowing and traumatic in others, as Chelsea tells her story through a series of essays about the many women who have given her life shape and meaning, recounting a tumultuous childhood, a series of toxic relationships, and a pattern of domestic violence that might have upended a less determined soul. 
Join us as we talk with Chelsea about her new book, about her unlikely career path, and about the current state of the celebrity memoir, in a conversation that will hopefully make you think about the stories we share, and the ways we go about sharing them. 
Learn more about Chelsea Devantez:
Website "Glamorous Trash" podcast Instagram Twitter Facebook TikTok Patreon Please support the sponsors who support our show:
Ritani Jewelers Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog  Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton Everyday Shakespeare podcast A Mighty Blaze podcast The Writer's Bone Podcast Network Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order  Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

“You gotta be the best on your worst day.”
Words to live by from the mother of Ronda Rousey, the mixed-martial-artist-turned-professional wrestler known as “the baddest woman on the planet.” Rousey’s mother happens to be first American to win a gold medal at the World Judo Championships, and she also happens to be the mother of podcast guest Maria Burns Ortiz, co-author of Rousey’s just-published memoir Our Fight.
The book is a follow-up to the sisters’ previous collaboration—the New York Times best-selling My Fight/Your Fight.   
Maria has taken her mother’s hard-won advice to heart, in an entirely different arena from her famous sister. A former columnist at ESPN.com, with an expertise in digital integration in sports media, she was honored as the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Emerging Journalist of the Year in 2007 and has served as an adjunct professor of journalism at Emerson College. 
Alongside her work as a journalist, Maria is also a leader and innovator in the game development industry. She is the CEO and co-founder of 7 Generation Games, an award-winning developer of educational adventure games for children, and was recently named executive director of Global Game Jam, the world’s largest game creation event. 
Join us as Maria shares what it was like to give voice to a shared childhood and a family history that gave rise to one of the most celebrated female athletes of our time. 
Learn more about Maria Burns Ortiz:
Website X/Twitter Instagram Ronda Rousey on Instagram Ronda Rousey on Twitter Please support the sponsors who support our show:
Ritani Jewelers Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog  Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton Everyday Shakespeare podcast A Mighty Blaze podcast The Writer's Bone Podcast Network Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order  Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

“Reading to me is like breathing,” notes Zibby Owens, the creator and host of the Webby Award- winning podcast “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books,” who joins us on the podcast to discuss her lifelong love of reading and writing and her commitment to championing books and authors. Indeed, Zibby has built on the success of her podcast to become the publishing industry’s “most powerful book-fluencer,” according to New York magazine. 
A frequent contributor to “Good Morning America” and other media outlets, she is the co-founder and CEO of Zibby Books, an independent book publisher, and the owner of Zibby’s Bookshop, an independent bookstore in Santa Monica, California. Across her Zibby Media empire—which devoted followers have christened “the Zibby-verse”—she also offers retreats, classes, special events, a book club, a writing group, and other bookish opportunities. 
“Everything has unraveled one thing at a time,” she says, of her full-on embrace of the book world, and the community of book lovers she has helped to nourish. “It’s like a carpet sort of unspooling in front of me.” 
Most recently, Zibby has added the title of novelist to her long list of credits.  Her just-published first novel, Blank, the story of a frustrated writer who seeks to disrupt the publishing industry, was hailed as “a delightful gift to book lovers,” by New York Times best-selling author Carley Fortune.
Join us for a fresh, candid conversation on what it means to celebrate the written word. 
Learn more about Zibby Owens:
Website Zibby Media “Moms Don’t Have Times to Read Books” Facebook Twitter Instagram Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature Please support the sponsors who support our show:
Ritani Jewelers Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog  Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton Everyday Shakespeare podcast A Mighty Blaze podcast The Writer's Bone Podcast Network Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order  Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount