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Randy Edelman Appears on the Good News Podcast with Paul Sladkus – New York Examiner News

Austin Tang — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 13:57:07 +0000

In a conversation as uplifting as his music, Randy Edelman graced the microphone of the Good News Podcast hosted by the brilliant Paul Sladkus — delivering an episode that feels like a breath of fresh inspiration.

Recorded with warmth, wit, and heartfelt insight, Randy shared stories from his remarkable career as a composer — from writing unforgettable themes for beloved films to the deeper personal reflections that shape his art. With each answer, he radiated the same generosity and joy that have made his music resonate across generations.

Paul guided the dialogue with thoughtful curiosity, creating space for Randy to open up about the power of creativity, the bridges between emotion and melody, and the moments that define a life in music. The conversation was candid yet poetic, inviting listeners into a rare glimpse of the man behind the scores.

Listeners will find themselves smiling, nodding, and ultimately walking away with something rare: true Good News — a reminder of how beauty, perseverance, and heartfelt expression can uplift the world.

Whether you’re a longtime fan or discovering Randy’s genius for the first time, this episode is an inspiring journey — one that echoes long after the final note.

Tune in, turn up the volume, and let the good news play on.

Watch Randy Edelman on the Good News Podcast with Paul Sladkus here:

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Dr. David Weill, author of TELL ME I BELONG: A Journey Across Faiths and Generations (Union Square & Co.; December 9, 2025)

Austin Tang — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 14:29:38 +0000

Listen to “Dr. David Weill, author of TELL ME I BELONG: A Journey Across Faiths and Generations” on Spreaker.

“In this fascinating and personal book, Dr. David Weill takes us on a journey to understand his Jewish identity and heritage. It can be a guide for anyone who is searching for an elusive sense of belonging.”

—Walter Isaacson

A heartfelt memoir about the search for religion and identity

“I’m not Jewish.” For years, that’s what David Weill told anyone who asked about his religious background. Yes, his father was a Jew who had left Nazi Germany as a boy. But his mother was a Southern Baptist. Growing up in New Orleans, religion wasn’t something his family discussed, let alone practiced. As an adult, he developed a fervent zeal and profound devotion to his work as a specialist in organ transplants. Transplantation was all he needed to define and fulfill him—until a crisis shook him to the core.

As a boy, Weill’s only experience with religion was when he accompanied Deborah, the family’s domestic help and his second mother figure, to her all-Black Baptist church. As a young doctor, he fell in love with Jackie, a nurse from rural Iowa and a devout Catholic. Much to the chagrin of her parents, they were married in a Dallas hotel rather than a church. After settling in Palo Alto, close to Stanford University Medical Center where Weill headed the heart and lung transplant program, their two daughters were baptized and confirmed at a local Catholic church. When his oldest daughter, Hannah, was around ten and asked him why he never joined them at mass on Sundays, he told her, “I’m not Catholic.” She looked at him, brow furrowed, and raised a question that would prove to haunt him, “What are you then?”

TELL ME I BELONG follows David Weill’s search for the answer. In 2015, after the simultaneous unraveling of his carefully crafted career and the death of his father, Weill began to doubt everything, including his purpose in life. While grappling with emotional pain and sinking deeper into despair, he began to suffer perplexing physical symptoms. In his moment of crisis, he was seized by a strong desire to practice a formal religion. But for Weill, the real question was, Which religion? Eventually, he chose Catholicism and was baptized at age fifty. He found solace in heart-to-heart talks with a priest and his daughters’ happiness at having the whole family at church together. Everything was fine—until 2020, when he learned that his mother had converted to Judaism right before marrying his father. He was born a Jew. And in the eyes of the Jewish faith, he would always be Jewish. That realization sparked his second quest. In an interview, David can talk about:

· What drew his mother, a native of Selma, Alabama, to Judaism—partly because, to quote her, Jews “always seemed like such practical people,” and largely as a rejection of Baptists who preached love for all God’s children and practiced racism.

· His father’s complicated sense of being Jewish, which he viewed as a source of pride for its association with smart and successful people while remaining wary of being ostracized or stigmatized for the religion he was born into.

· His determination, with the help of investigators, to learn more about his grandfather’s time imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the role of his famous relative, the composer Kurt Weill, in orchestrating his family’s escape to the United States.

· His heart-wrenching trip to Berlin, accompanied by his daughter Hannah, to find his father’s first home, and the inner work of defining himself.

Ultimately, David Weill made peace with who he is and where he belongs. “I am not turning away from Catholicism as much as I am embracing Judaism, because it is mine, always was,” he reflects. “It just took me a while to get there.”

DAVID WEILL, MD, is theformer Director of the Center for Advanced Lung Diseases and the Lung and Heart-Lung Transplant Program at Stanford University Medical Center. A sought-after advisor to various transplant programs across the country, he also serves on the Board of TransMedics, a company focused on improving availability of donor organs. Dr. Weill has also served on several non-profit boards including the Tulane Medical School, Xavier University of Louisiana, SFJAZZ, the Isidore Newman School, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) Foundation, NextGen Personal Finance, and the Bellevue Literary Review. Dr. Weill’s writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Salon, Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, STAT, the Washington Post, The Hill, LitHub, Tablet, The Times of Israel, TODAY.com, and the Los Angeles Times. His previous books include the memoir Exhale: Hope, Healing, and Life in Transplant (2021) and a novel, All That Really Matters (2024). He lives in New Orleans. For more information, please visit davidweill.com.

Social Media:

https://www.instagram.com/davidweillmd/

https://www.facebook.com/david.weill/about/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidweillmd/

TELL ME I BELONG

A Journey Across Faiths and Generations

By David Weill

Publication date: December 9, 2025

ISBN: 978-1454961833; $24.99 Hardcover

Union Square & Co.

The post Dr. David Weill, author of TELL ME I BELONG: A Journey Across Faiths and Generations (Union Square & Co.; December 9, 2025) appeared first on Good News!.

Mother’s Day, Former Oprah Winfrey TV Executive Producer, Lisa Erspamer

admin — Fri, 08 May 2015 19:06:15 +0000

Top TV producer Lisa Erspamer shares celebrities’ exclusive, heartfelt letters to their mothers in MUST HAVE book, A Letter to My Mom
Lisa Erspamer, former co-executive producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show, and creator of the A Letter To My… series is now available for interviews to discuss her blockbuster new book, A Letter To My Mom—which features a number of exclusive letters from celebrities such as Shania Twain, Kristin Chenoweth, Kelly Osbourne, Mariel Hemingway and Melissa Rivers, among many others.
A Letter To My Mom is the third book in Lisa’s breakout series celebrating the joy and emotion of letter-writing. The first two books, A Letter To My Dog and A Letter To My Cat, were huge hits — now the third installment is here and it’s this year’s MUST gift for Mother’s Day.
Would love to schedule an interview for you with Lisa to discuss these letters and this incredible list of talent decided to share their personal letters. We will also have giveaway available for your listeners and a chance to have them submit their letters to for future books in this hugely popular series.
Available now from Crown Archetype, A Letter To My Mom features touching, heartfelt letters and nostalgic photos from sons and daughters expressing their love for their mothers and features everyday people as well as celebrities (full list below).
Lisa is an inspiring, highly-regarded television producer who has helped craft stories and segments for Oprah and many of today’s most influential celebrities.
Celebrity contributors:
Kristin Chenoweth
Cat Cora
Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York
Josh Groban
Mariel Hemingway
Ali Landry
Monica Lewinsky
Lisa Ling
Dr. Phil McGraw
Robin Meade
Nancy O’Dell
Suze Orman
Kelly Osbourne
Ken Paves
Melissa Rivers
Shaun Robinson
Molly Sims
Lennon & Maisy Stella (Nashville)
The Tenors
Christy Turlington Burns
Shania Twain

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Firefighter Chefs Step into the Spotlight,

editor — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 22:07:58 +0000

Taking Top Honors for their Delicious Dishes at the 11^th Annual Iron Skillet® Cook Off

On Monday, October 22, 2012 amidst the sophisticated, ruby red décor of Crimson, firefighters stepped out of their firehouses and into the spotlight to take home big honors for their incredible cooking talent at our 11^th Annual Iron Skillet® Cook Off. You may be familiar with culinary competitions like Food Network’s Chopped or televised throwdowns between professional chefs, but the Iron Skillet® Cook Off differentiates itself from the pack of culinary competitions by focusing on the camaraderie, spirited brotherhood, and jovial nature of the firehouse cooking clan. And it comes across in the food. At the competition, five firehouse chefs were matched up with five top restaurant chefs to see who could make the most crowd-pleasing dish of the night. The firehouse chefs supplied the original recipe and the professional chefs were charged with reinventing it, making it better (if they dared). The winners of the night were everywhere – in the chef coats, in the sponsor booths, and on stage. Everyone who came added to the lighthearted, but heartfelt spirit of the night. The smells and sights of the dishes – fried chicken with sweet potato waffles, skirt steak with burgundy cream sauce, and smothered pork chops – permeated the restaurant with an intoxicating breeze that we swear could be smelled throughout the five boroughs.

At World Cares Center we’ve managed to pull off the impossible: to host a night filled with sumptuous food and jovial spirits that reenergizes our serious mission of providing training in emergency preparedness for emergency managers, community leaders, and concerned citizens. This evening would not have been possible without the connection between the emergency response community, our corporate sponsors, and the everyday heroes that came out to support us. For this one night, we saw the wonderful dichotomy of the firefighter spirit. Two sides of the same coin: the ever-present professional emergency responder and the lighthearted, spirited community member. As Lisa Orloff, Founder and Executive Director of World Cares Center put it, “the Iron Skillet® Cook Off represents what we see in any crisis situation, people of all walks of life coming together to do good. The event is a celebration, in disaster response it is the visceral goodness in people that World Cares center ensures is applied in a safe, effective and coordinated manner.”

A Tribute to Everyday Heroes

The night was a tribute to the everyday hero. Queens Council member Peter F. Vallone Jr. and his two brothers, Perry Vallone and Paul Vallone, were honored for their quick thinking and ready response in saving two young girls in rough waters off Long Branch, NJ. The award was given among their peers – a room full of heroes that demonstrated their unwavering commitment to emergency preparedness and effective training for emergency response.

It’s telling that the top chef of the night, Iron Skillet® champion Khalid Baylor from Ladder 14 in Manhattan, made a dish that comforts the soul as much as it tempts the palate. Chef Baylor’s Lemongrass Fried Chicken with Sweet Potato Waffles and a Peach Schnapps Compote caused the crowd to sigh with a collective southern swoon that comes from food that truly satisfies. To win, Chef Baylor took a heaping spoon of southern roots, a cup of grandma’s cooking wisdom, and a pinch of love for baking, and put it all into a spectacular dish that had guests begging for more. Second place went to firefighter Pete Lazarcheck from Engine 291 in Queens for his Skirt Steak with Burgundy Cream Sauce. Pete’s restaurant competitor, Matt Gibson from Legends Hospitality at Yankee Stadium, took third place for his rendition of the skirt steak dish.

Celebrity Judges Bring the Sparkle & Sizzle

Rounding out the night was a raucous live auction that included hilarious commentary by our guest judges who acted as auctioneers. Ben Aaron, an NBC Universal reporter, got the crowd in a bidding war over the auction’s choice items including sports memorabilia, international trips, and entertainment packages. Our panel of celebrity judges included radio/television personality Valerie Smaldone, who served as emcee for the night, Council member Peter J. Vallone Jr., WPIX 11 reporter Sukanya Krishnan, Former NHL player (New Jersey Devils) Grant Marshall, NBC Universal reporter Ben Aaron, WNYC Radio host Soterios Johnson, former NFL player (NY Jets) Freeman McNeil, Former NFL player (Washington Redskins) Thomas Huff, NBC 4 consumer reporter Lynda Baquero, and NFL player (NY Giants) Stevie Brown. Restaurant owner and chef, Adrianne Calvo was a celebrity guest chef providing tasty nibbles for the crowd throughout the night.

As returning judge Sukanya Krishnan said on her WPIX 11 morning show, “I’ve had the privilege of serving as a judge for the competition and let me tell you the food is fantastic, the people are wonderful and it all goes for an organization that’s really making a difference.” Each year, the competitors manage to put more love, more flavor, and more life into their cooking. We thank all our firehouse and restaurant chefs, our generous corporate sponsors, our celebrity guests, and our volunteers for an incredible night of spectacular food and exceptional company. The proceeds from the event will help us continue to provide the best in emergency and disaster training, helping to empower leaders and volunteers to become ready responders. See you all next year for our 12^th annual Iron Skillet® Cook Off!

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