Upcoming Guest

2/28/2025

Randee Dawn is a Brooklyn-based author and journalist focusing on speculative fiction across the categories (science-fiction, fantasy, and horror) at night while writing entertainment and lifestyle stories during the day for publications including Today.com, NBCNews.com, Variety, The Los Angeles Times, and Emmy Magazine.

You may have seen her name in other publications over the years, including Soap Opera Digest and The Boston Phoenix, E! Online, New Musical Express, and Mojo. She contributed to a French book about American television, Les Series Tele, and co-authored (with Susan Green) The Law & Order: SVU Unofficial Companion.

For more info: https://randeedawn.com

3/14/2025

Bridget Barkan is a chameleon artist who shape-shifts through genre and style with a thread of raw truth and soul, woven into every melody and lyric. A native New Yorker, she has toured the world with pop/glam band Scissor Sisters and has performed with Bright Light Bright Light and Slow Knights. Starring in LGBTQ romantic classic “Walk with Me,” as a singer/songwriter, featured on the original album as well. As a singer she has also opened for Lady Gaga, and has shared the stage with Drag legends Joey Arias, Murray Hill and more. She worked closely with Baz Luhrmann as the voice of Misty Holloway on the Netflix show “The Get Down.” Bridget has released singles with the House DJ/producer legend Todd Terry as well as numerous of her own singles. As a child actress, she has appeared in countless commercials and Sesame Street. She has starred in HBO’s Everyday People, Sherrybaby, Redacted, God’s Pocket, Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick and had a recurring role as a one-legged “hooker” on Law & Order: SVU. On stage, Barkan has appeared in numerous productions including Dog Sees God and alongside Lea Michelle in a workshop of Spring Awakening.

3/21/2025

From an early age, Amanda has been aware and in tune with her Psychic gifts and with the spirit world. As she grew up listening to the sound of her own drumbeat. She borrowed her first book on Wicca when she was 13 and her first tarot deck at 16. Then, at the age of18, she was free to truly study her Spirit Lead path of Witchcraft, Psychic Development, and Energy Healing at a local shop that was located in Indianapolis, IN.

In 2006, Spirit lead Amanda to move down to Birmingham, AL. While living there the Spirits lead her to connect with her Southern roots and began doing professional readings at a local shop. This began her journey of being not just a high-demand Psychic/Medium/Tarot Reader, but she started teaching classes on the Tarot and becoming a leader in the community. As well as learning and practicing Hoodoo/Root working. In the Fall of 2009, Amanda came back home Indianapolis area. While helping her

Today she is a member of the Temple of Witchcraft and the Cabot-Kent Hermetic Temple and is focused on helping others all around the world, with clients ranging from the United States, Canada, the U.K., China, Australia, Japan, Puerto Rico, India, Mexico, Cayman Islands, and Denmark to name a few. People come to her for spiritual guidance, love, relationship, career, and business guidance.

Here website is here: https://3crowsconjure.com

4/4/2025

Julie Brill (she/her) is at work on a memoir entitled Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia. Her numerous short pieces related to this larger project appear in Haaretz, the Forward, Balkan Insight, Kveller, Cognoscenti, Alma, the Globe Post, and elsewhere. She shares her family’s experiences in the Shoah with middle and high school students through Living Links.

Julie is a lactation consultant, childbirth educator & doula at WellPregnancy in Boston. Julie is also the author of the anthology Round the Circle: Doulas Share their Experiences. She lives outside of Boston and is the mother of two adult daughters.

Julie is a contributor to the Read650 Anthology Jewish: True Stories of Love, Latkes, and L'Chaim and has been featured on Memoir Mondays.

Follow her on Twitter @JulieBrill8 and Instagram @JulieSBrill.

4/18/2025

Lively, magnetic, and memorable – Shari Rowe is nothing short of enchanting in all aspects. This Southwestern troubadour has spent her career captivating audiences worldwide, from multiple tours in Poland to charity events and big stage concerts opening for artists like Wynonna Judd and LeAnn Rimes. Living her life in the true spirit of country music, Shari Rowe leaves an impression – and this impression inspires and uplifts audiences through the power of music. 

5/2/2025

Rey has seen a lot… and I mean A LOT. Twenty six plus years as a publicist (since 1995) and a few years before that as a nationally published entertainment journalist, he’s been around. Backstage, on the tour bus, in the hotel rooms, behind closed doors, in the conference room… he’s witnessed almost all… but there’s undoubtedly more that he hasn’t seen.  But it hasn’t shocked him. In fact, it’s intrigued him… challenged him… and at times, offered myriad choices of how to react and how to process. And that’s the thing… nothing shocks him. Starting his journey into the lion’s den that is the music industry, he was a journalist for a number of newspapers, magazines, and regionals across the country (and one or two overseas). He’s interviewed Kurt Cobain, U2, Joey Ramone, Sinead O’Connor, Bjork, Polly Jean Harvey… oh, and Vanilla Ice… While journalism was his passion, it didn’t quite pay the bills, especially in Boston. 

So he moved to NYC and jumped into Publicity. IRS Records, Mammoth Records, Grass Records, Jive/Silvertone/Zomba, KSA Publicity/Press Here, Island Def Jam… He worked with Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Hanson, Duran Duran, Sting, Brooks & Dunn, O Brother Where Are Thou?, Juliana Hatfield, Diana Ross, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Dresden Dolls, Charlotte Church, among hundreds of others.  He did the label (indie and major) and indie PR thing but he was burnt out on doing publicity like a pre-defined template that labels determined, so he left the corporate world to start his own shingle with a focus on building profiles and strategies that weren’t constrained by hard, constrained blueprints. 

In 2004, Reybee Inc. was born. 

Instead of sticking to templates, he and his team of professionals craft unique strategies to build solid foundations and build up from there, creating campaigns that focus on constructing artist careers that go beyond. His campaigns go forward and sideways, and rarely backwards (unless, of course, we’re talking retrospectives, which, in that case, they go backwards too).

Nearly two decades later, it’s still going strong… in fact, it keeps growing… and growing… and growing. Yay.

5/16/2025

Robert Schrenier is the author of The Wolves and the Greyhounds, a military thriller/historical fiction novel set in the early months of the First World War.

The novel is based on extraordinary actual events. In August 1914, as war was declared, an entire fleet of German warships stealthily eluded an Allied blockade, slipped out into the Pacific Ocean - and disappeared. The possibility that the elusive German fleet might suddenly appear on any horizon paralyzed the British Empire and set in motion a frantic search for the enemy warships.

The book follows two naval captains - on British, one German - as their fates are inexorably drawn together. In this epic wartime adventure, bold gambles and tragic miscalculations pull these two captains, their ships, and their rival empires into a desperate clash—culminating in the most decisive naval battles of the war.

Robert is former CIA Intelligence Officer who works as a consultant and executive in the global private security industry. He is an avid amateur military historian who has traveled the world, routinely sneaking in side-trips to visit ancient fortifications and battlefields. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee with his wife, two spoiled cocker spaniels, an an amusingly musical cockatiel.

Website: https://www.robertschreiner.com

5/30/2025

John Michael Ferrari is a highly acclaimed singer-songwriter and entertainer who loves being on stage. He believes that there are no strangers in the audience and shares his emotional songs about life’s experiences with sophistication and childlike wonder. His latest single, “Music with You,” is all about his audience, and he hopes they can feel the love he has for them through his music. He writes emotional storytelling songs.  He loves what he does. There is no place he’d rather be than on stage.

Named Crossover Artist of the Year by New Music Awards, John Michael pens crossover genre soft yacht rock pop country songs, sometimes with jazz, blues, or Motown influences.  He arranges the music how he and his music producer, Pepper Jay, best think communicates the story.   It’s the John Michael Ferrari genre about life’s experiences.  John Michael splits his time between Nashville and on a ranch in Pahrump, Nevada.John Michael Ferrari writes emotional story-telling songs with touches of simple sophistication in a fusion of country crossover, Top 40, pop, blues, jazz, and child-like wonder genres.  It’s the John Michael Ferrari Genre.

Interested in being on the show send an email to dauna@bettertopodcast.com