Type.Tune.Tint.

The Dinicola family of Scotch Plains, New Jersey is used to having lots of dogs around. They provide a foster home for dogs awaiting adoption, a specialized commitment that requires patience and a love of animals. One particular dog was a hard sell because of his skittish personality. So, they got special permission to adopt Jordan and he's now a family member. Their story is immortalized in the children's book Jordan and...

A cocaine addiction, two burglaries that cleaned him out and a fraught recovery have shaped Sam Gladu's music. Performing as DjRetsam, Sam has been sober for ten years and only a few months into his new career as a rap artist. But he has attracted the attention of Busta Rhymes and a streaming audience that has grown to thousands. His music is raw and real with messages of recovery, loss and optimism. He also hates to see used ...

A near-death experience inspired professional musician Andrew Schulman to create the Medical Musician Initiative, teaching musicians to become part of the care of critically ill patients in ICUs. Having benefitted himself from the healing power of music, Andrew is on a mission to bring a dose of medical music to every ICU around the world. The autobiographical account of his life, death and rebirth Waking the Spirit has attracted a...

Wasps are not our friends, usually. However, Chris Alice Kratzer has found redeeming qualities in wasps, dedicating an entire book to them called The Social Wasps of North America. She was also inspired by a specific type of wasp to design a new kind of home insulation that could go into production sometime in 2024. We'll find out when Yellowjacket Insulation will be coming to a Home Depot near you. Alie's fascination wit...

Three authors, three books, three ways to enjoy your summer reading!

I invited three of my returning authors to tell us about their new books, all coming out during June, 2024. There’s something for everyone here, to wit:

• Fork Social Media! (And the algorithm it rode in on). Sudi “Rick” Karatas returns for his third visit to Type. Tune. Tint. with stories of social media users who ended up booted, suspended, tossed because the al...

Dr. David Weill spent 20 years as one of the world's pre-eminent heart and lung transplant surgeons. Some of his exploits are detailed in his memoir, Exhale: Hope, Healing and A Life in Transplant, which he wrote to preserve the amazing nature of transplant surgery, its successes and failures.

But as many authors have found, writing fiction from fact is incredibly freeing. Thus, his first novel, All That Really Matter...

Australia’s pre-eminent recovery guru brings his positive energy to the world. It took sheer exhaustion from a 17-year heroin addiction to simply stop the madness. And in 2009, he cleared his head and began living a life devoted to better health and commitment to helping other addicts.

"I'm incredibly blessed to be where I am today,” he says.

At age 48, Danny Shannon is a college graduate, an expert on helping addicts get a...

I lost a friend of mine recently. I was fortunate to reconnect with Rob Feldman after going our separate ways for several decades. I was even more fortunate to be able to speak with him at length during this podcast episode in January of 2023. I learned so much about this individual whom I only knew dribs and drabs about even while working with him for a couple of years in the mid 1980s. He lived a remarkable life and I thought you...

Of all the author stories I’ve encountered in five years, this is probably the most amazing of all. Mary Beth O’Connor is a retired federal administrative law judge who survived a childhood rife with physical, sexual and emotional abuse followed by 20 years of hard core alcohol and drug addiction. Faced with never-ending feelings of abandonment, danger and marginalization, she persevered through high school and college, made it int...

The combination of musical talent and digital technology has created a new breed of artists who can create amazing music at home using a computer and a keyboard. It’s one thing to create tunes as a hobby. It’s quite another to identify a market for that music and sell it. In this episode, we meet Evan Oxhorn who has done just that. He’s recorded hundreds of songs and stock music tracks that have earned him thousands of dollars from...

Can one devastating mistake erase 20 years of good?

The road to redemption for volunteer EMT Griffin Ambrose is dark, indeed--a crashed ambulance, a dead patient, an injured partner, then testing legally drunk. After going to jail, losing his EMT card and getting fired from his paid job, he contemplates a new life in exile.

But some of his former patients haven't forgotten the good he did, the lives he saved. Will their support ...

As recently as the 1980s, women firefighters were rare, especially in light of the tough road a group of New York women had in achieving their dream of becoming members of the FDNY. But they did it and around the same time a young woman in Florida named Cindie Schooler-Ball embarked on a career in the fire service there. A product of poverty in Ohio, then jumping from job to job as a teen and young woman in Florida, Cindie was enco...

Sal Panicci wasn’t looking to work retail in his youth in New Jersey, but the blind ad in the Newark Star Ledger was inviting. Seeking to get out of jobs that were unstable, he went for the interview and discovered the job was for a management trainee at Toys R Us, the nationwide chain of toy stores that dominated the market for a generation. His short book In the Toy Box is a recollection of his almost 30 years working for the pre...

After surviving a transient childhood, a knife fight, brain cancer and the death of his wife, Dan Henk’s survival is a story in itself. But he’s not dwelling on the tragic tales. He is a successful tattoo artist who was in the right place at the right time to benefit from the resurgent popularity of body art. He has been around the world, done illustrations for magazines and bands and is a self proclaimed “Master of Horror,” a prin...