Storybeat with Steve Cuden

Danielle Sunberg, a multi-award winning author and TEDx speaker, coaches high performers and advises social-impact organizations on authentic leadership. Specializing in conscious self-development, she guides individuals and groups to cultivate personal mastery as the key to experiencing our full potential. A former commercial litigator at a Washington D.C. law firm, Danielle's journey took a pivotal turn after successfully de...

Noted author and teacher Andrew Erish’s first book, Col. William N. Selig, the Man Who Invented Hollywood, was hailed by the L.A. Public Library as “One of the best books of 2012.” And The Huffington Post declared, “…it may well be the film book of the year.” 

Andrew’s most recent book, Vitagraph, America’s First Great Motion Picture Studio, received the Peter C. Rollins Award for the best book of 2022 by the Southwest Popular/Ameri...

Rosanna Staffa is an Italian-born playwright and author.  Her debut novel, The War Ends At Four, is a beautifully rendered tale about an Italian acupuncturist in Minneapolis who returns home to Milan and rediscovers all that she left behind, who she is, and what her life is really about. I’ve read The War Ends at Four and found it to be a moving and poignant personal story about a woman trying to find herself.  I highly recommend i...

This is Charles Rosenay’s second time on StoryBeat. He’s been in the entertainment business for over four decades as an actor, promoter, music aficionado, entertainer, MC, DJ, humorist, and author.

Recently, he released his latest book, The Book of Top 10 Beatles Lists, which contains dozens of top ten lists from pop-culture notables, like Pete Best, Dick Cavett, Tommy Chong, Melanie, and even Dave Winfield, all laying out their fav...

         Terry Press recently joined Amblin Partners in the newly created role of President of Strategy and Communications. Terry oversees the execution of all elements of marketing, publicity, consumer products, and communication for the film and television divisions of Amblin Partners and Steven Spielberg, who said of Terry, “Since the earliest days of DreamWorks, Terry has been a vital part of our DNA, championing our films with...

Jimmy Roberts is the composer of the second longest-running Off-Broadway musical in New York theater history, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, which ran for over 5000 performances. It’s been produced around the world in languages as diverse as French, Spanish, German, Finnish, Mandarin and Cantonese.  

Jimmy's second Off-Broadway show The Thing About Men, won the New York Outer Critics Circle award for Best Musical....

Branden Cobb is a 15-year Marketing executive at the forefront of industry evolution. In a time of heightened concern regarding Artificial Intelligence, content generation, and responsible Marketing, Branden stands out for merging innovation with market insights, by insisting that successful Marketing is a dynamic fusion of both art and science. As a pioneer in crafting courageous strategies, Branden aims to not only grab customers...

Actor-director Michelle Danner is also an acting coach at the Los Angeles Acting School who specializes in the Meisner, Strasberg, Adler, Hagen, Chekhov and Stanislavsky techniques. Alongside Larry Moss, she’s also the founding and Artistic Director of the Edgemar Center for the Arts.

In 2006, Michelle made her feature film directing debut with, How to Go Out on a Date in Queens, winning the L.A. Film Awards' Best Acting and Be...

What a great deal of fun it is to chat with the dynamic John Vorhaus, who is making his second StoryBeat appearance because you never know which direction he's going to take in any answer.  

John is best known for his classic comedy writing textbook, The Comic Toolbox: How to be Funny Even if You’re Not. Now available in five languages, John’s “bible of comedy writing” continues to be a definitive source of information and insp...

I had a blast chatting with the great Australian-born actor and world-class raconteur, Thaao Penghlis, about his career and creative process.  If you’re a fan of NBC’s long-running soap opera, Days of Our Lives, then you’re also likely to be a fan of Thaao's. He's had a remarkable four-decade, 1500+ episode run on the show playing both the seductively villainous Count Tony DiMera and the Count’s evil look-a-like impersona...

Writer-director Richard Bakewell is a veteran cinematographer and television camera operator who has worked with major media figures like Gordon Ramsay and Oprah Winfrey, and on noted TV docuseries such as Cops, Last Chance U, and Cheer. 

Richard has written and directed the feature film, Roswell Delirium, as a response to both his own journey back from PTSD and the global response to the 2020 pandemic.  The film stars 1980’s legend...

Damyanti Biswas is a Singapore-based fiction writer. Her short fiction has been published at Smokelong, Ambit, Litro, and Puerto del Sol, among others. And she's the coeditor of The Forge literary magazine. Her popular blog damyantiwrites.com, where she speaks about the writing life and interviews publishing professionals, turned 15 this year.

She's the author of You Beneath Your Skin, an Amazon-bestselling crime novel, wh...

Fritz Coleman is a 5-time Emmy Award Winning Stand-Up Comedian and former NBC Weathercaster. He’s opened all over the United States for entertainment icons like Ray Charles, Debbie Reynolds, Jay Leno, George Benson, the band America and too many more to mention. He made 8 appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Jay Leno. He spent 40 years as the main weathercaster for NBC Los Angeles until he retired in 2020. 

He curr...

Skye Fitzgerald founded Spin Film to bear witness to unfolding crises with the intent to deepen empathy and understanding. He recently completed a trilogy of films on the global refugee crisis. The first, 50 Feet from Syria, focused on doctors working on the Syrian border and was voted onto the Oscar® shortlist. The second, Lifeboat, documents search and rescue operations off the coast of Libya and was nominated for an Academy Awar...

Shelley Herman is an Emmy-nominated writer, actress, and host whose career began as an NBC Page in Burbank, CA. Shelley’s written over 1000 hours of television, contributed to numerous books for Dove/Phoenix Books, starred in the TV series Off the Wall and Night Rap, and co-hosted ESPN's Battle of The Monster Trucks and Mud Bog Spectacular. 

In addition, Shelley has guest-starred on numerous TV shows and hosted eight infomercia...

Leslie S. Klinger is the multi-award-winning New York Times best-selling editor of more than 75 books, focusing primarily on the history of crime and supernatural fiction. 

In addition to heavily-annotated editions of classics like the stories of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Frankenstein, the work of H. P. Lovecraft, and most recently, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he’s edited numerous anthologie...

Making a return for his second appearance on StoryBeat is the great jazz and world flutist, Michael Mason. Michael’s been playing professionally for more than 40 years.  He’s led off for Trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, had master classes with James Newton, been influenced by Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, performed with New Orleans Saxophonist Edward “Kidd” Jordan and Chicago’s legendary Fred Anderson. He’s also collaborated with James Gal...

Author-publisher Stephen Games came to publishing after a lifetime of reflecting on the creative arts. Stephen is a former architecture correspondent for The Guardian, documentary maker for the BBC, and opinion writer for the Los Angeles Times. 

He has a PhD from Cambridge University for research into the work of the celebrated German architectural historian, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, about whom he’s published four books. And Stephen ha...

The actor and writer, Joe Coyle has appeared in such movies as Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise, Promised Land with Matt Damon, Frances McDormand, Emily Blunt, and John Krasinski, and Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, starring Cate Blanchett.

Joe hails from Sewickley, Pennsylvania.  He’s been a paperboy, journalism student, university newspaper writer/photographer, magazine junior executive, TV/Film actor/writer/producer, bartender, landman ...