Dubbs Weinblatt

Enjoy the first episode of Rachael Cerrotti's first podcast - We Share The Same Sky. This is a 7-episode narrative series that takes you into Rachael's decade long journey to retrace her grandmother's wartime history. The show was listed as one of the best podcasts of 2019 by HuffPost, received a literary award from The Missouri Review, was a reader's choice for Vulture Magazine and listed as a "Show We Love" by Apple Podcasts. You can listen to the whole series by searching "WE SHARE THE SAME SKY" wherever you get your podcasts.

Learn more at: www.sharethesamesky.com

On the final episode of this first season of The Memory Generation, host Rachael Cerrotti is joined by her cousin Elana Israel to talk about their grandmother, Hana Dubova. Hana was the matriarch of their family. She was a joyful, fun, spirited grandmother who also was the sole Holocaust survivor in their family. Rachael spent more than a decade researching and retracing Hana's survival story and turned it into an award-winning documentary podcast and a book. This is the first public conversation she has had with any extended family member about this work. (This project is titled We Share The Same Sky. Learn more at: www.sharethesamesky.com). 

Elana is a psychologist and a relationship coach and lives outside of Philadelphia with her son. In this conversation, Elana shares her experience living with Hana in the final months of her life and struggling with addiction in the years after. Rachael and Elana dig into their process making amends when Elana became sober and how addiction affects grief. They also share memories and reflections about Hana and what it felt like to have a grandmother who carried such a heavy life experience.

Elana and Rachael recorded this conversation on October 29, 2022. Elana was at home near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Rachael was in Portland, Maine.

We are nearing the end of our first season with just one more episode of The Memory Generation to go. So for this episode, we are bringing you a short narrative piece that is all about the power of sharing our stories with strangers and highlights how we never know how our everyday conversations can have a ripple effect in other people’s lives. In the case of this story – it all starts with an Uber ride.

Featured in this episode is Juan Zambrano who shares about his family's history migrating to America from Mexico and Holocaust survivor Morris Price. Both men live in Los Angeles, California.

For more: www.memorygenerationpodcast.com/17-juan-zambrano

Phuc is an award-winning author, high school Latin teacher and tattoo artist based in Portland, Maine. His memoir Sigh, Gone was published in 2020 and is a coming-of-age story that explores growing up in rural Pennsylvania as a punk rock Vietnamese refugee. In this conversation, we talk about his realities being the only Vietnamese family in an all-white town, family abuse, sensitivities around retelling stories of trauma, and about tattoos and how they can be the manifestation of memories.

Rachael and Phuc recorded this conversation on November 21, 2022 in Portland, Maine.

For more: www.memorygenerationpodcast.com/16-phuc-tran

Mira Ptacin is a writer, educator and activist who lives on an island in Maine with her husband, two children and a whole bunch of rescue animals. She teaches creative writing at Colby College, leads memoir workshops to incarcerated women at the Maine Correctional Center, and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. She has written two books - The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna as well as the award-winning memoir Poor Your Soul.  She describes herself as writing about ‘the uterus and the American Dream’ and has written extensively about grief, motherhood and family storytelling. In this conversation, we dig into Mira's 2016 memoir Poor Your Soul. The book weaves together the story of the loss of her brother when she was just a teenager and then the loss of an unborn child when she was in her twenties. 

Mira & Rachael recorded this conversation on October 9, 2022 in Portland, Maine.

More here: www.memorygenerationpodcast.com/15-mira-ptacin

In this episode of The Memory Generation, we explore memory through a contemporary queer experience. Dubbs Weinblatt is the founder of Thank You For Coming Out which is an improv show, podcast and soon-to-be book that aims to create a space of belonging for the queer community by uplifting and celebrating stories of coming out and coming into oneself. During this conversation, we talk about Dubbs wrestling with their Jewish identity, the closing off of oneself to family history during times of pain and how loved ones may struggle with witnessing the growth that happens during self discovery.

We recorded this conversation on October 3rd, 2022 through Zoom. Rachael was in Portland, Maine and Dubbs was at their home in Brooklyn, New York.

For more: www.memorygenerationpodcast.com/14-dubbs-weinblatt

On this episode of The Memory Generation, we are exploring memory loss through the lens of Alzheimer’s  and Dementia. What happens when a family member loses their memory – and with it, their ability to relate with their community and their sense of self? We are joined by Gina Martin. Gina has been a force in the photography world for decades and spent 21 years working for National Geographic representing photographer’s work worldwide.  Her mother was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's at the age of 65 and years later in 2016, after her mother passed away, Gina started the Bob & Diane Fund which annually grants $5000 to a photographer documenting Dementia. In this conversation she shares her experience watching her mother suffer from the disease, her father's role as the caregiver and how the experience changed the course of her life.

Rachael and Gina recorded this conversation on October 6, 2022. Gina lives in Washington D.C, but was visiting California at the time and Rachael was in Portland, Maine.

For more: www.memorygenerationpodcast.com/13-gina-martin

In this episode of The Memory Generation, Rachael Cerrotti talks with author Elizabeth Rosner about her book Survivor Cafe: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory. Both of Elizabeth’s parents were Holocaust survivors and she has carried their stories from the day she was born.  Some stories she was told and others she learned through the silences that threaded their way through her childhood. She began writing about her family history from a young age through poetry and fiction and now explores the topics of inherited trauma and epigenetics through non fiction. Her books teach us that it is our sensitivities that will save us and highlights how we are all connected through very intrinsic human experiences. 

Rachael and Elizabeth recorded this conversation on October 10, 2022. Elizabeth was at her home in Berkeley, California and Rachael was in Portland, Maine.

For more: www.memorygenerationpodcast.com/12-elizabeth-rosner

In this episode of The Memory Generation, we have a story that starts with two girls – best friends who grew up in Berlin in the 1930s. Together, they experienced rising antisemitism and in 1939, each of their families fled. At just 9-years-old, they said a tearful goodbye to each other and promised to keep in touch, but neither knew where the other one went or if they even survived. One of these girls, a woman named Betty Grebenschikoff, who is now in her 90s, never stopped looking for her best friend. And amazingly 82 years later, thanks to the testimony Betty gave to USC Shoah Foundation in 1997, the two women were reunited.  In this conversation, Rachael and Betty discuss how memories of our past can change as life unfolds.

Betty & Rachael recorded this conversation on April 7, 2022 at Betty’s home in St. Petersburg, Florida.

For more: www.memorygenerationpodcast.com/11-betty-grebenschikoff

On this episode of The Memory Generation, Rachael is joined by actress Alina Zievakova who is originally from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine but now lives in Kyiv. Since Russia invaded Ukraine this past February, Alina has been using theater as an act of resistance and as a way to help others process their trauma and wartime experiences. Alina (who speaks 7 languages) shares with us her experiences during this period of war -- everything from the first day of the invasion, her choice not to leave, love during wartime and her hopes for the future. She also shares her experience collecting testimony from her fellow Ukrainians and working as a fixer with foreign journalists. She talks about bearing witness to the war while struggling to survive herself and about how she insists on sharing what she’s seen, even when her own family doesn't believe her.

For more: www.memorygenerationpodcast.com/10-alina-zievakova