"Sometimes you discover who your dream is for only after you start sharing it"

The Insiders website

YouTube @HeyInsiders

Instagram @DisneylandInsiders

Episode chapters

[00:49] Meet the Beigel family

[03:21] How Disney became part of family life

[06:24] The kids' earliest park memories

[16:59] Jac creates The Disneyland Insider page

[18:33] The kids decide to make their own show

[22:51] How the family divided the work

[25:23] Learning from the early filming mistakes

[26:27] Jac's promise to keep Disneyland fun

[31:18] Discovering who was watching from afar

The Insiders grew out of something the Beigel family already loved doing together. Jac and David shared a love of Disney before they had children, which led to Adam, Cara, and Eric growing up with Disneyland woven into family life. Jac started a Facebook page to share photos from their visits. When the kids decided they wanted to make a show of their own, she gave them the page and told them to run with it.

I loved hearing how the family made those first shows. The kids wrote scripts and edited their videos. Jac kept the schedule and held the camera. They learned as they went, sometimes discovering that the sound hadn't recorded or that the Mark Twain riverboat's horn would go off every time Eric tried to speak. Through it all, Jac held them to one promise: Disneyland had to stay fun.

What began as something the Beigels enjoyed together now reaches people who cannot visit the parks as often as they'd like. This is part one of our conversation about the dream they built as a family.

BobWeis.com

Buy the book Dream Chasing

"You can't imagine how wonderful it is when you write a book then have a young person read it and ask questions about it."

BobWeis.com

Buy the book Dream Chasing

I spent years loving the Haunted Mansion without ever getting to work on it. Then, while Disneyland was closed and I was home writing, I found another way into that world. What if at the end of the ride, a ghost follows you home.

That question brought together the Mansion's playful ghosts and the dogs I've loved over the years. In this special episode, Gretel Maberry takes the microphone and asks me how that idea grew into Ghost Dog. We talk about the details I pulled from the attraction, the places that helped me picture Herbert's adventure, and why I ended up writing the book a second time. Composer Dave Wallace also joins us to share how he gave the audiobook its ghostly sound.

Episode Chapters

[00:57] A Halloween special and an audiobook gift

[05:14] Gretel takes over the interview

[06:45] How the Haunted Mansion inspired Ghost Dog

[09:02] Bringing familiar details into a fictional story

[17:40] George Scribner's illustrations

[25:37] French ghosts and recording the audiobook

[28:25] Dave Wallace creates the audiobook's sound

[35:52] Why the ghost had to be a dog

[37:34] Rewriting the manuscript and designing the book

[42:20] Closing thoughts and the audiobook gift

www.jodymaberry.com

"It would not have been this thing if it was not for the contributions of these people."

Joe Rohde book, Floating Mountains

Episode chapters

[02:55] Joe's first glimpse at Floating Mountains

[04:14] Giving a team direction without commanding it

[06:41] How Joe found his path at Disney

[09:36] Why creative satisfaction has little to do with scale

[11:38] Joe's advice to young artists: find your people

[12:55] Where Joe sees promise for AI and artists

[18:11] Why unfamiliar art can be difficult to value

[25:43] Seeing creative potential in raw materials

[29:24] Bob and Jody reflect on the conversation

oe Rohde and I have known each other for decades, going back to our years working together at Imagineering. He helped create places like Disney's Animal Kingdom and Aulani, and he has a way of bringing people and ideas together that makes the finished work more than any one person could have imagined.

When I asked Joe what it felt like to hold his new book, Floating Mountains, he started talking about the people who made it with him. That's Joe. He knows where he wants a project to go, but he leaves room for someone else to make it better. If you've ever tried to make something with a team, you'll recognize both the trust and the uncertainty in that approach.

Our conversation also takes us into the strange moment before an original idea makes sense to anyone else. Joe has a lot to say about that, including where he thinks AI could help artists keep creating work that surprises us.