What can a handwritten record reveal after someone is gone? In this episode, we follow two very different paper trails.

Marci Pelzer shares the 109-page list her father kept of more than 3,500 books he read over six decades. After going viral, his private habit became a public window into his life.

Dan Fogel lost his wife of 45 years to cancer, and then found diaries including writing that made him question how well he really knew her.

Together, these stories are about grief, memory, mystery, and the strange power of paper to preserve not just facts, but personality, silence, love, and what still can’t be explained.

Suggested episodes:

GUESTS:

Marci Pelzer: The daughter of Dan Pelzer, who left behind a 109-page handwritten list of every book he read from 1962 to 2023. After his death at 92, she helped bring the list to a wider audience
Dan Fogel: Wrote a Huffington Post essay about finding his late wife Sue’s journals after her death and realizing how much of her inner life had remained unknown to him during their 45-year marriage

Support the show: https://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paper trails: A viral book list and a wife’s secret thoughts revealed