As Told To – Details, episodes & analysis

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As Told To

Daniel Paisner

Arts

Society & Culture

Frequency: 1 episode/14d. Total Eps: 115

Everybody's got a story to tell. Sometimes they need a little bit of help. Veteran ghostwriter Daniel Paisner talks shop with his fellow collaborators and shines a light on what it means to pursue a writing life on the back of someone else’s story.

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Apple Podcasts

🇨🇦 Canada - books
18/12/2025
#74
🇬🇧 Great Britain - books
15/01/2025
#97

Spotify

No recent rankings available

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https://www.filmmovementplus.com/
123 shares
https://libro.fm/
83 shares
https://www.koehlerbooks.com/book/balloon-dog/
74 shares

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Score global : 53%

Publication history

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Episode 80: Benjamin Dreyer

Tuesday, January 14, 2025 • Duration 01:13:37

“You’d be amazed at how far you can get in life having no idea what the subjunctive mood is,” writes Benjamin Dreyer, retired managing editor and copy chief of the Random House division of Penguin Random House. “As if it’s not bad enough that English has rules, it also has moods.”

Yes, it does. Happily, the mood of the room for writers in Benjamin’s good hands as a copyeditor was cheerful and patient and winning… and, for the most part, grammatically correct. Over the course of his 30+ years in publishing, he helped to shepherd the work of writers such as Michael Chabon, Edmund Morris, Suzan-Lori Parks, E.L. Doctorow, Elizabeth Strout, and Shirley Jackson into print.

Somewhere in there, he also found time to write a book of his own: The New York Times best-selling stylebook Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style—a “brilliant, pithy, incandescently intelligent book [that] is to contemporary writing what Geoffrey Chaucer’s poetry was to medieval English,” according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham, another Random House author who benefited from our guest’s unseen hand.

Join us as Benjamin reflects on the collaborative role of the copyeditor in the publishing process, on the joys of creative footnoting, on the particularly lovely frustration of working with Isabella Rossellini, on a writer’s lifetime allotment of exclamation points, and the excesses to be pruned from phrases like “assless chaps,” “slightly ajar,” and “passing fad.”

(Note the ever-popular serial comma in the previous sentence, and the expenditure of one of those allotted exclamation points in this parenthetical aside!)

Learn more about Benjamin Dreyer:

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Ritani Jewelers
Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
Everyday Shakespeare podcast
A Mighty Blaze podcast
The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

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Second Printing: Peter Asher and David Jacks

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 • Duration 01:21:57

This episode originally aired June 20, 2023

First-time author David Jacks, a veteran video editor and music supervisor, ran into legendary music producer Peter Asher at a Santa Monica taco joint in 2003 and asked if he could interview him. Jacks, a long-time admirer of the man said to be the inspiration for Mike Myers’ “shagadelic” Austin Powers character, who first came to prominence as one-half of the hit-making British pop vocal duo Peter and Gordon and would go on to produce generation-defining albums for artists such as James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, and Diana Ross, immediately asked Asher if he would sit for an interview.

The aspiring journalist thought he might use the interview as the basis for an article in a music magazine, but the two-time Grammy-winning Producer of the Year didn’t think anyone would want to read it. Nevertheless, that first interview led to another… and another… and on and on. Over the next two decades, the two continued to talk, while Jacks lined up interviews with hundreds of musicians and record industry professionals who had worked with Asher over the years, eventually leading to the publication of Peter Asher: A Life in Music, the first book-length account of the producer’s life and career.

Join us for a two-part conversation with author and subject, as Asher reflects on a book he never thought anyone would be interested in reading, and Jacks shares what it was like to tease out the story of a shape-shifting pioneer—“a fascinating music business anomaly,” according to The New York Times, who could never quite understand what all the fuss was about.

Learn more about our guests:

Read The New York Times profile of Peter Asher, timed to coincide with the publication of the David Jacks book.
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Episode 72: Nancy French

Tuesday, September 10, 2024 • Duration 01:16:21

Best-selling author, investigative journalist, political commentator and memoirist Nancy French is a storyteller at heart. She’s helped to write more than a dozen books, including five New York Times best-sellers, with a variety of collaborators from conservative politicians to Olympic athletes to reality television stars. Her latest memoir—Ghosted: An American Story—was published in Spring 2024 to wide critical acclaim. CNN’s Jake Tapper hailed the book prior to publication as “a great read for anyone trying to make sense of cultural whiplash over the last few years,” and went on to write that “Nancy French’s journey from poverty-stricken mountains to a presidential campaign plane is a joy.”

Join us as we kick off Season 4 at the podcast factory with an insight-filled conversation on what it means to lend your voice to leaders who share your values, only to find yourself “ghosted” by a political establishment that seemed to want to punish you for your refusal to endorse the 2016 Republican Presidential nominee.

Learn more about Nancy French:

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

Ritani Jewelers
Chelsea Devantez's I Shouldn't Be Telling You This
Daniel Paisner's

Second Printing: Frank Santopadre

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 • Duration 01:27:26

Originally aired Dec. 6, 2022.

Frank Santopadre is a veteran comedy writer and the longtime co-host of “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast,” with the late, great Gilbert Gottfried. Prior to working with Gilbert, Frank helped to write jokes and supporting material for numerous awards shows (including the Daytime Emmys, the TV Land Awards, and the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize). He has also written comics for Bazooka Joe bubble gum, and mock ad copy, concepts, and character profiles for the Topps Company’s popular Wacky Packs and Garbage Pail Kids trading cards series.

Oh, and did we mention he also wrote for Mad and Cracked magazines? And the somewhat less zany The New York Times, The Washington Post, People, US Weekly, and Politico? Along the way, he has created comedy material for an eclectic line-up of celebrated personalities, including Bill Murray, Howard Stern, Sarah Silverman, Meryl Streep, Martin Short, and Ben Stiller, and briefly served as a staff writer on what he proudly calls “the worst sitcom in television history”—a forgettable show from the late ‘90s called “Lost on Earth,” hailed by The Los Angeles Times during its mercifully-brief run as “mirthless.”

Join us for a somewhat more mirth-filled hour, as we talk about what it was like to help give voice to one of the most singular voices in the annals of American comedy—a joyful burden Frank kinda, sorta shared with podcast host Daniel Paisner, who collaborated with Gilbert Gottfried on his 2011 memoir Rubber Balls and Liquor.

Learn more about Frank Santopadre, visit his official website, like his Facebook page, and follow him on Twitter.

Episode 71: Gathering of the Ghosts

Tuesday, August 13, 2024 • Duration 01:10:28

Join podcast host Daniel Paisner as he moderates the keynote panel discussion at the inaugural “Gathering of the Ghosts” ghostwriting conference earlier this year—an event jointly sponsored by Gotham Ghostwriters and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Dan is joined by music journalist Holly Gleason and former As Told To guests Seth Davis and Jodi Lipper for a spirited discussion on their ghostwriting journeys, and a reflection on the many ways authors and journalists are writing in collaboration.

Learn more about our guests:

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

Ritani Jewelers
Chelsea Devantez's I Shouldn't Be Telling You This
Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis

Episode 70: Hope Edelman

Tuesday, July 30, 2024 • Duration 01:15:49

Hope Edelman is an author, ghostwriter, essayist, writing instructor and life coach. The through-line connecting much of her work, from the collaborations she’s helped to write to her own best-selling memoirs, is the theme of parent-loss.

“Navigating motherhood without your mom is like assembling a complex puzzle without the picture on the box,” she writes in a blog post on her website. She’s been writing about the grief and loss in her own life since her best-selling 1994 memoir Motherless Daughters—a book she began as a graduate student at the University of Iowa, when she realized she was being called to write about her mother’s death more than a decade earlier.

It's a calling that connects Hope to her ghostwriting clients as well. Her first collaboration, a dual memoir written with actors Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez—Along the Way: The Journey of a Father and Son—is informed by the death of Sheen’s mother, when the actor was just 11 years old, while her current project, written with Owen Elliot-Kugell, the daughter of the late Cass Elliot—My Mama, Cass—finds its narrative drive in the sudden death of the author’s mother, who died in her sleep in a London apartment nearly ten years after she shot to fame as a member of The Mamas & The Papas.

The recipient of a Pushcart Prize for Creative Nonfiction, Hope has taught writing at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the University of Iowa, and Antioch University-Los Angeles.

Join us for a compelling conversation on what it means to find a way to heal as you find your voice as a writer.

Learn more about Hope Edelman:

Website

Episode 69: Adam Nimoy

Tuesday, July 16, 2024 • Duration 01:13:43

Television director, filmmaker and author Adam Nimoy, the son of actor Leonard Nimoy, knows what it means to grow up in the chilling shadow of a famous father. He also knows what it means to tell a helluva story, and he does so in the pages of his new memoir The Most Human: Reconciling with My Father, Leonard Nimoy.

The book explores the author’s complicated relationship with his father and reflects on how it informed his views on marriage, parenting, addiction and recovery.

A graduate of Loyola Law School, Adam Nimoy started his career working in entertainment law, before becoming a filmmaker, ultimately directing dozens of network television shows—some of them, he allows with self-deprecating good cheer, “sublime”, and some of them “eminently unwatchable.” He also directed the documentary “For the Love of Spock,” which was originally conceived as a collaborative venture with his father shortly before the actor’s death in 2015.

Adam also taught writing, directing and acting at the New York Film Academy, and filmmaking at Beit T’Shuvah, an addiction treatment center.

“Whether you’re a Leonard Nimoy fan, a Trekkie, or from another planet,” writes noted rabbi and social justice advocate Shmuly Yanklowitz, “you are sure to find this vulnerable, brave, humorous, and intimate story about Spock, the outer limits, a father-son relationship, and teshuvah (recovery and repair) deeply moving.”

Learn more about Adam Nimoy:

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

Ritani Jewelers

Episode 68: Michael Franklin

Tuesday, July 2, 2024 • Duration 01:06:17

Michael Franklin is the co-founder and executive director of Speechwriters of Color, a community of expert and aspiring communicators helping to give voice to leaders at every level of the public, private and non-profit sectors. As a proud partner of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, the organization has placed dozens of candidates in both full-time and contract roles as speechwriters across the Biden-Harris administration.

“We are definitely understanding and realizing the power of words to make a difference,” Michael says.

As the founder and chief thought leadership officer of Words Normalize Behavior, a Black- and Gen Z-owned and certified LGBT Business Enterprise, Michael has developed a reputation as a leading communications strategist, working with clients in higher education, political advocacy, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, sports and entertainment.

Michael’s commitment to telling stories through coalition building, targeted outreach and inclusive communications practices has its roots in his commitment to public speaking and debating. While a student at Howard University, he was the inaugural HBCU Speech and Debate League National Champion in both Parliamentary Debate and Extemporaneous Speaking and helped to lead the school’s debate team in 2019’s “Great Debate” against Harvard University.

Learn more about Michael Franklin:

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

Ritani Jewelers

Episode 67: Ellis Henican

Tuesday, June 18, 2024 • Duration 01:17:49

Ellis Henican—New York Times best-selling collaborator, Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist, and popular television news pundit—had perhaps the coolest side-gig of any of our podcast guests to date. He provided the voice of “Stormy” in the adult animated television series “SeaLab 2021,” which ran on the Cartoon Network for four seasons.

This spring, he’s also provided the “voice” for books by former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (What Would Reagan Do?); legendary actor Tom Selleck (You Never Know); and, high-stakes hostage negotiator Mickey Bergman (In the Shadows), marking him as perhaps the busiest ghostwriter of the publishing season.

Ellis’s other collaborative credits include Home Team, a New York Times best-seller written with New Orleans Saints football coach Sean Payton; In the Blink of Any Eye: Dale, Daytona, and the Day that Changed Everything, with two-time Daytona 500 winner Michael Waltrip; and Doc, with former All-Star pitcher Dwight “Doc” Gooden.

For 20 years, he wrote a thrice-weekly column in New York Newsday, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize for the newspaper’s coverage of the Union Square train wreck.

Join us as Ellis reflects on his mid-career pivot from the newsroom, the lessons he’s learned writing on behalf some of our most influential athletes, actors, and politicians, and how it happened that a veteran journalist found his way to becoming a cartoon character.

Learn more about Ellis Henican:

Episode 66: Chelsea Devantez

Tuesday, June 4, 2024 • Duration 01:17:29

“Celebrity memoirs have always been my favorite book genre,” reflects podcast guest Chelsea Devantez, the Emmy-nominated writer, comedian, director, and host of the celebrity book club podcast “Glamorous Trash.” “That is what happens when your nearest bookstore growing up is a Wal-Mart. That was my fate.”

Chelsea is just out with a celebrity-adjacent memoir of her own, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This (But I’m Going to Anyway), from Hanover Square Press. It’s a book that might surprise her loyal podcast listeners, or viewers who know her from her work as a television writer for shows like “Not Dead Yet,” “Girls5Eva,” and “Bless This Mess,” or as the head writer for the Apple TV+ show “The Problem with Jon Stewart.”

The book is wildly funny in spots, but harrowing and traumatic in others, as Chelsea tells her story through a series of essays about the many women who have given her life shape and meaning, recounting a tumultuous childhood, a series of toxic relationships, and a pattern of domestic violence that might have upended a less determined soul.

Join us as we talk with Chelsea about her new book, about her unlikely career path, and about the current state of the celebrity memoir, in a conversation that will hopefully make you think about the stories we share, and the ways we go about sharing them.

Learn more about Chelsea Devantez:

As Told To – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

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Apple Podcasts

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As Told To – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other99+

Amazon99

Bookshop49

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other99+

Amazon99

Bookshop49