As Told To

We're back with the second installment of our new "Between the Lines" feature here at the podcast factory—a bridge to take listeners from our current As Told To episode to our next installment.  Here's a passage from Arsenio: A Memoir , the latest collaboration from podcast guest Alan Eisenstock . The book, an immediate New York Times best-seller, chronicles the life and career of comedian and pio...

What happens when a ghostwriter/collaborator looks on as the subject of her latest book becomes the lede of a story neither one of them set out to tell? That's the question at the heart of this conversation with journalist Kate Andersen Brower , co-author of the New York Times best-seller We the Women: The Hidden Heroes Who Shaped America , written with "60 Minutes" correspondent and former "CBS E...

" Did I do that? " Yes, in fact, he did. After a successful career as a writer on hit sitcoms like "Mork and Mindy," "The Nanny," and "Married with Children," podcast guest Alan Eisenstock managed to step from television writing rooms and reinvent himself as one of the publishing industry's most sought-after collaborators.  His most recent books include New York Times best-selling memoir Life's To...

We're trying something new here at the pod shop – a kind of palate cleanser to follow our latest full episode .   What gives? Well, we keep hearing from our listeners that they'd like to sample one or more of the books under discussion in each of our every-other-weekly conversations with writers and creatives who write and create in collaboration, so we thought we'd offer a brief reading in this s...

"Memory without responsibility is just nostalgia," reflects podcast guest Doron Keren, the keeper of his family's harrowing Holocaust survival story. "Someone has to make sure that stories like this live and are experienced by future generations." Keren, a retired dentist, has determined to do just that, working tirelessly to help shepherd first his mother's story ( The Girl in the Green Sweater ,...

"It's a constant hustle," reflects podcast guest John Rosengren on the life of a freelance journalist. "Ginning up ideas, developing them into pitches, sending them around, facing rejection… sometimes it can wear me down." But sometimes, too, it can be endlessly rewarding, as we can hear as John looks back on a rich, wildly prolific journalism career. Over the years, John's articles have appeared...

Award-winning music journalist, critic and artist development consultant Holly Gleason returns to the podcast for a solo outing to discuss her eclectic and electric career as one of the music industry's leading voices. Over the years, she has written for Rolling Stone , the Los Angeles Times , the New York Times , Playboy , Spin , and the Miami Herald .  Holly's most recent collaboration, the #1 N...

As a freelance writer, Jenna Glatzer has lent her voice to books, articles, essays, blog posts, scripts—even greeting cards and doormats, she's proud to say. She is the author or co-author of more than 35 books, many of them written in collaboration with some of our leading actors, athletes, CEOs, models, reality television stars, medical professionals and news personalities. Oh, and Celine Dion !...

What makes a good New Yorker cartoon? More to the point, who makes a good New Yorker cartoon? In our latest episode of As Told To: The Ghostwriting Podcast , we visit with the magazine's self-described "toonsome twosome," the cartooning team of Bizzy Coy and Lia Strasser, and discover what it takes to tap the talents of a like-minded soul to help you discover your best creative self.  "It was out...

"This is the best book about how it used to be," writes the influential music critic and record industry analysts Bob Lefsetz, in praise of Paul Rappaport's wild ride of a memoir, Gliders Over Hollywood: Airships, Airplay and the Art of Rock Promotion . "[It's] the only book I can remember that truly details what it was like inside the star factory." After a career spanning more than three decades...

"It's off the record until it's on the page." That's a line from our As Told To podcast conversation with award-winning author/ghostwriter Joanne Gordon, reflecting on the level of trust that exists between author and subject in a successful book collaboration. A former staff writer and contributing editor at Forbes , where she wrote about management, career, and workplace issues, Joanne is the au...

This episode originally aired on June 7, 2022. Two-time Emmy Award-winner Bruce Vilanch has written jokes for Bob Hope, Lily Tomlin, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and virtually every Hollywood star to grace the Academy Awards stage from 1989 – 2014.  As one of the entertainment industry's most sought-after joke writers, the actor, comedian and songwriter was perhap...

Join podcast host Daniel Paisner as he moderates a panel discussion at the second annual Gathering of the Ghosts ghostwriting conference earlier this year.   Dan is joined by former As Told To guests Jodi Lipper , Lisa Dickey , and Ellen Daly , as the veteran collaborators compare notes on craft and process—a fun, spirited, insightful reflection on the very many ways authors and journalists are wr...

"As a ghostwriter, I've trained my ear to listen for what's really there or not there, to discern what's underneath or between someone's words," writes veteran collaborator Samantha Rose, in her stirring, soaring new memoir Giving Up the Ghost: A Daughter's Memoir . "I hear what's implied, what's withheld…" Samantha's gifts as a storyteller are very much on display in the pages of her new book—a h...

Nelson and Alex DeMille's The Tin Men is an electrifying read and a chillingly timely one," writes The New York Times best-selling novelist Megan Abbott of the third and final father-son collaboration in the Scott Brodie & Maggie Taylor series. "[It's] both a master-class in suspense and a haunting exploration of the dangers and costs of a surrender to technology, an abandonment of the human." Yes...

Student journalist and first-time documentary filmmaker Matthew Winkler joins us to discuss his work on a film chronicling the life and career of Joya Sherrill, an unsung American jazz vocalist who wrote the lyrics to the Billy Strayhorn standard, "Take the A Train," made famous by the Duke Ellington orchestra. Matthew came across Sherrill's name during his freshman year at Tufts University, while...

Podcast guest Michael E. Long calls himself "a professional explainer with a restive mind."   He is just that.   Trained as physicist, Mike is the co-author of the international bestseller The Molecule of More , which has been translated into more than 20 languages, and the sole author of the recently-published follow-up title Taming the Molecule of More .   As a speechwriter, he has written for m...

"No two caregiving journeys are alike," writes Emma Heming Willis, the wife of actor Bruce Willis, who was diagnosed in 2023 with Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), a rare form of dementia affecting behavior, movement and language. "But we are connected by the same unchosen thread." In The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path , Emma writes movingly and hopefu...

"Pull the heart of your work out of your chest and lay it out there for the gods," podcast guest Samuel G. Freedman told his Columbia Journalism School graduate students on the first day of his final semester after 35 years of teaching. "That's all I'm asking of you. Not much."   No, not much. And yet what Sam Freedman asked of his students during his tenure as one of our leading journalism educat...

Jane Leavy is the New York Times best-selling author of Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy , The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood , and The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created . She is also the author of the comic novel Squeeze Play , hailed by  Entertainment Weekly as "the best novel ever written about baseball." A longtime sportswriter and feature writer for The W...

Episode originally aired on Nov. 2, 2021. "Don't make it out, make it better." That's a line from podcast guest D. Watkins, offered in the book trailer for his book of essays We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black Americ a , in which he gives voice to the voiceless and shines meaningful light on what it means to come of age in East Baltimore, in one of America's poorest black neighbor...

Episode originally aired on April 11, 2023 "Writing is not what you start," writes podcast guest Nell Scovell in her scathingly funny memoir Just the Funny Parts . "It's not even what you finish. It's what you start, finish, and put out there for the world to see." Indeed, Nell offers this observation from a place of hard-won experience. A veteran television writer ("Newhart," "The Simpsons," "Lat...

Ivy Pochoda is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels Visitation Street , These Women , Sing Her Down , and the just-published Ecstasy , a reimagined contemporary feminist horror story hailed by the Washington Post as a "stiletto-sharp remake of Euripides."  She is also the co-author of The New York Times best-selling middle-grade Epoca fantasy series , created by the late basketball legend...

Amy Silverberg is a comedian and writer based in Los Angeles. Her stand-up comedy has been featured on Comedy Central, Hulu, NPR, and Amazon Prime. Her short fiction has appeared in  Best American Short Stories ,  The Paris Review , Granta, and The New Yorker. She holds a Ph. D. in Creative Writing from USC, where she now teaches. Prior to publication, Amy's debut novel First Time, Long Time was h...

Veteran journalist Carla Sosenko has written for The New York Times , Cosmopolitan , Marie Claire , People , Self , Newsweek , and numerous other publications. Her work has also appeared in Time Out New York (where she was editor-in-chief), Entertainment Weekly (where she was executive editor), In Touch (where she was managing editor) and Us Weely (where she is currently executive editor at large)...