As Told To

Daniel Paisner
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As Told To

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.

  1. Episode 83: Cynthia DiTiberio

    6 DAYS AGO

    Episode 83: Cynthia DiTiberio

    “We all have to figure out our own ways to carve out our own creativity,” says New York Times best-selling ghostwriter Cynthia DiTiberio about finding time to do her own writing alongside her collaborative work. “Not that our creativity doesn’t go into our ghostwritten books, but you can’t claim it in the same way.” Cynthia knows what it takes to create a successful book. She started her publishing career as a senior editor at HarperCollins, where she worked with a number of authors, including NIH director Francis Collins and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Jeffrey Marx. From there she went on to co-author a number of best-selling books with a variety of well-known personalities, including Emmy-nominated actress and producer Roma Downey; author-turned-political activist Marianne Williamson; and business strategist and motivational speaker Tony Robbins. She currently writes the Substack newsletter “The Mother Lode,” and is the former publisher of Literary Mama, and her work has appeared in Scary Mommy, The Lily, Mutha Magazine and The Voices Project. Learn more about Cynthia DiTiberio: Website Instagram LinkedIn Box of Butterflies Napkin Notes Please support the sponsors who support our show: Ritani Jewelers Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot Heaven Help Us by John Kasich 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

    1h 4m
  2. Episode 82: Hannah Bos & Paul Thureen

    FEB 11

    Episode 82: Hannah Bos & Paul Thureen

    We’re taking a bit of a pivot here at the podcast factory with this one, pinching from the season-opening episode of Writer’s Bone, our flagship podcast at the Writer’s Bone Podcast Network.  “As Told To” producer and Writer’s Bone host and founder Daniel Ford featured a conversation with the writing team of Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, co-creators of the enchantingly poignant HBO series “Somebody Somewhere,” starring actress/comedian Bridget Everett—a conversation that brushed up against so many relatable aspects of collaborative writing that we decided to rebroadcast it (to re-podcast it?) here.  “Somebody Somewhere” ended its three-season run in December, shortly after the creators sat with Daniel Ford to discuss the series—hailed by The Los Angeles Times as “epic television”—and we were charmed by their conversation, inviting listeners behind the scenes to reflect on how the show came about, and the singular place it now holds in the annals of bittersweet television.    Paul Thureen is a founder and co-Artistic Director of The Debate Society, a Brooklyn-based theater company.  He received an OBIE Award for his performance in the company's Blood Play. Hannah Bos, also a founder and co-founder of the company, received a Drama Desk Award for her performance in the Signature Theater Company’s production of Will Eno’s The Open House. Together, they have written for “Mozart in the Jungle” and “High Maintenance,” and developed pilots for HBO, FOX, Amazon and Paramount.  “This has been a dream come true,” Hannah reflected on the duo’s “Somebody Somewhere” run as the series came to a close. “It was a dream that they made the pilot. It was a dream that they made the first season, the second season, the third season. And it was a dream that we made it with really fun, good people. So I hope we can do it again.” Paul’s reflections were a little less…well, reflective, as he shared what it was like to write for a group of midwestern-ish characters who weren’t used to talking about their feelings. “If it gets a little too real,” he said, of the pain and heartache that could often be found at the show’s core, “then you have to make a fart joke.”  Indeed.  Learn more about Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen: “Somebody, Somewhere” Season Three Trailer Hannah Bos Website Paul Thureen Instagram The Debate Society Please support the sponsors who support our show: 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

    33 min
  3. Episode 81: Laura Morton

    JAN 28

    Episode 81: Laura Morton

    “The work that we do is actually very difficult to detach from when you’re writing in somebody’s voice,” notes veteran collaborator Laura Morton on the emotional connection she often feels when channeling her clients’ stories.   Laura comes by this observation honestly, after spending more than thirty years helping to tell other people’s stories.  In that time, she has written more than 60 books, including 22 New York Times bestsellers. Her most recent bestseller Fire in the Hole: The Untold Story of My Traumatic Life and Explosive Success, written with GoDaddy and PXG Golf founder Bob Parsons—was a publication of Lasega Books, her own imprint at Forefront Books, an innovative independent publisher.   Over the years, Laura has worked with a wide range of celebrities, entrepreneurs and innovators, including Joan Lunden, Al Roker, Jennifer Hudson, Susan Lucci, Melissa Etheridge, Justin Bieber, Danica Patrick, John Maxwell, Glenn Stearns, and the Jonas Brothers.   Laura is also the writer, co-director, and producer of the award-winning 2022 documentary “Anxious Nation,” exploring the age of anxiety and depression, and a leading mental health advocate and workshop facilitator.     Join us for a wide-ranging conversation on the changing face of publishing, as Laura reflects on her long career as one of the industry’s leading storytellers, and on her recent shift from ghostwriter to “mission-driven” publisher, helping to build a platform for her collaborative clients and other authors looking to land their stories on America’s bookshelf.   Learn more about Laura Morton: Website Lasega Books Forefront Books Facebook Instagram Please support the sponsors who support our show: 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

    1h 34m
  4. Episode 80: Benjamin Dreyer

    JAN 14

    Episode 80: Benjamin Dreyer

    “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:  Website Blue Sky Facebook Instagram Substack Please support the sponsors who support our show: 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

    1h 14m
  5. Second Printing: Peter Asher and David Jacks

    12/31/2024

    Second Printing: Peter Asher and David Jacks

    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. Read Peter Asher: A Life in Music Read Peter Asher’s The Beatles from A to Zed, based on the author’s popular Sirius XM radio show on The Beatles Channel. Peter Asher on Instagram David Jacks website Please support the sponsors who support our show: Gotham Ghostwriters/ASJA “Andy Awards” Guidelines 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

    1h 22m
  6. Episode 79: Seth Rogoff Returns

    12/17/2024

    Episode 79: Seth Rogoff Returns

    Here at the podcast factory, we’re thrilled to welcome back novelist, translator, collaborator and cultural critic Seth Rogoff to talk about his new novel—a thrilling and unsettling coda to Franz Kafka’s unfinished masterwork The Castle. Seth joined us in Season 2 (Ep. #35) to talk about the also thrilling and decidedly unconventional memoir he helped to write with ESPN basketball analyst and former NBA star Kendrick Perkins, The Education of Kendrick Perkins, which took a critical look at racism in America, and in professional sports, and sounded a call for justice and social change—a book hailed by Kirkus Reviews as “a well-balanced blend of activism and memoir.”  In that first interview, we talked a little bit about Seth’s work as a noted Kafka translator, and we’re picking up that conversation here, as Seth celebrates the publication of The Castle—“a palimpsestic fever dream” of a novel, according to another noted Kafka translator, Ross Benjamin.  (Go ahead and look up palimpsestic—we’ll wait.)  In this follow-up conversation, we talk with Seth about the collaborative nature of translation, the state of contemporary memoir, and the never-ending search to find meaningful stories in the life and work of others.  Learn more about Seth Rogoff: Website BlueSky Threads Twitter Please support the sponsors who support our show: Gotham Ghostwriters/ASJA “Andy Awards” Guidelines 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

    1h 14m
  7. Episode 78: Mike Thomas

    12/03/2024

    Episode 78: Mike Thomas

    “In general, magazine profiles are to biographies as inland lakes are to oceans,” writes the late entertainment journalist and ghostwriter Bill Zehme in The New York Times best-selling Carson the Magnificent. “Far less sprawling and easier to navigate.”   This is true—and readers need look no further than Zehme’s latest (and last) book, completed posthumously, for confirmation. Zehme, who collaborated on memoirs with Jay Leno and Regis Philbin and was a frequent contributor to Esquire, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Vanity Fair, worked on his Carson biography for over a decade, before a cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatments halted his progress. When he died in 2023, The New York Times cited “Carson the Magnificent” in his obit as one of the entertainment world’s “great unfinished biographies.”  Enter podcast guest Mike Thomas, Bill Zehme’s former research assistant and longtime friend, who was tapped to complete the project, which was an immediate New York Times best-seller upon its publication last month. “Everything I needed (and so much more) was there, somewhere, stashed in long-unopened binders and torn envelopes and dusty bins,” Mike Thomas writes of this collaboration. “It was mostly a matter of sifting through the stockpile, extracting and sorting the relevant material and reaching out to a handful of Bill’s sources, all of whom were eager to help, for further illumination. But I’ve never lost sight of the fact that, despite my contributions, this is Bill’s book.” The book, Mike says, has been a blessing, gifting him the chance to keep connected to a close pal with whom he can no longer communicate directly—a mentor who cheered him on during his own career as arts and entertainment features writer at the Chicago Sun-Times, as a regular contributor to Chicago magazine, and as the author of two critically-acclaimed books of his own—The Second City Unscripted and You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman. Learn more about Mike Thomas: Instagram Threads Grantland profile of Jan Hooks Mentioned on the show:  The Bob Book, by Bill Zehme and ATT guest David Rensin Please support the sponsors who support our show: Gotham Ghostwriters/ASJA “Andy Awards” Guidelines 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

    1h 9m
  8. Second Printing: Winnie Holzman

    11/26/2024

    Second Printing: Winnie Holzman

    This episode originally aired on Feb. 14, 2023 “I moved on to the next thing I was going to write,” says the noted dramatist and television writer Winnie Holzman, recalling the cancellation of her critically-acclaimed series “My So-Called Life,” after just one season. “That’s what we do as writers.  We move on to the next thing.”  Indeed. In Winnie Holzman’s case, one of those “next things” turned out to be the book for the hit Broadway musical “Wicked,” with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz—one of the longest running shows in Broadway history. The collaboration earned her a prestigious Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, as well as a Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical. Prior to her Emmy-nominated work on “My So-Called Life,” which she created for executive producers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, Winnie wrote several scripts for the Zwick-Herskovitz drama “Thirtysomething,” and she would go on to serve as executive producer of “Roadies,” created by Cameron Crowe, and as co-creator of the series “Huge,” with her daughter Savannah Dooley.  Join us as Winnie reflects on her wickedly successful career writing for the stage and the small screen, the many ways writers measure their successes, and the give-and-take that has fueled her collaborations with some of the most creative minds in theater and television. Please support the sponsors who support our show: Gotham Ghostwriters/ASJA “Andy Awards” Guidelines 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 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

    1h 17m
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5
out of 5
28 Ratings

About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Daniel Paisner
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2025
  • Episodes
    94
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    As Told To

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