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Episode 78: Mike Thomas

As Told To

Release Date: 12/03/2024

Episode 92: Carla Sosenko show art Episode 92: Carla Sosenko

As Told To

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). She is also the co-author of , written with TikTok star Melissa Dilkes Pateras. In her just-published collection of essays entitled , Carla writes with candor and great good cheer about growing up with a...

info_outline Episode 91: John Kasich show art Episode 91: John Kasich

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—a collection of inspiring profiles of individuals working to make a difference with the help of their faith communities—is podcast host Daniel Paisner’s fifth collaboration with former Ohio governor John Kasich.  The collaboration goes back to the very first book the two wrote together—the 2006 New York Times best-seller —as Gov. Kasich was completing his ninth term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio’s 12th district. They would go on to write about the governor’s long-time Bible study group, about his 2016 presidential campaign, and a primer on what...

info_outline Episode 90: Art Bell show art Episode 90: Art Bell

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“I never thought I would have a career in the television business,” writes podcast guest Art Bell, the founding father of the Comedy Central network and the longtime president of Court TV. While at Comedy Central, which had its origins at HBO as “The Comedy Channel,” Art helped to launch the careers of Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, and to provide a platform for up-and-coming comedians. He also found the time to co-author a humor book with his network colleagues—Web Sightings: A Collection of Websites We’d Like to See. At Court TV, he oversaw the network’s daily live courtroom...

info_outline Episode 89: Alan Zweibel show art Episode 89: Alan Zweibel

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"Comedy writers learn early on that we have a high degree of anonymity," writes podcast guest Alan Zweibel in his memoir . "Our words are spoken publicly by others who often have famous faces. Or by unknown people on their way to having famous faces." As one of the founding writers on Saturday Night Live, Alan’s words were given voice by a cast of virtual unknowns, all on their way to becoming famous faces, eventually earning worldwide acclaim as some of the most iconic comic performers of their generation. Over the course of his 50-year career, he has penned jokes for dozens of Borscht Belt...

info_outline Episode 88: Rachel Holtzman show art Episode 88: Rachel Holtzman

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How much does ego play a role in the art and craft of a book collaborator? That’s a question at the heart of this conversation with #1 New York Times best-selling ghostwriter Rachel Holtzman, co-author of more than 60 books on topics ranging from wellness and spirituality, to cooking and entertaining, including collaborations with such celebrated personalities as , , , and . Prior to her work as a self-described “book doula,” Rachel was an editor at Penguin Books and ELLE magazine, before a detour to culinary school and a short stint in the kitchen at New York’s Gramercy Tavern helped...

info_outline Episode 87: Adam Ross show art Episode 87: Adam Ross

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Adam Ross’s second novel, , is one of the best-reviewed books of the year. A story “dipped in molten nostalgia and flecked with love and sadness,” according to The Washington Post, it was hailed immediately upon publication by The Los Angeles Times as “extraordinary” and by The New York Times as “a gorgeous cat’s cradle of a book.” He is also the author of a previous novel, , which was selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist, and the story collection , which featured a story entitled “In the Basement,” a...

info_outline Episode 86: Salwa Emerson show art Episode 86: Salwa Emerson

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“Sometimes our own stories get snatched from us, hidden in darkness for years,” writes podcast guest Salwa Emerson, “until it’s time to reclaim them.” Salwa is well-known to publishers as an author, editor and ghostwriter, specializing in memoirs, thought-leadership books, and book proposals. To hear her clients tell it, she has a way of bringing those stories out of hiding and into the light. She has collaborated with world-renowned chefs, professional athletes, reality television personalities, Oscar-winning actors, and Pulitzer Prize winners. Before turning to ghostwriting, she...

info_outline Episode 85: Elizabeth Shockman show art Episode 85: Elizabeth Shockman

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“My job was to dance so well that it didn’t matter who favored me or why.” That’s a line from the compelling new memoir by world-renowned ballerina Joy Womack, “as told to” podcast guest Elizabeth Shockman. Together, in (dare we say it?) balletic prose, the two recount Womack’s storied career as the first American woman to dance under contract for the Bolshoi Ballet Theater in Moscow. “The dancers beside me were tired, pale after months of clouded winter skies,” they write in . “They bent and bowed, their bodies corded with muscle, like sallow stalagmites that had...

info_outline Episode 84: David Peisner show art Episode 84: David Peisner

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David Peisner is a freelance journalist and ghostwriter/collaborator based in Atlanta. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York, Esquire, Playboy, and other publications. His first book collaboration—with “Steve-O,” the legendary co-star of the legendarily out there MTV reality series “Jackass”—grew out of a magazine assignment, taking Peisner on a sidelong career turn he hadn’t anticipated. “If you are only going to buy one book this year about an alcoholic, self-abusive, vegan, pyromaniac ex-circus clown with a talent for vomiting on command and...

info_outline Episode 83: Cynthia DiTiberio show art Episode 83: Cynthia DiTiberio

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“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...

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“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.

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