Second Printing: Bruce Vilanch
As Told To
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 perhaps best-known to audiences for his work behind-the-scenes at the Oscars, supplying one-liners to hosts and presenters. (Oscar-watchers are still talking about the year Jack Palance did...
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Episode 102: Gathering of the Ghosts 2025
As Told To
Join podcast host Daniel Paisner as he moderates a panel discussion at the second annual ghostwriting conference earlier this year. Dan is joined by former As Told To guests , , and , as the veteran collaborators compare notes on craft and process—a fun, spirited, insightful reflection on the very many ways authors and journalists are writing in collaboration. Learn more: Please support the sponsors who support our show: Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership ...
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Episode 101: Samantha Rose
As Told To
“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 . “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 heartbreaking account of her mother’s suicide, published earlier this year by Sybilline Press. An Emmy Award-winning television writer and a New York Times best-selling collaborator, Samantha has written...
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Episode 100: Alex DeMille
As Told To
Nelson and Alex DeMille’s 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, it is. It’s also the final novel from legendary author Nelson DeMille, completed posthumously following his death in September 2024, and a follow-up to the duo’s first two collaborations in...
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Episode 99: Matthew Winkler
As Told To
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 doing research for Boston Globe journalist and noted biographer Larry Tye, who was writing a book about jazz. Matthew, a music and history major, was astonished to discover the small...
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Episode 98: Michael E. Long
As Told To
Podcast guest 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 , which has been translated into more than 20 languages, and the sole author of the recently-published follow-up title . As a speechwriter, he has written for members of Congress, U.S Cabinet secretaries, presidential candidates, governors, diplomats, and business leaders. As a ghostwriter, he has collaborated on several books of non-fiction. As a playwright, he’s had more than two dozen of his shows...
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Episode 97: Emma Heming Willis and Michele Bender
As Told To
“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 , Emma writes movingly and hopefully about the blessings and burdens of being thrust into the role of caregiver, emerging as a passionate voice for care partners and families navigating neurodegenerative disease. Together with her collaborator, Michele Bender, she offers an essential blueprint for others...
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Episode 96: Samuel G. Freedman
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“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 educators was everything. Before his retirement this spring, his popular book-writing seminar led to the publication of 95 books by his students. “He’s been the godfather to an awful...
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Episode 95: Jane Leavy
As Told To
Jane Leavy is the New York Times best-selling author of , , and . She is also the author of the comic novel , hailed by Entertainment Weekly as “the best novel ever written about baseball.” A longtime sportswriter and feature writer for The Washington Post, Jane covered baseball, tennis and the Olympics during her tenure at the paper. She also wrote features for the Post’s “Style” section on sports, politics and popular culture. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Grantland, The Los Angeles Times, and Tablet. In her latest...
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Second Printing: D. Watkins
As Told To
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 , 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 neighborhoods. It’s a line you might hear as well from D.’s NBA legend Carmelo Anthony, himself a product of an uncertain, unforgiving environment–the housing projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn, and Baltimore. In the future Hall-of-Famer’s...
info_outline“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:
Mentioned on the show:
- The Bob Book, by Bill Zehme and ATT guest David Rensin
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