loader from loading.io

Second Printing: Peter Asher and David Jacks

As Told To

Release Date: 12/31/2024

Episode 103: Joanne Gordon show art Episode 103: Joanne Gordon

As Told To

"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 author of more than a dozen books, with a focus on helping business and thought leaders elevate their voices and share their stories. She is the co-author, most recently, of , written with former Coach...

info_outline Second Printing: Bruce Vilanch show art 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...

info_outline Episode 102: Gathering of the Ghosts 2025 show art 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 ...

info_outline Episode 101: Samantha Rose show art 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...

info_outline Episode 100: Alex DeMille show art 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...

info_outline Episode 99: Matthew Winkler show art 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...

info_outline Episode 98: Michael E. Long show art 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...

info_outline Episode 97: Emma Heming Willis and Michele Bender show art 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...

info_outline Episode 96: Samuel G. Freedman show art Episode 96: Samuel G. Freedman

As Told To

“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...

info_outline Episode 95: Jane Leavy show art 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...

info_outline
 
More Episodes

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: 

Please support the sponsors who support our show: