Episode 121: Jane Leeves and Isabella Kathryn Coben
As Told To
“This was a tough ask of me, to write a book,” offers the Emmy-nominated actress Jane Leeves, as she celebrates the publication of her memoir . “I’m a very, very private person, and I wasn’t on board with it at first. They offered me a ghostwriter, and I thought, ‘I’ll never be able to open up to a stranger.’ So my husband said, ‘Well, what about our daughter? She’s a fabulous writer.’ And that sort of intrigued me.” Intriguing, yes. A little out-of-the-ordinary, certainly. And yet working in collaboration with her daughter, Isabella Kathryn Coben, Jane has written a...
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Between the Lines: Touching All the Bases
As Told To
“This isn’t your typical baseball memoir. It’s about spies and lies far more than RBIs.” That’s a line from the opening pages of Dave Winfield’s gritty, gripping new baseball memoir , written in collaboration with . Alan joins us in our "Between the Lines" segment, as he shares a passage from the Winfield book, which was published this fall by BenBella Books. It’s a baseball memoir with teeth, an unvarnished look at a life and career marked by one of the most famous feuds in baseball history. A longtime journalist, Alan was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize, for his...
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Episode 120: Alan Maimon
As Told To
October baseball is in the air—and in this episode, it’ll be in your ears as well. Podcast guest Alan Maimon is just out with his latest baseball collaboration—this one written with Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield. , from BenBella Books, is a baseball memoir with teeth, an unvarnished look at a life and career marked by one of the most famous feuds in baseball history. Alan is no stranger to the baseball memoir. In fact, he’s no stranger to working alongside some of the game’s all-time greats. The Winfield book is his fourth collaboration with a member of...
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Between the Lines: You Had to Be There
As Told To
“Our desire to celebrate this magical moment is a tribute to youth, to everyone’s youth, when working and playing with your best friends is a dream you never want to end.” That’s , writing in the companion volume to his critically-acclaimed documentary “,” which opened the 2025 Toronto Film Festival and is currently playing in theaters across the country. The documentary, with a mouthful of a title, shines meaningful light on the storied 1972 production of the Stephen Schwartz musical, with a cast that included a then-unknown Martin Short, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin,...
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Episode 119: Nick Davis
As Told To
Nick Davis is a . His latest film, “,” opened the 2025 Toronto Film Festival and is currently playing in theaters across the country. The documentary, with a mouthful of a title, shines meaningful light on the storied 1972 production of the Stephen Schwartz musical, with a cast that included a then-unknown Martin Short, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber, Dave Thomas and Paul Shaffer—“a Rosetta Stone of funny people,” according to The New York Times. Storytelling is in Nick’s blood. Filmmaking, too. His grandfather, Herman Mankiewicz, was the celebrated...
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Between the Lines: I Will Follow You Anywhere
As Told To
Ghostwriter, developmental editor, and book coach Charles Daly joins us for our “Between the Lines” segment of to share a reading from his latest collaboration—a powerful account of the struggles of first responders in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. Written in collaboration with noted advocate and activist John Feal, an Army veteran who worked as a demolition supervisor at Ground Zero until a disabling injury five days into the clean-up, is the untold story of a true American hero who turned trauma into a call to action. In these pages,...
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Episode 118: John Feal & Charles Daly
As Told To
John Feal is a native New Yorker and Army veteran who worked as a demolition supervisor at Ground Zero until an 8,000-pound beam crushed his left foot during the clean-up. As he struggled with his own post-9/11 trauma, and scrambled to get out from under his also-disabling medical bills, he watched his fellow responders suffer and die from cancer and other ailments caused by the dust in the air they were told was safe to breathe. Forgotten by a broken healthcare system and lawmakers who had promised to #NeverForget, and inspired by the men and women who continued to suffer in the fallout from...
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Second Printing: Lee Goldberg
As Told To
This episode originally aired on Sept. 12, 2023. Novelist, screenwriter, producer and publisher Lee Goldberg knows what it is to work in collaboration. He has helped to write and produce a number of television shows, including “seaQuest” and “Monk,” and he also served as a supervising producer and executive producer of the long-running series “Diagnosis Murder,” starring Dick Van Dyke. While working on “Monk” and “Diagnosis Murder,” he wrote several original tie-in novels based on those series. Lee is also an accomplished storyteller in his own right—the author...
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Second Printing: Amy Ferris
As Told To
This episode originally aired February 1, 2022. Amy Ferris writes like a dream. About love. Also: strength, humanity, depression, aging, inspiration, resilience. But mostly about love. It's kind of her thing—a thing that led her to her first gig as a collaborator, a dual memoir from Joseph "Rev Run" Simmons and Justine Simmons called . Amy's worked primarily as an essayist, an editor, a screenwriter and playwright. She's even published a young adult novel called . She made a whole bunch of noise with the publication of her 2009 breakout book, , a wildly funny and yet achingly wistful...
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Between the Lines: Jeff Daniels – Alive and Well Enough Continues
As Told To
Jeff Daniels’s audio memoir/podcast series is the darndest thing. He joined us to promote the launch of “,” a collection of stories, songs, and scenes and monologues from some of the actor’s plays. He followed that launch with a second collection, “,” a year later, and now here we are a few years after that waiting on “Son of Alive and Well Enough” or “Alive and Well Enough Already.” Really, we can’t get enough of this unique storytelling format, and you’ll begin to hear why in this intro to the versatile performer’s follow-up collection. Part podcast, part musical...
info_outlineThis episode originally aired Oct 10, 2023.
“Sometimes I’m asked if I’ll ever write a book,” notes actor, playwright and singer-songwriter Jeff Daniels, “and I always answer that I already have. It’s in my songs.”
This is true. But now it’s also true that the stuff of Jeff Daniels’s life is on delightful display in the Audible Originals memoir “Alive and Well Enough”—a collection of stories, musings and songs that invites listeners into the heart and mindset of one of our most versatile performers, offered with grace and good cheer and midwestern soul.
Daniels, the two-time Emmy Award-winning actor and star of such iconic films as “Terms of Endearment,” “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” “Dumb and Dumber,” “Pleasantville,” and “The Squid and the Whale,” recalls being inspired in this effort by the story-laced songs of Steve Goodman and Arlo Guthrie, and, more recently, by Bruce Springsteen’s “Springsteen on Broadway.”
Part podcast, part musical memoir, part bulletins from the frontlines of contemporary storytelling, “Alive and Well Enough” is a wildly entertaining mash-up of Jeff Daniels’s many gifts as a writer and performer, including scenes from some of the author’s original plays, many of which have been staged at The Purple Rose Theatre Company in his hometown of Chelsea, Mich. “[It’s] is the only place where I get to do everything I do,” he says of his new audio project, which he calls “an adventure of an accidental artist who one day looked up and realized he had a sense of humor, a passion for writing, and stories to tell.”
Join us for an insightful, engaging and surprisingly candid conversation on what it means to channel the work of some of our finest playwrights and screenwriters – like Lanford Wilson (“Fourth of July”), Scott Frank (“Godless”) and Aaron Sorkin (“The Newsroom” and the Broadway adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird”).
“When you’re inside the writing, it rubs off,” he says.
This is true as well.
Note: This episode of As Told To: The Ghostwriting Podcast features narrative and song excerpts from Jeff Daniels’s audio memoir “Alive and Well Enough,” presented courtesy of Audible Originals.
Jeff Daniels photo credit: Sam Jones
More from Jeff Daniels:
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