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As Told To

As Told To

Daniel Paisner

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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.
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Top 10 As Told To Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best As Told To episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to As Told To for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite As Told To episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

As Told To - Episode 14: Andrew Neiderman

Episode 14: Andrew Neiderman

As Told To

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03/01/22 • 60 min

Andrew Neiderman is perhaps the world’s most prolific ghostwriter, and, the most widely-read. Since 1987, he’s been writing under the pen name of V.C. Andrews, helping to sustain one of publishing’s most successful franchises, following the death of Cleo Virginia Andrews in 1986. Andrews is best-known to millions of readers as the author of Flowers in the Attic, a surprisingly dark family saga that was first published in 1979—a book that now features prominently in many discussions on book banning and cancel culture for its graphic content and its focus on death and imprisonment and incest...not exactly the stuff of school libraries, despite the fact that the book has appealed to young readers for generations.

Neiderman, already an established and widely-published novelist in his own right, was hired by the V.C. Andrews estate to keep writing under name, and he went on to publish over 90 additional titles (including 2021’s The Umbrella Lady and Out of the Rain) with no end in sight. He’s also written nearly 50 books of his own, including The Devil’s Advocate, the basis for the 1997 Taylor Hackford film of the same name, starring Al Pacino, as well as the stage adaptation of “Flowers in the Attic” and numerous screenplays. He is the author of the just-published The Woman Beyond the Attic: The V.C. Andrews Story, a celebration of the life and career of the woman who has been his muse for more than 35 years.

Learn more about Andrew Neiderman:

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As Told To - Episode 55: Andrew Crofts

Episode 55: Andrew Crofts

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01/02/24 • 66 min

“I’m quite good at detaching and passing the tissues and just listening,” says Andrew Crofts, one of the world’s most prolific ghostwriters, on his ability to help his clients share their most intimate, most harrowing, most traumatic experiences in the pages of their memoirs.

As the author or co-author of more than eighty books, including a dozen Sunday Times best-sellers, Andrew is well-known in England for his work behind-the-scenes with top television personalities, footballers, politicians, and ordinary individuals caught in extraordinary circumstances.

He is also well-known among publishers for his willingness to take on any subject, and to collaborate with any celebrity, as long as the project comes with the promise of a good story. “Extremes of evil are as interesting as extremes of goodness,” he writes, of his ability to work with heroes and villains alike. In fact, he once told a reporter for The Guardian that he is grateful he was not born early enough to pursue this type of work during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. “I have a horrible feeling that if I’d got the call from Germany in the 1930s,” he said, “I would have hopped on that plane like a Mitford.”

Learn more about Andrew Crofts:

Links to some of Crofts’ collaborations discussed in our interview:

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As Told To - Episode 54: Rebecca Shaw & Ben Kronengold

Episode 54: Rebecca Shaw & Ben Kronengold

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12/19/23 • 64 min

“Voices of their generation. Except for Greta Thunberg. And Malala. Amanda Gorman . . .you know what, I take it back.” — Jimmy Fallon

That’s high praise for the comedy writing duo of Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, from their former boss at NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” where our podcast guests became the two youngest writers in that program’s storied history and earned a shared spot on Variety’s “Power of Young Hollywood Impact List” in 2021.

Shaw and Kronengold began dating and writing together as freshmen at Yale University and capped their undergraduate career with a 2018 commencement address that went a little bit viral. (Okay, it went a whole lotta viral – their speech was seen by more than 5 million people, and landed them an agent...and, eventually, their “Tonight Show” gig.)

Together, they’ve just published a disarmingly funny collection of essays, stories, and humor pieces called Naked in the Rideshare: Stories of Gross Miscalculations, which was hailed by actor and comedian Will Ferrell as “incredibly original, bizarre, and funny” prior to publication by William Morrow in November.

Join us as we talk about what it means to find your voice in collaboration with your partner, and to take that voice to one of the most dynamic writing rooms in late night television – and beyond.

Learn more about Rebecca Shaw & Ben Kronengold:

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As Told To - Episode 51: Rennie Dyball

Episode 51: Rennie Dyball

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11/07/23 • 68 min

Rennie Dyball is an award-winning journalist, ghostwriter, middle-grade novelist and children’s book author who’s found a way to marry her lifelong interest in horses with her many and varied talents as a writer. Together with her co-author Piper Klemm, she created the popular Show Strides series of equestrian-themed novels for middle grade readers—originally published by The Plaid Horse and soon to be reissued by Andrews McMeel Universal. Rennie’s standalone novel for children, Good Boy, Eddie, was published by The Plaid Horse earlier this year.

As a ghostwriter, Rennie has helped to give voice to a number of celebrity-driven autobiographies and memoirs, including the Audible Original memoir, Stronger Together, with Terry Crews and Rebecca King Crews; Full Circle, with Andrea Barber (Kimmy Gibler from “Full House”); A Famous Dog’s Life, with Hollywood animal trainer Sue Chipperton; and, Fierce Style, with fashion designer Christian Siriano. An accomplished equestrian, Rennie has also drawn on her love of horses to collaborate on With Purpose: The Balmoral Standard, with top trainers Carleton and Traci Brooks.

Her most recent book, B Is For Bellies, a picture book celebration of body positivity, with illustrations by Mia Saine, was published by Clarion Books in July.

Rennie was a reporter and writer at People for over 15 years, before retiring from the magazine in 2017, and she continues to write for People.com as a freelance book critic.

“People was the best training ground I could imagine,” she says of her development as a writer. “More than anything, I took away the importance of making every word count.”

Join us for a winning conversation on what it takes to build a life and career out of two abiding passions—in Rennie’s case, riding and writing.

Learn more about Rennie Dyball:

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As Told To - Episode 44: Arthur Smith

Episode 44: Arthur Smith

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07/04/23 • 84 min

“The more you try, the luckier you get...”

Words to live by, from podcast guest Arthur Smith, the pioneering television producer behind some of the longest-running unscripted series in history, and author of the just-published motivational memoir Reach: Hard Lessons and Learned Truths from a Lifetime in Television. Arthur’s long-running hit “Hell’s Kitchen,” with Gordon Ramsey, helped to forge the modern food competition reality genre, while his Emmy-nominated “American Ninja Warrior” has spawned a cultural movement and inspired millions to push themselves to next-level successes in their own lives and careers.

As the founder and chairman of A. Smith & Co. Productions, Arthur has produced over 200 shows, for virtually every network and streaming platform, including “The Titan Games,” “Mental Samurai,” “Kitchen Nightmares,” “The Swan” and “Paradise Hotel.” Prior to launching his own production company, he served as the youngest Head of Sports in the history of the Canada’s CBC television network, and as Executive Vice President of Programming, Production and News for FOX Sports. He also served for four years as Senior Vice President of Dick Clark Productions, producing a wide variety of award shows, special events and non-fiction programming.

In Reach, written in collaboration with podcast host Daniel Paisner, Arthur reflects on his remarkable career and shares some of the lessons he’s learned while pushing himself beyond what he ever thought possible.

“In the nonfiction genre people get tired of the same thing,” he recently told a reporter from the Jewish Journal. “The biggest hits in reality/nonfiction television come from originality. So we have to keep reinventing. We have to keep freshening up ideas. We have to keep reaching.”

To learn more about Arthur Smith:

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As Told To - Episode 41: Tara Trudel

Episode 41: Tara Trudel

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05/23/23 • 57 min

“Songwriting is kind of where my heart is,” says former Second City music director Tara Trudel, a versatile songwriter and composer based in Los Angeles. Tara’s unique talents popped on podcast host Daniel Paisner’s admittedly limited radar during the launch of Post in Fall 2022, when she created a mini-musical based on the early days and growing pains of the new social media site. Tara started her career teaching early childhood and elementary school music for Chicago’s The Merit School of Music and the city’s public school system, before pivoting to comedy and theater—a natural extension of her work with children, she says.

These days, Tara makes her principal living writing music for comedy shorts and theme songs for children’s books—a collaborative niche she seems to have all to herself. Her work has been featured at SXSW, on Amazon Prime, Sony’s Voces Nuevas, and Vulture’s “Best Comedy Shorts of the Year.” Tara’s score for Chelsea Devantez’s short film “Basic” was named “Best Score” at the LA Film Awards and the Festigious International Film Festival. Her debut album, “Fractured: Fairy Tales Remixed,” offers listener’s Tara’s modern take on the classic stories we think we know, featuring guest appearances by her collaborating partners from the Chicago improv scene, including Ashley Nicole Black, Eddie Mujica, and Mary Sohn.

Learn more about Tara Trudel:

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As Told To - Episode 74: Jill Sobule

Episode 74: Jill Sobule

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10/08/24 • 67 min

Over the course of her nearly forty-year career, singer-songwriter Jill Sobule has earned a singular spot in the American songbook. Best known for her breakout 1995 singles “Supermodel” (from the “Clueless” soundtrack) and “I Kissed a Girl” (which came out more than 10 years before the Katy Perry hit of the same name), her quirky, heartfelt, cheer-filled songs are difficult to categorize: she sings about the death penalty, anorexia, shoplifting, the French Resistance, LGBTQ issues and Mexican wrestling.

In another decade, Jon Pareles, the chief pop music critic of The New York Times, wrote that she stands “among the stellar New York singer-songwriters of the last decade”—high praise that has surely applied in all subsequent decades.

Jill’s songs are enchanting, disarmingly funny and achingly poignant, and many of them are featured in her Drama Desk-nominated autobiographical musical "F*ck 7th Grade," which premiered at the Wild Project in NYC in 2022 and returns for a limited engagement in November 2024.

“We didn’t have to create a story around these songs,” she says of the show, which she really, really hopes isn’t dismissed as just another jukebox musical featuring songs from an artist’s back catalogue. “These songs are my story. I just wrote a few more to fill out the narrative.”

Jill joins us on the podcast to discuss her rich and varied career as one of the music industry’s most uniquely collaborative artists. She’s performed with musicians such as Neil Young, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper, and Warren Zevon, and once released a concept album of original music with lyrics written by some of her favorite writers, including Jonathan Lethem, Rick Moody, Mary Jo Salter, Vendela Vida, and David Hajdu. She regularly tours with comedian/actress/author Julia Sweeney in their two-woman “Jill & Julia” show.

Two highlights from the very many cool, pinch me-type moments that have stamped Jill Sobule’s remarkable career: she inducted Neil Diamond into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, and she appeared as herself on an episode of “The Simpsons.” So, you know, there’s that.

Learn more about Jill Sobule:

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As Told To - Episode 49: Lindsey Jacobellis

Episode 49: Lindsey Jacobellis

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10/17/23 • 85 min

Lindsey Jacobellis is the most dominant athlete in the history of women’s snowboardcross—a thrilling head-to-head sport that made its Olympic debut at the 2006 games in Torino, when Lindsey also stepped to the Olympic stage for the first time. And yet the inaugural running of the event was nearly her undoing. At 20 years old, Lindsey had a commanding lead heading into the final stretch of the medal round when she grabbed her board on the penultimate jump and was unable to land cleanly, spilling off the course and looking on in despair as her rival, Tanja Frieden of Switzerland, sped past to claim the gold. The world looked on as well, in judgement and disbelief, and Lindsey’s fall would go down as one of the biggest unforced errors in sports—a misstep that allowed her to ultimately write one of the greatest comeback stories in Olympic history.

It also cost her many of her sponsors, and shook her confidence, and in many ways stamped her career before it had really begun, and in her just-published memoir Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall, co-written with podcast host Daniel Paisner, she revisits the anguish and heartbreak that found her on the back of that fall— and followed her around like a black cloud through the next four Olympic cycles, finally leading to her two gold medal runs at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

“I’m calling this book Unforgiving because that word has taken on so many meanings for me,” she writes. “It speaks to the single-minded, relentless pursuit that has helped to shape my snowboarding career...but it also reflects the punishing, intolerant treatment I received in the press, and in and around the Olympic and snowboarding communities. And it reminds me that for the longest time I wasn’t able to forgive myself for this one stupid, rash, thoughtless mistake—a mistake that cost me a whole lot more than a simple medal or the chance (for the moment!) to call myself a champion.”

One of the ways Lindsey was finally able to put the fall behind her and reclaim her own narrative was to lean into her many other interests away from the mountain. She moved to California and took up surfing. She became a certified personal trainer and wrote a children’s book, Sochi: A True Story, based on the life-affirming bond she developed with the stray dog she met in the athletes’ village at the Sochi games. And she helped to launch Super Girl Snow Pro, an event series working to showcase the world’s top female pros and provide an inspirational platform for young female athletes.

Join us as we visit with the GOAT of women’s snowboardcross to talk about what it was like to rewrite her story on the snow—and, now, to share that story on the page.

Learn more about Lindsey Jacobellis:

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As Told To - Episode 52: Adeena Sussman

Episode 52: Adeena Sussman

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11/21/23 • 63 min

“If I’m developing a recipe for a client, or for my own books, I’m all about people telling me what they think about it, what it invokes for them, what they would do differently,” notes New York Times best-selling cookbook author Adeena Sussman about the collaborative nature of preparing recipes for readers.

If there’s anybody who knows what it means work in partnership in the kitchen, it’s Adeena Sussman—the co-author of 15 books, including the best-selling Cravings series written in collaboration with model and television personality Chrissy Teigen. Adeena is also the co-author of The Sprinkles Baking Book, written with Candace Nelson, the noted pastry chef and founder of Sprinkles cupcakes.

Adeena’s latest solo book, Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals from My Table to Yours, celebrating (and reimagining!) the traditional foods that have long graced her family’s Shabbat table, became an immediate best-seller upon publication in September 2023. The book is a follow-up to Adeena’s 2019 cookbook Sababa, named one of the best cookbooks of the year by The New York Times, Bon Appetit, and Food & Wine.

A lifelong visitor to Israel who has been writing about that country’s food culture for almost twenty years, Adeena lives, cooks, and writes in Tel Aviv, in the shadow of that city’s famed Carmel Market.

Learn more about Adeena Sussman:

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As Told To - Second Printing: Barbara Feinman Todd

Second Printing: Barbara Feinman Todd

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08/29/23 • 82 min

This episode originally aired on June 21, 2022.

If there’s anyone who knows what it’s like to be invited into “the kingdom of knowing,” to borrow a phrase from journalist Richard Ben Cramer, it’s podcast guest Barbara Feinman Todd, who graduated from The Washington Post Style desk to work as a researcher, book doctor, editor and spirit guide on books with Bob Woodward (Veil) and Carl Bernstein (Loyalties), and Ben Bradlee (A Good Life), leaving her uniquely positioned to reflect on the mind and mindsets of the three journalists who were perhaps most responsible for uncovering the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Indeed, as Barbara writes in her compelling memoir Pretend I’m Not Here, there are a hundred different ways to know and to be known, as she would go on to discover for herself in her work as a ghostwriter for such leading Washington personalities as Bob Kerry, then a U.S. senator from Nebraska (When I Was a Young Man); Marjorie Margolies-Mazvinsky, then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania (A Woman’s Place); and, ultimately, Hillary Clinton. In what she had thought might be her most attention-getting assignment, Barbara signed on to collaborate with the First Lady on It Takes a Village, coming up with the title and structure of the book, and helping to shape the narrative into a coherent hole. Trouble was, Barbara was “disappeared” from the book’s “Acknowledgements” page, and her contributions whitewashed by the Clinton White House, and so the attention-getting was not at all as she had imagined.

Barbara would go on to teach journalism at Georgetown University for 25 years, and as she leaned away from ghostwriting she reflected on her work as a ghostwriter, and on her years-long relationships with her clients and subjects, with a shifting perspective. Her conclusion? “Writing other people’s lives is a bit silly,” she writes in her memoir, “like playing dress-up, clomping around in your mother’s pumps that don’t quite fit, but it also lets you have a momentary sense of what it’s like to be someone else.” That momentary sense is at the heart of our conversation.

Follow Barbara Feinman Todd:

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    • FAQ

    How many episodes does As Told To have?

    As Told To currently has 88 episodes available.

    What topics does As Told To cover?

    The podcast is about Society & Culture, Podcasts, Books and Arts.

    What is the most popular episode on As Told To?

    The episode title 'Episode 43: Peter Asher and David Jacks' is the most popular.

    What is the average episode length on As Told To?

    The average episode length on As Told To is 72 minutes.

    How often are episodes of As Told To released?

    Episodes of As Told To are typically released every 14 days.

    When was the first episode of As Told To?

    The first episode of As Told To was released on Aug 23, 2021.

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