As Told To - Second Printing: Barbara Feinman Todd

Second Printing: Barbara Feinman Todd

08/29/23 • 82 min

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As Told To

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.

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This episode originally aired on June 21, 2022.

Follow Barbara Feinman Todd:

Please support the sponsors who support our show.

Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

Previous Episode

Second Printing: Amy Ferris

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 Old School Love.

Amy's worked primarily as an essayist, an editor, a screenwriter and playwright. She's even published a young adult novel called A Greater Goode. She made a whole bunch of noise with the publication of her 2009 breakout book, Marrying George Clooney: Confessions from a Midlife Crisis, a wildly funny and yet achingly wistful collection of middle-of-the-night musings on life and death and connectedness. (Don't just take our word for it: The New York Times called it "poignant, free-wheeling, cranky and funny.")

The book helped to establish Amy as a voice of her generation and a leading champion of women and women's issues. She is the co-editor of anthology Dancing at the Shame Prom: Sharing the Stories That Kept Us Small, and editor of Shades of Blue: Writers on Depression, Suicide and Feeling Blue, a collection of essays that looked to shine meaningful light on the shadow of depression.

She is a founding board member of the Scranton, PA-based Pages & Places Literary Festival, a co-director of the Story Summit Writer's School, and a frequent guest at writer's conferences and workshops all over the world.

Follow her on Facebook, where she posts almost daily on the stuff of her life and the human condition. Oh, and love...a whole lotta love.

Learn more about Amy Ferris:

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Next Episode

Episode 46: Lee Goldberg

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 of nearly 40 novels, including Lost Hills, True Fiction, and the first five books in the Fox & O’Hare series, written with best-selling mystery novelist Janet Evanovich. His latest book, Malibu Burning, tells the story of an elaborate heist staged in the middle of a raging California wildfire, and he’s got two additional books coming out in the weeks ahead—Calico and Dream Town.

Join us for a fun and informative conversation on what it means to work in and around television, and how it is that one writer has been able to capture the imagination of audiences in a variety of mediums.

Learn more about Lee Goldberg:

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