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As Told To

As Told To

By: 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. Art Literary History & Criticism Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Episode 109 Doron Keren

    Episode 109 Doron Keren
    Apr 7 2026
    "Memory without responsibility is just nostalgia," reflects podcast guest Doron Keren, the keeper of his family's harrowing Holocaust survival story. "Someone has to make sure that stories like this live and are experienced by future generations." Keren, a retired dentist, has determined to do just that, working tirelessly to help shepherd first his mother's story (The Girl in the Green Sweater, by Krystyna Chiger, co-written with podcast host Daniel Paisner), and now his grandfather's memoir, (Beneath the Lightless Sky, by Ignacy Chiger), to bookstore shelves. His grandfather's gripping, historically significant account, just published by Amsterdam Publishers, revisits Ignacy Chiger's desperate struggle to evade Nazi persecution in wartime Lvov, Poland, where he hid with his family for 14 months in the city's underground sewers, with the help of an unlikely hero. The book stands as a compelling companion piece to Krystyna Chiger's 2008 international best-seller, the inspiration behind the 2011 film "In Darkness," from acclaimed Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Time magazine film critic Richard Corliss called the movie "a thrilling adventure picture—as if Anne Frank had found an Inglourious Basterd to help her make 'The Great Escape.'" In his foreword to Beneath the Lightless Sky, Keren calls his grandfather "a real-life superhero"—a description that is well-earned. "[He] outwitted interrogators," Keren writes, "evaded deportation, engineered the survival of a small underground community, and kept alive the faintest flicker of hope in a place where even light could not enter." Join us as Keren shares what it was like to grow up beneath the shadow of the Holocaust, and what it means to keep sharing the stories that give our lives shape and meaning. Learn more about Beneath the Lightless Sky: Facebook pageInstagram page Please support the sponsors who support our show: Gotham Ghostwriters' Gathering of the GhostsRitani Jewelers Daniel Paisner's Balloon DogDaniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television PilotHeaven Help Us by John KasichUnforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey JacobellisFilm Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discountLibro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membershipFilm Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef SuttonEveryday Shakespeare podcastA Mighty Blaze podcastThe Writer's Bone Podcast NetworkMisfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discountWizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount
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    57 mins
  • Episode 108: John Rosengren

    Episode 108: John Rosengren
    Mar 24 2026
    "It's a constant hustle," reflects podcast guest John Rosengren on the life of a freelance journalist. "Ginning up ideas, developing them into pitches, sending them around, facing rejection… sometimes it can wear me down." But sometimes, too, it can be endlessly rewarding, as we can hear as John looks back on a rich, wildly prolific journalism career. Over the years, John's articles have appeared in The Atavist, GQ, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Men's Health, and The Washington Post Magazine. His 2016 expose on the ways casinos enable gambling addicts, originally published in The Atlantic, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Magazine Award, and earned John the Donald Robinson Award from the American Society of Journalists & Authors. John is also the author of more than a dozen books, including a thoroughgoing account of an indelible moment in baseball history—The Fight of Their Lives: How Juan Marichal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball's Ugliest Brawl into a Story of Forgiveness and Redemption. As a ghostwriter, he collaborated on the brutally honest memoir of former NFL player Esera Tuaolo—Alone in the Trenches: My Life as a Gay Man in the NFL. Join us for a compelling conversation on what it takes to make it as a freelancer always looking in out-of-the-way places for the next great untold story. Learn more about John Rosengren: WebsiteFacebookLinkedIn Please support the sponsors who support our show: Surfers HealingGotham Ghostwriters' Gathering of the GhostsRitani Jewelers Daniel Paisner's Balloon DogDaniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television PilotHeaven Help Us by John KasichUnforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey JacobellisFilm Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discountLibro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membershipFilm Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef SuttonEveryday Shakespeare podcastA Mighty Blaze podcastThe Writer's Bone Podcast NetworkMisfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discountWizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • Episode 107: Holly Gleason

    Episode 107: Holly Gleason
    Mar 10 2026
    Award-winning music journalist, critic and artist development consultant Holly Gleason returns to the podcast for a solo outing to discuss her eclectic and electric career as one of the music industry's leading voices. Over the years, she has written for Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Playboy, Spin, and the Miami Herald. Holly's most recent collaboration, the #1 New York Times best-selling memoir Heart Life Music, written with country music superstar Kenny Chesney, has helped to cement Holly's reputation as an in-demand ghostwriter who pushes her subjects to reflect on life, music, and the vagaries of fame. She is the co-author of the best-selling, story-laden cookbook Y'all Eat Yet?: Welcome to the Pretty B*tchin' Kitchen, with Miranda Lambert, and editor of the acclaimed compilations Prine on Prine: Interviews and Encounters with John Prine, and Woman Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music changed Our Lives. The recipient of the 2023 LA Press Club's Entertainment Journalist of the Year and 2024 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism's Independent Journalist awards, Holly lives and works in Nashville, Tenn., where she occasionally writes lyrics (as "Lady Goodman") with such noted songwriters as Rodney Crowell, Bill Deasy, Travis Hill, and the late Guy Clark. Learn more about Holly Gleason: WebsiteFacebookInstagramThreads Please support the sponsors who support our show: Surfers HealingGotham Ghostwriters' Gathering of the GhostsRitani Jewelers Daniel Paisner's Balloon DogDaniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television PilotHeaven Help Us by John KasichUnforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey JacobellisFilm Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discountLibro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membershipFilm Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef SuttonEveryday Shakespeare podcastA Mighty Blaze podcastThe Writer's Bone Podcast NetworkMisfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discountWizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount
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    1 hr and 7 mins
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