Ellis Henican—New York Times best-selling collaborator, Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist, and popular television news pundit—had perhaps the coolest side-gig of any of our podcast guests to date. He provided the voice of “Stormy” in the adult animated television series “SeaLab 2021,” which ran on the Cartoon Network for four seasons. 

This spring, he’s also provided the “voice” for books by former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (What Would Reagan Do?); legendary actor Tom Selleck (You Never Know); and, high-stakes hostage negotiator Mickey Bergman (In the Shadows), marking him as perhaps the busiest ghostwriter of the publishing season. 

Ellis’s other collaborative credits include Home Team, a New York Times best-seller written with New Orleans Saints football coach Sean Payton; In the Blink of Any Eye: Dale, Daytona, and the Day that Changed Everything, with two-time Daytona 500 winner Michael Waltrip; and Doc, with former All-Star pitcher Dwight “Doc” Gooden. 

For 20 years, he wrote a thrice-weekly column in New York Newsday, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize for the newspaper’s coverage of the Union Square train wreck.

Join us as Ellis reflects on his mid-career pivot from the newsroom, the lessons he’s learned writing on behalf some of our most influential athletes, actors, and politicians, and how it happened that a veteran journalist found his way to becoming a cartoon character. 

Learn more about Ellis Henican:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

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Daniel Paisner Daniel Paisner - author, collaborator, podcaster

Daniel Paisner is an author, collaborator and podcaster. He is the author or co-author of over 80 books, including four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, and he is the ghostwriter behind 17 NYT best-sellers, written in collaboration with such celebrated personalities as Whoopi Goldberg, Serena Williams and Denzel Washington. He is the host of the podcast “AS TOLD TO: The Ghostwriting Podcast,” a production of the Writers Bone Podcast Network, which features conversations with his fellow ghostwriters, as well as songwriters, speechwriters, screenwriters and other artists who work in service of someone else’s voice or vision.