Podcasts

Welcome! Each week, we post fascinating discussions with biographers from around the country and the world.

If  you get your podcasts via iTunes, you can also subscribe here.

If you are a member of BIO and would like to talk about your recently released biography, please contact: lisa@lisanapoli.com

Podcast #241 – Ron Chernow, Part I

Mark Twain, published in May 2025 by Penguin Press, is this celebrated, multiple award-winning biographer’s latest book. Chernow is the recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal, and his first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award. Chernow’s Washington: A Life won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and Alexander Hamilton—the inspiration for the Broadway musical—won the George Washington Book Prize. Ron Chernow has twice been a finalist for the National… Read More »

Podcast #240 – Todd Goddard

Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, A Writer’s Life, is the latest book by this scholar and author, published in November 2025 by Blackstone Publishing. Goddard is an associate professor of literary studies at Utah Valley University, and the Mellon Foundation and a Bordin-Gillette Fellowship from the University of Michigan have funded his work. BIO member and BIO Podcast Producer Jenny Skoog interviewed Goddard.   Note: BIO, the Biographers International Organization’s podcast series, will return on January… Read More »

Podcast #239 – Daniel Brook

The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfield, Visionary of Weimar Berlin, is this journalist and author’s latest book. It was published by W. W. Norton & Company in May 2025. Brook’s writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. One of his previous books, A History of Future Cities, was longlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize and selected as one of the ten favorite books of… Read More »

Podcast #238 – Cindy Schweich Handler

This journalist’s biography, A German Jew’s Triumph: Fritz Oppenheimer and the Denazification of Germany, was published by McFarland in April 2025. Handler’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and a host of other national publications. A former editor-in-chief of multiple USA Today Network magazines, she currently writes for the USA Today Network in northern New Jersey, and her features have appeared in The Record newspaper, online at Northjersey.com,… Read More »

Podcast #237 – Marion Orr

House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr., is the latest book by this political scientist and the inaugural Frederick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy at Brown University. House of Diggs was published by the University of North Carolina Press in September of this year. An award-winning author, Orr’s publications include Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore and The Color of School Read More »

Podcast #236 – Tim Greiving

John Williams: A Composer’s Life, published by Oxford University Press in September 2025, is the first biography by this arts journalist. Greiving, a longtime fan of Williams’ celebrated film scores, has contributed stories to NPR, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. He has written program notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Royal Albert Hall, and liner notes for more than one hundred soundtrack albums.… Read More »

Podcast #235 – Francesca Wade

Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, published by Scribner in October 2025, is the latest book by London-based author Francesca Wade. Additionally, Wade is the author of Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars, and her writing has appeared in The New York Review of BooksLondon Review of BooksParis ReviewGranta, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, the Leon Levy Center… Read More »

Podcast #234 – Todd S. Purdum

Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television, published by Simon and Schuster in June 2025, is the latest book by this veteran journalist and author. Purdum also authored Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution and An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In a career spanning more than forty years, Purdum has written extensively about politics and culture, beginning at … Read More »