Read Beat (...and repeat)
If you're like me, you like to know things but how much time to invest? That's the question. Here's the answer: Read Beat--Interviews with authors of new releases. These aren't book reviews but short (about 25-30 minutes on the average) chats with folks that usually have taken a lot of time to research a topic, enough to write a book about it. Hopefully, there's a topic or two that interests you. I try to come up with subjects that fascinate me or I need to know more about. Hopefully, listeners will agree. I'm Steve Tarter, former reporter for the Peoria Journal Star and a contributor to WCBU-FM, the Peoria public radio outlet, from 20202 to 2024. I post regularly on stevetarter.substack.com.
Episodes
247 episodes
"Marutas of Unit 731" by Jenny Chan
Writing in the Sept. 20, 2025 issue of the Korea Times, Park Jin-hai noted that “Jenny Chan grew up in America caught between clashing versions of history — her school textbooks skipped over the cruelties of World War II in Hong Kong, ...
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Season 5
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Episode 34
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23:24
"Rewiring Democracy" by Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders
AI will change democracy. The only question is how, say the authors of a new book described as "surprisingly optimistic" when it comes to regarding how artificial intelligence will impact the world.Bruce Schneier, a lecturer at the Harva...
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Season 5
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Episode 33
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23:43
"American Oasis" by Kyle Paoletta
Kyle Paoletta’s American Oasis comes with a subtitle: Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest.Born in Santa Fe, Paoletta grew up in Albuquerque. The native Southwesterner said he had to leave the region, to li...
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Season 5
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Episode 32
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30:07
"Crossings--How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet" by Ben Goldfarb
Ben Goldfarb’s new book, Crossings—How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, is a reminder that we need to consider the impact of a highway network--not just on the drivers--but on the animals that share the planet.W...
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Season 5
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Episode 31
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27:22
"The Accord" by Mark Peres
“AI is technology that lets computers do things that normally require human intelligence—like understanding language, recognizing pictures, solving problems, or making decisions. It’s like teaching a computer to ‘think’ in specific ways by givi...
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Season 5
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Episode 30
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27:49
In the Japanese Ballpark by Robert Fitts
You don’t have to worry that U.S. baseball fans could be overlooking Japanese baseball. Not after the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series for the second year in a row, led by Japanese stars Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Roki Sasak...
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Season 5
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Episode 29
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29:27
"That October" by Keith Roysdon
Keith Roysdon is a media marvel. He spent 40 years as a newspaperman in Muncie, Ind., not just writing about what went on in Muncie but absorbing the movies, TV shows, and critical articles on the arts.Now living in Tennessee, Roysdon ha...
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Season 5
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Episode 28
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19:02
"Small Farms Are Real Farms" by John Ikerd
John Ikerd, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri, has a message regarding the present state of agriculture in this country: it's not sustainable.Ikerd doesn't see a future for industrial agriculture ...
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Season 5
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Episode 27
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33:05
"When Can We Go Back to America?" by Susan Kamei
The attack on Pearl Harbor did more than plunge the United States into a two-front war, it turned over 120,000 Japanese-Americans into prisoners of war--in their own country.Almost as soon as the bombs had dropped in Hawaii, Japanese-Ame...
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Season 5
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Episode 26
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25:38
"Hollywood's Spies" by Laura Rosenzweig
The debate lingers: why didn’t Hollywood’s studios produce anti-Nazi pictures before war was all but imminent in the 1930s?Plenty has been written about the lack of films that might have alerted the American public to what was happening ...
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Season 5
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Episode 25
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21:31
"Your Money" by Carl Richards
If you want to find a relaxed approach to planning your finances, Carl Richards has it for you, complete with 101 simple sketches: Your Money.It's an approach Richards employed as a financial writer for the New York Times for 10...
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Season 5
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Episode 24
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26:50
"American Scary" by Jeremy Dauber
The arrival of the nuclear age ushered in yet another chapter in America’s horror history. Jeremy Dauber, the Columbia University professor who previously wrote a history of comics in this country, now digs a little deeper for American Scar...
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Season 5
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Episode 23
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25:53
"They're Playing Our Song" by Bruce Pollock
Bruce Pollock has been around. He’s covered a lot of ground. Best known as a rock critic, he's the author of 17 books on popular music, the founding editor of Guitar (for the Practicing Musician), a former record producer, and he’s bee...
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Season 5
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Episode 22
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30:00
"We'll Prescribe You Another Cat" by Syou Ishida
The Kokoro Clinic for the Soul is back in business. That's the mental health clinic that appears for those who need it. We’ll Prescribe You Another Cat is a follow-up to We'll Prescribe You a Cat, a bestselling Japanese novel....
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Season 5
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Episode 21
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18:54
"The Martians" by David Baron
Mars is held in high esteem on Earth. It’s a neighboring planet but, unlike Venus, our neighbor closest to the Sun, the planet stands as the closest thing to Earth in our solar system.It’s not inhabited, but robots now roving the planet ...
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Season 5
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Episode 20
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28:04
"Moses Jacob Ezekiel: Jewish, Confederate, Expatriate Sculptor" by Samantha Baskind
Moses Jacob Ezekiel may be a 19th-century sculptor who’s been largely forgotten, but his work hasn’t been.A member of the Jewish faith who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, Ezekiel is described as a complex figure. Samantha Ba...
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Season 5
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Episode 19
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25:58
"Saving Ourselves from Big Car" by David Obst
David Obst wants to end America’s love affair with the car.Saving Ourselves from Big Car defines “Big Car” as that complex of companies in the automobile, oil, insurance, media, and concrete industries that promote and entrench ...
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Season 5
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Episode 18
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25:27
"Launching Liberty" by Doug Most
When it comes to World War II, you often hear about "the arsenal of democracy," a characterization of U.S. factories that produced all the food, medical supplies, tanks, planes, and tractors that helped win the war.In Launching Liber...
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Season 5
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Episode 17
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28:10
"Wisdom of the Marsh" by Clare Howard (Photographs by David Zalaznik)
If draining the swamp strikes you as a good idea, you're not listening to Clare Howard and David Zalaznik.The pair, former journalists with the Peoria Journal Star, have just written their second book extolling the benefits of w...
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Season 5
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Episode 16
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27:24
"Hollywood and Hitler: 1933-1939" by Thomas Doherty
Hollywood came under scrutiny after World War II as the fear of Communism gripped the country.The Cold War came to Hollywood in 1947 when the House Un-American Activities Committee held a notorious round of hearings over possible Communi...
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Season 5
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Episode 15
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34:10
"Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life"
Tiffany Jenkins takes a look at privacy in her new book, Strangers and Intimates. As Jenkins points out, the whole concept of privacy is a relatively recent development. She points to an article published in 1890 by Louis Brandeis and ...
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Season 5
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Episode 14
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29:24
"Eating Up Route 66" by T. Lindsay Baker
T. Lindsay Baker’s Eating Up Route 66 is not your typical Mother Road guidebook. It’s a history—with business notes, photographs, and recipes.Baker, a retired history professor from Texas has written plenty about the American We...
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Season 5
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Episode 13
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28:48
"The Devil Reached Toward the Sky" by Garrett Graff
If you haven’t read an oral history before, it’s like flashing through comments that sometimes follow an online article. Only with a difference: you don’t see those back-and-forth arguments that always seem to break out among those commenting.<...
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Season 5
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Episode 12
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30:39
"America America" by Greg Grandin
When you get through reading America America by Greg Grandin, a Yale University history professor, you have to wonder what might have been when it comes to U.S. policies regarding Latin America over the years.Grandin figures tha...
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Season 5
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Episode 11
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34:44
"The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant" by Liza Tully
Liza Tully’s previous literary effort was a grim thriller set in Siberia. “It was a suspense novel, but I realized it was very dark,” she said.The author, who wrote Finding Katarina M under the pseudonym Elisabeth Elo, decided t...
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Season 5
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Episode 10
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27:01
