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
271 episodes
"Heartland" by Keith O'Brien
The saga of basketball star Larry Bird invariably culminates in the Bird-Magic Johnson story, two players who met in the most-watched basketball game of all time, the 1979 NCAA championship game between Indiana State and Michigan State, and the...
“The Navigator’s Letter” by Jan Cress Dondi
A true story, The Navigator’s Letter is a tale of uncanny coincidences: two friends from the same small town in Illinois join the Army Air Corps in World War II. Both become navigators. Both were assigned to B-24 Liberators...
"Tigers Between Empires" by Jonathan Slaght
It’s a familiar story: the animals we’ve all known since we were children, the lions, tigers, and elephants, all disappearing from the wilds due to loss of habitat, hunters, or a changing environment.So how gratifying is it to learn that...
"Boss Lincoln" by Matthew Pinsker
Abraham Lincoln has been characterized in many ways: as a father, statesman, lawyer, writer, speechmaker, and military leader. He served as U.S. President during this country’s Civil War, grappling under the intense pressure that could have spl...
“Ms. Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block” by Jesse Sutanto
Jesse Sutanto has found a unique writing formula. The author of over a dozen books including the Aunties and Vera Wong (the previous interview with Sutanto came after the publication of Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a ...
“The 100 Greatest Literary Characters” by James Plath, Gail Sinclair, and Kirk Curnutt
The first thing that makes a reader read a book is the characters. That was John Gardner. If the characters come alive, the novel comes alive. That’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez.Given the importance of characters, James Plath, an English prof...
“Last of the Titans” by Richard Vinen
The date of June 18, 1940 proved to be the most important day in the lives of two of the best-known world leaders of the 20th century: Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle.World War II had taken an ugly turn in Europe with the fall of...
"CrimeReads" articles by Keith Roysdon
An upcoming story on the CrimeReads website (https://crimereads.com/) will look at the performances of movie/TV good guys who later took on bad-guy roles and vice versa. It can only be another story by Keith Roysdon, whose previous sto...
"Making Democracy Count" by Ismar Volic
"Making Democracy Count" by Ismar VolicIsmar Volic is one math professor who wants to use mathematics to improve our democratic process. His book,
“Winning the Earthquake” by Lorissa Rinehart
The first woman to serve in the U.S. congress didn’t come from New York or Boston but from Montana. Jeannette Rankin served two terms in Congress—not in succession but terms separated by more than 20 years.Among her many distinctions is ...
"Show Trial" by Thomas Doherty
Groundhog Day, Ed Wood, The Big Lebowski, Dark City, and 12 Monkeys. What do these movies have in common?They were all made in the 1990s and represented a middle-level film—neither franchise nor family fare. “That’s wha...
"Road to Nowhere" by Emily Lieb
In the mid-1950s, Baltimore’s Rosemont neighborhood was alive and vibrant with smart rowhouses, a sprawling park, corner grocery stores, and doctors’ offices. By 1957, a proposed expressway threatened to gut this Black, middle-class community f...
"Vote with Your Phone" by Bradley Tusk
We think nothing of ordering dinner, shopping for clothes, or banking on our phones anymore. So why not vote?That’s what Bradley Tusk has been working on. In his book, Vote with Your Phone: Why Mobile Voting Is Our Final Shot at Savi...
"Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling" by Danny Funt
An exploration into the perilous world of American sports gambling, journalist Danny Funt interviews the power players of the betting boom at FanDuel, DraftKings, and beyond. He relates the story of ESPN Bet, a failed attempt by the...
"Radical Cartography: How Changing Our Maps Can Change Our World" by William Rankin
Where are you with maps? Still digging in the glove compartment for that dog-eared map of Iowa? Gazing contentedly at a map of the world with Greenland as the dominant feature? Maybe you’ve got a pocket map of attractions in Downtown Chicago?
"The Heartland: An American History" by Kristin Hoganson
When Kristin Hoganson came from the East to the Midwest 25 years ago to teach at the University of Illinois, she realized she had entered the heartland, that safe sanctuary that lies between the American coasts. But was it? Her book, The He...
"Artificially Intelligent" by David Eliot
If you’re weary of being bombarded by claims and concerns over AI, you need to hear David Eliot talk about the subject. The author of Artificially Intelligent: The Very Human Story of AI is “the story of how artificial intelligence was...
"Troublemaker" by Carla Kaplan
When you review the life of Jessica Mitford, the activist muckraking journalist who died in 1996, you’re following someone who not only lived through world events but put her body on the line and wrote about them. That list includes the Spanish...
"The Intelligence Explosion" by James Barrat
Science fiction has long contemplated the possibility that machines could rise up against their human creators. Movies such as 2001, Terminator, Matrix, and I, Robot are part of our cultural history. But James Barrat,...
“The Hard Line” by Mark Greaney
The 15th in the Gray Man series is out this February. That means it’s time to talk with author Mark Greaney about the latest Court Gentry entry. Entitled The Hard Line, action takes place in Bulgaria, Nicaragua, Boston, and Washington,...
“The Killing Age” by Clifton Crais
You get a sense of The Killing Age by Clifton Crais, a history professor at Emory University, when you read “killing became the West’s most profound contribution to world history" in the author's preface.“The violence that creat...
“The First Movie Studio in Texas” by Kathryn Fuller-Seeley and Frank Thompson
When you think about the early days of motion pictures, you might recall the New York/New Jersey area where Thomas Edison set up shop in 1893. Maybe you reflect on those very early days when producers in search of sunshine ventured to shooting ...
“When We Were Brilliant” by Lynn Cullen
There’s probably no brighter star in the Hollywood heavens than Marilyn Monroe. The blonde bombshell who died at the age of 35 in 1962 has been the focus of hundreds of accounts, linking her with the leading celebrities of the day—John F. Kenne...
"Retaining and Transitioning Businesses in Communities" by Norm Walzer and Christopher Merrett
Rural America faces serious problems. That record has been playing for decades: the lack of jobs, healthcare, housing, and internet access are just some of the low notes.Who hasn’t driven through a small town to observe empty buildings t...
"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, ...
