Thom Hartmann is a progressive national and internationally syndicated talk show host whose shows are available in over a half-billion homes worldwide. He’s the New York Times bestselling,four-times Project Censored Award-winning author of 24 books in print in 17 languages on five continents. Leonardo DiCaprio was inspired by Thom’s book “The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight” to make the movie “The 11th Hour” (in which Thom appears), and Warner Brothers is making a movie starring DiCaprio and Robert De Niro from the book Thom co-authored with Lamar Waldron, “Legacy of Secrecy.”
Talkers Magazine named Thom Hartmann as the 8th most important talk show host in America in 2011, 2012, and 2013 (10th the two previous years), and for three of the past five years the #1 most important progressive host, in their “Heavy Hundred” ranking.
Thom has spent much of his life working with and for the international Salem relief organization, and he and his wife Louise founded a community for abused children in New Hampshire and a school for learning disabled and ADHD kids. His book “Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception” sparked a national debate, both in the psychology/psychiatry community and among the general public, on ADD/ADHD and neurological differences ranging from giftedness to autism. His book “Rebooting The American Dream” so inspired Sen. Bernie Sanders that he wrote a cover letter to accompany the delivery of the book to his 99 colleagues in the United States Senate and he read from it extensively on the floor of the Senate during his famous filibuster.
As an entrepreneur, he’s also founded several successful businesses which still are operating, and lived and worked with his wife, Louise, and their three children on several continents.
An inveterate traveler and sometimes a risk-taker, Hartmann has often found himself in the world’s hot spots on behalf of the German-based Salem international relief organization or as a writer, a situation which causes his friends to sometimes wonder aloud if he works for the CIA (he does not and never has). He was, for example, in The Philippines when Ferdinand Marcos fled the country; in Egypt the week Anwar Sadat was shot; in Uganda during the war of liberation by Tanzania; in Hungary when the first East German refugees arrived; in Germany when the wall came down; in Beijing during the first student demonstrations; in Thailand when the military coup of 1991 occurred; in Barbados during the 2004 anti-government strikes and shutdowns; in Bogota and Medellin, Colombia, during the spate of killings of presidential candidates; in Israel, in the West Bank town of Nablus, the week the Intifada started there; on the Czech border the week Chernobyl melted down; in Kenya during the first big wave of crackdowns on dissidents; and in Venezuela during the 1991 coup attempt. He has been successful in avoiding some disasters, however. For example, he was out of the country when George H.W. Bush picked Dan Quayle as his running mate.
He was born and grew up in Michigan, and retains strong ties to the Midwest, although he and Louise have lived in New Hampshire, Vermont, Georgia, Germany, and Oregon…and now live on a boat in Washington D.C. with their new attack-cat, Fang.