Episodes

It’s as though someone spent 2300 hours reading the microfilm of every State Journal and Capital Times, and the relevant issues of the Daily Cardinal, from 1932 to 1979 and hundreds of hours combing the photo archives of the State Historical Society, University Archives and Capital Newspapers, and synthesized all the information in one handy volume. It’s just like that

Festival director Jane Rotonda and author Meghan O'Gieblyn join the program to preview this year's book events.

An in-depth conversation with musician/author Ben Sidran about the life and times of the English keyboardist/singer/songwriter Georgie Fame , -- the only artist to twice knock the Beatles out of the top spot on the UK musical charts, and whose 64-year career encompassed rock and roll, rhythm and blues, pop and jazz.

Stu Levitan welcomes playwright Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff for a conversation about her new play, "Walt Whitman's American Dream," a featured presentation at the Capital Times Idea Fest on September 19. Presenting Whitman's life and poetry in the context of his time -- born while the Founders were still alive, he mourned Lincoln and died on the cusp of the Gilded Age -- the play invites audiences to reflect on what it means to be an American, and whether a divided people can reconnect. And th...

Author Chloe Benjamin joins host Sara Batkie to talk about her new novel, Understory.

UW professor Tara Mulder joins us to discuss her new book, A Womb of One's Own.

Historian/music publicist Dennis McNally's fourth book accounting for the growth and meaning of the postwar counterculture puts all the pieces together.

Poet Lisa Fishman talks with host Sara Batkie about her debut novel, Write Back Now!

Stu Levitan welcomes Nancy Kathman, for a conversation about her engaging new memoir, “Love, Cuba, Goats and Music,” about her life cutting sugarcane in Cuba, co-founding the Southwest Dairy Goat Cooperative and exploring world music with the late Bob Queen, founder of so many of the hallmark east side music festivals.

Palestinian-American author Sahar Mustafah talks about her new novel, The Slightest Green.

Jeff Oloizia was our guest on Book Beat with John Quinlan discussing his new weekly WI Literary Podcast "Writing Forward," which debuted on May 6th. We learned about the purpose of the cutting edge podcast, and about the man behind it. The Brookfield native and 2007 UW alum left Wisconsin post-graduation, not necessarily expecting to return, settling into "an itinerant existence" in exotic places like Japan, San Francisco and New York as a journalist, and eventually earning a professorship as p...

An in-depth conversation with author and editor Dean Robbins about his flourishing fourth career writing books for elementary school children.

Author Theresa Evans of Sturgeon Bay discusses important end of life issues around her support of her mother in experiencing Assisted Death. "Choosing to Die: A Daughter's Story Of Supporting Her Mother's End Of Life Through Assisted Death," is about the journey her family took once her mother decided to define the date and terms of her death in the context of a small southwestern Ontario town. Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID, has been legal in Canada since 2016. By 2023, over 60,000 Canadi...

Poet Lisa Low joins us to talk about her new collection, Replica.

Author and Oneida member Doug Metoxen Kiel joins us to talk about Unsettling Territory.

Author and Mt. Horeb native Melissa Faliveno joins us to talk about her debut novel, Hemlock.

Doug Bradley explores the meaning of his life through the music of his generation, from Doo-Wop Philly to hard rock Vietnam and beyond.

Booksellers from A Room of One's Own, Mystery to Me, and Lake City Books share their reflections on the past year

WORT 89.9FM Madison · Cheryl Schiltz - When the World Falls Away Lisa Malawski talks with Cheryl Schiltz today on Madison Bookbeat, November 24, 2025. Cheryl Schiltz is no stranger to silence—but not the peaceful kind. After a reaction to antibiotics destroyed her vestibular system—the part of the inner ear responsible for balance—Cheryl was plunged into a world of disorientation, instability, and invisible suffering. Even while lying down, she felt as if she were falling through space. The noi...

Stu Levitan welcomes Cary Segall for a conversation about his engaging new book A Talk in the Woods: Voices Along the Appalachian Trail (Back Burner Books), recounting stories of the people he met along the world's longest hiking-only trail. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the mid-1930s, the 2,197.4-mile Appalachian Trail runs through 14 states, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. More than three million people hike segments each year; fewer than one thousa...

Author Emily Mitchell joins us to chat about her new short story collection, The Church of Divine Electricity.

What was it like for a lesbian seeking to become a mother, either through childbirth or adoption, in the years before the US Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right to same-sex marriage? What legal and practical pressures did they face, what choices did they have to make? Radical Family: Trailblazing Lesbian Moms Tell Their Stories (Wisconsin Historical Society Press 2025) offers nine first-person accounts which detail the pressures and pleasures of participating in what Newsweek magazine called the "gayby boom."

Author Pernille Ipsen joins us to chat about her unique upbringing amidst the feminist movement in 1970's Denmark.

Stu Levitan welcomes Wauwatosa Mayor Dennis McBride for a conversation about his new book A City on the Edge: Pandemic, Protest and Polarization. It's a gripping and insightful first-person account of what it was like to be the newly elected chief executive of a Wisconsin city during the twin traumas of 2020 – the onset of COVID and the murder of George Floyd. In particular, a city with its own unique history of racial extremes – founded by east coast abolitionists in the mid-nineteenth century ...