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Thomas Carl Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio personality, author, businessman, and progressivism pundit. Hartmann has been hosting a nationally syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, since 2003 and hosted a nightly television show, The Big Picture, between 2010 and 2017.
Hartmann enrolled at Lansing Community College and transferred to Michigan State University, majoring in electrical engineering. In 1968, Hartmann opened his first business, a repair shop named "The Electronics Joint" located next to Michigan State University and became a part-time disc jockey at local country music station WITL-FM.Thom Hartmann, Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture.Hartmann, Rebooting the American Dream, p. 97. With Students for a Democratic Society, Hartmann protested against the Vietnam War. Man's Got Heart; Insider Radio – Personality Interviews; September 11, 2006 Hartmann had been interested in consciousness and spirituality since childhood, and by 1969 his interest evolved from hippie subculture to Christian mysticism. During that year, he met the head of the Coptic Center, Kurt Stanley, called Master Stanley. An excerpt from The Prophet's Way. In this case, Coptic is an acronym for Center Of Personal Transformation In Consciousness and has no relation the Coptic Orthodox Church. Website of the Coptic Center In 1971 Hartmann was ordained as a Minister with Coptic Fellowship International. He has since been a keynote speaker at many Coptic Conferences nationally. In 1973, Hartmann returned to Detroit to work as an engineer with RCA.
Hartmann founded International Wholesale Travel and its retail subsidiary Sprayberry Travel in Atlanta in 1983, a business which in the intervening years generated over a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue. Dun & Bradstreet Million Dollar Directory, Volume 2; Dun and Bradstreet, Inc.;Dun & Bradstreet, Incorporated, 1999; Pg. 2542 Rebooting the American Dream: 15 Ways to Rebuild Our Country; Thom Hartmann; ReadHowYouWant, 2011; Pgs 106–107 According to their website, Sprayberry Travel was lauded by the Wall Street Journal in 1984 as one of the early adopters of frequent travel programs analogous to the recent frequent flyer programs of the airline industry. "About Our Company, Overview", Sprayberry Travel (website). Retrieved February 17, 2010 He sold his share in the business in 1986, and retired with his family to Germany to work with the international relief organization Salem International. In the late 1970s, he was a trainer in advertising and marketing for The American Marketing Centers (now defunct), and in 1987, after returning from Germany, founded the Atlanta advertising agency Chandler, MacDonald, Stout, Schneiderman & Poe, Inc., doing business as The Newsletter Factory. He sold his interest in that company in 1996, and re-retired to Vermont.
Hartmann's national program, on the air since 2003 and now in the noon to 3 pm. ET daypart, was chosen by Air America to replace Al Franken on most Air America affiliates in 2007. From 2008 to 2011, Talkers Magazine rated Hartmann the most popular liberal talk show host in America, rising from number 10 among all talk show hosts in 2008 to number 8 in 2011 and 2015.Talkers Magazine Heavy Hundred, Talkers Magazine, 2008–2010 [7] According to his then-syndicator Dial Global, more people listened to Hartmann's show on more stations than any other progressive talk show in America. The Thom Hartmann Program is estimated by industry magazine Talkers to have 7 million unique listeners per week.
As of March 2016, the show was carried on 80 terrestrial radio stations in 37 states, as well as on SiriusXM Progress channel 127. A community radio station in Africa, Radio Builsa in Ghana, also broadcasts the show. Various local cable TV stations simulcast the program. In addition to Westwood One, the show is now also offered via Pacifica Radio to non-profit stations in a non-profit compliant format and is simulcast on Dish Network channel 9415 and DirecTV channel 348 via Free Speech TV. The program also airs in London, England.
Many guests appear on the show expressing a variety of points of view on diverse social and political topics. Some guests proffer progressive views similar to Hartmann's, but more than half are conservatives, libertarians, or Ayn Rand Institute members who espouse opposing views. Due to his eagerness to invite people who disagree with him, vigorous discussion and debate between the host and guests usually ensues; "My goal in my conversations with conservatives is not to create a spectacle, and not to win the argument, not to prove that I'm the smartest guy in the room or that I'm a tough warrior and I can smack down people." For many years, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) appeared every Friday for the "Brunch with Bernie" segment. Other regular phone-in guests include Congressmen Mark Pocan (Mid-day with Mark) and Ro Khanna, both members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Ellen Ratner of the Talk Radio News Service provides Washington commentary daily. Victoria Jones who is the White House correspondent for Talk Radio News Service appears occasionally, as does Ravi Batra, an economics professor at SMU. Broadcasting from the Belly of the Beast; The American Prospect; Paul Waldman; February 16, 2012
Like most talk radio shows, The Thom Hartmann Program takes calls from listeners. When callers asked Hartmann how he was, he used to reply, "I'm great, but I'll get better." But after a time, callers would regularly try to elicit this response, so he's stopped replying this way routinely. Hartmann ends each show with the phrase, "Activism begins with you, democracy begins with you. Get out there, get active! Tag, you're it!"
Michael Harrison, publisher of radio industry trade magazine Talkers, offered this appraisal of Hartmann:
He also publishes The Hartmann Report, a daily progressive newsletter. The Hartmann Report Apple Podcasts
Hartmann is a practitioner of the pseudo-scientific Neuro-Linguistic Programming, having been trained by Richard Bandler. Hartmann popularized some of NLP's concepts in Cracking the Code (2007), arguing Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz made use of them in the 1980s and 1990s for Republican Party causes, while advocating using them to advance liberalism. His book Healing ADD also utilises NLP techniques. Co-authored with Lamar Waldron, Hartmann's Ultimate Sacrifice (2005) echoes the conspiracy theory that the Mafia ordered the assassination of John F. Kennedy and that Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA agent.
Hartmann was one of several contributors to Air America, the Playbook, a collection of essays, transcripts, and interviews by liberal radio personalities. It was published in 2006 and was on The New York Times Best Seller List for October 8, 2006. "Best Sellers", The New York Times, October 8, 2006
Leonardo DiCaprio made a web movie titled Before The Flood, inspired by The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Hartmann appears in DiCaprio's 2007 documentary The 11th Hour, as well as the feature documentary film Dalai Lama Renaissance (with Harrison Ford), and Crude Impact. In 2010, Warner Brothers and Leonardo DiCaprio announced they are making a motion picture based on the book Legacy of Secrecy, authored by Lamar Waldron and Hartmann. Hartmann also narrated the 2011 documentary film
In September 2013, Hartmann was granted an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Goddard College in Port Townsend, Washington. According to President Barbara Vacarr, "Thom's work as a journalist, author, and community activist is a living example of the very mission of Goddard College, and what our students are committed to—advancing cultures of rigorous inquiry, collaboration, and lifelong-learning, where individuals take imaginative and responsible action."
Hartmann served on the board of Voqal, a collaboration of EBS licensees working to advance social equity.
Hartmann is a vocal critic of the effects of neoliberal globalization on the U.S. economy, claiming that economic policies enacted during and since the presidency of Ronald Reagan have led, in large part, to many American industrial enterprises' being acquired by multinational firms based in overseas countries, leading in many cases to manufacturing jobs—once considered a major foundation of the U.S. economy—being relocated to countries in Asia and other areas where the costs of labor are lower than in the U.S. and the concurrent reversal of the United States' traditional role of a leading exporter of finished manufactured goods to that of a primary importer of finished manufactured goods (exemplified by massive trade deficits with countries such as China). Hartmann argues that this phenomenon is leading to the erosion of the American middle class, whose survival Hartmann deems critical to the survival of American democracy. This argument is expressed in Hartmann's 2006 book, Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class and What We Can Do About It. One of the book's main arguments is that media deregulation leads to corporate media's shifting the American consensus towards the acceptance of privatization and massive corporate profits—which causes the shrinking of the middle class.
In a 2013 interview with Politico, Hartmann described his political philosophy as democratic socialism:
He also operated the "ADD Forum" and "DeskTop Publishing Forum", along with several others, on CompuServe. Thom Hartmann – Biography ADD-Holistic Mailing List
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