Obama Podcast 'A Great Book' Launches With Tom Hanks, Coates

The new Obama podcast launches tomorrow on Audible, and Barack Obama is bringing some heavyweight company with him. "A Great Book with Barack Obama" debuts September 24 with six episodes, each one pairing the former president with a different guest to talk through a book that shaped how he sees the world.

The guest list, revealed by The Wrap last week, reads like a dream syllabus: Tom Hanks, Ta-Nehisi Coates, historian Jill Lepore, former Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes, and novelists Percival Everett and Lauren Groff. Each episode centers on one of six titles Obama says stuck with him since his youth and influenced how he thinks about family, faith, race, politics and America.

The six books on the list are "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin, "Song of Solomon" by Toni Morrison, "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy, "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson, "All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren, and "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" by John le Carre. It is a lineup that covers the civil rights movement, American mythmaking and a Cold War spy story, and it tracks with the reading lists Obama has published every summer and winter since leaving the White House.

"Great books have always helped me figure out who I am and what I believe," Obama said in a statement when the series was announced in August. "The six books featured in this series have stayed with me throughout my life, and each one has something to teach us about the human experience."

A nudge toward reading

Obama has framed the show as more than a celebrity conversation series. In a social media post announcing the project, he wrote that at a time when fewer people sit down with a book, it matters to remember the joy and power reading can bring. "Some books don't just tell a story, they change the way we see the world," he said.

The timing lands as reading habits keep shifting. The series asks listeners to do something almost old-fashioned: sit with one book at a time. Obama said he hopes listeners will be inspired to discover or rediscover books that change how they see themselves and the world, a line he has used across years of his annual reading lists.

For listeners who want homework before tomorrow's premiere, the reading list is public and short. Morrison's "Song of Solomon," a book Obama has called a favorite for years, anchors the American canon side of the list. Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time," a slim pair of essays on race in America, gives the series its sharpest political edge. McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses" and Robinson's "Gilead" bring the western and small-town moral novel traditions, while le Carre's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" adds a spy thriller that Obama read as a young man.

Inside the Audible and Higher Ground deal

The series is produced by Audible in partnership with Higher Ground, the media company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama. It is the sixth release under the exclusive first-look audio agreement the two companies signed in 2022, according to The Wrap. Earlier entries include "Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast," "The Wonder of Stevie" and this summer's "Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise," which Obama co-hosted with Malcolm Gladwell.

Audible chief content officer Rachel Ghiazza has described the series as a chance for listeners to connect with transformative storytelling through audio, while Higher Ground's head of audio, Dan Fierman, pointed to the easy chemistry between Obama and his guests, as reported by PodcastingToday.

The Obama podcast launches exclusively on Audible on September 24, but it will not stay there. The Wrap reports that "A Great Book with Barack Obama" will arrive on YouTube and other podcasting platforms later this year, a window that will open the series to listeners who do not use Audible. For a show about the power of books, a second life on YouTube, where many Gen Z listeners now get their podcasts, seems like the point.

Whether the series can move the needle on reading habits is an open question, but Obama has a record of doing exactly that. His annual book lists routinely send titles climbing bestseller charts. Now he is betting that six long conversations can do what a list cannot: make the case for why literature matters, one book at a time.