Described as "a whip-smart, button-cute leftie” by Time magazine, Rachel Maddow is the first openly gay host of a major prime-time program in the United States. She has received multiple Emmy Awards for her broadcasting work and received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for her audiobook Blowout last year.
Maddow is known for her liberal political views. Her MSNBC program, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” was adapted from the successful radio program of the same name, broadcast on Air America, and became one of MSNBC’s most successful shows to date.
Maddow grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and attended Stanford University, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy. She was the first openly lesbian winner of the Rhodes Scholarship and studied as a postgraduate at Lincoln College, University of Oxford.
Maddow worked with the AIDS Legal Referral Panel in San Francisco and became an advocate for those living with AIDS in prison. In 2001, she earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Politics from Oxford. Her dissertation was titled “HIV/AIDS and Health Care Reform in British and American Prisons.”
She landed her first hosting job by winning a contest put on by WRNX radio in Amherst, Massachusetts. She transitioned to television as a regular panelist for “The Situation With Tucker Carlson” and “Paula Zahn Now.”
In 2008, she signed a contract with MSNBC to be their Political Analyst. The same year, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” a mixture of news, opinion, and entertainment, was launched. She became the network’s leading public figure after beating Larry King in ratings in her first month, which was unheard of for MSNBC. Earlier this year, Maddow confirmed she was taking a hiatus, leading to speculation that her show could shift to a weekly format.
Maddow is also a best-selling author. Her book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power reached number one on the New York Times Best Seller List. Her most recent book, Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House, came out in 2020.