Deepak Chopra first visited the Tattered Cover in 1988, but in this Best of AOT podcast, we take you back to 2007, when he came to discuss his novel Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment. In Buddha, Chopra tells the story of Prince Siddhartha, who becomes the Buddha. This re-imagining of the Buddha’s life presents a new form of teaching which shows how the iconic journey of the prince who became the Buddha has changed the world forever.

Listen in as Chopra talks about the early life of this legendary character. If you enjoyed this Best of Authors On Tour podcast, please listen to the entire Deepak Chopra podcast.

This podcast was originally recorded on May 21, 2007.

Les Claypool, art-rock pioneer, bassist, and front man for the band Primus, has never subscribed to the rock playbook. Claypool’s debut novel, South of the Pumphouse, is not a book of tales from the road, but rather a dark, clever tale of two brothers, a fishing tip, misconceptions, drugs and murder (OK, he did have to put drugs in there, right?).

In this Best of Authors on Tour podcast, Claypool reads from “The Big One” a chapter from South of the Pumphouse.

If you enjoyed this Best of Authors On Tour podcast, please listen to the entire Les Claypool podcast.

This podcast was originally recorded on November 21, 2006.

Waldman, who used to hang out with such literary giants as Allen Ginsberg (with whom she founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at what is now Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado), is known for her fiery and thought-provoking performances. When she came to the Tattered Cover on Colfax Ave. in 2009, she upped the ante by bringing along singer/songwriter Alaina Ferris to help her recite one of her poems.

Listen in as Waldman and Ferris blend their voices in what must be called performance art on top of poetry.

If you enjoyed this Best of Authors On Tour podcast, please listen to the entire Anne Waldman podcast.

Much can be said about the first half of Obama’s first term, but this is not the venue! Instead, we turn the clocks all the way back to October of 2006, when Senator Obama visited the Tattered Cover’s LoDo store to speak about his book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.

Even those of us in the room that day, impressed by Obama’s presence and vision, could not have guessed that in a mere four months he would announce his candidacy for President. Even less fathomable is that two years later Obama would move a few miles down the road to Invesco Field at Mile High to accept his party’s nomination in front of 84,000 onlookers.

Listen in as a Obama discusses his vision for the future of our country, and even gives props to a certain Reverend who would cause him a touch of trouble in the future.

If you enjoyed this Best of Authors On Tour podcast, please listen to the entire Barack Obama podcast.

This podcast was originally recorded on October 24, 2006.

For many, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon, that meant Legos. As he explains in this Best of AOT podcast, he was in for a rude awakening when Legos returned to his life when his oldest daughter began playing with them.

This story, taken from Chabon’s memoir Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son, details his internal battle with the evolution of the world’s favorite Scandinavian plastic building blocks.

Happy Holidays from everyone at Authors on Tour!

If you enjoyed this Best of Authors On Tour podcast, please listen to the entire Michael Chabon podcast.

This podcast was originally recorded on October 19, 2009.

One of the survivors was Nando Parrado who, years later, recounted the events in his book Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home. Back in 2006, Parrado visited the Tattered Cover book store in Denver to share his story with us.

If you enjoyed this Best of Authors On Tour podcast, please listen to the entire Nando Parrado podcast.

This podcast was originally recorded on May 12, 2006.

As Mark Bowden details in his book The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL, the 1958 NFL Championship Game was a definitive turning point in this country’s love affair with the game of pro football. In this Best of AOT podcast, Bowden explains that on this late December day in 1958 the stands at Yankee Stadium were not even full (can you image that at a Super Bowl today?). Due to the game’s sudden death overtime (the first in NFL history), however, the end of the game bumped NBC’s prime time programming, and an estimate 45-50 million viewers saw Johnny Unitas’ Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants 23-17.

Listen in as Bowden delivers a brilliant narrative on the game itself, the story behind the key players in that game, and the effect the contest had on the modern game of football and today’s NFL.

If you enjoyed this Best of Authors On Tour podcast, please listen to the entire Mark Bowden podcast.

This podcast was originally recorded on June 3, 2008.

We feel an extra bit of pride when one of these books becomes a Hollywood film, a trip Carleen Brice‘s Orange Mint and Honey will complete this Sunday, February 21 (8 PM ET/5 PM PT) as Sins of the Mother, based on Orange Mint and Honey, premiers on Lifetime Movie Network.

Boasting an all-start cast, Sins of the Mother stars Jill Scott (singer and star of the HBO original film The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) as Nona. Nicole Beharie (American Violet) portrays Shay, and Mimi Rogers plays Nona’s sponsor Lois.

Let’s rewind nearly two years to February 2008, when Carleen Brice returned to her old haunts to find a packed house waiting for her to read from her debut novel. In this Best of Authors On Tour podcast, Carleen reads two passages from Orange Mint and Honey. If you’d like to hear more, you can also listen to Carleen podcast her second novel, Children of the Waters

During the choruses of the classic tune “Get Along Little Doggies,” Keillor even got the Tattered Cover crowd to sing along, a moment that won’t soon be forgotten by those in attendance.

If you enjoyed this Best of Authors On Tour podcast, please listen to the entire Garrison Keillor podcast.

This podcast was originally recorded on September 13, 2007.

In this excerpt from The Sum of Our Days Allende reads from the chapter “Searching for a Bride.” She tells the hilarious tale of her quest to find a wife for her son Nico after his divorce.

Spoiler alert: Mother knows best!

If you enjoyed this Best of Authors On Tour podcast, please listen to the entire Isabel Allende podcast.

This podcast was originally recorded on April 10, 2008.

During the time in between, he paid a visit to the Tattered Cover book store in Denver to discuss his book of made-up facts, The Areas of My Expertise, along with his personal troubador, Jonathan Coulton.

Hodgman and Coulton are nothing if not obsessed with depression-era hobos, as you’ll hear in this podcast. They sing about hobo nickels, lint-knitting, the hobos’ failed attempt at a U.S. Government takeover, and much, much more.

If you enjoyed this Best of Authors On Tour podcast, please listen to the entire John Hodgman podcast, where, among other things, he conducts the entire audience Q&A session via walkie talkie.

This podcast was originally recorded on February 17, 2006.

The book is full of side-splittingly familiar stories that most dog owners can, unfortunately, relate to. The passage from Marley & Me that Grogan chose to read, though, recounts an experience few of us have had to endure: watching our dog disrupt a day of shooting on a movie set.

Many of us assume that animals appearing in film are specially trained to “act,” but as you’ll hear in this podcast, sometimes low-budget movies cast low-budget pets and are forced to live with the consequences!

This podcast was originally recorded on March 20, 2006. You can also listen to the uncut John Grogan: Marley & Me Podcast.

Lamb started this event, however, by reading a majority of his essay Braided Cords, a hilarious look back at his early life and career. Lamb starts by introducing us to his older sisters and girl cousins who forced young Wally to play such games as “Death Drums” and “Kingy Boy” (you’ll have to listen to understand!). He also takes us though his college years, his post-collegiate teaching career, and then describes the life-changing call he received from Oprah Winfrey, telling him that She’s Come Undone was chosen as an official selection for Oprah’s Book Club.

This reading of Braided Cords was a great way to start the evening that continued with a riveting reading from I Know This Much Is True.

This podcast was originally recorded on December 1, 2008. You can read the entirety of Wally Lamb’s Braided Cords essay by clicking here.

Please also listen to the uncut Wally Lamb Podcast.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year’s Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma (she later dies).

This powerful book is Didion’s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.”

This podcast features Didion reading an excerpt from The Year of Magical Thinking, a section of the book that details her thoughts and experiences in the day following her husband’s passing.

This podcast was originally recorded on November 7, 2005. The audio for this podcast was furnished courtesy of KGNU radio in Boulder which also broadcast the event. For more, please listen to the entire Joan Didion podcast, which includes an interview with author, friend and radio host, Sara Davidson.

McCourt became an unlikey star when, at the age of sixty-six, he burst onto the literary scene with Angela’s Ashes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his childhood in Limerick, Ireland. Teacher Man, his third book, recounted McCourt’s thirty-year teaching career in the New York public schools.

On behalf of everyone at Authors On Tour – Live, Frank McCourt will truly be missed, but his words and passion will live on forever.

This podcast was originally recorded on January 30, 2006. If you’d also like to hear Q&A from the Tattered Cover audience, you can listen to the entire Frank McCourt Podcast.

Al Franken has gone from entertaining us on Saturday Night Live to informing us as a liberal radio talk-show host. Now, after a eight-month legal battle, Franken is the junior Senator from the state of Minnesota.

Back in November of 2005, Franken spoke at the Tattered Cover book store in Denver. In his book The Truth (with Jokes), he hinted at a possible run for the Senate and spoke of what he would do if elected. This excerpt, however, shows Franken’s more sensitive side (although not quite in Stuart Smalley territory!).

Reading form the chapter “Al Franken Talks About God,” he looks back at the last days of his father. He prefaces the reading by admitting he cries at “sappy McDonald’s commercials,” and he certainly showed his emotions during this powerful reading.

This podcast was originally recorded on November 16, 2005. Listen to the entire Al Franken Podcast.

This story from the book, Crybaby, recounts Sedaris’s experience with a publicly mourning seatmate on a flight from New York City to Paris. Listen in as Sedaris electrifies the Tattered Cover crowd.

This podcast was originally recorded on June 22, 2008. Listen to the entire David Sedaris Podcast.