About

There may be nothing more inspiring and entertaining than relaxed, candid conversations among creative people. Mark Caro, a relentlessly curious journalist and on-stage interviewer, loves digging into the creative process with artists and drawing out surprising stories that illuminate the work that has become part of our lives. Caropop, a podcast and blog, is for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the music, movies, food and culture that they love.

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Mark is a writer, reporter, author, public speaker, occasional radio host and, now, podcast host and website creator.

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He wrote The Special Counsel: The Mueller Report Retold (Mulholland, 2019) and The Foie Gras Wars (Simon & Schuster, 2009), winner of the Great Lakes Book Award for general nonfiction and two Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. He also co-authored, with Anthony Griffith and Brigitte Travis-Griffin, Behind the Laughter: A Comedian’s Tale of Tragedy and Hope (Thomas Nelson, 2019) and, with musician Steve Dawson, Take It To the Bridge: Unlocking the Great Songs Inside You (GIA, 2016).

 

Recently Mark has written for The New York Times, Chicago magazine, The Forward and other outlets. His Chicago article about restaurateur/entrepreneur Nick Kokonas won the 2020 National City and Regional Magazine Award for best profile.

 

Mark created and hosted the "Talking in Space" on-stage interview series as well as the "Is It Still Funny?" film series. He also has hosted talk shows on WGN Radio. Among those he has interviewed on stage: Colson Whitehead, Jesse Eisenberg, William H. Macy, Laura Linney, Billy Corgan, Nora Dunn, John Cusack, Chuck Klosterman, Jon Langford, Noah Baumbach, Jeff Daniels, Bob Saget and Graham Eliot.

 

For more than 20 years as a Chicago Tribune staff writer/reporter, Mark covered film, food, music, murder trials and more. He served as film critic/reporter, reviewed many concerts and albums, and created and wrote the popular Pop Machine blog and the Home Front/Local Heroes Chicago music column. He regularly covered the Oscars and Sundance and Toronto film festivals and accompanied Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on three European tours.

 

His reporting about the foie gras controversy earned a James Beard nomination, inadvertently inspired Chicago’s ban of the delicacy and spawned a book (The Foie Gras Wars). He also wrote as three-part, 15,000-word series on game-changing, mercurial chef Charlie Trotter. Other profile subjects included Yo-Yo Ma, Jennifer Hudson, Renee Fleming, Gene Hackman, Viola Davis, John Cusack, Tom Cruise, Sherry Lansing, Harold Ramis, Jonah Hill, Judd Apatow, Woody Allen, Tilda Swinton, Adam McKay and Dennis Kucinich.

 

Mark lives in the Chicago area with his wife, Mary Dixon, the local host for NPR’s “Morning Edition” on WBEZ-FM, and their two daughters.