If only every broadcaster in the US had Rachel Maddow's intellectual heft. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in public policy, Maddow won a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford. She was awarded her PhD in 2001, presenting a thesis entitled HIV/Aids and Health Care Reform in British and American Prisons. Glenn Beck this is not.

Since 2008, she has hosted The Rachel Maddow Show - a nightly TV talk show on weekdays for MSNBC that began life on radio for the progressive Air America. A self-professed liberal and the first openly gay anchor of a prime-time news show in the US, Maddow claims not to be partisan, and refused to give public support to any candidate in the 2008 election. She also denies having political ambitions of her own, taking out an advert in the Boston Globe in 2010 to contradict the Republican Scott Brown, junior senator for Massachusetts, who had speculated that she was going to run against him this year.

Next: Matt Damon

Previous: Elizabeth Warren

Back to list