Tom Hanks posted an announcement on Instagram Wednesday morning: he’ll be live on TuneIn today at 1pm ET, or 10am for listeners on the West Coast.
The post was brief. Hanks tagged the platform and listed the two time zones. He didn’t mention a topic, a format, or other guests.
TuneIn is a digital audio platform. It carries live radio, news, sports, and on-demand shows. It serves everything from local AM stations to international broadcasters. A live radio appearance works differently from the typical press circuit. There’s no editing, no retakes, and conversations tend to run longer and looser than a five-minute TV segment.
Hanks, 69, has been a steady presence in American film for more than four decades. He won back-to-back Academy Awards for Best Actor – for Philadelphia in 1994 and Forrest Gump in 1995. Only Spencer Tracy had done it before him, winning twice in a row in the late 1930s. It remains a rare achievement in Oscar history.
His career has covered nearly every genre. He broke through with comedies in the late 1980s. Big in 1988 cast him as a 12-year-old who wakes up in a grown man’s body. A League of Their Own came in 1992. The heavier dramatic roles followed. In Philadelphia, he played a lawyer fired for having HIV, who took his former firm to court. In Apollo 13, he played astronaut Jim Lovell on a moon mission that nearly didn’t make it back. In Saving Private Ryan, he was a captain leading a small unit through occupied France. In Cast Away, he spent most of the film alone on screen as a FedEx worker stranded on a Pacific island.
He’s also voiced Woody in the Toy Story films since 1995. In 2019, he played Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.
In 2017, he published Uncommon Type, a short-story collection. He spent part of that year doing radio and podcast appearances to promote it. He’s been active in those formats over the years.
Whether today’s TuneIn broadcast is tied to a new project isn’t clear from the post. The same-day announcement is a little unusual. Most celebrity media appearances are arranged well in advance. This one came with no runway at all.
The broadcast is live at 1pm ET today on TuneIn. West Coast listeners, that’s 10am PT.
