About Candy Leonard

The year Candy Leonard, the show's Contributing Editor, was born, Elvis Presley released his first hit record, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl was published, and Soviet troops crushed rebellions in Poland and Hungary.

Growing up in a progressive and politically engaged household in Queens, NY, Candy witnessed the transformative events of the 1960s as a precocious and inquisitive young person. This particular intersection of biography and history provided fertile ground for her sociological imagination and her insights into the Beatles as a phenomenon.

 After getting a master’s degree in Human Development and a doctorate in Sociology, Candy began a career in academic research, exploring the effects of media and popular culture on child development, gender relations, and family life.

On her long journey from Queens to her current home, Cambridge, MA, she has been a professor, a talk show host, a child and family advocate, and qualitative research consultant to the healthcare industry. She’s also a parent and a grandparent. Through it all, she maintained her life-long passion for the Beatles. She is intimately familiar with their entire body of work, biography, commentary, fan culture, and has written and lectured on them from her unique social science vantage point.