Leo Laporte

Laporte was born in New York City, the son of geologist Leo F. Laporte, and grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. From 1973 to 1976, he studied Chinese history at Yale University before dropping out in his junior year to pursue a career in radio broadcasting, where his early on-air names were Dave Allen and Dan Hayes. He began his association with computers with his first home computer, an Atari 400. By 1984 he owned a Macintosh and wrote a software review for Byte magazine. From 1985 to 1988, he operated one of the first Macintosh-only bulletin board systems, MacQueue.

From December 1977 to May 1998, Laporte hosted newstalk and interview shows on KGO, KSFO, and KNBR in San Francisco. He was a personality DJ on KLOK in San Francisco and San Jose and KMBY in Monterey. Laporte had been a midday, general-interest radio host until the increasing popularity of Rush Limbaugh, after which he created and co-hosted the tech talk radio show On Computers from January 1991 to July 1994. The program was syndicated to over 60 stations nationwide as well as the American Forces Network.

In 1997, Laporte was awarded a Northern California Emmy for his role as Dev Null, a motion capture character on the MSNBC show The Site.

In 1998, Laporte created and co-hosted The Screen Savers, and the original version of Call for Help on the cable and satellite network ZDTV (later TechTV).

Laporte hosted the daily television show The Lab with Leo Laporte, recorded in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The program was formerly known as Call for Help when it was recorded in the US and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The series aired on G4 Canada, on the HOW TO Channel in Australia, on several of Canada's Citytv affiliates, and on Google Video. On March 5, 2008, Laporte confirmed on net@nite that The Lab with Leo Laporte had been canceled by Rogers Communications. The HOW TO Channel did not air the remaining episodes after it was announced the show had been canceled.

He hosted a weekend technology-oriented talk radio program show titled Leo Laporte: The Tech Guy. The show, started on KFI AM 640 (Los Angeles), was syndicated through Premiere Radio Networks. On November 19, 2022, actor, writer, musician, and comedian Steve Martin called into Laporte's radio show to announce Leo's retirement from The Tech Guy radio show. Laporte's last new radio show was December 18, 2022 with reruns for the remainder of the year. Rich DeMuro later appeared on the show to announce that he would take over in January with a weekly show, recorded on Saturdays, called "Rich On Tech."

Laporte appeared on Friday mornings on KFI with Bill Handel, and previously on such shows as Showbiz Tonight, Live with Kelly, and World News Now.

He holds an amateur radio license, W6TWT.

Laporte owns and operates a podcast network, TWiT.tv with his wife Lisa Laporte. Before the expansion to new facilities in 2011, Laporte said TWiT earned US$1.5 million (equivalent to $2,150,000 in 2025) annually on a production cost of US$350,000 (equivalent to $501,000 in 2025). In a 2012 Reddit posting, he commented that revenue was approaching US$4 million (equivalent to $5,720,000 in 2025). The TWiT studios are located in Petaluma, California, where Laporte lives.