Great Quotations

Oh, Chicago. Where did we go wrong? With our shocking fiscal crisis, looming and potentially crippling property tax hikes, rampant crime, out flight of businesses and youth, crumbling infrastructure, education system mired in corruption and under performance, rising cost-of-living…the list of ills goes on and on. What can Chicago teach the rest of the nation?…

Richard Lindberg is one of the foremost authorities on Chicago history. He’s written multiple, fine books on some of the lost history of this city. In his latest book, Gangland Chicago, Richard talks gangsters. From the organized crime outfits to vice to booze and gambling and all that these endeavors entail, this is the book…

After the thoroughly depressing and emotionally exhausting events from Paris last week and lengthy discussions of them this week, we turned to one of our refuges–movies. Here we talk about some of the greatest directors. We’re joined in studio by our mainstay of film talks, John Kupetz of Medill and the College of Lake County,…

On this show we again investigate the events of another devastating attack on the French capitol. We’re joined in studio by W. Rand Smith of Lake Forest College, a political scientist who studies French politics and Daniel S. Kamin, adjunct professor of International Relations at DePaul. Via phone we check in with Fred Kagan of…

Like the rest of the civilized world, we were horrified by the weekend’s events in Paris. Immediately we moved to bring you the most sober and informed analysis possible. In this episode, we’re joined by to fine academics who study terror and its machinations–John Allen Williams of Loyola and Barry Kellman of DePaul–in studio. Via…

What began as a show on the political world at large and the insanity on the campuses (campi?) of American colleges quickly turned into a discussion of the events in Paris, again, following the attacks on a concert venue and other locations Friday evening last. Charles Lipson of the University of Chicago and Richard Baehr,…

“Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.” So said Ambrose Bierce, at least we hope. In this entry, we discuss some of our favorite quotes. This show could’ve been the length of a week, but we confine it here to one episode along with Gary Saul Morson of Northwestern and David…

Yet another debate was held in Milwaukee and we are on the scene to tell you who won and who lost. Several under-performing candidates have left the big table, and Ben Carson and Donald Trump are at the top of the leaderboard as of this writing. To discuss, we have in studio Dick Ciccone and…

Jim Baggott is an influential science writer. A scientist himself by training, he has turned toward a career in the commercial world as a successful author who popularizes complex scientific theories by making them, well, understandable. His latest, Origins: The Scientific Story of Creation, is a concise history of how we got here, how life…

Dark Matter. How does it differ from Dark Energy? What role has it played in mass extinctions throughout history? To answers those and many, many more questions of cosmological and biological import is Dr. Lisa Randall, one of our nation’s most esteemed physicists and professor at Harvard. Her latest book, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs:…