Chicago Public Square Podcasts
24 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 months ago - ★★★ - 16 ratingsInterviews with people who merit a place on Chicago's new front page.
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Episodes
How tech-savvy author Cory Doctorow got scammed
March 12, 2024 05:01The American Dialect Society’s 2023 word of the year? Enshittification. And our guest on this edition of Chicago Public Square Podcasts, Cory Doctorow, is the guy who coined it. Hear him define it—and his harrowing explanation of how he, one of the world’s most tech-savvy authors and journalists, got scammed out of $8,000 before he could figure out what was going on. Also: The one “ironclad” rule you should follow to avoid a similar fate. And then, in this—our first conversation since thi...
Axios Chicago’s Monica Eng and Justin Kaufmann: ‘This is a talk show in an email format’
September 11, 2022 15:28She’s worked for Chicago’s biggest newspapers and he’s worked for Chicago’s most successful radio stations. And now … they do email. Joining Charlie Meyerson for this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks: Axios Chicago newsletter authors Justin Kaufmann and Monica Eng. Listen on Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or Apple Podcasts. Or if you prefer to read your podcasts, check out the transcript below. And if you’re a complet...
Axios Chicago's Monica Eng and Justin Kaufmann: ‘This is a talk show in an email format’
September 11, 2022 15:28She’s worked for Chicago’s biggest newspapers and he’s worked for Chicago’s most successful radio stations. And now … they do email. Joining Charlie Meyerson for this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks: Axios Chicago newsletter authors Justin Kaufmann and Monica Eng. Listen in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or on Apple Podcasts. Or if you prefer to read your podcasts, check out the transc...
Food critic Louisa Chu’s vivid pandemic moment: ‘Crying so much’
August 24, 2022 09:30The most enduring memory of a restaurant reviewer through the pandemic: “Crying so much … over so many meals with gratitude and relief.” Joining this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks: Chef, journalist, adventurer and Chicago Tribune critic Louisa Chu—who takes us from her time as a 4-year-old worker at her family’s Chicago restaurant through her stint as a judge on Food Network’s Iron Chef America to what she’s working on next. Listen on Spotify...
Stephanie Skora and A.D. Quig: Reshaping Chicago’s news and political scene
August 12, 2022 19:36Joining this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks: A couple of media figures whose work is increasingly shaping Chicago’s news and political landscape. Meet A.D. Quig, a rising Chicago Tribune reporter who sees local government facing “a time of big change”; and Girl, I Guess Progressive Voter Guide author Stephanie Skora—someone unafraid to call a candidate, in her words, “a slimy fuckface—because there’s no reason not to.” Listen in your favorite ...
Pulitzer winners Hopkins and Reyes: Teamwork ‘wasn’t always easy’
August 03, 2022 16:34Their groundbreaking alliance netted them and their news organizations a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. But that doesn’t mean they always worked together seamlessly. In this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks, meet Madison Hopkins and Cecilia Reyes, praised by Pulitzer judges for “a piercing examination of the city’s long history of failed building- and fire-safety code enforcement, which let scofflaw landlords commit serious violations...
Meet the Sun-Times’ new executive editor, Jennifer Kho
July 20, 2022 02:24She’s the first woman—and the first woman of color—ever to serve as Chicago Sun-Times executive editor. She’s facing challenges like none before her, as the paper comes under the control of an organization primarily in the radio business. In another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks, meet Jennifer Kho, who joins the Sun-Times at a critical point in the evolution of the news business. (Recorded July 11, 2022.) Listen in your favorite podcast playe...
WTTW’s new stars navigate changing news landscape
August 10, 2021 21:01Odds are good you didn’t know their names a decade ago, when one of them was just breaking into Chicago radio news and another was barely removed from an internship at Chicago’s public TV station. And now they’re two of the city’s most influential journalists. In another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks, WTTW News’ multiple award-winning reporters and Chicago Tonight co-anchors, Brandis Friedman and Paris Schutz, talk about their careers, the cha...
Block Club Chicago’s origin story
July 27, 2021 02:11When a billionaire yanked the plug on a pioneering Chicago digital news site, putting a large team of local reporters out of work, some of them banded together to start another digital news site—for themselves, and for the people of the city. Block Club Chicago editor-in-chief Shamus Toomey joins hosts Sheila Solomon and Charlie Meyerson for another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks. Listen in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify, YouTube an...
Music journalist Jim DeRogatis: ‘Every system in this city failed … to protect these young black girls’
July 21, 2021 01:27You could trace the evolution of the news business through Jim DeRogatis’ career arc over the last 35 years—as he’s moved from print to broadcast to online and podcasting, and from employer-supported to audience-funded journalism. And along the way, he broke one of the biggest stories in music history. He joins hosts Sheila Solomon and Charlie Meyerson for the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks—to discuss his life, how he broke the R. Kelly scandal, and the state...
After a lifetime at the Chicago Tribune, Eric Zorn and Steve Johnson are leaving. What’s next?
June 29, 2021 00:04Columnist Eric Zorn started at the Tribune in 1980; cultural critic Steve Johnson started six years later. Now, they’re among the more than three dozen editorial staffers who’ve left—taking buyouts offered under the Trib’s new ownership. They join hosts Sheila Solomon and Charlie Meyerson for another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks. Listen here, or in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify, YouTube and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered spea...
Pulitzer winner Jamie Kalven on the news business: ‘I see no reason to despair’
June 22, 2021 00:52Jamie Kalven—journalist, human rights activist and founder of one of Chicago’s newest Pulitzer Prize winners, the Invisible Institute—says he has “deep sympathy for those who wagered their lives and their careers on the stability of legacy media,” but he says “some of the new forms that are evolving … may actually ultimately produce a healthier diet for consumers of the news.” He joins hosts Sheila Solomon and Charlie Meyerson for another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podc...
A ‘mouthy black lesbian feminist’ is one of Chicago’s most influential media leaders
June 15, 2021 01:59Karen Hawkins—self-described “mouthy black lesbian feminist over 40” and “recovering mainstream media reporter and editor”—is doing a terrible job of recovering: She’s now co-publisher of the Chicago Reader, the founder of Rebellious Magazine, and a leader of the upstart Chicago Independent Media Alliance. She joins hosts Sheila Solomon and Charlie Meyerson to survey the 21st-century media landscape for another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks. L...
Did Mayor Lightfoot make things better for journalists of color?
June 08, 2021 02:28Pulliam Professor of Journalism at DePauw University and former Sun-Times editor and columnist Deborah Douglas joins host Charlie Meyerson and co-host Sheila Solomon to launch the new Chicago Media Talks podcast—a joint production of Chicago Public Square and Rivet360—with a discussion of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s decision to limit her anniversary interviews to journalists of color. Listen here, on your favorite podcast player, via Spotify, YouTube and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powere...
Who was Stan Lee? Two biographers discuss his life and legacy.
February 10, 2021 21:13Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee so inspired a generation of readers and writers, a multiplicity of biographies was inevitable after his death in 2018. On the occasion of the publication of Oak Park, Ill., native Abraham Riesman’s entry, True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, the Chicago Public Square Podcast invited Riesman and A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee author Danny Fingeroth to join a conversation about Lee’s life and legacy. Listen here, on your favorite podcast ...
'Wait Wait … Don't Tell Me!' host Peter Sagal tells his not-favorite things
November 23, 2019 18:37Let Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s incredibly successful Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, tell you this: He hates the show’s name. He also hates the place where he creates that show. You’ll learn why as you listen to a podcast of my onstage interview with Sagal—part of the Wednesday Journal Conversations series—in which he talks about the show, his career, the Constitution under Donald Trump, the challenge sexual harassment poses to comedy writing, the differences between announcers Bill Kurtis and...
How Steve James overcame doubt—his and others'—to create 'America to Me'
November 23, 2019 17:45Filmmaker Steve James’s work—including the Oscar-nominated Hoop Dreams and Abacus—has won him critical acclaim galore and goodwill in the town where he lives, Oak Park. But when he set out to create his 10-part documentary series America to Me—about Oak Park, its historic commitment to integration and its high school’s challenges in living up to a reputation for inclusiveness—he had his doubts. Hear all about that—and catch up with two of the students spotlighted by this celebrated Starz se...
Barack Obama's 1st biographer, David Mendell: Michelle didn't care for the book
November 22, 2019 21:23He’s Barack Obama’s first biographer. But journalist David Mendell doesn’t expect his award-winning 2007 book, Obama: From Promise to Power, to land a spot in Obama’s presidential library. Mendell and I were colleagues at the Chicago Tribune through much of the 2000s, but we barely exchanged hellos back then because he was so busy covering Obama’s rise to the U.S. Senate. So I learned a lot—including just how hard Obama worked to conceal his smoking habit—as Mendell and I finally got to cat...
Barack Obama’s 1st biographer, David Mendell: Michelle didn’t care for the book
November 22, 2019 21:23He’s Barack Obama’s first biographer. But journalist David Mendell doesn’t expect his award-winning 2007 book, Obama: From Promise to Power, to land a spot in Obama’s presidential library. Mendell and I were colleagues at the Chicago Tribune through much of the 2000s, but we barely exchanged hellos back then because he was so busy covering Obama’s rise to the U.S. Senate. So I learned a lot—including just how hard Obama worked to conceal his smoking habit—as Mendell and I finally got to cat...
Science fiction, Radicalized: An interview with Cory Doctorow
March 24, 2019 22:11Wanna know what terrible technology is headed your way in the years ahead? Journalist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow says it’s not hard: Take a look at what The Powers That Be are foisting on prisoners and students. Doctorow joined the Chicago Public Square Podcast for half an hour or so to talk about police brutality; controversial high-rise developments and “poor-doors”; the criminalization of copyright law; and his new book, Radicalized—a collection of four science fiction nov...
How Steve James overcame doubt—his and others’—to create America to Me
September 14, 2018 04:21Filmmaker Steve James’s work—including the Oscar-nominated Hoop Dreams and Abacus—has won him critical acclaim galore and goodwill in the town where he lives, Oak Park. But when he set out to create his 10-part documentary series America to Me—about Oak Park, its historic commitment to integration and its high school’s challenges in living up to a reputation for inclusiveness—he had his doubts. Hear all about that—and catch up with two of the students spotlighted by this celebrated Starz se...
Food Network star Jeff Mauro talks about that time a guy in the audience died
May 18, 2018 19:13Something different for the Chicago Public Square Newscast (and Podcast) series this time: A visit with Food Network star and Chicago native Jeff Mauro. He joined the Wednesday Journal Conversations series May 15, 2018, to talk about his life and times—including that time he was performing improv comedy and a ticketholder died. And stick around to hear in detail about Mauro’s bathing habits. (Photo: Carmen Rivera.) Listen here, on your favorite podcast player, via Spotify, YouTube and Pa...
‘Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!’ host Peter Sagal tells his not-favorite things
November 26, 2017 23:55Let Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s incredibly successful Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, tell you this: He hates the show’s name. He also hates the place where he creates that show. You’ll learn why as you listen to a podcast of my onstage interview with Sagal—part of the Wednesday Journal Conversations series—in which he talks about the show, his career, the Constitution under Donald Trump, the challenge sexual harassment poses to comedy writing, the differences between announcers Bill Kurtis and...
David Axelrod: From Oak Park to the White House
September 09, 2017 20:23When President Obama’s former chief strategist—now University of Chicago Institute of Politics founder and CNN senior political commentator—David Axelrod agreed to return to his old suburban neighborhood to kick off the Wednesday Journal newspaper’s series of public conversations at Dominican University, I was honored by the request to moderate the session with my long-ago neighbor and teammate at Chicago’s WXRT-FM. It was an enlightening and—by the account of Axelrod’s fans in the audienc...