Latest Wxrt Podcast Episodes
Trump's precursor? An interview with Pat Buchanan in 1998
Charlie Meyerson interviews - May 03, 2018 16:25In many ways, two-time presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan—former adviser to three Republican presidents (Nixon, Ford and Reagan)—set the stage for Donald Trump’s ascendance. When Buchanan made 2016’s “Politico 50,” the magazine pronounced Trump “Pat Buchanan with better timing.” How simila...
Trump’s precursor? An interview with Pat Buchanan in 1998
Charlie Meyerson interviews - May 03, 2018 16:25In many ways, two-time presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan—former adviser to three Republican presidents (Nixon, Ford and Reagan)—set the stage for Donald Trump’s ascendance. When Buchanan made 2016’s “Politico 50,” the magazine pronounced Trump “Pat Buchanan with better timing.” How simila...
From 1998: The man who REALLY saved Apple
Charlie Meyerson interviews - April 27, 2018 22:31In 1998, Apple’s now-widely-forgotten CEO, Gil Amelio, sat down with me to discuss his relatively brief time atop what was then a struggling company—the subject of his book On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple. As you’ll hear—and as Engadget noted in 2014—Amelio proved remarkably “accurat...
National Lampoon's origins, recalled by founding publisher Matty Simmons in 1987
Charlie Meyerson interviews - January 28, 2018 06:03Netflix’s comedic biography of National Lampoon co-founder Douglas Kenney, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, sent me back to my conversation decades ago with one of the story’s key figures, who shared his recollection of developments that made their way into the movie. If you enjoyed A Futile and ...
In 1998, a look to the future of working women
Charlie Meyerson interviews - January 25, 2018 17:14From the perspective of the Women’s March and #MeToo era of 2018, a 20-year-old book that set out to examine “working women and the transformation of American life” offers insight into trends decades in the making. Here’s my 1998 interview with author Sally Helgesen, who, over the course of thr...
How the Fantastic Four radio series disappointed Stan Lee in 1975
Charlie Meyerson interviews - December 28, 2017 20:211975: I was just beginning my radio career at college station WPGU-FM, hosting an investigative mini-documentary radio series, Probe. What would be more natural to “investigate” than my passion for comic books—with what became the first of several interviews over my career with Marvel Comics imp...
The time I interviewed 'Chickenman' creator Dick Orkin in 1976
Charlie Meyerson interviews - December 26, 2017 20:52Radio production, comedy and advertising visionary Dick Orkin’s death Sunday sent me back into the archives—waaaay back in the archives—to my days learning radio at my college station, WPGU. (Image: 2016 Radio Ink cover.) Aired Feb. 2, 1976, here’s my journalist-in-training report from the tim...
The time I interviewed ‘Chickenman’ creator Dick Orkin in 1976
Charlie Meyerson interviews - December 26, 2017 20:52Radio production, comedy and advertising visionary Dick Orkin’s death Sunday sent me back into the archives—waaaay back in the archives—to my days learning radio at my college station, WPGU. (Image: 2016 Radio Ink cover.) Aired Feb. 2, 1976, here’s my journalist-in-training report from the tim...
David Simon—before The Wire in 1997
Charlie Meyerson interviews - November 30, 2017 21:48Twenty years ago, journalist David Simon, author of the book that inspired the TV show Homicide—and later the creator of HBO’s acclaimed The Wire, among many others—joined me for a discussion of the then-new book he’d co-authored, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood. ...
David Simon—before 'The Wire,' in 1997
Charlie Meyerson interviews - November 30, 2017 21:48Twenty years ago, journalist David Simon, author of the book that inspired the TV show Homicide—and later the creator of HBO’s acclaimed The Wire, among many others—joined me for a discussion of the then-new book he’d co-authored, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood. ...
‘Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!’ host Peter Sagal tells his not-favorite things
Charlie Meyerson interviews - 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 Conversatio...
'Wait Wait … Don't Tell Me!' host Peter Sagal tells his not-favorite things
Charlie Meyerson interviews - 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 Conversatio...
Turning a live event into a podcast: A case study
Charlie Meyerson interviews - September 10, 2017 21:03Last week, I interviewed my former neighbor, Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, on stage. A sellout crowd of 1,000 people paid to see it, and many more told me they wished they’d been there. So I made arrangements to turn it into a podcast. Photo: Alexa Rogals, Wednesday Journal Our hosts at...
David Axelrod: From Oak Park to the White House
Charlie Meyerson interviews - 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 U...
If your school kills your student newspaper—or you're laid off—you can keep going. Cheap.
Charlie Meyerson interviews - April 25, 2017 23:46[Headline revised July 15, 2020, to include “or you’re laid off.” Because, well, you know.] If you were asked to lecture 600 high school journalists and their teachers on the state of journalism, what would you tell them? When the Northern Illinois Scholastic Press Association (NISPA) invited me...
If your school kills your student newspaper—or you’re laid off—you can keep going. Cheap.
Charlie Meyerson interviews - April 25, 2017 23:46[Headline revised July 15, 2020, to include “or you’re laid off.” Because, well, you know.] If you were asked to lecture 600 high school journalists and their teachers on the state of journalism, what would you tell them? When the Northern Illinois Scholastic Press Association (NISPA) invited me...
Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee in 2017: ‘Nerdism is the highest state of mankind’
Charlie Meyerson interviews - April 23, 2017 03:13(Updated on the occasion of Stan Lee's death, Nov. 12, 2018.) Here’s Stan Lee, the man who created or co-created the core Marvel Comics universe, sitting down during C2E2 at age 94 for what his staff said was his last Chicago comics convention appearance. As you’ll hear, he had energy and enth...
The gang that used to rule cyberspace: A 1993 interview
Charlie Meyerson interviews - January 14, 2017 19:19As digital lawlessness holds center stage in the national political drama, doesn’t this seem like a good time to revisit the first generation of internet outlaws? So let’s set the WABAC machine for Feb. 5, 1995, original airdate for my interview with Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner — autho...
Stan Lee interviewed in 1998 (raw audio)
Charlie Meyerson interviews - December 28, 2016 20:17It’s a tradition on the birthday of Marvel Comics’ fearless leader, Stan Lee, for me to revisit one of my favorite encounters with him: A July 18, 1998 sitdown at the Wizard World pop-culture convention in Rosemont, Ill. This time, though, something different: Raw, unedited (stereo; he’s in the ...
June Foray and Bill Scott, the voices behind 'Rocky and Bullwinkle'—in 1983
Charlie Meyerson interviews - November 18, 2016 21:19Nov. 19, 1959, brought the debut of one of the greatest cartoon shows of all time: Rocky and His Friends. Bill Scott, Bullwinkle, June Foray (Credit: beyondthemarquee.com). Click for audio. Later known as The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and The Bullwinkle Show, it had everything a little kid coul...
'Westworld,' 'Jurassic Park' creator Michael Crichton's 1993 plea to science
Charlie Meyerson interviews - October 14, 2016 14:39Michael Crichton—the science fiction writer who created Jurassic Park, “Westworld” (reborn this fall as a critically acclaimed HBO series) and other tales of tech gone awry—bristled at suggestions his work was “anti-science.” Michael Crichton in 2002 Photo: Jon Chase / Harvard News Office (Click...
This book about the toy biz will be a TV series. Here's the author in 1998.
Charlie Meyerson interviews - September 26, 2016 13:30“I went in with this naive notion that what I was going to find … was sort of this fun-filled Santa’s workshop.” Toy Wars cover (Click or tap for audio) Author’s book inscription Reporter G. Wayne Miller’s inside story about the 1980s and ’90s battles between the toy companies Mattel and Hasbr...
Bobby Rush, congressman and Black Panther Party veteran, in 1994
Charlie Meyerson interviews - September 25, 2016 14:39U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) (Click or tap to hear audio) Then flirting with a campaign for mayor of Chicago, here’s U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush in an interview with me, aired Sept. 25, 1994. On his role in 1968 as co-founder of the Black Panther Party’s Illinois chapter: “The focus of the civil ri...
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