Most of us don’t think of imagination when we think of the Secret Service, if we think of them at all. They’re the President’s bodyguards, after all, and how much imagination does […]
The Chicago River, as many of us know, once flowed the other way, into Lake Michigan. It was reversed—a triumph of engineering, at the time—to move sewage and waste water away from […]
What do junior high school science, science fiction, string theory, the God equation, and Elvis Presley have in common? They all played a starring role in physicist Michio Kaku and actor LeVar […]
Most of us probably don’t think of economics as an optimistic field. For some of us it pulls up thoughts of Milton Friedman; for others, it’s relegated to a class taken, or […]
A parade of artists and pop art, literary and music figures from mid-century America populate Louis Menand’s new book, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War. The book looks […]
When one speaks more than one language, and moves from one to another with any degree of frequency, one runs into them: words that don’t quite translate, because they’re not just a […]
Ray Bradbury’s work and reputation have aged like fine dandelion wine. Unlike many of his fellow 20th century science-fiction and fantasy writers, he’s entered the current millennium fairly woke and relatively […]
What if you could build a holographic map, in which all America’s Indigenous poets, from the beginning of time until now, were mapped, linking out to their works and their words? Joy […]
As if to prove his versatility as a writer and creator, George Saunders’ latest book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, is not a work of his own creation but […]
Fifty years ago, Daniel Ellsberg, an economist and military analyst, created a national controversy that resulted in a landmark press freedom decision by the US Supreme Court. He did it by leaking […]
Author, journalist, and academic Walter Isaacson and WBEZ’s chief content officer Steve Edwards were brought together virtually to speak to the Chicago Humanities Festival about Isaacson’s new biography The Code Breaker: Jennifer […]
Even via Zoom, Don Evans is passionate about Chicago’s relationship with the written word. A writer, editor, and teacher, Evans is also the executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame […]
