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Curious City
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Content provided by WBEZ Chicago. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by WBEZ Chicago or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
Ask questions, vote and discover answers about Chicago, the region and its people. From WBEZ.
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570 episodes
Mark all (un)played …
Manage series 13760
Content provided by WBEZ Chicago. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by WBEZ Chicago or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
Ask questions, vote and discover answers about Chicago, the region and its people. From WBEZ.
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570 episodes
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Curious City


1 How sweet the sound: The history of Evanston folk coffeehouse Amazingrace 12:14
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Folk music surged in popularity across America in the late 1950s through the ‘70s, including here in the Chicago area. Last episode , we looked at how a few area coffeehouses catered to many patrons in their teens and early twenties. These were alcohol-free spaces where people could listen to live music and hangout for hours. Curious City host Erin Allen looks at one of those beloved coffeeshops of the 1970s: Amazingrace, which was born out of Vietnam War protests on the campus of Northwestern University and later moved to the heart of downtown Evanston. She was joined by a panel of Amazingrace founders, performers and patrons at last year’s Evanston Folk Festival. WBEZ is a programming partner of the Evanston Folk Festival, which is taking place this year Sept. 6-7, 2025. A pre-sale is happening now through April 22. Enter the code EFFWBEZ to access the sale.…
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Curious City


1 ‘An underground subculture’: How Chicago coffeehouses shaped the folk revival movement 7:42
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In the 1960s and 70s, Chicago coffeehouses were popular spots for young people. These were alcohol-free establishments where people in their teens and 20s could listen to live music or just hangout for hours.
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Curious City


Introducing WBEZ's latest podcast series, Making: Stories Without End. Host Natalie Moore takes you on a journey to learn about daytime soap operas and their broad reach on television. From the early radio days in the 1930s through the invention of TV to streaming, this way of telling immersive stories has endured. There are intergenerational family stories, discussions about divorce and abortion, groundbreaking storylines dealing with queer representation. And all these threads go back to one Chicago woman, Irna Phillips. The queen of soaps originated, wrote or supervised more than a dozen daytime serials for more than 40 years… and left a lasting mark on the television industry. You’ll hear the story behind the stories from scholars, actors, writers – from the past and now – as well as fans.…
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Curious City


Extremism in America has been on the rise . Last episode , we looked at extremist groups in Chicago and how they terrorized select groups of people and influenced housing policy in the city during the 1950s. But what does extremism look like today? Curious City host Erin Allen talks with Odette Yousef, a national security correspondent focusing on extremism at NPR, about why it’s less about fringe groups and more about ideology that has permeated our culture. “January 6 was a good example of how everything has changed,” she says. “That to me was really a milestone in terms of how extremism looks in this country, because I think we have long expected it to come out of small cells or groups. And here it was just everyday Americans who had gotten really kind of radicalized until the point where they participated in the violence that day.” She also talks about how extremism has shown up in Chicago and how the city compares with other large American cities.…
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Curious City


1 How much influence did white supremacist groups have on Chicago housing? 6:50
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Extremist groups of the 1950s played a violent part, alongside real estate and neighborhood organizations, in keeping Chicago segregated.
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Curious City


Chicago is home to thousands of feral cats, and some people are looking after them.
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Curious City


1 “Enemy Alien”: How Chicago photojournalist Jun Fujita avoided Japanese internment camps 18:06
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Jun Fujita is the Japanese-American photographer behind some of the most recognizable photographs taken in Chicago in the 20th century, including his shots of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, the Eastland passenger boat disaster of 1915, and the 1919 Chicago race riots . Fujita was also a published poet and something of a regional celebrity, known for socializing with William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Fujita’s foreign identity also made him the subject of government inquiry and suspicion on multiple occasions — during both World War I and World War II — according to Graham Lee, Fujita’s great-nephew and the author of a new Fujita biography, “Jun Fujita: Behind the Camera.” After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Fujita’s assets were frozen, his business was shuttered, his cameras were taken away, and he constrained himself to Chicago to avoid possible internment, Lee said. How did Fujita navigate this perilous time for an immigrant in Chicago? We sat down with Lee to discuss how Fujita, a “supremely confident person,” came to rely on both the support of his community and his wits.…
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Curious City


1 Restriction and sanctuary: A look at Chicago mayors’ wildly different approaches to immigrants 7:12
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Chicago is in the national spotlight when it comes to the immigration debate, but that’s nothing new to the mayoral office. We take a look back at how mayors have either embraced or rejected new arrivals.
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Curious City


Scientist Alice Hamilton’s investigations into toxins in Chicago’s factories led to some of the first workplace safety laws in the country. She was known for her “shoe leather” epidemiology, wearing out the soles of her shoes from all the trips she made to Chicago homes, factories and even saloons to figure out what was making people sick.…
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Curious City


1 How does honoring the dead impact the environment? 15:18
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How should we decide what happens to our bodies when we die? And what implications does that decision have for the living? It’s common to think a burial at a cemetery is the final resting place for a loved one. But as we heard in our last episode , sometimes the need to progress as a society is in direct conflict with the desire to honor the dead. Today, we talk to one of the leaders of the Green Burial Council , funeral director Samuel Perry. His organization advocates and sets standards for “natural” burials, which he calls “the full body burial of the person directly in the ground with only biodegradable materials.” We talk about the practicality of natural burial in Chicago and the very personal and spiritual decisions that add complexity to this corner of the death care industry.…
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Curious City


The suburban village of Bensenville has a long history of getting eaten up by development. Resthaven Cemetery is a symbol of what remains.
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Curious City


1 How one Midwestern community avoids road salt all winter 10:15
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Chicago — like so many other frigid American cities — can’t seem to kick its dependence on road salt. Last episode , we talked about why chloride from salt is harmful to both our natural and built environments. So we spent some time looking around for a cold-weather community that avoids using it altogether. And we found one! A little community way up north: Have you ever taken a ferry — or a plane — to Mackinac Island? Today, we hear from Dominick Miller, chief of marketing at the Mackinac State Historic Parks, about how the island deals with snow and ice in the winter without laying down a single grain of salt. And it has a lot to do with the fact that cars have been banned on Mackinac Island for over a century.…
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Curious City


Road salt helps us get around safely during snowy, Chicago winters. But salt is corrosive and harmful for the environment. Could the city ever go without road salt?
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Curious City


1 The First Black-Owned And Operated Airport Was In Robbins 20:04
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The Chicago area played a key role in Black aviation in the early 1900s. The founders of the first Black-owned airport learned to fly in Chicago and went on to teach thousands of others.
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Curious City


1 “It’s too complicated”: The state of cannabis record expungement in Illinois 11:55
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When Illinois legalized recreational use of marijuana five years ago, it came with a goal to right the wrongs of the war on drugs. “We’re addressing the past harms of discriminatory prosecution of drug laws,” Governor J.B. Pritzker said at the time. Many low level cannabis charges would automatically be expunged and legal aid would be made available. Last episode , we looked at two areas where the state spent the largest share of its $500 million in marijuana sales tax revenue: the state budget and R3 funding, a program to invest in communities that have been harmed by violence, excessive incarceration and economic disinvestment. Some of that sales tax revenue also goes toward social programs, like legal aid for cannabis record expungement. Today, we’re looking at how well Illinois’ expungement program is working. Advocates and people getting their records expunged tell us that “automatic” doesn’t apply to everything and the process itself is “too complicated.”…
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