WBEZ Presents

Most colleges have buckets of free condoms at their health centers — or even Plan B vending machines. DePaul University in Lincoln Park is on the opposite end of the spectrum. The Catholic campus has a total ban on distributing birth control. A student group tried to fill that gap with free contraceptive delivery. But DePaul officials recently suspended the organization.

Illinois lawmakers ended their Spring Session without passing any legislation to address a looming financial cliff for the state’s public transit agencies. Metra, Pace and the C-T-A are up against a $770 million dollar budget gap beginning next year, raising concerns for commuters that cuts are on the way. Here to share what this will mean for public transportation is Sun-Times reporter David Stru...

Listen to the first episode of this new collaboration between WBEZ and The University of Chicago's Becker Friedman Institute. Economists are always talking about The Pie - how it grows and shrinks, how it’s sliced, and who gets the biggest shares. Join hosts Eduardo Porter and Tess Vigeland as they talk with leading economists from the University of Chicago and other experts about the most pressin...

One hundred years ago, all across this country, racial tensions were exploding into violence so brutal that it would become known as the Red Summer. Chicago saw some of the worst violence in deadly attacks between blacks and whites. In City on Fire , we take you back to that time and its lessons. It’s a co-production of WBEZ and the production company Make-Believe Association.

C.W. McCall had a surprise No. 1 hit in 1976. But he was actually an ad executive playing the character of a country singer. Sound Opinions producer Evan Chung tells the strange story of how “Convoy” became a cultural phenomenon. He speaks with the songwriters behind “Convoy” – ad executive-turned-lyricist/vocalist Bill Fries and composer Chip Davis (later of Mannheim Steamroller fame) – who revea...

Upon discovering a pattern of students skipping swim class in the CPS system, WBEZ’s Linda Lutton attempts to follows the trail of sick notes and track down their progenitor: one elusive and enigmatic Dr. Fong. This episode of WBEZ Presents is a special rebroadcast of a December 2015 story.

Last summer, WBEZ reporter Dan Weissmann traveled to West Frankfort, a small town in southern Illinois that briefly played host to a small battle in the so-called “war on coal.” With coal at the center of the climate change battle, some people from around West Frankfort pulled together an army of sorts to take up their part in that fight. Weissmann attended one of their rallies last June. With coa...

After more than two years as WBEZ’s vice president of content and programming, Ben Calhoun is returning to the staff at This American Life . WBEZ’s Shannon Heffernan sat down with Calhoun on his last day to discuss his career, the WBEZ stories he loved the most and what’s next for him. Click ‘play’ to hear their conversation.

ESPN reporter Baxter Holmes tracked the popularity of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the NBA. We speak with Holmes – and WBEZ employees – about the famous sandwich.

Chicago-based Chess Records helped make stars of Muddy Waters, Etta James and a force of nature named Chuck Berry, who died March 18, 2017, at his home outside St. Louis. He was 90.  In 2010, WBEZ’s Sound Opinions visited the home of Chess Records, which released most of Berry’s best-known songs. In this special rebroadcast by WBEZ Presents, Sound Opinions hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot div...

Buying a house is a complicated and high-risk move, but it’s even more so if you’re black because all kinds of things are rigged against you.

Thirty miles southwest of downtown Chicago, in a village where suburban sprawl and farmland coexist, sits a scaled-down version of Jerusalem’s iconic Dome of the Rock. The men who built The Prayer Center of Orland Park a decade ago set out to create what they called a “model mosque” -- a blueprint for what an American Muslim house of worship could be. Along the way they encountered resistance...

Reporter Linda Lutton spent a year at Penn Elementary on Chicago’s West Side exploring one big idea: Can schools make the American dream real for poor kids?