Charlie Meyerson interviews

I doubt that back in 1972, when I bought the first issue of Ms. Magazine —whose cover featured the iconic declaration “Wonder Woman for President”—I could’ve imagined that a bit more than 20 years later I’d sit down with that magazine’s then-editor-in-chief Robin Morgan to talk about the state of the women’s movement. At the time, she was promoting her book The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches...

The death in March 2026 of Pulitzer winner Tracy Kidder —a reporter The Associated Press credits with turning “everything from computer engineering to life in a nursing home into unexpected bestsellers”—sent me diving back into the archives for the time in 1993 that I was fortunate enough to sit down with him to discuss his then-new book, Old Friends , documenting his year spent visiting and obser...

… in which acclaimed broadcaster and podcast host John St. Augustine and I discuss  the intersection of news, podcasting … and farmers’ market music . Thanks, John, for the kind words about my modest efforts in all three arenas. (Interview recorded March 29, 2026; published May 30, 2026.) If you like this, check out more of my podcast guidance on Rivet’s website and elsewhere on this blo...

I certainly couldn’t. So when Joey Marcus said he wanted to talk, I said yes. And then here’s what happened .

Every fall, the Farther Foundation —a nonprofit devoted to providing global travel opportunities for students from families and communities that have faced chronic disinvestment and sustained inequity—hosts a Story Slam at the historic FitzGerald’s Night Club in Berwyn. I was honored to be invited to take the stage in 2023 but—as you’re about to learn—couldn’t make it. The foundation nevertheless...

The existence of my daily email newsletter, Chicago Public Square , became public Jan. 27, 2017, during a visit to my alma mater, WGN Radio . So it seems appropriate, eight years later to the day, to share audio from another interview on WGN—earlier this month, at 10 p.m., Jan. 4, 2025—joining two people I’ve known for (wow) close to half a century: Steve King and Johnnie Putman. Johnnie and I met...

I haven’t posted much here lately about my work with the talented team I helped assemble a decade ago at Rivet (now formally known as Rivet360)— mostly in secret at the beginning . That’s partly because, as I’ve shifted focus since 2017 to my award-winning Chicago Public Square email news briefing ( subscribe free! ), I’ve eased into a role as Rivet’s Vice President of Editorial and Development—or...

[Updating this original post—from March 1, 2015—on Nov. 20, 2022: Greg Bear is dead at 71 .]  Science fiction writer Greg Bear in a 1994 interview with me on WNUA-FM, Chicago, on the future of the Internet: “It’s going to be a huge intellectual telephone line, with graphics and library materials, all available at a few minutes’ notice. That, I think, will be revolutionary. ... We have a lot o...

Chicago Reader columnist Ben Joravsky was kind enough to invite me on his show this week —we talked Wednesday, the podcast was published Saturday—to answer questions about how and why I do what I do for Chicago Public Square . I was honored along the way to express my admiration for columnists Neil Steinberg and Robert Feder , Reader critic Jack Helbig , The Onion , WXRT-FM News pioneers C.D. Jaco...

[It’s been a while since we dove into the archives. But now that hour’s come round at last—again.] In 1995, the comic book industry was approaching what later became known as “ the Great Comics Crash of 1996 ”—triggered in part by Marvel Comics’ 1994 purchase of the business’ third-largest distributor, converting it to distribute Marvel’s stuff exclusively . So that was a significant topic June 30...

Back in 1993, a former editor of the Chicago Tribune sounded an alarm about the growing conflict between the drive for corporate profits and traditional journalism’s social-reform agenda. That was close to six years before I joined the Trib and close to two decades before that trend inexorably led to a gutting of the paper’s staff . As the paper welcomes a new editor , now seems like a good time t...

Of all the interviews I’ve conducted, none have influenced my career more than this 1996 sit-down with Aaron Barnhart , whose Late Show News newsletter pioneered the email news biz. Listen to us discuss his model for how, in my words, “a lot of us in this profession will … do our work in the future” and you’ll hear the siren call that two years later would draw me from radio to the internet —...

Prepping to watch The Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix, I revisited my Sept. 16, 1994, interview with The 7’s defense lawyer, William Kunstler , who told me then that the trial “changed me totally. … “I never knew what it was to really fight until I watched Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Dave Dellinger, Hayden and so on fight in a courtroom—do things that would make the jury understand that the...

This hasn’t happened much in my career, most of which I’ve devoted to profiling people far more interesting than I am . But, twice in less than two weeks, I was honored to be interviewed about journalism, politics, radio, the origins of Chicago Public Square and my personal journey: On Friday, I was a guest on Chicago Reader columnist Ben Joravsky’s podcast —and that was just seven days after Matt...

You’d think if you’d met the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, in the flesh you’d remember it. Especially if he told you the real reason he made Mr. Spock look a little … devilish (about 32:17 in). Well, I did meet him, and he told me that—and I confess that I forgot all about it. Only when a longtime friend and neighbor lent me a vintage reel-to-reel tape player and I opened a long-fil...

This week’s transformative Chicago City Council development— the historic livestream video presentation of a committee meeting —brings to mind a time when the council was maddeningly tough to follow. In 1988, I was a newbie City Hall reporter for WXRT-FM. It was an assignment I relished not—partly because the council’s procedures were bewilderingly opaque and byzantine. But I channeled my journali...

The death Tuesday of Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago journalist Lois Wille —a veteran of the Tribune , the Sun-Times and the Daily News —brings to mind a memorable 1997 interview with her and journalist Linda Lutton . You can hear them debate urban housing trends that were remaking Chicago then and, more than two decades later, are shaping it still. Here’s how it sounded —as aired June 22, 1997, on...

In his 1997 book A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America , Pulitzer Prize winner David K. Shipler documented a major split among Americans: “The divide between those who see racism and those who do not.” And he sounded an alarm about what many then might not have perceived: “How much prejudice has gone underground since the civil rights movement.” Here’s my 1997 interview with Shipler...

The death of Nobel Prize winner Leon Lederman took me back to March 19, 1997, when I interviewed the professor about his then- (and still-) revolutionary ideas on how to overhaul science education . Hear him talk about that—and much more— here … … or on iTunes or via your favorite podcast player . And while you’re at it, check out my other interviews with thought-leaders through the years here and...

Approaching Mother’s Day 1993, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Anna Quindlen—who shaped a generation’s approach to parenthood—stopped by the WNUA-FM studios in Chicago to promote her then-new book, Thinking Out Loud. Check out this audio—recorded May 5, 1993—to learn why she objected to the name of a Chicago Tribune newspaper section. Listen to my interview with Anna Quindlen — on the web , iTune...

In 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 similar are they? Here’s the unheard-since-broadcast audio of my interview with Buchanan, aired on this date...

In 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 “accurate … regarding how Apple could get its groove back .” In at least one way—his decision to bring Apple...

Netflix’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 Stupid Gesture, you’ll get a kick out of this unedited April 30, 1987, interview with the Lampoon’s foundi...

From 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 three years, put a microscope to women in the Chicago suburb of Naperville—and found dramatic changes, whic...

1975: 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 impresario Stan Lee ? Presented here far more for the value of Lee’s remarks—including his disappointment...