Chicago Public Square Podcasts

The collapse of the indictment of six people who in the fall of 2025 were protesting the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration crackdown created problem after problem for the feds—and in particular for the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago. As you’re about to hear, that case might’ve gone quite differently if not for a fateful connection between two dads who met on the fields...

Have you thanked a journalist lately? Coming off one of the most challenging years ever for local U.S. reporters, the historic 19th Century Club in Oak Park gathered a panel of journalists—and a gerontologist—to assess the present and future of local news, with your Chicago Public Square publisher as a moderator. And now, in a Square podcast, hear how it went, May 9, 2026—with Monica Eng of Axios...

The American Dialect Society’s 2023 word of the year? Enshittification. And our guest on this edition of Chicago Public Square Podcasts , Cory Doctorow, is the guy who coined it. Hear him define it—and his harrowing explanation of how he, one of the world’s most tech-savvy authors and journalists, got scammed out of $8,000 before he could figure out what was going on. Also: The one “ironclad” rule...

She’s worked for Chicago’s biggest newspapers and he’s worked for Chicago’s most successful radio stations. And now … they do email. Joining Charlie Meyerson for this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast , Chicago Media Talks : Axios Chicago newsletter authors Justin Kaufmann and Monica Eng. Listen on   Spotify ,   Pandora , YouTube , Amazon’s Alexa-powered speake...

The most enduring memory of a restaurant reviewer through the pandemic: “Crying so much … over so many meals with gratitude and relief.” Joining this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast , Chicago Media Talks : Chef, journalist, adventurer and Chicago Tribune  critic Louisa Chu—who takes us from her time as a 4-year-old worker at her family’s Chicago restaurant through her...

Joining this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast , Chicago Media Talks : A couple of media figures whose work is increasingly shaping Chicago’s news and political landscape. Meet A.D. Quig , a rising Chicago Tribune reporter who sees local government facing “a time of big change”; and Girl, I Guess Progressive Voter Guide author Stephanie Skora —someone unafraid to call a candi...

Their groundbreaking alliance netted them and their news organizations a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. But that doesn’t mean they always worked together seamlessly. In this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast , Chicago Media Talks , meet Madison Hopkins and Cecilia Reyes , praised by Pulitzer judges for “ a piercing examination of the city’s long history of failed bu...

She’s the first woman—and the first woman of color—ever to serve as Chicago Sun-Times executive editor. She’s facing challenges like none before her, as the paper comes under the control of an organization primarily in the radio business. In another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks , meet Jennifer Kho , who joins the Sun-Times at a critical point in the...

Odds are good you didn’t know their names a decade ago, when one of them was just breaking into Chicago radio news and another was barely removed from an internship at Chicago’s public TV station. And now they’re two of the city’s most influential journalists. In another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks , WTTW News’ multiple award-winning reporters and C...

When a billionaire yanked the plug on a pioneering Chicago digital news site, putting a large team of local reporters out of work, some of them banded together to start another digital news site—for themselves, and for the people of the city. Block Club Chicago editor-in-chief Shamus Toomey joins hosts Sheila Solomon and Charlie Meyerson for another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360...

You could trace the evolution of the news business through Jim DeRogatis’ career arc over the last 35 years—as he’s moved from print to broadcast to online and podcasting, and from employer-supported to audience-funded journalism. And along the way, he broke one of the biggest stories in music history. He joins hosts Sheila Solomon and Charlie Meyerson for the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podc...

Columnist Eric Zorn started at the Tribune  in 1980; cultural critic Steve Johnson started six years later. Now, they’re among the more than three dozen editorial staffers who’ve left—taking buyouts offered under the Trib ’s new ownership. They join hosts Sheila Solomon and Charlie Meyerson for another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks . Listen ...

Jamie Kalven—journalist, human rights activist and founder of one of Chicago’s newest Pulitzer Prize winners, the Invisible Institute—says he has “deep sympathy for those who wagered their lives and their careers on the stability of legacy media,” but he says “some of the new forms that are evolving … may actually ultimately produce a healthier diet for consumers of the news.” He joins hosts...

Karen Hawkins—self-described “mouthy black lesbian feminist over 40” and “recovering mainstream media reporter and editor”—is doing a terrible job of recovering: She’s now co-publisher of the Chicago Reader , the founder of Rebellious Magazine , and a leader of the upstart Chicago Independent Media Alliance . She joins hosts Sheila Solomon and Charlie Meyerson  to survey the 21st-century medi...

Pulliam Professor of Journalism at DePauw University and former Sun-Times editor and columnist Deborah Douglas joins host Charlie Meyerson and co-host Sheila Solomon to launch the new Chicago Media Talks podcast —a joint production of Chicago Public Square and Rivet360—with a discussion of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s decision to limit her anniversary interviews to journalists of color. Listen&n...

Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee so inspired a generation of readers and writers, a multiplicity of biographies was inevitable after his death in 2018. On the occasion of the publication of Oak Park, Ill., native Abraham Riesman’s entry, True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee , the Chicago Public Square Podcast invited Riesman and A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee author Danny Finge...

He’s Barack Obama’s first biographer. But journalist David Mendell doesn’t expect his award-winning 2007 book,  Obama: From Promise to Power, to land a spot in Obama’s presidential library. Mendell and I were colleagues at the Chicago Tribune through much of the 2000s, but we barely exchanged hellos back then because he was so busy covering Obama’s rise to the U.S. Senate. So I learned a lot—...

Wanna know what terrible technology is headed your way in the years ahead? Journalist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow says it’s not hard: Take a look at what The Powers That Be are foisting on prisoners and students. Doctorow joined the Chicago Public Square Podcast for half an hour or so to talk about police brutality; controversial high-rise developments and “ poor-doors ”; the criminal...

Filmmaker Steve James’s work—including the Oscar-nominated Hoop Dreams and Abacus —has won him critical acclaim galore and goodwill in the town where he lives, Oak Park. But when he set out to create his 10-part documentary series America to Me —about Oak Park, its historic commitment to integration and its high school’s challenges in living up to a reputation for inclusiveness—he had his doubts....

Something different for the Chicago Public Square Newscast (and Podcast) series this time: A visit with Food Network star and Chicago native Jeff Mauro . He joined the Wednesday Journal Conversations series May 15, 2018, to talk about his life and times—including that time he was performing improv comedy and a ticketholder died. And stick around to hear in detail about Mauro’s bathing habits.&nbsp...

Let 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 Conversations series —in which he talks about the show, his career, the Constitution under Donald Trump, the challe...

When 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 University, I was honored by the request to moderate the session with my long-ago neighbor an...