WGTD's The Morning Show with Greg Berg

This is an illuminating and inspiring conversation about the importance of helping people who have recently been incarcerated to find employment and build new lives for themselves.  Our guests are Patricia Hansen, Racine DA ......  Jim Schatzman,  Executive Director of Racine-Kenosha Vocational Ministries .... and Karl McNeil, who was incarcerated for drug offenses back in the late...

Peter Steiner, whose cartoons have appeared in New Yorker magazine over the last several decades, is also an accomplished novelist.  His latest novel, "The Good Cop," is set in Munich, Germany during the tumultuous years between the world wars that saw the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. 

This conversation from 2007 is with sportswriter Bill Plaschke, talking about his best-selling book "Tommy LaSorda: I live for this! - Baseball's Last True Believer." LaSorda is one of the most renowned managers in the history of major league baseball- and he was associated with the Brooklyn/L.A. Dodgers in various capacities for more than sixty years.   As of this moment, he is the olde...

In an interview recorded back in 2008, acclaimed journalist Robert MacNeil talks about his memoir "Looking for my Country: Finding Myself in America."   MacNeil co-anchored the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS for many years and covered many important news event over his long career, including the assassination of JFK.  (MacNeil was in Dallas that day.)   MacNeil (who was b...

Rachel DeWoskin's fascinating novel "Repeat After Me" is based at least in part on the author's real-life experience of teaching English in the nation of China.   

We speak with Stu Maddox, the director and producer of a documentary called "Gen Silent," that explores some of the difficulties confronted by many elderly people who are in the gay community - especially those who need to go into long term care facilities and who might feel compelled to go back into the closet for fear of how they might be viewed and treated.  The film is going to be screene...

Gwendolyn Bounds was living in New York City at the time of 9-11 .... and found herself displaced from her home.  Her memoir  "Little Chapel on the River" chronicles what it was like for her to try and make a new home for herself in a small community in upper state New York .... and the pub that was a center of her new community.

Our guest is Dr. James Ripley, director of instrumental activities and conductor of bands at Carthage College.  We talk with him about the upcoming patio concert on September 22nd as well as several exciting commissions that will be premiered later in the year in honor of the 150th anniversary of when women first began studying at Carthage.   

We are previewing the one-woman play "Intrusion," which explores the issue of sexual violence through the perspective of eight different characters.  The play is being performed at Carthage College Tuesday night, September 10th.  Part one is with Ellen Hauser, director of the Gender & Women's Studies program, which is sponsoring the performance.  Part two is with the actress who...

This is a preview of the American Experience documentary "The Film" - an illuminating examination of the famous feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys, a bloody feud that captured headlines around the country.   The film traces the origins of the feud, which emerged at least in part by how the region of Appalachia was turned upside down by our country's rapid industrialization.  ...

A look behind the scenes of "Belle City," a magazine devoted to the city of Racine.    We speak with editor and co-publisher Katie Matteson.  We also talk about some of her other experiences in publishing. 

Ryan Swanson's book is titled "The Strenuous Life: Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of the American Athlete."  The book explores how important athletic endeavor was to TR - and also chronicles all that he did as president to make athletics a more central element of American culture in that era.  

Benjamin Runkle's book is 'Generals in the Making: How Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton and their Peers Became the Commanders Who Won World War II."  The book focuses on the experiences of these generals (plus Douglas MacArthur and others) between the end of World War I and the start of World War II and examines the events and experiences that helped shape them into the important leaders they eve...

This interview from 2006 is with Bob Harris,  a 5-time Jeopardy champion (back in the days when that was the longest that a person could compete on the show.)   His book about the popular game show is titled "Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy."   We're sharing this interview as Alex Trebek (battling pancreatic cancer) is beginning his 36th season as the host of...

This interview with best-selling author Buzz Bissinger was recorded in 2015 at the time of the publication of the 25th anniversary edition of "Friday Night Lights: A Town,  a Dream, and a Team."  Bissinger's book chronicled a season of the high school football team in Odessa, Texas,  a community where football is followed with ferocious intensity.  

Joan Wickersham's lost her father to suicide.  "The Suicide Index: Putting my Father's Death in Order" is a very thoughtful examination of that heartbreaking event and Wickersham's attempt to understand it.   We're playing this just ahead of the 10th annual Labor of Love Music Festival tomorrow (September 1st) in New Munster... a fundraiser for Just Live, a local non-profit organiza...

Ronald C. Rosbottom's book is "Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945."  It explores the many and varied ways in which young adults in France were part of the Resistance against the Nazis occupying their country.  

In this interview,  Doug and Kim Instenes talk about their recent visit to the Fringe Festival in Edinburg, Scotland-  the largest theatrical festival in the world-  and some of what they saw and experienced there.   We also talk with Kim about the honor she received back in the spring when she was named Distinguished Teacher of the Year at Carthage, where she is Associate...

Dr. Art Cyr, Clausen Distinguished Professor of Political Economy and World Business at Carthage College, pays his monthly visit to the program to offer his analysis of current events and issues.   Topics in today's discussion include the so-called Trade War with China,  new tensions with Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Ireland, the fires in the Amazon Rain Forest,  and the...

David Vann, author of “ Legend of a Suicide.” Although a work of fiction, the novel draws heavily upon Vann’s real-life experience of losing his own father to suicide.

From 2007 comes an interview I recorded with Susan Clancy, author of a fascinating book titled "Abducted:  How People come to believe that they were kidnapped by aliens."   Clancy, a Harvard University research fellow at the time she wrote this book, chronicles how her interest in "false memory formation" led her to explore what might be behind the earnest claims of hundreds (if not...

From 2015 comes a conversation with Neil Swidey, author of "Trapped under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, 5 Men, and a Disaster 10 Miles into the Darkness."  It chronicles the efforts in Boston to construct a huge tunnel beneath Boston Harbor that would allow the city to discharge waste well out to sea rather than directly into the harbor.   It was an engineering project of enormou...

We speak with three representatives of the non-profit Just Live, which for the past ten years has been working on the important issue of Suicide Prevention.  Their major fundraiser of the year,  the Labor of Love Music Festival, is coming up on Sunday,  September 1st.   

This 2010 conversation is with NPR's Scott Simon (host of Weekend Edition) talking about his memoir "Baby, we were meant for each other:  in Praise of Adoption."  The book is a chronicle of the experience which Simon and his wife had in adopting two beautiful baby girls from China.    

My guest is Rayna R. Andrews, who calls herself a public health ambassador advocating for more people to seek out- and have access to- good, healthy food.   To help reach young people, she has written a children's book titled "Alex McGreen and the Tale of the Mysterious Kale."   Also on hand for this interview is Dr. Howard Moon, a former administrator for the Kenosha Unified S...