WBEZ’s ‘Motive’ investigates Illinois Corrections in new season

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Five Questions with Monica Steinberg, author of “Lives of the Imaginary Artists in Cold War California”

January 27, 2026

With her new book, Lives of the Imaginary Artists in Cold War California, Monica Steinberg takes us into the world of artists who concealed or fabricated their identities, using pseudonymity, obfuscation, anonymity, (auto)biografiction, imaginary portraiture, heteronymity, role-playing, doubling, and alter ego. These real artists, through their creation of imaginary artists,

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Brighten Your Winter Day with Images from “Gems and the New Science”

January 22, 2026

The winter solstice may be behind us, but the Chicago region is still gripped by wintry gloom. We’re brightening our day with a few images from Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution by Michael Bycroft. In this book, Bycroft argues that gems were connected

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Five Questions with Elizabeth Mitchell Elder, author of “Company Towns”

January 14, 2026

In Company Towns, Elizabeth Mitchell Elder examines the long-lasting political legacies of mining-company dominance in the Midwest and Appalachia. While the economic consequences of deindustrialization are well-known, Elder shifts the focus to a more insidious problem: the political dysfunction that took root long before the mines shut down. Elder charts

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A Conversation on Writing, Craft, and Poetry

December 18, 2025

Read on below for a conversation between CavanKerry Press authors Dorsía Smith Silva (In Inheritance of Drowning) and Cati Porter (The Body at a Loss) about their writing journeys and the craft of poetry. Cati Porter: Dorsía, you read and reviewed my first poetry collection, Seven Floors Up, for a

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Five Questions with Alison Bashford, author of “Decoding the Hand”

December 17, 2025

Decoding the Hand is an astounding history of magic, medicine, and science, of an enduring search for how our bodily surfaces might reveal an inner self. From sixteenth-century occult physicians to twentieth-century geneticists, and from criminologists to eugenicists, award-winning historian Alison Bashford takes us on a remarkable journey into the

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Read an Excerpt from “Atlas’s Bones” by D. Vance Smith

December 10, 2025

Atlas’s Bones is a major new look at Africa’s influence on European culture and how colonization remade Africa in the image of a medieval Europe. D. Vance Smith reveals that much of what is claimed as European culture up to the Middle Ages—its great themes in literature, its sources in

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Five Questions for Joshua B. Freeman, Author of “Garden Apartments”

November 25, 2025

In his new book, eminent historian Joshua B. Freeman turns his attention to an overlooked feature of the American landscape: garden apartments. He details their outsized influence on housing and social policy, helping improve living standards for working people. Inspired by the architectural innovations and socialist politics of British garden

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Five Questions with Cynthia Cruz, poet and author of “Sweet Repetition”

November 21, 2025

As we continue to celebrate the amazing writers, editors, and translators in our Phoenix Poets series, we’re delighted to highlight poet Cynthia Cruz, whose latest poetry collection, Sweet Repetition, published with the series in October. Sweet Repetition centers its movement on repetition and return, integrating Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, continental

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Read an Excerpt from “The Adaptability Paradox” by Stephen Skowronek

November 18, 2025

Faith in the resilience and adaptability of the US Constitution rests on a long history of finding new ways to make the system work. In The Adaptability Paradox, political scientist Stephen Skowronek examines the rearrangements that regenerated the American government in the past and brings that experience to bear on

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WBEZ investigated claims that guards at an Illinois prison beat people in a place with no cameras. It’s part of the new season of the podcast Motive. Host: Mary Dixon; Reporter: Shannon Heffernan