Author: WBEZ Chicago

Fast fashion stresses water supply, leaches chemicals into the environment and requires diesel and gasoline to transport the goods. Reset learns about the problem with Karen Weigert, director of Loyola University Chicago’s Baumhart Center for Social Enterprise and Responsibility. Sasha-Ann Simons also sits down with fiber artist and teacher Kristine Brandel, and Katherine Bissell Cordova, executive director of Chicago Fair Trade, about how to reuse clothes in creative ways to keep them from heading to the landfill.

Vocalo’s Stephen Bekoe stops by Reset to share the top five tracks he’s spinning this month.

U.S. district court judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled a ban on the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of medical abortion pill mifepristone. Since then, the Biden administration has urged the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to keep the drug available to Americans as litigation continues. Reset breaks down what’s happening nationwide and locally with Lee Hasselbacher, director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health, Illinois Democratic Representative Kelly Cassidy of Chicago, and Jennifer Welch, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois

Reset digs into the five ways Mayor Elect Brandon Johnson plans to improve public safety in Chicago with WBEZ criminal justice reporters Chip Mitchell and Patrick Smith.

Thanks to its unique geology, companies are eyeing Illinois to be the terminus of carbon dioxide pipelines that send liquid CO2 long distances to be stored deep underground so the gas does not need to be released into the atmosphere. Reset talks to Chicago Tribune reporter Nara Schoenberg about how the technology works and what people from downstate Illinois have to say about the greenhouse gas being stored in Illinois sandstone.

Do you have to be wealthy and knowledgeable about everything there is to know about art to be a collector? Not according to Chicago artist Patric McCoy. In our Chicago Innovator series, we get to know the people shaking up the city. In this installment, Reset talked to McCoy about his journey to embracing the term “art collector,” and about his new exhibit, which chronicles Black gay culture in the 80s.

Independent artists have it harder than ever and big streaming platforms pay less than a penny per listen. So how can you give back to the person behind that song you have on repeat? Reset learns more about finding new artists and supporting them outside of the streaming platforms. We spoke to Sen Morimoto, musician and co-owner of Sooper Records, Shane Bradley, AKA DJ Moonlanding, Marketing Director at Audiotree Music, and Stephen Bekoe, a host at our sister station Vocalo.

An investigation from the Chicago Tribune shows how a cascade of failures within the Cook County criminal justice system leads most murder cases to take four years to go to trial, with some lasting up to or more than a decade. Reset talks with journalists Megan Crepau and Joe Mahr, who reported “Stalled Justice,” and with Shapearl Wells, a Chicago woman who’s still seeking justice in her son’s death.