Category: Yesterday

Folk music surged in popularity across America in the late 1950s through the ‘70s, including here in the Chicago area. Last episode, we looked at how a few area coffeehouses catered to many patrons in their teens and early twenties. These were alcohol-free spaces where people could listen to live music and hangout for hours. Curious City host Erin Allen looks at one of those beloved coffeeshops of the 1970s: AmazinGrace, which was born out of Vietnam War protests on the campus of Northwestern University and later moved to the heart of downtown Evanston. She was joined by a panel of AmazinGrace founders, performers and patrons at last year’s Evanston Folk Festival. WBEZ is a programming partner of the Evanston Folk Festival, which is taking place this year Sept. 6-7, 2025. A pre-sale is happening now through April 22. Enter the code EFFWBEZ to access the sale.

In the 1960s and 70s, Chicago coffeehouses were popular spots for young people. These were alcohol-free establishments where people in their teens and 20s could listen to live music or just hangout for hours.

Introducing WBEZ's latest podcast series, Making: Stories Without End. Host Natalie Moore takes you on a journey to learn about daytime soap operas and their broad reach on television. From the early radio days in the 1930s through the invention of TV to streaming, this way of telling immersive stories has endured. There are intergenerational family stories, discussions about divorce and abortion, groundbreaking storylines dealing with queer representation. And all these threads go back to one Chicago woman, Irna Phillips. The queen of soaps originated, wrote or supervised more than a dozen daytime serials for more than 40 years… and left a lasting mark on the television industry. You’ll hear the story behind the stories from scholars, actors, writers – from the past and now – as well as fans.

Extremism in America has been on the rise. Last episode, we looked at extremist groups in Chicago and how they terrorized select groups of people and influenced housing policy in the city during the 1950s. But what does extremism look like today? Curious City host Erin Allen talks with Odette Yousef, a national security correspondent focusing on extremism at NPR, about why it’s less about fringe groups and more about ideology that has permeated our culture. “January 6 was a good example of how everything has changed,” she says. “That to me was really a milestone in terms of how extremism looks in this country, because I think we have long expected it to come out of small cells or groups. And here it was just everyday Americans who had gotten really kind of radicalized until the point where they participated in the violence that day.” She also talks about how extremism has shown up in Chicago and how the city compares with other large American cities.

Extremist groups of the 1950s played a violent part, alongside real estate and neighborhood organizations, in keeping Chicago segregated.

Chicago is home to thousands of feral cats, and some people are looking after them.

Jun Fujita is the Japanese-American photographer behind some of the most recognizable photographs taken in Chicago in the 20th century, including his shots of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, the Eastland passenger boat disaster of 1915, and the 1919 Chicago race riots. Fujita was also a published poet and something of a regional celebrity, known for socializing with William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Fujita’s foreign identity also made him the subject of government inquiry and suspicion on multiple occasions — during both World War I and World War II — according to Graham Lee, Fujita’s great-nephew and the author of a new Fujita biography, “Jun Fujita: Behind the Camera.” After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Fujita’s assets were frozen, his business was shuttered, his cameras were taken away, and he constrained himself to Chicago to avoid possible internment, Lee said. How did Fujita navigate this perilous time for an immigrant in Chicago? We sat down with Lee to discuss how Fujita, a “supremely confident person,” came to rely on both the support of his community and his wits.

Chicago is in the national spotlight when it comes to the immigration debate, but that’s nothing new to the mayoral office. We take a look back at how mayors have either embraced or rejected new arrivals.

Scientist Alice Hamilton’s investigations into toxins in Chicago’s factories led to some of the first workplace safety laws in the country. She was known for her “shoe leather” epidemiology, wearing out the soles of her shoes from all the trips she made to Chicago homes, factories and even saloons to figure out what was making people sick.

How should we decide what happens to our bodies when we die? And what implications does that decision have for the living? It’s common to think a burial at a cemetery is the final resting place for a loved one. But as we heard in our last episode, sometimes the need to progress as a society is in direct conflict with the desire to honor the dead. Today, we talk to one of the leaders of the Green Burial Council, funeral director Samuel Perry. His organization advocates and sets standards for “natural” burials, which he calls “the full body burial of the person directly in the ground with only biodegradable materials.” We talk about the practicality of natural burial in Chicago and the very personal and spiritual decisions that add complexity to this corner of the death care industry.