The popular host of “This American Life” was in town last week to promote the new movie he helped produce and write with Mike Birbiglia. We sat down with him for a Q&A, in which he weighs in on his latest project, working with Birbiglia, and the Chicago Cubs.
The annual Union Park electronic/hip-hop/jam band extravaganza will feature these artists you can download right now
On your agenda: Chicago’s outsider dramatists take over Pilsen… the MCA celebrates John Cage’s centennial… free jazz… plus, the weekend plans of the artist and curator Edmund Chia
THE SHORTLIST: Five musts from our September culture calendar
The director talks to Kartemquin Films’s Justine Nagan about the new movie, his infamous “dolly shot,” Muhammad Ali, his teenage children, and more. Listen to our podcast and read the highlights.
On your agenda: Dawoud Bey finds Chicago’s most promising young artists… The Cumberland River Band blaze through town… free John Luther Adams… plus, the weekend plans of the percussionist Matthew Duvall
What’s on the mayor’s mind?
The brilliant Cincinnati group—a little bit Flying Burrito Brothers, a little bit Velvet Underground, a lot Ohio–plays a must-see Chicago show this weekend.
Bertrand Goldberg’s brutalist hospital was a technical masterpiece of its time, from its innovative structure to the technology used in designing it. Can preservationists link its inner beauty to its future?
An old Chicago TV pilot celebrates a time when men were men, public-safety officials were stiff bureaucrats in gray suits, and propaganda was really boring.
