WILL-AM

The 21st Show

From the Billy Goat to the Black Sox, the idea that the Cubs and White Sox were cursed is a key part of Illinois baseball lore. Author Addy Baird explores those stories and more in her new book, The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball's Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses.

The 21st Show

This fall, Illinois voters in at least seven more counties will be asked whether they support splitting the state in two. One of the groups leading the push, New Illinois — tagline: "Leave Illinois Without Moving" — wants to carve off Cook County. That would leave the state's other 101 counties, from Lake and Winnebago in the north to Alexander and Massac in the south, to form "New Illinois."

The 21st Show has covered this movement before, but it's getting national attention this year thanks in part to reporting from Connor Towne O'Neill, who has covered the story for NPR, including a feature on All Things Considered and a full episode of The Sunday Story podcast. O'Neill also worked on NPR's White Lies podcast, whose first season was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The 21st Show

Kevin Williams was a college sophomore in Ohio when he started driving around Michigan and Indiana, knocking on the doors of Amish women with a pitch: write a weekly newspaper column about your life, tack on a recipe, and he'd get it into print. He heard "no" most of the day. Then, in Adams County, Indiana, one woman said yes.

That column, "The Amish Cook," is still running — these days written by an Illinois woman named Gloria Yoder — and it set Williams on more than three decades of reporting on the Amish and other people dedicated to simple living.

His new memoir is Not So Simple: My Adventures Among the Amish, Mennonites, Shakers, and Other Plain People.

The 21st Show

Illinois farmers are filing for bankruptcy at a rate that's climbed for three years running — a trend that echoes the 1980s farm crisis, which is part of what led to Farm Aid's founding in Champaign-Urbana.

The 21st Show

Jennifer Roscoe spent 34 years at WCIA-TV — all of them at the same central Illinois station — before signing off last month. She joins The 21st Show to talk about her career, which started with a 1992 internship at WCIA and included an unlikely brush with celebrity: sharing shrimp with '90s heartthrob Fabio in a mall green room.

Roscoe also reflects on the losses of two colleagues, meteorologist Robert Reese and anchor Dave Benton, who both died of cancer, and on how the industry itself has changed — from typewriters and pagers to satellite trucks, and from a public that trusted local news to one now more skeptical of the press. A tornado that struck central Illinois just days before her retirement convinced her that local TV news isn't going anywhere: she says only a station with people on the ground can tell viewers, in real time, which way a storm is headed.

Now retired, Roscoe says she's looking forward to spending more time with her daughter Sophia, who has special needs.

The 21st Show

From “da Bears” in Chicago to “Hahvahd Yahd” in Boston, our accents shape how the world hears us — and how it judges us. Linguist Valerie Fridland explores how and why in her new book, "Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents," which traces how American speech patterns took shape over centuries and why they're still shifting today.

The 21st Show

To close out the show ahead of the Fourth of July, we're featuring the first three voices in a new Illinois Public Media series, "America at 250: The Questions Before Us.” It asks Illinoisans what they think are the most important questions facing the country at the United States Semiquincentennial.

These installments were reported by Annisyn Krebs-Carr and Fernanda Romero of the Illinois Student Newsroom, and University of Illinois journalism professor Charles "Stretch" Ledford, who also conceived of and produced the series. Special thanks to Christine Herman for helping prepare it for The 21st Show.

The 21st Show

Two powerful earthquakes struck Caracas, Venezuela's capital, in quick succession last week — a magnitude 7.1 followed less than a minute later by a magnitude 7.5. As of air time, more than 2,200 deaths have been linked to the quakes, with more than 40,000 people still unaccounted for.

Alvaro Bello grew up in Venezuela and still has friends and family there. he works with The Immigration Project, an organization accredited by the U.S. Department of Justice to help immigrants with paperwork, though he joins us today as a private citizen. Bello talks what he's heard from contacts in Venezuela, the scale of the destruction, and how Venezuelans in Illinois are responding.

The 21st Show

Illinois drivers between the ages of 79 and 86 are no longer required to take a driving test every year, under a new law that just took effect. The change, part of what's called the Road Safety & Fairness Act, was pushed by AARP Illinois and the Illinois Secretary of State's office. Illinois had been the only state in the country with a rule requiring road tests for drivers in this range based solely on age.

Secretary of State personnel can still require a driver to take the test if they notice signs of trouble, and family members can report concerns about a loved one's driving. We'll talk with Ryan Gruenenfelder, Senior Director of Advocacy and Outreach for AARP Illinois, about why the organization pushed for the change, what crash data shows about older drivers' safety records, and how drivers of any age can stay safe on the road.

The 21st Show