WILL-AM

The 21st Show

Christian Mitchell served three terms in the Illinois House and four years as Deputy Governor. Now he’s Governor Pritzker’s running mate in the November elections.

The 21st Show

Self-driving cars were once a vision of the future. Now, the company Waymo is hoping to put its autonomous rideshares on the streets of Illinois. A panel of experts weigh in on what's happening with self-driving cars in the state, how they work, and why some people have concerns with the technology.

The 21st Show

Roughly 1,000 Black men were trained in Tuskegee, Alabama to serve as Army aviators in World War II. Nearly 100 were killed — and of those, 27 went missing. Most were never recovered, leaving a trail of unresolved grief that would haunt their families for decades.

Their stories are the subject of a new book called “Forgotten Souls: The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen" by Cheryl Whitlow Thompson. An award-winning investigative journalist, Thompson is currently a reporter and editor at NPR. She's also a native of Chicago and earned two degrees from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The 21st Show

Spring has officially begun. At Eckert’s Farm in Belleville, visitors can find an upcoming season dedicated to the colorful flower, check out the Tulip Trail and enjoy a stroll along through thousands of different pigments of tulips.

The 21st Show

Saunas have always been around in some form, but there’s more and more sauna businesses opening up, and content creators online are sharing all sorts of health claims associated with saunas. A health expert offers some tips.

The 21st Show

The Illinois Times covered the story of a man who was convicted of defrauding the Illinois EPA out of millions of dollars.  He was sentenced to five years in federal prison in 2015 — but now he’s back in business and has collected more than $1.5 million from the same state agency he defrauded.

Weather Realness

A massive hailstorm fell across Illinois and a six-inch hailstone was reported in Kankakee Illinois, that could be record breaking. We go through how hailstorms are formed and how they can grow to enormous sizes.

Weather Realness

Severe storms last week produced destructive tornadoes that traveled from Illinois to Indiana. We go through how tornado outbreaks are formed and why they happened in the midwest.

The 21st Show

It’s the official policy of the U.S. government to work toward putting people on Mars. Debates about that usually focus on cost and national priorities. Less considered is what life on Mars would do to the people who go there.

That, however, is the subject of a new book by scientist Scott Solomon. It’s called Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds. Solomon was raised in Champaign, attended University High in Urbana, and earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The 21st Show

We are talking to some of the athletes that represented Team USA in the 2026 Winter Olympics with ties to the 21st state. Speedskater Ethan Cepuran is originally from the Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn. He joins the program today.