WILL-AM

The 21st Show

Last week, three teenagers from Collinsville, Illinois were on their way to a job. That’s when they were stopped by local police in Christian County. Before long, all three of them were in the custody of federal immigration agents. The family says local police circumvented the TRUST Act — the Illinois law meant to stop that from happening. We'll talk about it with Brian Munoz of St. Louis Public Radio.
 

Weather Realness

It’s summer time and that means warmer temperatures. Learn how to stay safe during extreme heat.

Weather Realness

Garden Hills has experienced chronic flooding for decades. We discuss how flooding affects communities and the engineering behind the Garden Hills Neighborhood drainage project.

The 21st Show

Author Ken Liu was born in China in 1976, and his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was 11. 

He has published multiple collections of short stories and an epic series of novels. Several of his works have been made into films , including “Good Hunting,” which was part of the Netflix animated anthology series Love, Death and Robots. He's also known for translating the Chinese sci-fi series known as The Three Body Problem.

Based in the Boston suburbs, Liu visited Central Illinois back in 2024 for a talk at the Champaign Public Library on art and artificial intelligence. That's when we first aired this conversation, in which he talks about trading a traditional job for writing full time, what's unique about Chinese science fiction, and why he's excited for the possibilities of artificial intelligence.

The 21st Show

The Onion's news satire has become a staple of American culture. It’s come a long way from humble beginnings in the Midwest in 1988, when Christine Wenc was part of the original. Her book, Funny Because It’s True: How the Onion Created Modern American News Satire explores history of the publication and how it's still relevant today.

News Local/State

From covering school districts, politics, campus news, and more, Illinois Public Media reporter Emily Hays is a versatile journalist who loves keeping it local.

The 21st Show

Business owners who offer safe spaces to their local LGBTQ communities in downstate Illinois discuss what these spaces mean to people in the current political environment. 

The 21st Show

For enslaved people and others of African descent, it would be nearly another century until they were included in the founders’ conception of liberty and women would win equal citizenship more than a half-century after that.  That is the subject of a new exhibit at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

Weather Realness

 The FIFA World Cup is just days away. But weather hazards like extreme heat and storms can pose a risk to players and fans. We talk about how the National Weather Service manages weather safety for sporting events like this one.

Weather Realness

“Pressure” is a war film about D-Day that spotlights the importance of weather forecasting in military decisions. We break down the weather science behind the film how weather forecasting has evolved.