Focus, or Focus 580, was WILL Radio's flagship talk program from 1981 until 2014. David Inge was the host from 1981 until his retirement in 2012. Always engaging, the program acted as a resource for citizens to directly question politicians and candidates as well as keep up on the arts, science, health, and even the latest from well-known novelists.
The Focus archive below offers thousands of great interviews and serves as a time capsule and a great resource for researchers and those just curious about how influential people spoke of important topics as they were happening.
You’ve already heard his voice … even if you didn’t know it. This hour on Focus, host Jim Meadows talks with the former “voice of NPR,” Frank Tavares, about being a somewhat of a disembodied celebrity and about his new book “The Man Who Built Boxes.
The 2013 farm bill is at least a 900 billion dollar piece of legislation. It’s been stalled in Congress since the 2008 bill expired a year ago. This hour on Focus, we’ll talk about what the hold-up is and why it matters.
A bill to fix the state’s massively underfunded pension system is headed to Gov. Pat Quinn’s desk. This hour on Focus, we’ll talk with Illinois Public Radio Statehouse Bureau Chief Amanda Vinicky and former state senator Rick Winkel about what’s in the bill and what happens now.
A lot of our food grows in expansive, rolling fields that make up the Midwest. But with more and more people living in cities, that is changing. This hour on Focus, we’ll hear from Will Allen, CEO of Milwaukee’s urban farming project “Growing Power.”
This hour on Focus, we'll talk about our changing energy resources with Director of the Bureau of Economic Geology and State Geologist of Texas Scott Tinker.
In this holiday special, Hannukah Lights 2013, NPR's Susan Stamberg and Murray Horwitz read memoirs and stories from acclaimed authors' experienes during the Jewish festival of lights. The stories are written expressly for the show.
This hour on Focus, we remember our "Chef-in-Residence," Doyle Moore.
During this half hour on Focus, former major league baseball pitcher Jamie Moyer tells Jeff Bossert about his new book, “Just Tell Me I Can’t.”
Dave Isay has spent more than the last decade of his career helping Americans collect stories for the public radio segment “StoryCorps.” During this Focus interview, host Jim Meadows talks with Isay about his new book “Ties that Bind.”
Raising kids is already a challenge, so what do you do when your kids express that they are uncomfortable in their own skin?
