Topic: Community

The 8th annual C-U Folk and Roots Festival starts Thursday at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on the University of Illinois Urbana campus, and continues Friday and Saturday in downtown Urbana.  The Hobnob String Band and Hubby Jenkins are performing Thursday at Krannert.  Three members of the Hobnob String Band joined Illinois Public Media’s Brian Moline for the latest edition of “Live from Studio F.” 

Michael Chrzastowski worked for years as a geologist at the University of Illinois. Instead of retirement, however, he decided to pursue a second career in religion. Now, the Lutheran helps Christians better understand Islam. 

Journalist Katherine Zoepf (zohf) covered the Middle East for The New York Times between 2004 and 2010. And she says the reality is much more nuanced than the views of the region commonly held in the US. Illinois Public Media’s Amanda Honigfort talked with Zoepf about the stories shared in her recent book "Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of the Young Women Who are Transforming the Arab World."

The annual Pens to Lens screenwriting competition is accepting entries from area K-12 students from now through February 29.  Illinois Public Media's Brian Moline spoke with two members of the C-U Film Society board, AJ Christensen and WILL-TV's Tim Meyers about this year's event.

Laurie Bonnett's last meeting with the Champaign School Board is Monday.  The former Unit Four board president, who's moving out of town, says she hopes to see a more collaborative strucuture in the future of school facilities, and believes the board can benefit from the high rate of turnover of late, bringing new and innovative ideas.

Downton Abbey season six, the final season, premiered in the U.S. yesterday to great acclaim. It wouldn’t look the way it does or be so historically accurate, however, if it weren’t for Alastair Bruce. The cast and crew of Downton Abbey, Masterpiece’s smash hit about the Crawley family and their servants call Bruce, the show’s historical advisor, “The Oracle” because he knows everything about the customs and protocols of the time period. 

Bestselling author Wes Moore's Book, "The Other Wes Moore," is the current selection of the University of Illinois' "One Book, One Campus" program. Before speaking Tuesday night at the Illini Union, he spoke with Illinois Public Media's Brian Moline about the book, the Freddie Gray case, and his Bridge EDU program.

The Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, William Adams, is in Champaign-Urbana today. He stopped by WILL to talk with Illinois Public Media's Amanda Honigfort about the role the humanities play in the United States and several initiatives the NEH is undertaking. 

NPR’s Tom Gjelten talked with Illinois Public Media’s Amanda Honigfort about how his new book, Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story, chronicles not only how we’ve reached that point, but also tells the stories of some of those immigrants. 

Conventional wisdom says there’s never been a better time to be a woman. For the first time in U.S. History, women make up half of the educated labor force and are earning the majority of advanced degrees. Not so fast. Caryl Rivers says if you look more closely, women now must fight what she dubs the “New Soft War on Women.” That’s the title of a new book she wrote with Rosalind Barnett, just out in paperback.