Illinois Public Media News

Election Day is less than a week away, and one of the biggest choices before Illinois voters is who will succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin.

Democratic Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton is facing Republican Don Tracy, a former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, and Whitfield Harrington Jr., a Chicago pastor running with the American Center Party. Our conversations covered the war in Iran, America's relationship with Israel, immigration enforcement and the Senate filibuster.

We've spoken with all three candidates on our show, and today we listen back to some of the highlights from those interviews.

Among the choices before voters in this year's election — which is less than a week away — is who should be the governor of Illinois.

Incumbent Democrat J.B. Pritzker is seeking a third term. He’s once again being challenged by Republican Darren Bailey, representing his party for the second election in a row. And there’s also an independent campaign from Collin Corbett, a former Republican political consultant hoping to build a political movement from the center of Illinois politics.

We’ve spoken with all three men on our show, and will listen to some of the highlights from those interviews today.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood has represented Illinois' 14th Congressional District since 2019. Today the 14th encompasses a large triangle in north-central Illinois, bounded by Joliet, DeKalb, and LaSalle-Peru.

The Democrat joined us live ahead of next week’s midterm elections, in which she’s facing a challenge from Republican Jim Marter (with whom we spoke on Sept. 21, 2026).

We talked with Underwood about a wide range of issues, including the war in Iran, tariffs, health care, government regulation of AI, abortion law, ICE accountability, generation gaps in Congress, and why so many people are disconnected from politics.

Americans have spent years arguing about how police, paramedics, and other emergency personnel respond when dispatched to help people in crisis. But UChicago researcher Rebecca Neusteter says that conversation overlooks an important part of our public safety system: the 9-1-1 call center.

She says too often, emergency call centers default to sending police, when a different type of response would be more appropriate. Neusteter's new book is called, “911, What’s Your Emergency? The Promise and Peril of Crisis Response.”

Illinois-based writer Daniel Kraus has been having a remarkable year. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel Angel Down. Another, Whalefall, was made into a movie that hit theaters last week. And he's published his first book of nonfiction, about how the classic horror film Night of the Living Dead (1968) saved his life.

Kraus talks about researching how someone could survive being swallowed by a sperm whale, why he's watched Night of the Living Dead more than 300 times, and how winning a Pulitzer Prize has forced him into writing his next book on airplanes.

Kraus will be at the Virginia Theatre in Champaign on Tuesday, Oct. 27, for a screening of Night of the Living Dead and an onstage conversation about the film and his book.