Illinois Public Media News

Today on The 21st, we talked about something we all have: Personality. One of our guests wanted to see if her personality could actually be changed, and she gave herself three months to do it through a series of activities. She joined us, along with one of the experts she consulted, to talk about how her experiment played out and what she learned along the way. 

Years ago, lawmakers created a position in the General Assembly that’s supposed to have the responsibility for investigating allegations of wrongdoing among legislators and staff. It’s called the Legislative Inspector General. The 21st was joined by Illinois' new legislative inspector general to talk about how he plans to serve and what his goals are for his new position.

From studying engineering at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, to a music career that had him touring the U.S., Japan, and Europe to now being a vice president at Microsoft — Ashley Llorens contains multitudes. He joined The 21st to talk about his expertise in AI, as well as the benefits and risks of a future with smarter machines.

When schools shifted to remote learning in March 2020, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made the unprecedented decision to let states cancel standardized testing. Every state, including Illinois, did so, but that allowance did not extend to 2021. With a second round of pandemic-era standardized tests beginning this spring, we considered the current state assessment landscape in Illinois and how it may need to change going forward with an Illinois state senator and leaders from education groups.

To mark Presidents' Day, we talked about an overlooked aspect of the American presidency — the way the institution affected photography, and how America itself was influenced by the way presidents have been photographed. We were joined by a historian of photography and author of Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital.