Illinois Public Media News

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.
 

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 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.

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

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.