Illinois Public Media News

If you go to the Illinois State Fair every year, there's no way you've missed the butter cow. Today we'll talk to its sculptor about how it's created. And speaking of the state fair, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is showing up there next week, but she's not the first politician to make an appearance. Plus, George Will is a conservative writer who’s been in the national spotlight for decades. He’s also a native of Champaign. We’ll talk with him about Illinois politics and his latest book, The Conservative Sensibility. Also, do you use an app like Slack or Trello in your office? It turns out some families have co-opted office apps to help them organize things in their personal lives too.

A few years ago, when he was going to Yorkville High School, Matt Pitstick saw college recruiters roaming his school who surprised him and made his friends laugh. They were recruiters from a university more than 700 miles away: the University of Alabama.

After mass shootings in Texas and Ohio last weekend, Illinois Congressman Rodney Davis said he’ll back so-called red-flag laws.

If Brendt Christensen told his defense attorneys the truth, the remains of Yingying Zhang, the young woman he murdered two years ago, may be in a landfill near Danville.

Almost 16 years ago, three young children died after they were trapped in a car that went into Clinton Lake. Edith Brady-Lunny has been covering the story since that first night. We’ll speak with her about her new book, The Unforgiven. Also, local communities play a big part in the census. But this time, there’s a lot of fear about being counted. Today, we’ll focus on what this looks like in the central Illinois community of Beardstown.