Illinois Public Media News

The sights and sounds of traditional Mexican folk dancing. We’ll talk with members of Quad Cities Ballet Folklorico, which has been teaching young people this cultural dance for more than 40 years.

State lawmakers are back in Springfield for the Illinois General Assembly’s fall veto session. Some Democrats are exploring their options for putting guardrails on what ICE can do. Also potentially on the agenda is funding for mass transit, home insurance rates, and soaring energy bills.
 

The Trump administration has expanded the scope of ICE operations in Chicago and its suburbs, but state and local officials — as well as everyday citizens — are pushing back.

A new book and exhibit at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum aims to tell the story of our 16th president through objects and documents from his life. Co-written by the ALPLM's chief of acquisitions Ian Hunt and museum director Christina Shutt, the book is called Lincoln: A Life and Legacy that Defined a Nation in 100 Objects (Rizzoli, $50).

The related exhibition of some of the objects from the book also marks both the museum's 20th anniversary and the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It's called Lincoln: A Life and Legacy that Defined a Nation and it's open through April 26, 2026.

If you have young people in your life, you might've heard them use words such as skibidi (SKIH-bih-dee) or rizz or sigma. Maybe that's mumbo-jumbo to you, as mumbo-jumbo was to someone else in the past. But Adam Aleksic says that's just how language evolves. And as we continue through the internet age — specifically the era of short form video — the rate of change in our language is only going to accelerate.

Aleksic, known online as @EtymologyNerd, writes about this in his new book, Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language.