TUESDAY MAY 2ND
A PRERECORDED INTERVIEW FOLLOWS THE 7:05p BALL GAME
WEDNESDAY
MAY 3RD
DEMOCRACY IN DANGER
'The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the
growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their
democratic state itself' - Franklin D Roosevelt.
Tonight's guests are equally convinced that grave danger stalks American
democracy. For DAVID S. BRODER author of DEMOCRACY
DERAILED the danger lies in the growth of initiative campaigns, which
move America away from the form of representative democracy envisioned
by the Founding Fathers and towards a system of 'direct democracy'. Our
second guest, ELIZABETH DREW author of THE CORRUPTION OF AMERICAN POLITICS
is troubled by the growth in power of lobby groups as politicians become
more concerned with funding expensive campaigns and less concerned with
making effective policy choices.
THURSDAY
MAY 4TH
ENTOMOLOGY
'Lord clear my misted sight that I
may hence view thy Divinity
some sparkles whereof thou dost hasp,
within this little downy Wasp'
Like the poet Edward Taylor quoted above, tonight's guests are all equally
struck by the miraculous complexity and wonderful design to be seen in
insect life. Join our expert panel of entomologists from the University
of Illinois including, Professor GILBERT WALDBAUER author of MILLIONS
OF MONARCHS, BUNCHES OF BEETLES: HOW BUGS FIND STRENGTH IN NUMBERS,
as we discuss the lives, social and otherwise, of these 'fustian animals'
tonight on Extension 720.
FRIDAY MAY 5TH
WORLD CUISINE
The smell of lemon grass, of garam masalla, of saffron, cilantro and star
anise waft through the air as Studio A's table heaves with a smorgasbord
of expert chefs specializing in various national and regional cuisines.
Tune in tonight as our expert panel, including MUHAMMAD MCHABCHAB from
the Moroccan restaurant L'Olive, PAUL WILDERMUTH chef of the new pan-asian
restaurant Red Light and Chef GENO BAHENA of the Mexican restaurant Ixcapuzalco,
prepare a cornucopia of culinary conversation from all four corners of
the globe.
MONDAY MAY 8TH - TUESDAY MAY 9TH
PRERECORDED INTERVIEWS FOLLOW TONIGHT'S BALL GAME
WEDNESDAY
MAY 10TH
SUBVERTING STALIN
Tonight we journey back to the early days of the cold war, a world of
double agents and dead letter drops, as Milt talks to PETER GROSE author
of OPERATION
ROLLBACK: AMERICA'S SECRET WAR BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN. With millions
of people homeless or otherwise uprooted, post-war Europe was a fertile
field for Soviet expansion. Employing recently declassified documents,
Grose has pieced together the clandestine anti-Communist strategy that
was developed by the US intelligence community after WWII, a strategy
that would `start with innocuous propaganda and persuasion, then proceed
directly into sabotage, subversion, and paramilitary engagement.' Grose
is joined by fellow espionage analyst WILLIAM E DUFF author of A TIME
FOR SPIES and Professor TOM MOKAITIS Chair of DePaul's History Department
and an expert on cold war conflict. Grab your code book and the short
wave radio as Grose and our expert panel discuss the genesis, the achievements
and disasters of cold war spycraft tonight on Extension 720.
THURSDAY MAY 11TH
THE MILLENNIAL CITY
Tonight we welcome a panel of writers, including MYRON MAGNET, from the
City Journal to discuss the issues and ideas raised in their recently
published collection of journal articles THE
MILLENNIAL CITY:A NEW URBAN PARADIGM FOR 21ST CENTURY AMERICA. The
City Journal, the quarterly publication of the Manhattan Institute, has
established a reputation for groundbreaking analytical reports on urban
America and has exercised great influence over the policies of many leading
politicians.
FRIDAY MAY 12TH
BEADED BUBBLES WINKING AT THE BRIM
Our regular panel of guys with the job you'd pay to have join Extension
720 for further discussion of the brewing and drinking arts. ALAN DICHTY,
MARK DORNAN, and SHAUN LUDFORD, all of whom hail from the Dionysian halls
of Chicago's Beverage Testing Institute, will flip the cap on the latest
microbrews and pull up a bar stool at the best local pubs.
MONDAY
MAY 15TH
EXTINCTION 720?
Over 65 million years ago in what is now Cheyenne River Sioux territory
in South Dakota, a Tyrannosaurus Rex matriarch locked in a ferocious battle
fell mortally wounded into a riverbed. In 1990, her skeleton was found,
virtually complete, in what many call the most spectacular dinosaur fossil
discovery to date. And then another battle began involving commercial
dinosaur hunters, gun-toting law officers, an ambitious federal prosecutor,
a Native American tribe, jealous academics, an enterprising auction house,
major museums, and corporate giants, all making their claim for the dinosaur
named Sue. Tonight we talk to an expert panel including, Sue Henderson,
the fossil-hunter who found the eponymous T-rex skeleton and to author
Steve Feiffer who has documented the extraordinary tale of this fossil
in the new book TYRANNOSAURUS
SUE, about the rise and fall of the dinosaurs and the fierce battles
fought by them and over them.
TUESDAY
MAY 16TH
THE BEAR MARKET FOR CHICAGO SPORTS
AFTER THE 6.05p BALL GAME
With the exception of the Chicago Bulls' NBA championship run in the nineties
and the Bears' 1985 Super Bowl, Windy City sports fans have seemed doomed
to a perpetual cycle of pre-season excitement, mid-season frustration,
and late-season despair. SCOTT SIMON, NPR host and author of HOME
AND AWAY: MEMOIR OF A FAN, is a lifelong Chicagoan, if not geographically,
at least by sports affiliation. As a Chicago youth, his father was pals
with Hall of Fame WGN broadcaster Jack Brickhouse. Later, his journalism
credentials placed him in contact with some of the city's sports legends,
but for the most part he rooted from afar. Tune in as Milt and Simon discuss
the Cubs' heartbreaking collapse in 1969, the Bears' buffoonish mediocrity
from their NFL title in 1963 to the arrival of Iron Mike Ditka as coach
in the early 1980s, and the rise of the Bulls in Michael Jordan's early
years tonight on Extension 720
WEDNESDAY MAY 17TH
THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT
Of pivotal influence in the presidential race, and in the persisting public
dialogue are fundamentalist and evangelical Christians who find a basis
for their socio-political views in their religious principles. Often called
the 'religious right' they are a sometimes misunderstood factor in American
politics. Tonight's show attempts to penetrate the miasma of sensationalist
reportage, to discover and examine the real ambitions and beliefs of this
influential constituency.
THURSDAY MAY 18TH
THE RETURN OF THE S.D.I
More than a whiff of snake oil accompanied early visions of the Strategic
Defense Initiative. How could any system hope to destroy the thousands
of war-heads, dummy war-heads, decoys and counter measures that would
be launched against the USA in the event of a nuclear war. Many leading
scientists and strategists publicly derided the idea and its supporters,
but in spite of their protestations this visionary plan captured the national
imagination and was certainly one of the great ideas of the Reagan presidency.
As the present administration seeks to revive the missile defense system,
we revisit the policy of Star Wars with Pulitzer Prize-winning author
FRANCES FITZGERALD whose latest book WAY
OUT THERE IN THE BLUE, is a fascinating account of the development
and cultural and political impact of this extreme form of strategic thought
from the Reagan administration to the Clinton regime.
FRIDAY MAY 19TH
THE FIRST AMERICANS
Well if it wasn't Columbus then it was the Vikings, but now it seems
that even the rovers of the sea might have been beaten to America by other
Western Europeans who crossed the pond only a few tens of thousands of
years earlier. Orthodox scientific opinion has it that the first peoples
to settle North America traveled across the Bering Straits during the
last ice age. A new theory argues that the first Americans in fact traveled
from Southern Europe across the frozen wastes of the north Atlantic, which
then formed a great arc of ice connecting Europe and North America. Whatever
the true picture, we are pleased to be able to welcome to Extension 720
an expert panel of anthropologists, including Professor JIM BROWN of Northwestern
University, Professor DAN AMICK of Loyola University and Professor DENNIS
STAMFORD of the Smithsonian to discuss the origins of the earliest North
American people's and to shed some light into their life and culture.
MONDAY
MAY 22ND
AMERICAN PHARAOH
'This is Chicago, this is America', With those words, Chicago mayor Richard
J. Daley famously defended his brutal crack down on protesters at the
1968 Democratic National Convention. Profoundly divided racially, economically
and socially Chicago was indeed a microcosm of America and for more than
two decades Daley ruled it with an iron first. Tonight Extension 720 welcome
ELIZABETH TAYLOR and ADAM COHEN authors of AMERICAN
PHARAOH a new biography of Richard J Daley to talk about his time
at the helm of America's second city and its foremost political machine.
TUESDAY MAY 23RD AND WEDNESDAY MAY 24TH
Cubs baseball strikes out Extension 720 as Sosa and crew battle it out
in Colorado
THURSDAY
MAY 25TH
BOTH SIDES OF EVERYTHING
It's conventional wisdom, backed by a wealth of painstakingly gathered
empirical data, that buses always come in three's, but did you know that
sub-atomic particles always come in two's? In the new book SUPERSYMMETRY:SQUARTS,
PHOTINOS AND THE UNVEILING OF THE ULTIMATE LAWS OF NATURE, tonight's
guest, physicist GORDON KANE takes us inside giant particle accelerators,
in particular the atom smashers at Fermilab, to explore the theory of
supersymmetry. This theory implies that each of the fundamental particles
has a corresponding "superpartner" particle. Tonight, Kane is joined in
coversation by Professor HENRY FRISCH of the University of Chicago. If
new research at Fermilab, planned by Frisch and others, confirms the predictions
of this supersymmetry, it will be a major step towards capturing the physicist's
holy grail, the Grand Unified Theory of Everything.
FRIDAY MAY 26TH
The Cubs heroic struggles in San Francisco pre-empt tonight's show.
MONDAY MAY 29TH
Another great show is in store for Memorial Day. Visit www.wgnradio.com
to find out what it may be.
TUESDAY MAY 30TH
Taped interviews follow tonight's 7.05p ballgame.
WEDNESDAY
MAY 31ST
THE BITTER FRUITS OF FLOWER POWER
Tonight Milt welcomes ROGER KIMBALL, the author of Tenured Radicals, who
in his new book THE
LONG MARCH shows how the "cultural revolution" of the 1960s and '70s
took hold in America, overturning existing norms and values. In Kimball's
view, the rejection of traditional beliefs, epitomized by the counter
cultural movements of the period, lies at the root of many of the problems
evident in the fractured societies of subsequent decades. Turn on, tune
in but definitely don't drop out as Extension 720 explores the legacy
of Hippies, Yippies and the Age of Aquarius.
