Chicago Public Square Newscasts

The Chicago Public Square Newscast (still in pilot phase) now comes to you on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers*, in addition to iTunes, on your favorite podcast player or right here on the web. What do you think? Feedback welcome at [email protected]. * Even if you don’t have an Alexa smart speaker, you can turn your smartphone into an Alexa device. Alexa is embedded in the Amazon apps for Android and iOS phones—a low-impact way to experiment with the technology.

Here we go again! This pilot series is also newly available on iTunes and via RSS. Subscribe now! Comments or questions on what you hear? Email [email protected].

It’s the very first Chicago Public Square Newscast. Listen, then let us know what you think, using the email address provided at the end of this less-than-two-minute-long audio update. Bonus: Then answer this two-question poll, which will take you less than 30 seconds.

Let Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s incredibly successful Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, tell you this: He hates the show’s name. He also hates the place where he creates that show. You’ll learn why as you listen to a podcast of my onstage interview with Sagal—part of the Wednesday Journal Conversations series—in which he talks about the show, his career, the Constitution under Donald Trump, the challenge sexual harassment poses to comedy writing, the differences between announcers Bill Kurtis and Carl Kasell, and much more … including Sagal’s affection for the village we both call home: Oak Park, Ill. Hear how it went at Dominican University in River Forest, Nov. 20, 2017. P.S. Enjoy this? Check out the previous installment in this podcast series: My interview with President Obama’s former chief strategist, David Axelrod. P.P.S. Imagine how your advertisement or underwriting message would sound as part of the next in this podcast series, with a presence in the show and on this website. Interested? Write to [email protected] (Photos: Alexa Rogals/Wednesday Journal.)

When President Obama’s former chief strategist—now University of Chicago Institute of Politics founder and CNN senior political commentator—David Axelrod agreed to return to his old suburban neighborhood to kick off the Wednesday Journal newspaper’s series of public conversations at Dominican University, I was honored by the request to moderate the session with my long-ago neighbor and teammate at Chicago’s WXRT-FM. It was an enlightening and—by the account of Axelrod’s fans in the audience—therapeutic evening. Hear for yourself in this podcast, recorded Sept. 6, 2017. (Photo: Alexa Rogals, Wednesday Journal)