In the Loop

Morning Shift talks to Jason DeSanto of Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law and Chip Englander, a former campaign manager for Bruce Rauner, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio about the Second Presidential Debate. DeSanto is a former speechwriter and debate strategist for Democrats.

Look at the list of any TV critic’s anticipated fall shows and you're likely to find HBO's Insecure. The new comedy follows 29-year-old Issa Rae as she navigates life, work and romance, all while trying to break her “aggressively passive” attitude. In real life, writer and actress Issa Rae is more deliberate with her own career path. She joined the Morning Shift to give us some insight.

When Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he coined a phrase every American now knows by heart: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In her new book America the Anxious, journalist and filmmaker Ruth Whippman explores how that last “unalienable right” — “the pursuit of happiness” — is turning many Americans into nail-biting worrywarts.

The last time the Cubs won 100 games in a season was in 1935. Much like today’s team, back then the Cubs had a good pitching staff and a couple of future hall-of-famers. They won the National League pennant after a monster September but ultimately lost the World Series to the Detroit Tigers. Morning Shift talks to baseball historian Stuart Shea about the 1935 Cubs roster and compares and contrasts it with this years’ crop of players.

When you’re a massive bipedal carnivore living in the late Cretaceous period about 65 million years ago, you can get by with some pretty small arms. We’re talking about Tyrannosaurus Rex. Scientists know a lot about the animal’s jaws, but they’re still not sure exactly how it used its arms. That could change when scientists from the Field Museum remove one of the arms of Sue, the museum’s beloved T. rex skeleton and take it to the Argonne National Laboratory for testing with something called an “extreme brightness X-ray.”  Morning Shift talks to Pete Makovicky, Associate Curator of Dinosaurs at the Field Museum, and his colleague William Simpson, McCarter Collections Manager of Fossil Vertebrates about the project. We also open up the phones for listeners to ask anything they’ve ever wondered about dinosaurs. 

Some teens are getting the opportunity to go behind the scenes at Chicago companies to get a better understanding of the role innovation plays in business. Chicago Ideas Week features the year-round program CIW YOU(th) which takes leaders from schools around the city for job training, connect with people doing inspiring work, and seeing the day to day at these places. We talk to program director Rachel Graham and CIW YOU(th) ambassador Edgar Escalera.

 There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who’ve never heard of musician Bill Callahan, and those who are totally crazy about Bill Callahan.

Here in Illinois, if you want to return to the workforce after spending time in jail, a good step is usually to get your record sealed or expunged. That hides certain low-level crimes from most employers. The problem is, to do that, first you have to pay your court fees, and for many poor people in Illinois, those court fees are just too expensive.  Morning Shift talks to WBEZ’s Miles Bryan about the problems court fees are causing for some Illinois residents. We also hear from Democratic State representative Elaine Nekritz. She was part of a public task force on court fees in Illinois this year.

Telehealth is getting more and more popular with patients and medical practitioners alike as carriers continue to expand coverage to include virtual doctors visits. Sounds great for those too sick to get out of bed to see a doctor, or too busy to fit in an appointment, but would you or do you think it takes the place of hands-on care?  Morning Shift talks to a couple of doctors with personal experience. Dr. Elena Barengolts is with the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center here in Chicago, and Dr. Deborah Mulligan with MDLive, a national telehealth provider. 

WBEZ stats guru Chris Hagan has created a page where you can run a single playoff simulation to determine the North Sider’s actually chances of winning it all. Or, press a single button and have the computer run 1,000 simulations to see if the Cubs’ chances get any better.