In the Loop

During Monday night’s presidential debate, Republican Donald Trump talked about the number of shootings and murders in Chicago, portraying our city as a blighted and dangerous.  We speak with WBEZ South Side reporter Natalie Moore about the coded language that’s sometimes used to refer to neighborhoods on her beat, including words and phrases like "poverty-stricken", "impoverished", and "low-income".

For years Saint Boniface Church in West Town has nearly faced the wrecking ball, with preservationists fighting to save it as a local historical icon. Though Saint Boniface was once a sight to behold at its home on Chestnut Street, the more-than-a-century-old church has fallen into disrepair since closing in 1990. The derelict yet somehow beautiful Romanesque church was recently saved once again by a developer hoping to repurpose the building for the community. In the latest “What’s That Building,” The Morning Shift talks to Ward Miller of Preservation Chicago about the story behind Saint Boniface Church and its place in Chicago’s history.

When Rabbi Rachel Weiss was a young girl, she went to Hebrew school and was Bat Mitzvah’d at Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston. After college she ran the Nuestro Center in Highwood, working with new immigrants from Latin America. Most recently she was an associate rabbi at New York City’s largest congregation for the Jewish LGBTQS community.  Weiss’ life has come full circle as she’s recently been given the top rabbinical post at JRC. Morning Shift talks with Weiss about her personal journey and her preparations for the upcoming Jewish High Holy Days. 

Reverend Dr. Otis Moss III took over as the senior pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in 2008. The church has more than 8,000 members, 50 active ministries, and a dedication to social justice and environmental sustainability.  Morning Shift talks to Moss about how he addresses current events like police shootings in his sermons, why he’s putting a green roof on his church and how the blues, jazz and soul inform the way he leads his flock.

In Illinois, the average annual cost of child care is more than a year of college tuition. Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould and Voices for Illinois Children’s David Lloyd visit the Morning Shift to talk about why child care costs so much and what options parents have as they weigh the quality of care against the bottom line of affordability.

In his new book Bobby Kennedy: The Making Of A Liberal Icon, journalist Larry Tye tracks Kennedy’s political maturation from his days working for Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy to his time as Attorney General in his brother John’s administration to his years as a U.S. Senator representing New York.  Morning Shift talks to Tye about Kennedy’s early years and how a kid who was so often overshadowed by his older brothers became so revered by a generation of left-leaning Americans. 

In 2010 Chicago’s Theater Oobleck decided to put music to the words of 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire, and it did not shy away from the hits. The group picked Baudelaire’s most famous work: Flowers of Evil. The 1857 book of poems deals with sex and death, melancholy as well as sacred and ‘profane’ love.  Theater Oobleck has approached the poems in a series of ‘episodes’ over the years, calling the shows Baudelaire in a Box. Episode 9: Unquenched kicks off on October 5. Morning Shift talks to some of the performers about the show and hears them play some of the music. 

If Monday’s presidential debate has you feeling hopelessness, angry or anxious, you’re not alone. After weeks of writing about politics, Slate columnist Michelle Goldberg had trouble sleeping and developed nightmares about the campaign. So she decided to “sublimate” her anxieties into her work and reached out to therapists to see if others were also feeling the stress. Turns out they were.

Comedian Aparna Nancherla has brought her humor to many mediums. She’s a stand-up comic, has a YouTube series, and has written for shows like Late Night with Seth Meyers and Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. But like many comedians these days it was Twitter that really brought her a big audience. She’s been listed by Time magazine and College Humor as one of the funniest people tweeting. She also somehow manages to make her mental health candid, light-hearted and funny. We talk to Nancherla about walking the line of sad and funny.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture opened its doors to the public for the first time over the weekend. Among its more than 36,000 artifacts are everything from Harriet Tubman’s shawl to Emmett Till’s casket to Chuck Berry’s red Cadillac. The museum’s mission is to memorialize and educate people about the full scope of the black experience in America. Here in Chicago, the DuSable Museum of African American History has a related mission more focused on our city. Morning Shift talks to Leslie Guy, chief curator at the DuSable, about the collections at the new national museum and the DuSable as well as the impact the national museum could have on future generations of Americans.