In the Loop with Sasha-Ann Simons

Morning Shift talks to attendees at Eid Expo, a gathering of Muslims celebrating the end of Ramadan. The expo was held on Navy Pier this Tuesday and Wednesday

In the early 1990s, Chicago native Michael McDermott was being compared to Springsteen and Dylan. Critics were calling him “the next big thing.”  Then Nirvana hit the charts and the market for singer-songwriters fell through the floor. Believing he’d disappointed himself and everyone supporting him, McDermott descended into drug and alcohol abuse.  Through it all, he continued to release strong material. When he became a father and became sober several years ago, the quality went up even higher.  Michael McDermott joins us in studio to play some music and talk about his life and career ahead of the release party for his new album Willow Springs.

We now know that New York architecture firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects will design the Obama Presidential Library. Once it’s constructed on the South Side, the library will be the most prominent building in the city associated with the Obama name. But Barack and Michelle Obama have lived and worked in many other buildings all over the city, especially on the South Side. In the latest installment in our series What’s That Building? Dennis Rodkin of Crain’s Chicago Business tells the stories behind everything from the Kenwood mansion the Obamas called home before they moved into the White House to places Barack worked as a community organizer to the South Shore bungalow where Michelle Obama grew up.

Wednesday marks the start of Eid al-Fitr, the breaking of the monthlong fast of Ramadan for billions of Muslims worldwide. Though Islam is the second largest religion in the world, there are still plenty of misconceptions surrounding its people and traditions.

Many pro athletes in Chicago do charity work or start foundations to do right by the city that has embraced them. Some are more successful than others. Some do their good deeds through special projects set up by the team. And some are extremely hands-on. Joakim Noah falls into the latter category, bringing art and teaching non-violence directly to kids in the city’s toughest neighborhoods.  But now that Noah has parted ways with the Bulls, how will the Noah’s Arc Foundation continue its mission? We talk with WBEZ sports contributor Cheryl Raye Stout about NAF, and the other local sports figures spreading the love.

Jupiter is 1000 times larger than Earth, but its so far from us that in many ways it remains a mystery. All that changes this week with the arrival of NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which has spent the last five years zooming through the solar system on its route to the gas giant. Morning Shift talks to Lucianne Walkowicz from the Adler Planetarium about what scientists expect to learn as Juno orbits Jupiter.

Late last month we lost legendary keyboardist Bernie Worrell. His sound served as a funky backbone to music by both Parliament/Funkadelic and the Talking Heads. Worrell’s music blurred the lines between rock and R&B. To celebrate that blur, Reclaimed Soul host Ayana Contreras presents bands that bridged the gap between hard rock and soul.

A story posted online last week talked of a “global climate emergency”after one of the northern hemisphere’s jet streams crossed into the south. Turns out, that’s happened before. And it's not really an emergency. But pretty interesting things are happening in the upper atmosphere these days.

As with all great art, we can’t forget the predecessors that paved the way for great writing, powerful performances and risks on the stage. 25 years ago, that happened with Tony Kushner’s seven-hour masterpiece Angels in America. We talk to Slate’s Dan Kois about the history of the story.

He started in local politics as the ‘nobody nobody sent’ and rose to prominence as a lawmaker, judge and presidential adviser. We talk with David Axelrod from University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, and Sanford Horwitt, a former aide to Mikva.