The past month’s forecast has brought a series of weekly storms, snowfalls and snow squalls across the Midwest, and while winter brings with it the drudgery of shoveling, slippery ice and travel inconveniences, there are people who welcome winter and take full advantage of the snowfall. To talk about the trails and his passion for skiing, The 21st was joined by the man behind the volunteer-led efforts to groom the cross country ski trails in Peoria.

Our two guests today are friends on the frontlines — both pulmonologists who’ve treated some of the most critically ill COVID patients and supported each other along the way. They have a new podcast called "Get Better" in which they talk not only about their experiences during the pandemic, but also where they learn about other topics — ranging from mental health to gender-affirming care.

Today on The 21st, we talked about something we all have: Personality. One of our guests wanted to see if her personality could actually be changed, and she gave herself three months to do it through a series of activities. She joined us, along with one of the experts she consulted, to talk about how her experiment played out and what she learned along the way.

Years ago, lawmakers created a position in the General Assembly that’s supposed to have the responsibility for investigating allegations of wrongdoing among legislators and staff. It’s called the Legislative Inspector General. The 21st was joined by Illinois' new legislative inspector general to talk about how he plans to serve and what his goals are for his new position.

When schools shifted to remote learning in March 2020, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made the unprecedented decision to let states cancel standardized testing. Every state, including Illinois, did so, but that allowance did not extend to 2021. With a second round of pandemic-era standardized tests beginning this spring, we considered the current state assessment landscape in Illinois and how it may need to change going forward with an Illinois state senator and leaders from education groups.

From studying engineering at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, to a music career that had him touring the U.S., Japan, and Europe to now being a vice president at Microsoft — Ashley Llorens contains multitudes. He joined The 21st to talk about his expertise in AI, as well as the benefits and risks of a future with smarter machines.

To mark Presidents' Day, we talked about an overlooked aspect of the American presidency — the way the institution affected photography, and how America itself was influenced by the way presidents have been photographed. We were joined by a historian of photography and author of Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital.

In the 1830s, the U.S. government illegally auctioned off more than 1,280 acres of land belonging to Chief Shab-eh-nay in southern DeKalb County. Now, 170 years later, lawmakers are trying to right that wrong. To talk about it, The 21st was joined by Chieg Shab-eh-nay's fourth generation great-grandson and current chairman of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation.

Our guest for the second half of the show has represented workers going up against their employers, argued before the US Supreme Court, and is the author of half a dozen or so books on American politics, law, and labor — including his latest, The History of Democracy Has Yet to be Written: How we Have to Learn to Govern All Over Again. It’s about his long-shot campaign for Congress in the Obama era, and his ideas for fixing what’s wrong with American democracy.

Workers at one of the world’s largest coffee chains are leading an unprecedented effort to unionize their workplace, and one of the most recent to vote to unionize is here in Illinois at the Peoria campustown location. The 21st was joined by two baristas from that location to talk about the unionization efforts, as well as a history professor to give some context about the labor movement at large.