In this episode, Bela Gandhi, founder of Smart Dating Academy, shares her journey from being a bad dater to becoming a dating coach. Lissa & Thom get schooled on the importance of understanding partner preferences, navigating dating apps, and the significance of emotional and intellectual connections in relationships.

Bela emphasizes the role of coaching in dating, shares success stories from her clients, and offers insights on finding love after loss. The conversation concludes with quickfire questions that reveal Bela's personal insights and philosophies on love and relationships. Plus, Thom gets graded by Lissa on his performance as a matchmaker.

Join us for a wild ride through the entanglements of the Chicago City Council. Axios' Justin Kaufmann jumps into our chat room to breakdown the recent ban on hemp-derived THC products.

In this episode, Mayor Brandon Johnson's budget accountability is questioned, and Lissa & Thom work through the list of issues most likely to engage voters. Plus, Justin came ready with an intoxicating number of twists that will impact the March Illinois primary and the mid-term elections in November.

This week's Crisis Cast hero is Cook County Birding Champ Tarik Shahzad.

This is a conversation about political identity with a voice of reason no matter what side of the aisle you call home. In this episode, we're joined by Pat Brady, the former chair of the Illinois Republican Party. While Lissa Druss is on assignment, Thom Serafin digs into the Trump impact on Republican identity. Brady shares his journey from federal prosecutor to pure political junkie.

Plus you're hear the issues that persist in Republican messaging and the names that appear to be the emerging leaders. Learn about this week's Crisis Cast hero: Josephine Christopher

Pulitzer prize-winner Frank Main has been covering criminal justice in Chicago since 1998. Readers of the Sun-Times are drawn to his work for heeding the journalism mantra "inflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted." In this episode of The Crisis Cast, we travel back to a discussion with Lissa & Thom about COVID's lasting impact on crime in upper Midwest cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit. They also examine two behaviors that began surging in the early 2020s at alarming rates: car-jacking and police retirements. This conversation was originally released in February 2021.