Chicago

For Helfer, vintage piano dialects are living traditions, not museum exhibits. The 85-year-old Chicago musician helps keep those traditions alive — and passes that knowledge on — with a new album.

Guest interviewer Sam Sanders interviews Aaron Sorkin about his new film 'The Trial of the Chicago 7.'

Alex Kotlowitz discusses the people whose lives were changed or lost due to gun violence in Chicago one summer. He likens the trauma of living with gun violence to the PTSD some veterans experience.

Activist, filmmaker and writer dream hampton executive produced Surviving R. Kelly, a six-part docuseries focusing on Kelly's alleged victims and their family members.

Ameena Matthews is a former gang member who now works to stop retaliatory gang violence in some of Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods. She is one of the subjects of a new documentary called The Interrupters.

Singer-songwriter Brian Carpenter has cited places like Coney Island and the Florida Panhandle as inspiration for his work. On his latest album, Hothouse Stomp, Carpenter musically travels back to the jazz scene in 1920s Harlem and Chicago.

It's not unusual to get in a cab and find a paperback novel on the seat next to the driver. What makes Jack Clark's cab different is that he's both the driver and the author. Clark is a Chicago cab driver who's been driving for 30 years — and written three mystery novels.

Jonathan Eig's new book Get Capone reveals new insights about the famous Chicago gangster — including how freely he spoke to reporters, the time he shot himself in the groin, and how venereal disease eventually robbed him of his health and sanity.

In 1975, Michael Abrasion decided to photograph the blues clubs of Chicago. The pictures Abramson took in Pepper's Hideout, among other venues, have been released in a set called Light on the South Side. Jazz critic Ed Ward takes a listen to Pepper's Jukebox, the CD released along with the photographs.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and the American Experimental Music by George E. Lewis. The book tracks the history of Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, an organization that promoted the development of new jazz styles.

Barack Obama has been portrayed as an outsider candidate — an idealist not mired in the political game. But Ryan Lizza says that a look at Obama's political history in Chicago might offer a different view of the candidate. Lizza is the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, and has been tracking the Obama campaign.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a recently re-released 1940 recording from pianist Frank Melrose called Bluesiana.

The new film The Weatherman stars Nicholas Cage and Michael Caine. Film critic Daivd Edelstein has a review.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews An Unfinished Season, by Ward Just. He's known for weaving American history and politics into his fiction. This book is set in Chicago during the Eisenhower years.

His new book is Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. It*s about a 1995 heat wave in that city which proved to be an insidious natural disaster. Streets buckled, electric power blew, and over 700 people died. Klinenberg is an associate professor of Sociology at New York University.

Venkatesh, an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of African American Studies at Columbia University in New York. His newest book –American Project: The Rise and Fall of the Modern Ghetto,— (Harvard 2000) was awarded the 2000 Professional/ Scholarly Publishing Award of the Association of American Publishers. His research interests are based in investigating the social organization of poor urban neighborhoods. He lives in New York City.

Authors Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor are the authors of American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley, His Battle for Chicago and the Nation” (Little, Brown & Co). In the book, the authors look at Daley’s legacy, how he transformed Chicago into a modern metropolis, but also turned it into the nation’s most segregated city.

Royko died Tuesday at the age of 64. For more than 30 years, Royko has written a column on happenings in his native Chicago and throughout the world. Royko has earned the Pulitzer, the Mencken, and Pyle Awards. His column was carried in more than 800 papers. Royko also wrote "Boss," a best-selling portrait of Chicago mayor Richard Daley. (Originally aired 10/26/89)

Rock historian Ed Ward looks at Chicago's contribution to music. Artists discussed include Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Fontella Bass, The Dels, The Chi-Lites, and Earth, Wind, and Fire.