Added 5.29.18. Milt sits down with three Chicago restaurant industry denizens to discuss the ins and outs of the business. They are GianCarlo Nardini, co-owner of Club Lago; Michael Taus, then chef-owner of Zealous; and Liz Van Leeuwen, then front of the house manager at Avec, a Mediterranean dining establishment. They dine out on a broad menu of topics including how to read – and sometimes – console your customers; handling difficult diners; the glories of communal seating, octopus and eel; and where to get the best steak dinner in Chicago.

Added 5.22.18. From not-so-distant decades when aldermen and committeemen had the Real Juice, to the present day where power is more concentrated in the Mayor’s Office, novelist Mark M. Quinn in this 2009 conversation with Milt explores the fascinating and dismaying ins and outs of Chicago political corruption. It’s a somewhat fluid and nuanced thing, and will likely remain so. Quinn had just authored a roman-a-clef titled, “The Chairman – A Novel Of Big City Politics.”

Added 5.22.18. In this 2012 episode, Milt talks with two experts about man’s similarities and differences with primates. Is our own free will to some extent an illusion, because we’re hard wired to act in certain ways in certain situations? Discussants probe the tension between our biological programming and our higher nature, which stems from a more acute consciousness, ethics and the physical ability to produce nuanced linguistic expression. Guests are Paul Reber, Northwestern University psychologist and head there of the Brain, Behavior and Cognition program; and Dario Maestripieri, author of “Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation Of The Evolution And Economics Of Human Relationships.”

Added 5.22.18. Never one to shy away from the classics, Milt in this 2012 episode delves into what comprises the canon of classic American fiction. His guests are Professors of English Priscilla Perkins of Roosevelt University and Kenneth Warren of the University of Chicago. Together they delve into questions such as “what makes Nathaniel Hawthorne great?

Added 5.15.18. Milt in 1982 goes mano a mano with Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko, in this rare and revealing interview. The author of penetrating current-events, cultural and political essays – in the Chicago Daily News and later the Sun-Times and Tribune – under Milt’s questioning delves into his remarkable rib-cooking prowess, the politics of Chicago snow, the growing fiscal and political weakness of large U.S. cites, and of course, Chicago politics, its Machine and mayors. Royko also discusses how he does what he does; proffers an argument for greater handgun control laws; and argues for getting out the vote – over boycotts and protests.

Added 5.15.18. Guests are prominent radio historian Fred MacDonald, and Matthew Erlich, author of “Radio Utopia: Post-War Audio Documentary In The Public Interest.” With Milt, they discuss how popular U.S. radio shows helped shape public consciousness in the years following World War II. Themes included the fight against fascism, poverty and hunger, global stability, race relations, and the role of the individual in society.

Added 5.15.18. In this brief historical excerpt shortly following the 1973 publication of a young, Cambridge-educated Arianna Huffington’s critique of Western feminism, “The Female Woman,” Milt opens the disquisition with an admittedly chauvinist question: “What’s a nice Greek girl like you doing taking on the women’s liberation movement?” Arianna explains that although there has been no shortage of male chauvinist pigs to which she has been exposed in her homeland, and while she fully supports equal opportunity and equal pay, she was “repelled” by modern Western feminism for denigrating traditional female values and roles. Then she faces callers to the show.

Added 5.10.18. In this 2012 interview, Milt with author Paul Dickson brings to life the epic adventures of Major League Baseball’s most prodigious innovator, the larger-than-life Bill Veeck. The Baseball Hall of Famer – and owner, variously, of the Cleveland Indians, Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Browns – managed to offend and irritate other owners at the same time he delighted fans and sportswriters. To delve into Veeck’s colorful family, personal and professional history is to go on a ride across the landscape of broader 20th Century American culture and society. Dickson’s storytelling on this episode puts the listener right in the middle of it all. He is the author of 60 books including an equally colorful biography of Leo Durocher, and “Dickson’s Baseball Dictionary.”

Added 5.8.18. Milt in 2010 talked with author Bart Madden about what Madden calls the “invisible graveyard” of patients who “are dying needlessly because they are denied timely access to the most innovative new drugs.” Drawing from his book, “Free To Choose Medicine” Madden argues that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bears considerable responsibility for the problem. Offering additional perspectives are two other guests. They are Jeffrey M. Senger, a former Acting Chief Counsel at the FDA and partner at the Washington, D.C. office of Sidley and Austin; and emeritus professor of economics at the University of Chicago, Sam Peltzman.

Added 5.7.18. Milt opens up the line to callers to talk about an epidemic of street violence including 11 fatal shootings and the wounding of 43 others over Chicago’s 2012 Memorial Day weekend. Unfortunately, the storyline gained impetus in the years to follow. Hear what Chicagoans calling in to the show, and public officials, had to say then.