Chicago questions, reported with curiosity and context.
Curious City follows questions about Chicago and the surrounding region into archives, museums, shorelines, suburbs, and policy debates. Its stories make local history feel immediate, from Great Lakes shipwrecks to early Black photography and offshore wind.
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Curious City is a Chicago reporting show organized around questions that sound simple until the answer gets interesting. The premise is civic curiosity with a reporting spine. Recent episodes trace the region through shipwrecks, lighthouses, art galleries, photography, wind energy, road salt, and suburban industrial history. The show has a clear affection for Chicago, but it does not flatten the city into nostalgia. It likes specifics. A 153-year-old lighthouse, a cast-iron staircase, an 1849 photographer, a car ban on Mackinac Island, and a Batavia mayor’s long memory all become entry points into bigger stories. The pacing is friendly and direct. It can linger on a dramatic disaster, then pivot into policy, archives, or a funny local aside without losing the thread. Lake Michigan appears often as more than scenery. It is a route for commerce, a site of danger, a clean-energy question, and a place where regional identity gathers. The historical episodes are especially strong because they connect old facts to present-day assumptions. Chicago’s first art gallery becomes a story about cultural ambition. Early Black commercial photography becomes a story about image, visibility, and consciousness. Martial law after the Great Fire becomes a cautionary civic episode rather than a museum label. The show also has a practical streak. It asks what lighthouses do now, why offshore wind has not arrived, and how a cold Midwestern community gets through winter without relying on road salt. The result is local journalism with a wide lens. It is not only for history fans. It is for people interested in how infrastructure, culture, politics, weather, water, and memory shape daily life around Chicago. Curious City makes the familiar region feel freshly reported, one question at a time.
Made for: Curious City suits Chicago-area listeners, local history fans, urbanism readers, and anyone drawn to practical questions with unexpectedly rich answers. It also works for people who like public-radio storytelling without a stiff classroom tone.
What sets it apart: The show’s edge is its listener-question structure: everyday wondering leads to archival research, field reporting, and grounded regional storytelling. It turns local details into compact civic narratives instead of treating them as trivia.
Ask questions, vote and discover answers about Chicago, the region and its people. From WBEZ.
A Pez-head monument becomes your gateway to the civic fight that kept Chicago's lakefront open.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Chicago-rooted history of soap opera that treats daytime drama as serious American culture.
This episode frames daytime drama as a Chicago story with national reach, tracing how soap opera history took shape in the city and moved into American television culture.
Philadelphia stories with civic patience.
National parks with queer history and trail banter.
Gay midlife, spoken plainly.
This episode explores the 1860 sinking of the Lady Elgin, the deadliest shipwreck in Great Lakes history, which killed 300 people.
Erin Allen introduces WBEZ's new series 'Making Stories Without End,' which explores the history and impact of daytime dramas originating in Chicago.
Curious City revisits Berlin Nightclub, the Chicago LGBTQ+ venue that closed in 2023 after nearly 40 years, while owners Jim Schumann and Joe Webster cited rising security, insurance, licensing, equipment, and rent costs.
Curious City examines Chicago’s declaration of martial law after the Great Fire of October 8, 1871, which burned for 36 hours, killed 300 people, and left 100,000 homeless.
In Curious City’s “A good lake, not a Great Lake,” a 1998 federal law briefly designated Lake Champlain as the sixth Great Lake.
Curious City investigates why Aaron Montgomery Ward, the mail-order retailer, is less visibly honored along Chicago’s lakefront despite spending more than 20 years fighting to keep Grant Park “forever open, clear, and free.” Legal scholar Tom Merrill and biographer Roberta Allen describe Ward’s lawsuits against structures including a circus tent, bicycle track, armory, and Field Museum.
Curious City editor Susie Ahn revisits Ari Mejia and Maggie Sivit’s history of Chicago-style magic, from Harry Blackstone’s meeting with young restaurant magician Matt Shulian to Justin Purcell’s performances at Logan Arcade.
A 1926 Chicago Tribune series called Dubuque, Moline, and Holland part of Chicagoland.
Jerry Marcoccia turned a 1991 volleyball game with ten people into Chicago's queer beach tradition.
This episode recounts the tragic 1860 sinking of the passenger ship Lady Elgin after a collision with the Augusta, resulting in 300 deaths and making it the deadliest shipwreck in Great Lakes history.
This episode explores the historical and current uses of Chicago-area lighthouses, focusing on their role in 19th-century maritime commerce and modern preservation.
This episode explores how early Black Chicagoans used photography during a boom period to redefine their image and community representation, connecting it to contemporary moments like Autumn Durald-Arquipa's historic Oscar win.
This episode explores the origins of Chicago's art scene by investigating what was the city's first art gallery, tracing it back to the 1840s-50s and photographer John Carl Frederick Polycarpus von Schneidau.
This episode explores whether martial law helped Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871, detailing the chaos, federal intervention, and its collapse following a civilian shooting.
This episode explores Batavia's historical claim as the 'windmill capital of the world' through an interview with the mayor and museum director, connecting it to Chicago's wind turbine discussions.
This episode explores Chicago's significant role in cinema, highlighting its architectural and neighborhood appeal in award-winning films, following up on a previous discussion about the city's best movies.
This episode explores the emotional and historical impact of the abrupt closure of Berlin Nightclub, an iconic LGBTQ+ institution in Chicago, amid unionization efforts and rising costs.
This episode explores pilot John Ginley's calm response during a critical emergency landing on Chicago's Lakeshore Drive, as he recounts his experience and the internal tension behind his composed Mayday call.
This Halloween episode of Curious City shares three true spooky stories from Chicagoans about hauntings and unexplainable supernatural encounters across the city.