WBEZ is supported by Chicago Humanities, presenting its spring festival on April 27th in Lakeview,

with historians Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder, Jonathan Blitzer on Immigration,

University of Chicago professor Agnes Collard on Socrates,

and documentaries Unblocked Englewood by Chicago's Tanika Lewis Johnson,

and Beyond closure on the 2013 Chicago Public School closures. Tickets, Englewood by Chicago's Tanika Lewis Johnson and Beyond Closure on the 2013 Chicago Public School closures.

Tickets and more conversations on arts, culture, and current affairs at Chicago Humanities.org.

I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still watch them.

Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns.

Now let me tell you, soap operas aren't just some silly art form.

They are significant.

In this season of Making, Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago, join me as I share how the

genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.

Listen, wherever you get your podcast.

From WB.EZ Chicago, I'm Greta Johnson, and this is the Nerdat Book Club.

It's just like a regular

book club, except sometimes the author stops by. It is the month of March, and our selection this time

around is Kaveh Akbar's novel, Murder, exclamation point. It is about Cyrus, who is an absolute

mess, but he is contending with a lot. He and his dad moved from Iran to Indiana after his mom died

when he was little. Since then, his father has also died and Cyrus is struggling with addiction. He has

never slept well. And everything is deeply depressing. He's a poet, but he's not sure what that even

means. And he's haunted by existential questions about what makes life worth living and whether anything is worth dying for.

When he learns about an Iranian artist exploring similar questions at an exhibit in New York, he hits the road to learn as much as he can.

...