In 1900, the city of Chicago did something no city had ever done: it picked up its river and turned it around. The Chicago River had been carrying the city's sewage straight into Lake Michigan — straight into its own drinking water — feeding cholera and typhoid epidemics for decades. So Chicago dug a 28-mile canal, moved 42 million cubic yards of earth, and on one freezing January morning, cut the last dam before the state of Missouri could get a court order to stop it. Tonight: the ten-mile mud portage that made Chicago exist, the city that jacked itself up on screws, the dawn raid that reversed a river, Bubbly Creek, the 1992 flood, Poopgate, and why the river runs green every St. Patrick's Day. Just long enough to fall asleep to. 🌙
Listen here
Take your time. The story starts when you’re ready.
Settle in. There’s nothing you need to remember.
A note before you listen
Welcome back, my sleepy friends. Get comfortable, let your breathing slow, and follow along for as long as you like. If you drift off somewhere along the way, the story will keep you company.
Keep wandering
On a summer night, the darkness over a meadow is not silent. It is full of questions and answers, written in light.Each kind of firefly speaks its own pattern of flashes, and each female replies after a delay so precise it works as a password. It is a beautiful system - and it has a flaw. In the grass sits a larger, patient hunter who has learned the…
Here is a soft thought to fall asleep to: the word algebra means restoration - the mending of something broken. The same word once described the person who set your broken bone.Tonight, a gentle journey in the company of patient people. Babylonian scribes solving puzzles in wet clay at dusk. An Indian astronomer explaining negative numbers as fortunes and…
Tonight, we lie down on top of a story. After water itself, concrete is the most used substance on Earth - and there is a fair chance it is holding up your room right now. We begin beside a volcano, where Roman builders mixed lime with the ash of Vesuvius and poured harbours that grow stronger in the sea, and a dome in Rome that has carried itself, without…
Whenever you're ready
Find a comfortable corner. Let the day get a little quieter.
We’ll take it from here.
Listen your way
