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Making

by WBEZ Chicago
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Latest episodes

  • Becoming Bovino

    December 23, 2025 · 34 min

    Who is Gregory Bovino? For months, the Border Patrol Commander-at-Large led agents through Chicago on an aggressive immigration enforcement campaign, while making sure his noticeably uncovered face was in front of as many cameras as…

  • A new era for daytime soaps operas: Beyond the Gates

    May 20, 2025 · 38 min

    A Chicago woman, Irna Phillips, birthed the daytime serial — and a Chicago woman, Michele Val Jean, is ushering in new interest in the genre. Val Jean has written for several shows, including Generations, Santa Barbara, General Hospital…

  • Behind the curtain at 'Days of Our Lives': The lights, the sets, the pink coat

    May 13, 2025 · 19 min

    Go behind the scenes at Days of Our Lives in Burbank, California. Hear from actors, set designers and wardrobe as we pull back the curtain on how soaps manage to come on five days a week, every week — no reruns. Plus, we take you back to…

  • TV wouldn't be TV without soap operas

    May 6, 2025 · 30 min

    Without soaps, we wouldn't have melodramas or reality shows. Without soaps, we wouldn't have many of the TV tropes and shows we love to stream and binge-watch. Cliffhangers, serials, vixens — in television storytelling, all come from…

  • Soaps take the lead on nuanced storylines about queer life

    April 29, 2025 · 34 min

    Before the mainstreaming of Ellen and the hit show Will and Grace, soaps did their best to bring tenderness to LGBTQ+ storylines. That's the nature of the form: It gives room for anyone and everyone to be complex, fleshed out, loved and…

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  • Black actors don't want to be your sidekick

    April 22, 2025 · 40 min

    From Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee on The Guiding Light to the first Black super-couple, Jesse and Angie on All My Children, Black soap actors have been on the canvas. According to an executive at CBS, Black women overindex as soap watchers…

  • In the world of soaps, women's issues take front-burner status

    April 15, 2025 · 34 min

    Irna Phillips created the cliff-hanger in broadcast storytelling and perfected the serial drama, first in radio, then on television. She mentored the creators of All My Children, One Life to Live, The Young and the Restless and The Bold…

  • Meet Irna Phillips: The Queen of Daytime

    April 8, 2025 · 22 min

    Soap operas have long been trivialized as low-brow women's entertainment. Even the term “soap” is pejorative when describing television. But there's a deeper story to tell about the genre that changed storytelling on the small…

  • TRAILER: Stories Without End

    March 6, 2025 · 2 min

    Soap operas are the foundation of American television storytelling. From early radio days in the 1930s to the invention of TV to streaming, soaps have endured by telling intergenerational family stories. Daytime dramas are an important…

  • Making Jordan Peele

    May 18, 2023 · 39 min

    Jordan Peele is responsible for modern classics in the horror genre, including the films Us, Nope and the Oscar-winning Get Out. Before all that, he was a self-described nerd. He majored in puppetry in college before dropping out with his…

  • Making Kanye

    May 4, 2023 · 39 min

    Part 1: Touch the sky. Before becoming a cultural lightning rod, Kanye West was a self-confident teenager, handing out mixtapes on the South and West sides of Chicago. In the first episode of our two-part podcast series, we track Kanye's…

  • Unmaking Kanye

    May 4, 2023 · 38 min

    Part 2: It all falls down. Ye becomes a mouthpiece for the more sinister parts of American society. In the second episode of our two-part podcast series, hear from friends, journalists, activists, fans (and former fans) on Ye's second…

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About the show

WBEZ's critically-acclaimed bio-podcast series explores how icons, industries and newsmakers rose to the top.