John Callaway

Revisit an archival interview from 1977 with Joan Didion, the admired writer and dissecter of America who recently died at the age of 87.

Maria Tallchief, a half-Osage dancer considered one of the epitomes of American ballet in the twentieth century, was recently honored in a Google Doodle that featured footage from WTTW's archive, in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

"It's never been the Black artist's problem, it has been other people's problem," the legendary Leontyne Price told WTTW in 1981 about the lack of Black artists, specifically in opera. "It's so simplistic, it's fairly ridiculous." Watch excerpts of the archival interview. 

DuPage county, outside Chicago, took part in Jonas Salk's polio vaccine trials in 1954, a successful nationwide experiment that led to the virtual end of a terrifying disease and was called "one of the greatest events in the history of medicine." 

New Yorker writer Jane Kramer discusses the myth of the American West, the rise of big agribusiness and its effect on both traditional ranching and cows, and what bringing her daughter along on her reporting could do, in this 1978 interview from the WTTW archives. 

The author of Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X explains the origins of Roots and his difficulty in capturing the experience of being on a slave-ship in a 1976 interview. "The absence of pride changes to a presence of pride" when you know your history, he says.

Lederman, who won a Nobel Prize in 1988 for demonstrating that there are at least two kinds of particles called neutrinos, coined the Higgs boson's nickname "the God particle," and worked at Fermilab outside Chicago as well as the University of Chicago, has died at age 96.

One hundred and three years ago, on July 24, 1915, more than 800 people lost their lives in Chicago's deadliest tragedy, when a top-heavy boat rolled onto its side in the Chicago River only twenty feet from the shore. Watch an archival Chicago Stories episode about the Eastland Disaster.

"Nobody needs a book much, do they?" It's a surprising sentiment to hear coming from a writer, but in this 1981 interview with WTTW's John Callaway, John Updike discusses his impressively humble views on literature, his existential anxieties, and his goals as a writer.

The smash-hit film version of Grease premiered 40 years ago on June 16, but it was already a huge success on Broadway, and had originated as a small play in Chicago. One of its co-writers discusses its popularizing transformations into something different from the original.

The author of the world's best-selling science fiction novel discusses the broad base of knowledge he draws on in imagining other worlds, as well as his environmentalism. "I refuse to be put in the position of having to tell my grandchildren, 'I'm sorry, there's no more world for you, we used it all up.' " 

Tom Wolfe, who wrote The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities and gave us the terms "'Me' decade" and "radical chic," died yesterday at the age of 88. Watch him discuss his trademark white suit and the similarities between counterculture and evangelicalism in this archival interview.

Before watching Independent Lens: Dolores, take a look back at this 1985 interview with Dolores Huerta's compatriot and fellow labor organizer Cesar Chavez, in which he discusses his activism, the decline of labor, and the difficulties facing the movement.

Illinois just became the 37th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which sought to prohibit discrimination of women, more than 40 years after Congress approved it. Watch a 1977 interview with the woman who led the successful opposition.

In 1977, Toni Morrison spoke to WTTW's John Callaway about empathy, the importance of storytelling, and her deep love of writing in an extraordinary interview. Watch the Nobel Prize-winning novelist speak honestly early in her career.