Rick Kogan – Page 12 –

A photograph from the Smithsonian Institution Archives is captioned, "Velero crew visiting the Baroness' house. Captain Alan Hancock seated at table. Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn and Robert Phillipson standing on right. Hancock Pacific-Galapagos Expeditions, 1933-1935." It appears in Abbott Kahler's book "Eden Undone: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II" (Crown / 2024). (Provided by the Allan Hancock Foundation at the University of Southern California)

Column: Abbott Kahler’s ‘Eden Undone’ tells the story of how a nightmare was created on a lonely island

August 20, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.

This nonfiction story, subtitled "A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II," is also the subject of the new Ron Howard film "Eden."

Jim Dooley, a member of the longtime Chicago band The Dooley Brothers, died Aug. 8, 2025. (Mike Dooley)

Column: Remembering Jim Dooley of The Dooley Brothers, the man and his music

August 19, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.

Jim and his musical family had performed in Chicago for many years. They were once called “the longest continuously running band in the Chicago area after the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.”

Gemini 12 astronauts James Lovell, right, and Edwin Aldrin keep an eye on their spacecraft instruments during a countdown rehearsal on Nov. 1, 1966 at Cape Kennedy, Florida. (NASA)

Column: Remembering astronaut Jim Lovell, one of a rare kind

August 12, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.

It is a long way from Lake Forest to the moon — 240,000 miles, give or take — and Jim Lovell made that trip twice, seeing things that few people...

Jeremy McCarter, director and adapter of audio drama “Hamlet,” at Tightrope Recording in the Uptown neighborhood on Aug. 4, 2025. The Make-Believe Association, which McCarter founded, produced the “Hamlet” adaptation. (Eileen T. Meslar/baiduhai)

Column: A new podcast seeks to put you in ‘Hamlet’s’ head

August 6, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.

Jeremy McCarter of the Make-Believe Association has created a podcast version of Shakespeare's play that puts you inside his thoughts, and him in yours.

Musician Tom Lehrer sits beside the piano in his house in Santa Cruz, Calif., April 21, 2000. Accompanying himself on the piano in the 1950s and early 1960s, Lehrer wrote and recorded brilliantly crafted, scathingly sarcastic tunes that poked fun at all the major issues of the day. (Paul Sakuma/AP)

Column: Celebrating the one and only Tom Lehrer, the satirical voice of generations

August 5, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.

Tom Lehrer died on July 26 at 97, living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The radioactive plume from the bomb dropped on Nagasaki City, as seen from 9.6 km away, in Koyagi-jima, Japan on Aug. 9, 1945. The US B-29 superfortress Bockscar dropped the atomic bomb nicknamed 'Fat Man,' which detonated over the northern part of Nagasaki City just after 11am. (Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum/Getty Images)

Column: On an August anniversary, memories of the atomic bomb from a crew member who dropped it on Nagasaki

July 30, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.

The late Ray Gallagher of Chicago's Gage Park neighborhood was an assistant flight engineer on the B-29 that dropped the bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki 80 years ago.

An exhibit patron looks over work as a Portrait of Richard Hunt, by Harry Alan, hangs on the wall as part of the Freedom in Form: Richard Hunt exhibit at the Loyola University Museum of Art in Chicago, July 25, 2025. (Antonio Perez/baiduhai)

Column: New Richard Hunt exhibit takes the measure of the artist and the man

July 29, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.

“Freedom in Form: Richard Hunt” at the Loyola University Museum of Art displays much of the artist's work, with the exception of the huge outdoor monuments and sculptures that can...

Singer-songwriter Alyssa Allgood performs with her quintet at the Jazz Showcase, July 20, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/baiduhai)

Young singer-songwriter Alyssa Allgood makes the Jazz Showcase Wall of Fame

July 23, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.

Alyssa Allgood started singing when she was in the sixth grade and she is singing still, as she was last weekend at Jazz Showcase, that South Loop treasure.

Boho Bouquet Bar owner Amy Lechelt prepares her flowers for sale from her pink Mercedes Benz on July 18, 2025, on North Rush Street in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago. (Dominic Di Palermo/baiduhai)

Column: Amy Lechelt’s flower shop floats through town in a pink Mercedes

July 25, 2025 at 1:42 p.m.

Amy Lechelt of Boho Bouquet Bar drives around in a 2003 Mercedes-Benz convertible painted a dazzling pink, its back seat filled with all types of flowers.

John Scopes, center, seated next to his father, Thomas Scopes, is on trial for teaching human evolution in violation of Tennessee's Butler Act in July 1925. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)

Column: Returning again to the Scopes ‘monkey trial,’ and what I learned

July 16, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.

We've reached the 100th anniversary of the court case about teaching evolution in the classroom. Did you know that Scopes passed up offers of riches and instead came to the...

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