Sarah Vowell
speaker
165 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 28 Jun
Sarah Vowell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
And just a short walk from there is the building where Hugh Hefner ran Playboy magazine during its heyday.
As long as we're on the subject of the decline of Western civilization, if you look over there to the second story of the NBC Tower, tucked between the Equitable and the Tribune, that's where they taped the Jerry Springer show.
The Jerry Springer Show.
It just wouldn't be the haunted landscape around the Michigan Avenue Bridge if some symbolic television apocalypse did not happen here each day.
Booking guests whose near-constant profanity makes the show into an unintelligible barrage of bleeps.
Watching it is like listening to a constant storm warning, which is exactly what it is.
Maybe it's just a coincidence, but one way you can measure the importance of this corner to our national psyche is the number of times it shows up in motion pictures, specifically the action-adventure kind.
Bruce Willis, Samuel Jackson, Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Tommy Lee Jones, Wesley Snipes, Harrison Ford, Kevin Spacey.
There's barely an actor worth the cover of Entertainment Weekly who hasn't been in a film with a scene shot right at the corner.
And why?
Because these films are about the motion of planes, trains, automobiles, boats, helicopters, motorcycles, every modern means of transportation.
And so where better to film them than the place that three centuries ago was spotted as our country's leading transportation hub by Hollywood's favorite unintentional location scout, Louis Joliet.
In one typical offering, Chain Reaction, Keanu Reeves plays a fugitive, motorcycle-riding University of Chicago machinist being framed for murder, treason, and terrorism.
Being framed is usually a big part of all these movies.
Attempting to elude the police, he's chased down Michigan Avenue to the Michigan Avenue Bridge.
The bridge starts opening, and Keanu scurries up, a cop not far behind.
He does a little better than Vincent the Schemer Drucci did in the 20s, but then Keanu's a movie star, has a stunt double, and can do retakes.
As the angle of the raised bridge gets steeper, the cop slides to the bottom.
Keanu's at the top.
What should he do?
Showing 121–140 of 165 · page 7 of 9
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