The Weekly Show: 11/22/25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the weekly show here on iHeartRadio.
I'm Paulina, and every week we're here to discuss a
variety of topics that matter to Chicagoland. Today I'm the show.
We are chatting with Historia and Kenneth C. Davis talking
all about the World in Books. We are giving perspective
on what this holiday is all about and how Thanksgiving
got started. And I'll be chatting with our friends at

(00:20):
Lurie Children's Hospital, and we'll be talking to the Mogul
family in honor of Radiothon happening soon here in Chicago.
Let's kick off the show as.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
We prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving. For many of us, it
means family and food and football, not always necessarily in
that order, but I thought it a good time to
get some perspective about why we even celebrate this holiday
and what it's all about. So I look to get
some answers from our friend and historian Kennessey Davis. He's
the author of the Don't Know Much series of books,

(00:51):
as most recent is titled The World in Books fifty
two Works of great short nonfiction, and his website is
Don't Know Me dot com. Ken always great to speak
with you. Thanks for the time.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Thank you, Manny. And one of the things I'm grateful
for as we come around to this time of year
is being able to talk to people like you about
America and history and holidays, and it should be fun.
History is not boring. It's about real people doing real things,
and when you get to the real story, it's always

(01:25):
a lot more fascinating than the one we got in
our school.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
But well, let's talk about the real one then, because
we've been taught along those lines that the Pilgrims, the Mayflower,
Plymouth Rock and these are the times and the people
we all associate with Thanksgiving. What is wrong about that?

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Well, it's a mix of myths and mythology and mistakes.
But let's straighten it all out. First of all, what
we now call Thanksgiving was in fact a harvest festival.
For the Pilgrims, who celebrated in October, not November sixteen
twenty one. They were most mostly grateful just to be alive.

(02:05):
Half of the more than one hundred passengers who arrived
on the Mayflower in December of sixteen twenty had died
during that first very bleak winter in the Massachusetts colony
where they had landed what they called Plymouth. By the way,
there is no mention of Plymouth Rock at the time.

(02:27):
That's clearly a notion cooked up more than one hundred
years later by some enterprising local chamber of commerce or something.
So you can go there and you see that rock,
and it's behind a little fence, and it says sixteen
twenty on it, But no contemporary reference to the rock

(02:50):
when they land. Of course, there's that famous line from
Denzel Washington in Malcolm X, the Spike Lee movie. We
didn't land on Plymouth, Plymouth Rock landed on not.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
What was actually going on at the time the pilgrims.
What was it like to live in I guess even
before the colonies at that point in time.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Okay, so these people were very, very profoundly, deeply religious
Protestant sect you might call it. Some people might call
it a cult. We have to back up a little
bit here. This is the era when there's a great

(03:35):
split in the Christian Church between Catholics and Protestants. Henry
the Eighth had made his own church, called the Church
of England, and put himself at the head of it.
There were people who thought that the Church of England
hadn't gone far enough from breaking with the Catholic Church,
and they wanted to become They wanted to purify the church.

(03:58):
They were called Puritans. The people we call Pilgrims went
a step further. They wanted nothing to do with the
Church of England. They called themselves separatists. They actually left
England for a while and lived in Holland for about
ten years. Then they decided they didn't want their children
growing up in the Netherlands, where they were learning to

(04:19):
speak Dutch instead of English, and so they made this
plan to come to establish a new colony in what
was then called New England. It was also called Virginia
because Virginia had already been settled. So the Pilgrims sail
in sixteen twenty. They were supposed to leave on two boats.

(04:40):
One was not seaworthy, and so they left it behind
and they sailed on the Mayflower. They arrived first in
what is now called Provincetown, at the end of Cape
Cod in Massachusetts. They drop anchor. There the men sign
a agreement that they will be governed by a kind

(05:03):
of democratic rule, which is what we call the Mayflower Compact.
This very early expression of a sense of democracy in America.
And then they move on from Cape CODs to where
they eventually will plant a village and a colony which
they would call Plymouth. By the way. The first year,

(05:25):
as I mentioned, half of them died malnutrition exposure. These
people were clearly not well prepared for starting a new
colony in Massachusetts in December. So it was a very
very difficult first winter. And when a year went by,
most of a year and they had finally brought in harvest,

(05:49):
the survivors did get together for a day of feasting
and celebration. Actually three days. We think we spend a
lot of time at the dinner want Thanksgiving. They took
three days, and that's what eventually became kind of rooted
in our imaginations as the first Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Of course, they weren't the only people there. What was
the relationship like with I guess the Native Americans that
they encountered there, and especially on this first Thanksgiving.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Right in addition to about fifty pilgrims, only three women,
by the way were surviving. And guess who did the cooking. Yeah,
so there was unexpected company arrived in the form of
about ninety Wampanog Indians who showed up with their chief,
who was known as massasoyt As. Yet there was not

(06:43):
any hamburger helper, which I understand is really doing well
these days. The Indians went out like very good guests
and brought back venison, deer, five deer. They went out
and found them in the forest. There were many of
them around, and that was added to the menu. I
don't know if venison is on your Thanksgiving table, it's

(07:06):
not on our menu. But then this harvest feast lasted
three days. As I mentioned, there was accounts from that
time by Governor Bradford talk about having races and wrestling,
and so there was no football, but there were sports,

(07:27):
and then there was a lot of feasting. And in
addition to the venison, there would have been a lot
of seafood. They were right there on the shores of
the Atlantic, so there was duck, geese, cod, salmon, lobster, mussels, eels.
I'm sure that none of those things are on your

(07:50):
table either, as long as as well as wild onions
to make what they would have called salad salad. There
were pumpkins, but no pie, cranberries but no cranberry jelly,
and the dessert would have been cornmeal, breads and puddings,
which were traditional English savories.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
I can see why the feast took three days. Sounds
like an amazing menu I would love to partake. At
the risk of jumping forward many decades, where did the
idea of turkey come from? But because it's probably the
only animal you didn't.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
Mention, right, they did have besides duc and geese, which
was wild game, there was would have been probably wild turkey,
which is, you know, a very different animal from the
ones we're familiar with when we go to the supermarket.
So there was turkey. The idea of the turkey dinner,

(08:45):
as we know it was really more of an English
tradition that was introduced much later to America. The Christmas
goose became the Christmas turkey, and so that's how that
became more established on the American Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Were these were these fall harvest festivals something that they
were used to doing, because there were similar traditions in Europe.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yes, absolutely, And of course the Pilgrims weren't the first
to do it in sixteen twenty one. First of all,
there were accounts of the Spanish having harvest festivals, and
they had arrived much earlier than the Pilgrims. The English
in Virginia, the settlers in the Virginia Colony spoke about

(09:36):
a Thanksgiving celebration, but this one just got the publicity,
and also the fact that the New Englanders, who were
so prominent in early American history, really got to write
the history books, so they put this as they called it,

(09:56):
Founder's Day, eventually led to Thanksgiving. Now, the other interesting
piece of this is how we since it was in
October and nobody really celebrated it for a long time,
how did we get it in November, and how did
it become the day that it became. Several presidents over
time called for proclamations of Thanksgiving. George Washington did it,

(10:22):
but it had nothing to do with the Pilgrims. The
first one was for a victory at Saratoga during the Revolution.
Before we were a constitutional republic, an independent nation, but
not yet not yet a constitution, so there was no
real federal holiday. Even up until eighteen sixty three, there

(10:48):
was no national Thanksgiving holiday. Some states had Thanksgiving days,
but nothing like the tradition we think of. Abraham Lincoln
in eighteen sixty three issues a proclamation for a day
of Thanksgiving. He issues this in October, calls for the
day in November, and that's where the November date really

(11:10):
gets established. And he called for the fourth Thursday in November.
And the thing was, it had nothing to do even
still with the Pilgrims. Lincoln was just saying, in the
midst of the worst, one of the worst years of
the Civil War, Gettysburg had just taken place. He had

(11:31):
just given the Gettysburg address, opening up this cemetery in Pennsylvania.
So it was a bad time in America. But Lincoln
still felt that we should issue this this day to
be grateful for the things that we did have. By
the way, it was not meant to be a day
of celebration, but really a day of thinking humbly about

(11:54):
what we should be grateful for. It's kind of not
what we have in mind. I'm sorry, by the way,
on that point, the Pilgrims, if you said Thanksgiving to them,
a day of Thanksgiving would have meant a day of
prayer and fasting. Certainly not what most of happened in
mind for the upcoming holiday.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
A few more minutes here with historian Kennessey Davis, author
of the Don't Know Much series of books. His most
recent is The World in Books, fifty two works of
great short fiction. So how did we get to that?
And the original idea of what Thanksgiving was supposed to
be and what we celebrate today, which, as I mentioned,
is for most people about family, food and football.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Right as time went by, I mentioned that New Englander
is being very significant as people from New England went
out and spread around the country, especially more so in
the Northeast. They brought this tradition of a day of celebration,
what they call Founder's Day, the celebration of the pilgrims

(12:58):
arriving and the pure who then followed them. And as
I mentioned, there was a little bit of a difference
between Tilgrims and Puritans. The pilgrim community was eventually absorbed
into the larger community of Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Those are the people who of course brought us to
sell them witch trials, but that's another story. So these

(13:22):
people were very prominent in moving around the country, prominent
in the establishment of the country, prominent in establishment of
some of the first universities, Harvard and Yale among them.
So when they brought these traditions around to the rest
of the country. It quickly got established as a kind

(13:43):
of a national foundation story, if you will, or foundation myth,
and that's how this was attached eventually to this day
of Thanksgiving to celebrate what the Tilgrims had done in
sixteen twenty one in October and moving it into by
the way, I think Canada has its Thanksgiving in October,

(14:06):
which is more historically appropriate. But the point is, I
think that this became part of the American legend, the narrative,
and then as time went by, we got pictures of
men and women in these dark cloaks and bake hats
carrying That's really an image, it's kind of nineteenth century

(14:29):
Victorian image of what people idealized. The Puritan that looking
at the people who sat at that first so called
Thanksgiving feast would have looked nothing like that. They were
simple farmers. They would have worn probably very ragged right

(14:50):
scent of clothes, having survived that first winter.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
We have almost a cartoonish version of what it was like.
You mentioned Abraham Lincoln really was the making Thanksgiving a
national holiday. During the FDR tried to change the date
of Thanksgiving.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
Did he not, that's correct. Well, he didn't want to
change the date because there was no fixed date. But
the tradition had been making the Thanksgiving on the fourth
or sometimes the last Thursday in November. And during the
Great Depression, the retailers, the big retailers, came to Roosevelt

(15:28):
and said to him, please, mister President, move Thanksgiving up
a little bit this year. We're really struggling it with
the Great Depression. And by then we're talking about it
in the nineteen thirties. By then it was firmly established
that Thanksgiving was also the beginning of the Christmas holiday season.

(15:49):
Not to the extent that we have it today, of course,
but it was Remember that the first Macy's Parade is
in nineteen twenty four, one hundred and years ago, and
it was actually the first year it was called the
Macy's Christmas Day Christmas Parade, and of course Santa brings

(16:09):
the sleigh at the end of the parade. So this
was already something that was fixed in the commercial mind
that Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the holiday season. So
Roosevelt moved the date of his proclamation. Again, it wasn't
a national holiday up to the third Thursday in Thanksgiving,

(16:29):
just to stretch out the holiday shopping season. Well, Republicans screamed,
you can't do this. This is breaking tradition. So even
in America we can are where we argue over everything political.
They argued about the date of Thanksgiving, so it was
actually called there were states that celebrated the fourth Thursday,

(16:54):
and dates that states had celebrated the third Thursday, and
that was called, somewhat sarcastically, Franksgiving for Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The next year, Congress decided to make it official, make
Thanksgiving a national holiday, and set it where it is today,
which is the fourth Thursday in November.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
And I always learned something when I speak with you.
I had no idea that Black Friday actually started that
long ago the Christmas shopping season. The last thing for you,
what is the one part of the Thanksgiving story that
you wish Americans really knew? Because it sounds like from
your descriptions, so much of what we associate with Thanksgiving
today is not even remotely based in reality.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
No, well, it's not based in real history, and I
guess that's the point of it. And the real history,
as I said, is kind of fascinating. How did this
fellow named Squanto Pece speak perfect English. That's a great
piece of the story. That's the human He was actually
taken as a slave by an English sea captain earlier
and take into Spain and then found his way to England.

(18:03):
Really extraordinary story of how this man goes from New
England to Europe and back and is there to greet
the pilgrims and certainly does help them survive the first
Dreadful Winter. So this story of the relationship I think
between the Native Americans and the Anglo American settlers is

(18:28):
really one of the most important pieces of the story
because within a few decades those people were at war
and it was one of the most bloody conflicts of
early American history, called King Philip's War. And this is
the story that gets left out of the Christmas you know,
the Thanksgiving pageant or you know, are telling of the story.

(18:50):
And it's a fascinating story but also a reminder of
the extraordinary sacrifice that people did make to come to
this country. That's I think what we should really be
celebrating on this holiday.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Well, there's so many things that I'm thankful for. Your
friendship and my ability to learn from you is one
of them. Historian Kenneth C. Davis, author of that Don't
Know Much series of books, the most recent one The
World in Books, fifty two works of great short nonfiction.
His website is don't Know Much dot com. Ken always
appreciate the time. Happy Thanksgiving, continued success to you, Same to.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
You, Manny, Thanks to you and yours and people can
find out more about these Thanksgiving history and tradition at
don't Know much dot com. There's some blogs up there
right now on the front page. Thanks a lot. Enjoy
the holiday.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
iHeartRadio Chicago. It is Paulina here and today I get
to talk to Steve Molgel. Steve, how are you today?
I'm great, Thank you, Thank you for being here with us.
You are here representing Lari Children's Hospital. We're talking the
twenty twenty five radiothon, and of course we're talking about
you and your family story. So I would love for
you to give sort of just a little bit of

(20:04):
a summary, if you will, of your story and how
both of your daughters, right I believe, what are their names,
Hailey and Barry, Hailey and Barry, and Hailey and Barry
are now twenty seven and twenty one years old.

Speaker 4 (20:15):
Yeah, Bury will turn twenty one next month, but yes.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Wow, well happy birthday.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
And I think that your you know, your story is
incredible and your families and today of course you sit
on the Lury Children's Foundation board as well, so you
have been I mean you've been around since since children
Memorials Hospital days and we talked about that off the air. Yes,
that is incredible. So you you know you and your family,
your your beautiful, strong daughters. I want to sort of

(20:40):
for you to share your story with us here on
the radio and of course tell us why Lury Children's
Hospital is so important to you.

Speaker 4 (20:48):
When Hailey was about a year and a half old,
which was April of two thousand, she was rushed down
to the emergency room of Children's Memorial at the time,
and that was as a parent having a kid. You
get rushed down to the emergency room and you don't
know what's wrong. It's a complete feeling of helplessness. You

(21:13):
haven't got a clue what's going on, and nothing else
matters to you at that point in life, money, material things, nothing.
Haley was in the hospital for seven days. We met
with some of the best experts known to mankind. During
those seven days, we met with what would be our

(21:35):
geneticist for the next two decades, are urologist for the
next two decades, and our general internest at the hospital
for the next fifteen years. We went through tests that
would you go on for years and years and years,

(21:58):
multiple hospital stays. We were counseled to go to Saint
Louis Children's Duke Medical Center, the Cleveland Clinic, and then
from council we went to the National Institute of Health
and there with Lourie Children's we finally got a partial
diagnosis for our girls, and then we found out how

(22:25):
rare they are.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
Yeah, tell us about those diagnoses if you don't mind.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
Chailie has Smith macginnis syndrome, and normally Smith McGinnis syndrome.
There's a deletion a on part of a gene. She
has a mutation, so that makes it even more rare.
So maybe there's a few thousand kids in the world
with this kind of deletion. She's a mutation, so that's

(22:50):
a little bit different. Barry. Yeah, has a grin to
be mutation. Now grin to be that particular gene is
responsible for Parkinson's autism and Alzheimer's that's partially responsible in there. Now,
on top of that, both girls share an underlying metabolic disease. Now,

(23:12):
the way I can best describe it to you is
when we all as adults or kids, when we get
the flu, okay, we don't feel like eating or drinking.
When these kids get sick, they have a hypoglycemic episode,
meeting the sugar drops off a cliff. That means they
have to get hospitalized and get iv'ed until they get better.

(23:34):
So they've been hospitalized plenty of times. I've estimated that
I've stayed at the hospital well over a thousand days.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
That's a lot. That's been a lot for your family. Absolutely, yes,
And you know, as far as Haley and Berry's condition,
they are super rare and they're complex, and I think
you've definitely explained that you know to and we're able
to share that with our listeners today. But how did
it having a dedicated team at Lurie's Children's change the
path for your family?

Speaker 4 (24:09):
Having a quarterback, having the dedicated team helps immensely, immensely.
Whether we had a geneticist on our team at that time,
Doctor Barbara Burton who would never give up on our kids.

(24:31):
She was a driving force and said, I want to
know everything about these kids and whether the kids needed
a biopsy, whether they needed ear cleaning, whether they needed
their tonsils out, whether they needed this, they needed that.
She quarterbacked everything in the hospital for us, and it

(24:54):
was such a relief to know that we had what
the top pediatric geneticist behind our two kids. Yeah, quarterbacking
for us.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Oh absolutely, And as parents, I'm sure that make you
feel very seen, very supported, absolutely, which is I think
what you need in those moments, right in that period
of time, absolutely for you and your daughters. And you know,
I'm very curious to Steve, how has your families experienced
shaped the way that you show up for their families
who are still searching for a diagnosis or you know,
the right care team.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
You know, I tell them that that Lourie Children's is
by far the best pediatric hospital. And you know, obviously
my wife Robin and I have visited, as you already heard,
plenty of other places. I would put our team up
against any other team in the nation. Okay, we've got
the best and the brightest. I describe our doctors out

(25:54):
there as brilliant with compassion. Okay, they listen and they're
brilliant and they really understand and and how have I
helped someone? You know, if someone comes to me and

(26:17):
they need to get an appointment, God forbid, we know
the healthcare system isn't the best, I'll find a way
to get them in.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
I think that's incredible and so reassuring for so many
parents who might be experiencing the same thing that you
know you and your family went through, or you know,
just anyone anyone truly listening right that wants to support
Larry Children's. I think, you know, your story is so powerful,
So thank you for sharing.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
Well you think about you think about you know, when
my wife and I decided to give back in a
philanthropic way, and there's a lot of great charities out there,
but helping out sick kids is such a pure charity.
It really is. You can't throw a stone at that.

(27:04):
You think about it. You give money to a llury
Children's and you're helping sick kids, right, It's pure, It
really is.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
It's the purest form I think of giving back. It
really is.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
I agree, And you know, these kids obviously are you know,
can't help themselves. They're not of adult age. So this
is my motivation. Absolutely, these doctors help my kids, and
you know, they continue to help my kids, and I
want to help them.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
And then also see from your perspective on the Luriy
Children's Foundation Board, where do donations make a tangible difference
for families like yours, for today and even the next generation.

Speaker 4 (27:46):
You know, louri Children's is making massive gains and massive
strides in the world of genetics, in the world of
cardiovascular I'll tell you this when when I first onto
the Foundation board and I've been on the foundation board
now going on over two decades. Okay, my first meeting

(28:09):
on the Foundation board, there was a doctor that presented
and this was back in two thousand and three. The
doctor said, my fantasy in two thousand and three was
to do intrauteral surgeries and help and fix things that

(28:33):
are wrong intrauteral. Ten years later, we hired the best
intrautero team and we are doing intrautero surgeries fixing complex pregnancies.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
Wow right now, Wow, that is incredible And.

Speaker 4 (28:54):
And the speed of change in medicine is nominal genetics, medicine,
you name it, but it's most important. It's all with
brilliance and compassion. If your child, God forbid, has an issue,

(29:17):
you want to know that you're with someone brilliant and compassionate.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
That's what I was going to ask you for parents
listening who may feel overwhelmed by uncertainty, right, and I
know at one point that was you and your wife.
What's one piece of advice that you wish you uh
someone had given you early on?

Speaker 4 (29:36):
If if if if one piece of advice is take
take a step back and listen to the doctors. Don't
get overwhelmed. You're with the best.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
In the world.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
Really, absolutely, you're absolutely with the best in the world.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Absolutely. And then also our family's listening to who may
have never a scept you know, foot inside Lurie's Children's.
What would you tell them about why this hospital deserves
their support.

Speaker 4 (30:08):
If if you talk to anybody in the sixty eighty
miles Chicago Greater metropolitan area, there isn't an adult that
you can touch that doesn't know somebody who hasn't been
affected by Louri Children's. It's impossible. That's how big Louri
Children's is. Everybody knows of a story, a family member,

(30:34):
a cousin, a nephew, Yeah, who has been affected by
Lourie Children's Hospital. It's omnipresent in the Chicago Land area
and we're all over the country. We're bringing in people internationally.
The point is we give the best care known to

(30:54):
mankind and like I said, helping out sick kids, it's
a pure giving philosophy.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. And Steve, last question for you,
how are your girls doing today? I need to know
about Haley and Barry. What are they up to? I
mean twenty seven at almost twenty one.

Speaker 4 (31:18):
Haley's in a day program. She's loving her day program.
And Barry is gonna be twenty one. She's still in
her school. She's loving her school. So you know, it's great.
And I'll tell you this, Having special needs kids makes
you look at the world differently, absolutely and appreciate the
little things.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Steve, I couldn't agree with you more. Thank you so
much for being here and sharing your story with us
with our listeners. Can we get really quickly just details
on how we can visit Lurie Trodon's Hospital, how we
can donate, give back and then also be involved in
radiothon and when is that happening. Sure.

Speaker 4 (31:55):
The radiothon is December eleventh, and you can give Itlrichildren
dot org absolutely and love to have everybody and everything
tune in and click on the website and.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
Give absolutely Steve Mogel thank you for being here thoughs today.
We appreciate you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much,
and thank you for listening to the Weekly show here
on iHeartRadio. You can find this and all previous episodes
up on our free iHeartRadio app. Just simply search for
the Weekly Show. Thank you and we will talk to
you again next weekend.