December 28, 2025 – Reader Publisher Todd McGreevy joins Jason Bermas for the weekly Deep in the Weeds while Making Sense of the Madness on December 28. Typically Jason is live Friday mornings with Aaron Dail on WQUD 107.7FM at 9am. This holiday week McGreevy joins Bermas for a one hour video broadcast you can watch here or listen to above in the player.
Topics include Automatic License Plate Readers and a new Iowa ACLU Report as well as Election Integrity and lack of transparency in the Scott County Auditor’s office, and much more.
December 16, 2025 original broadcast on WQUD 107.7 FM – River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy and WQUD GM Aaron Dail indulge in their monthly audio tête-à-tête, this one concerning the December edition of the Reader. Dail gets right into it about his distrust of all things AI. Those who see the artistic benefits of AI — as a relatively new platform for art, is it awaiting its Stanley Kubrick? — might want to ask, Will the political consequence of AI necessarily lead us into the plot of a Stanley Kubrick film?
Original broadcast on WQUD 107.7 FM November 12, 2025 – River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy and WQUD GM Aaron Dail bid Neil Young a happy eightieth birthday, extol Gov’t Mule’s cover of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs, and give big ups to the Reader’s promotion of Jason Bermas’s Deep in The Weeds:A Rough Cut — Bermas himself being a recurring feature on WQUD. (JB can also be heard on his podcast, Making Sense of the Madness with Jason Bermas.) McGreevy and Dail run through their disagreement about the influence of AI: Dail thinks it’s insidious all around, while McGreevy believes its application in the arts, particularly music, will be salutary (perhaps as long as musicians use AI to help figure out how their individual arrangements are going to sound, and not act as a replacement for their own creativity, by which point AI will be using other AI results for its search parameters and wind up producing an incestuous beast of tired clichés and banal sounds which no one will want to listen to, and the market will respond accordingly).
River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy talks with WQUD GM Aaron Dail on May 13, 2025, concerning the May issue of the Reader, Issue 1033. Dail says that anyone who wants to pitch Netflix a series called City of Davenport would need look no further than the Reader’s coverage. One could get a whole season’s worth from the fallout from the 28 May 2023 collapse of The Davenport — an ostensible drama of intrigue, official-capacity opacity, and Scott County equivocation, which plays like an old Three Stooges short directed by David Mamet. And that’s just a season.
River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy talks with WQUD GM Aaron Dail about the contents of, and items related to, the November edition of the River Cities’ Reader, Issue N° 1027. With Hugh Grant’s wide-eyed visage adorning the cover, and a review by Mike Schulz of Heretic, the film HG made with Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the film poster’s tagline, “Question Everything,” remains as pertinent as ever. They are certainly words to live by.
River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy talks with WQUD GM Aaron Dail about the contents of, and items related to, the October edition of the River Cities’ Reader, Issue N° 1026. The issue’s tagline, “Ballets and Ballots,” is an apt summation, and you can get more of the former — the aht, the cultchuh, the cine, the théâtre, the musique, the danse — at the Reader Events Calendar. It truly is the best way to know what’s going on in the QCA. Continue reading Todd McGreevy & AD in the Morning on WQUD Discuss the October Edition of River Cities’ Reader→
River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy talks with WQUD GM Aaron Dail about the contents of the August edition of the River Cities’ Reader. With Floatzilla and Alternating Currents both wound down (the interview took place on 16 August), it’s time again to feed your heads the old-fashioned way — by reading stuff. Preferably stuff with heft. Stuff for discerning eyeballs. Stuff that reminds you of your rights and responsibilities as a citizen.
River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy talks with WQUD GM Aaron Dail about skateboarding down by the HESCO barriers (good times), the absence of Buried Stories (temporary), and whether TM will make good on an alleged promise and get a tattoo of Julian Assange on his back (will get back to you on that one).
River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy talks with WQUD Morning Show host Pat Jones, who’s taken over the spot from GM Aaron Dail, re recent highlights, both online and within Issue N° 1021. These include the Reader‘s entries for its Spring 2024 Photo Contest (with the winning entry, Kevin Richard Schafer’s “Secret,” as well as the image you see before you) and articles by Kathleen McCarthy (Scott County Appointments to Elected Offices Keep Records Secret and Not Transparent), Rochelle Arnold (Carbon Wolves Pause, For Now), and Ezra Sidran PhD (What We Know Now a Year After the 324 Main Street Disaster). Transparency is the issue’s theme, in particular the QCA’s perennial observance of it in the breach. Forthcoming regional events include the May 28 show by Chicago, a band that’s been together for nearly sixty years and would likely continue for another sixty, were humans not such frail animals, vulnerable at last to the ravages of age. (Jones mentions how his brother would break out the latest Chicago album every time he broke up with his high-school girlfriend — leaving one to ask, How many girlfriends did he have, really? Because Chicago had an album for every year of the Seventies and every other year of the Eighties. That seems to be the window, anyway.) McGreevy also boldfaces Bruce Walters’s Buried Stories: Louie Bellson (1924-2009) as a recommended feature, as local history shot through the lens of gravesites retains a certain evergreen fascination. Walters, who has contributed essays and illustrations for many years, will submit his final work for the Reader, as he is at work on a book — props, Bruce, and thanks for the memories. . .
River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy talks with WQUD GM Aaron Dail and Pat Jones, Sancho Panza to Dail’s Don Quixote, re recent highlights, both online and within Issue N° 1019. Joining the two for half of the discussion is Li Arellano, the former mayor of Dixon, Illinois, and one of three Republicans vying for the open 37th District state Senate seat at present. (The other candidates are Chris Bishop, former Dixon teacher and a member of the Dixon City Council, and Tim Yager, a member of both the Henry County Board and the Henry County Farm Bureau.) McGreevy solicits Arellano’s opinion re the recent state efforts to push Donald Trump off their ballots — since decided by the Supreme Court to be the provenance of Congress, not the states — and both question the legality of such efforts, given that (to date) Trump hasn’t been convicted of any federal offense that would mandate such pre-emptive actions.
