Have you ever wished you could travel back in time and uncover the history of the very ground beneath your feet? That's exactly what WTTW host Geoffrey Baer does in Chicago Time Machine, peeling back layers of fascinating stories from all over Chicagoland, going back as far as 14,000 years. From a notorious vice district south of the Loop, where crooked ward bosses went by names like Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink, to Wicker Park at the end of the Ice Age when prehistoric giant beavers roamed freely, this is Chicago history like you have never quite seen it. Along the way, Baer uncovers a World War II aircraft engine plant that now houses a mall and makes Tootsie Rolls, a decommissioned limestone quarry retrofitted as a neighborhood fishing pond, and a quiet River North alley where four notorious executions took place in 1887. Every corner of this city has a story, and most of them are stranger than fiction.

This free program is open to the public. It is approximately 1 hour and 22 minutes, not rated and made possible through PBS.