Upon meeting Patrick McBriarty he often delightfully explains how he lives under a bridge, since authoring his first book, the award-winning Chicago River Bridges.  What McBriarty often fails to mention is the documentary Chicago Drawbridges, he co-produced with Stephen Hatch, which aired on Chicago and Milwaukee Public Television before his first book was published.  Yet, he happily shares his children’s books which introduce kids (and adults) to STEM topics.  The picture book series Drawbridges Open and Close, Airplanes Take Off and Land, and City Railways Go Above and Below was designed to inspire future builders, designers, architects, pilots, and hands-on learners, AND as a salve to McBriarty’s decades-old frustration at completing a masters degree in economics and then learning he should have studied engineering!

He won’t go on about Douglas Adams or J.R.R. Tolkien, two of his favorite authors, instead he prefers to explain his penchant for deep dives into multi-year history projects since leaving the corporate world several years ago.  And that he and co-host Chris Lynch created the Windy City Historians podcast as simply a fun idea, which has morphed into something much larger.  For more about Patrick go to: http://pmcbriarty.com/