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Cooked: Survival by Zip Code

Cooked: Survival by Zip Code tells the story of the tragic 1995 Chicago heatwave, the most traumatic in U.S. history, in which 739 citizens died over the course of just a single week, most of them poor, elderly, and African American. Cooked is a story about life, death, and the politics of crisis in an American city that asks the question: Was this a one-time tragedy, or an appalling trend?

Trailer | Cooked: Survival by Zip Code

30s

Cooked: Survival by Zip Code tells the story of the tragic 1995 Chicago heatwave, the most traumatic in U.S. history, in which 739 citizens died over the course of just a single week, most of them poor, elderly, and African American. Cooked is a story about life, death, and the politics of crisis in an American city that asks the question: Was this a one-time tragedy, or an appalling trend?

Previews + Extras

  • "Almost Perfect Overlaps" | Cooked: Survival by Zip Code: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    "Almost Perfect Overlaps" | Cooked: Survival by Zip Code

    S21 E8 - 1m 29s

    In this excerpt from Cooked: Survival by Zip Code, Dr. Linda Murray, a public health medical officer, talks about being enraged but not surprised at the high death toll of poor people of color who died in the 1995 heatwave in Chicago. And Steven Whitman, the city's chief epidemiologist at the time, shows a stark "heat death map" illustrating the obvious overlap of the poor and the dead.

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