October 21, 2016 - MPR’s Doualy Xaykaothao reports on the meaning behind the Diwali Festival. Local Indian Americans gather at the Minneapolis convention center for annual event. The ancient celebration is one of the biggest and most important holidays in Hindu tradition.
November 2, 2016 - MPR’s Laura Yuen and Rahim Feshir report on disproportionately high traffic stop numbers of minority drivers. They present data and narratives on one of the most common interactions between police and the public.
November 20, 2016 - MPR’s Lorna Benson reports on a Ramsey County court ruling that Minnesota's refusal to cover transition-related surgeries violates the state constitution. State lawmakers enacted the ban in 2005, selling it as a cost-saving measure, and it only applied to people receiving state Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare benefits.
November 30, 2016 - Classical staff Brian Newhouse, Vaughn Ormseth, Mindy Ratner join Jack El-Hai to talk about the early days of MPR’s Classical station. In this MPR 50th anniversary interview, the staff talks about how the station started, how important the station is to the community, and the future of MPR Classical.
December 12, 2016 -
December 19, 2016 - Composers Notebook host John Zech highlights composer Wendy Carlos’ musical development for Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange. As in his earlier hit, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick used classical music. This time, however, in keeping with the film's futuristic storyline, the classics were adapted and arranged for Moog synthesizer by Carlos.
December 20, 2016 - MPR News with Tom Weber presents a program on The Dakota Access oil pipeline, which winds hundreds of miles from the oil fields of North Dakota to a pipeline hub in southern Illinois. In 2016, it was almost entirely built — except for a section under Lake Oahe, a Missouri River reservoir just south of Bismarck, N.D. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a coalition of other groups camped out near the site of the river crossing in an effort to stop pipeline construction.
December 22, 2016 - MPR’s Laura Yuen profiles Guled Omar, a young man convicted of conspiring to kill people abroad for the Islamic State in Syria. As former leader of nine young Twin Cities men, Omar received 35 years in prison. Yuen talks with Omar in his first interview since arrest.
December 23, 2016 - MPR’s Brandt Williams reports on Lyndale Community School’s Kwanzaa celebration. Twenty years ago, Titilayo Bediako, a Minneapolis public school teacher started telling her students about Kwanzaa - the week-long African centered celebration of black heritage and values which begins the day after Christmas. She discovered that the underlying principles of the non-religious holiday resonated with students from diverse backgrounds. Now that early classroom lesson has grown into an institution which hosts an annual musical Kwanzaa recognition.
December 23, 2016 - When Minnesota poet, author, and musician Bill Holm sat down to write a Christmas letter, he sorted through a lifetime of memories and put some of these memories in his 2009 book titled Faces of Christmas Past, published by the Afton Historical Society Press. That same year, Minnesota Public Radio produced this "Voices of Minnesota" special, with Bill Holm reading from his own book.