April 19, 1980 - On this Weekend program, MPR’s Rich Dietman interviews Lyman Steil, Chairman of the Speech and Communications Division of the Rhetoric Department of the University of Minnesota, about listening and how to become better at it. Steil also is a consultant to several corporations that are trying both to teach their employees to listen better and project the image that they are responsive firms because they listen.
April 24, 1980 - MPR’s Dan Olson interviews Bonnie Watkins, staff member of the Minnesota Council on the Economic Status of Women; and Carol Flynn, an organizer for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Watkins and Flynn discuss problems faced by office workers and efforts to organize the predominately female clerical workers. Topics include pay inequality, sexual discrimination, and vague job descriptions. Both also answer listener questions.
May 21, 1980 - MPR’s Dan Olson reports on opening of first American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center scheduled to open in Minneapolis. Olson interviews Clyde Bellecourt, former American Indian movement activist and one of the founders of the Indian-controlled survival schools in the Twin Cities.
June 27, 1980 - MPR President Bill Kling, Membership Director Marilyn Heltzer, and reporter/producer Bob Potter answer live listener questions about the Minnesota Public Radio network.
June 28, 1980 - Dr. Frances Hill, professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, speaking at the second annual Farm Women's Forum in Rochester, Minnesota. Hill’s address was about the changes in the roles and lives of farm women, based on her interviews with over one hundred Midwestern farm women. These changes include the demise of the family farm, and secondly, a change in women's personal rights.
August 6, 1980 - On this segment of People on Books, Paul Gruchow comments on The World of Oz: An Inside Report on Big-Time Journalism by Osborn Elliott.
December 13, 1980 - Jack Nelson, author of "Hunger for Justice: The Politics of Food and Faith", speaking at a Minneapolis conference on organic farming, sponsored by Clergy and Laity Concerned. Nelson’s address was on the topic "Hunger and the Crisis in American Agriculture." He shared his believe that America being the world's breadbasket was a myth. Nelson is a native of Minnesota. He is a critic of many of the trends in American agriculture.
March 11, 1981 - The Radio Project presents Vanished Voices: New Yorkers in the Thirties, part 3 (The Union Spirit). Program features workers stories of their union activities: Morse code operators, radiomen on merchant ships…and one tale relates an organized hair bobbing that was sparked by the firing of a junior nurse for showing up at work with bobbed hair.
March 13, 1981 - Don W. Larson, senior editor of Corporate Report magazine, speaking in Duluth. Larson’s shares his critical views on business in Minnesota and the United States.
March 14, 1981 - National Public Radio President Frank Mankiewicz and Minnesota Public Radio President Bill Kling discuss public radio, funding cuts, and recessions proposed by the Reagan administration, and what the future may hold for public broadcasting on this call-in program.