August 4, 1979 - In this documentary, Craig Oliver, of public station WAMU in Washington, traveled to Minnesota as part of a national examination of the D.C. congressional representation question, with three-quarters of a million residents of the district having no voting representatives in the U.S. House or Senate. The Minnesota legislature is one of six state legislatures in the country which have voiced approval of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, designed to give the District of Columbia full congressional representation. 38 states must agree to ratify, within seven years, if the proposed amendment is to take effect. Program presents various reports and interviews from opponents and supporters of amendment.
August 13, 1979 - Midday presents “The Way to 8-A,” a documentary sound portrait on the involuntary commitment to Hennepin County General Hospital's Ward 8-A, a psychiatric ward. Program looks at the people being committed, those doing the committing, the staff, and the entire process of involuntary commitment.
October 9, 1979 - Documentary that explores the attempts by South Dakota Native Americans to win more complete sovereignty from state and federal governments. A collection of various interviews. Topics include Sun Dance ritual, treaties, and courts.
December 29, 1979 - Midday presents the documentary “Trampled Grass.” MPR’s Greg Barron accompanied a team of medical doctors and nurses from Minnesota as they worked in Cambodian refugee camps along Thailand's border with Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge-controlled state that controlled Cambodia from 1975 until 1979.
April 7, 1980 - Less than half of the railroad branch lines operating 10 years ago in southwest Minnesota remain. The 1970's was a decade of wholesale rail abandonment and the role branch lines will play in the 1980's is uncertain. This program examines efforts being made to preserve railroad branch lines.
November 15, 1980 - Producer John Gaddo produced this sound portrait of life along the Mississippi River.
March 10, 1981 - Vanished Voices: New Yorkers in the Thirties, a five-part series. This collection of interviews based on unpublished materials collected by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930's recounts the experiences of immigrants to New York City.
March 11, 1981 - Vanished Voices: New Yorkers in the Thirties, a five-part series. Unpublished materials collected in the 1930's by the Federal Writers' Project are the basis for this program of stories about union organizing, including one protesting hair bobbing.This 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 12, 1981 - Vanished Voices: New Yorkers in the Thirties, a five-part series. In unpublished materials collected in the 1930's by the Federal Writers' Project, New Yorkers talk about witch doctors, herbalists and ambulance drivers.
March 13, 1981 - Vanished Voices: New Yorkers in the Thirties, a five-part series. In unpublished materials collected by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930's, people of New York talk about friendships, romance, and the American Dream.