August 31, 2016 - When most people are leaving the State Fair, some others are just arriving. A team of sanitation workers clean through the night emptying trash cans, cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors, among other things. MPR’s Max Nestrak interviews Jeffrey Martinez, a floor cleaner about his fairgrounds night shift in the Food Building.
September 2, 2016 - One of the most popular attractions at the Minnesota State Fair is the CHS Miracle of Birth Center. It takes hundreds of people to organize the live exhibit where you can see farm animals give birth. MPR’s Max Nesterak interviews veterinarian Florian Ledermann…and witnesses both a live birth and lost children.
September 2, 2016 - MPR’s Tracy Mumford takes a look at the history of one of Minnesota State Fair’s staples…the corn dog, which has been the unofficial food-on-a-stick of the Minnesota State Fair since 1947. That's the year the Pronto Pup came on the scene. And, yes: A Pronto Pup is a corn dog, despite what you might have been told.
September 2, 2016 - MPR’s Doualy Xaykaothao reports on Hmong Day at the Minnesota State Fair. The schedule offers a kaleidoscope of events, from honoring military veterans and registering voters in the morning to Hmong dancers and rappers in the afternoon.
September 9, 2016 - MPR’s Tom Crann interviews 20-year-old Augsburg College student Donte Collins, who was given the Academy of American Poets' Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank Most Promising Young Poet Award for his poem "What the Dead Know by Heart." Segment includes Collins reading poem.
September 9, 2016 - MPR’s Dan Kraker investigates the warming waters of Lake Superior. In late August 2016, the average surface water temperature for the entire lake hit 68 and a half degrees (the second highest ever recorded). In Lake Superior, researchers at the University of Minnesota Duluth have found that summer surface water temperatures have increased by 5 degrees over the past 30 years.
September 14, 2016 - On this MPR News with Tom Weber program, Ken Merryman discusses hunting for shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. Merryman and others discovered the Antelope, a Great Lakes steamship, that sank in Lake Superior in 1897.
October 3, 2016 - MPR’s John Enger interviews Ojibwe storyteller Anne Dunn, who reflects on a lifetime of storytelling on northern Minnesota reservations. Enger spoke with Dunn in a cabin on Drewery Lake.
October 5, 2016 - On this segment of MPR News with Tom Weber program, MPR’s Doualy Xaykaothao present an interview with co-founders of Maiv-PAC, the nation's first-ever Hmong American political action committee. The group sees it as another way to engage on issues of immigration, education, gender equity, and racial justice.
October 13, 2016 - Bob Dylan's literary roots may be as tangled as the Nobel Prize winner's famously enigmatic lyrics, but at some point they invariably end up in the Hibbing High School classroom of B.J. Rolfzen. MPR’s Dan Kraker profiles the teacher and his future music icon student.