September 14, 2023 - MPR’s Jon Collins profiles Hmong immigrants who have put down roots on Dakota County farmland. The Hmong American Farmers Association closed on farmland just south of the Twin Cities in Dakota County in 2022. The more than 150 acres are home base for the organization and 20 families of Hmong farmers.
September 22, 2023 - MPR’s Elizabeth Shockman visits St. Paul’s Johnson Senior High School, where gendered bathrooms have been replaced with installation of single-occupancy, gender-neutral restrooms. Shockman interviews school officials and students to get an idea on how the change benefits students.
November 3, 2023 - MPR’s Melissa Olson reports that conservators and artists have worked nearly a year to restore a work of art created by artist George Morrison half a century ago. Morrison’s vision is felt by the people who helped to restore his work, and by those redesigning the building where the mural lives.
December 1, 2023 - MPR’s Dan Kraker travels to Deer Yard Lake in northeastern Minnesota, where cold temperatures have combined with a lack of snow to create ideal conditions for the formation of what some call ‘wild ice’ — black, glassy, smooth ice that can make for miles of epic ice skating on some remote lakes. Kraker meets a die-hard group of skaters that drop everything in search of perfect ice, and the feeling of gliding across the mirror-like surface.
December 5, 2023 - The MPR News arts team guest hosts a special holiday hour of MPR News with Angela Davis. Arts reporters Jacob Aloi and Alex Cipolle, and arts editor Max Sparber, talk with performers, show directors, each other, and listeners about some of Minnesota’s most distinctive seasonal art and culture offerings.
December 15, 2023 - MPR’s Kristi Marohn reports that in Minnesota, forfeited properties generate millions of dollars that local governments use to run their operations, according to an analysis of public records by MPR News, APM Reports and the APM Research Lab. Property owners believe it to be an unfair practice.
December 15, 2023 - MPR’s Gracie Stockton reports that the Minnesota Department of Transportation announced that its plow-naming event will return for a fourth year. The contest offers people the chance to submit ideas and vote to pick eight winners, with the winning names going on plows in each of MnDOT's eight districts around the state. Some plow drivers are hoping more Indigenous names make the cut.
March 8, 2024 - MPR’s Cathy Wurzer interviews Nicole LaVoi, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, on the women’s sports boom in Minnesota.
April 5, 2024 - MPR’s Ellie Roth takes an ambulance ride along in Dodge County for a report on efforts by rural EMS services in Minnesota to get funding support from the Legislature. Ambulance services rely on being able to bill a patient’s insurance, but that depends on whether they transport that patient to the hospital. In Dodge Center, many times EMTs and paramedics are responding to calls that don’t require hospitalization.
May 1, 2024 - On this segment of Job Interview, MPR’s Lukas Levin produced this profile on James Everhart, an interior landscaper at the Mall of America. He’s one of five people who tend the 30,000 actual living plants at the mall. Watering alone takes the crew half a day, but plant care at the mall isn’t just about watering.