November 13, 2012 - MPR’s Dan Kraker visits Grand Marais, as lake herring season on Lake Superior crests. For about six weeks every October and November, thousands of the silvery fish, also called cisco, are pulled from the Lake's icy waters. The harvest supports a small but thriving fishing industry along the North Shore that caters to the growing market for local and sustainable food.
November 7, 2012 - MPR’s Laura Yuen reports on Minnesotans rejection of a proposed constitutional amendment that would have made marriage only between a man and a woman. It also made the state the only one in the nation to defeat a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
September 27, 2012 - MPR’s Elizabeth Baier gives a summary report on first debate between DFL Congressman Tim Walz and his Republican challenger former State Representative Allan Quist as they battle for 1st Congressional District seat. The debate included some feisty exchanges between the candidates, who met in the town of Byron, just west of Rochester.
September 19, 2012 - Minnesota author Jim Heynen knows the landscape and life of the farm. He is a master of the short short story, and he's been called "a Hemingway of farm life." His new novel "The Fall of Alice K," is a love story set in an Iowa farm town he calls Dutch Center. Both Heynen and his protagonist Alice know this landscape well.
August 30, 2012 - The Daily Circuit’s Tom Weber visits a Erin Daninger, a former Princess Kay of the Milky Way finalist, to find out what happens to a 90 lb butter head sculpture after the Minnesota State Fair ends. Weber finds himself being taken behind a famm shed, where Daninger’s butter head sits in a chest freezer…next to pulled pork. Weber checks in on other ‘heads’ as well.
August 1, 2012 - For the 5th anniversary of the 35W bridge collapse, Minnesota poet laureate Joyce Sutphen reads her poem "Someone Just Like You."
July 30, 2012 - MPR’s Sasha Aslanian reports on the differing viewpoints of various Hmong community groups over the proposed constitutional amendment on marriage.
July 17, 2012 - MPR’s Stephanie Hemphill presents a special science report on deformed frogs in Minnesota, first found in 1995. Even seventeen years later, scientists still have not completely solved the mystery of what caused frogs to develop deformities.
July 9, 2012 - As part of MPR’s Into The Song series, Chris Roberts talks with Now Now band members Cacie Dalager, Jess Abbott, and Bradley Hale. The group breakdown the song “Thread.”
June 20, 2012 - Rob Skutevik, a pastor of the Fond du Lac Community Church, talks about his experience with the Duluth flooding. He and his family left with the water lapping up his front steps, and those of the church next door.