KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

The Listening Lounge takes you inside Folsom Prison for Johnny Cash's historic 1968 concert. This documentary from Joyride Media features Cash singing "Cocaine Blues," "Long Black Veil" and other haunting songs. The program also includes interviews with prisoners and Merle Haggard. To listen to the full program produced by Joyride Media, go here .

We first aired City X in 2007. In recent weeks, I've listened to it again on the Radio Lab and Hearing Voices podcasts. And it's still worth hearing. So I thought I'd close out the decade with one of radio's best documentaries. Here's producer Jonathan Mitchell's description of the story: "City X is a history of the modern shopping mall through perspectives of people living in a real, yet unnamed, city. Using a sound rich audio mosaic of observations and ruminations, all scored to Muzak, the universal mall experience comes to life, for better or for worse. City X was commissioned by Hearing Voices radio with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting." We'll also air a short feature from the Memory Palace, "in which Guglielmo Marconi, the Father of Radio, dreams of a super radio that would allow him to hear every sound ever made. Melancholy ensues."

If you're a regular listener of the show, you know we air a lot of riveting stories by students who've attended the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. To keep up on the lastest Salt stories and get tips on how to produce great radio --- or just became a better listener --- check out the Saltcast . Follow the highlighted link or check it out on iTunes. I find the Saltcast enlightening and addicting.

"Go Tell It on the Mountain" was born in the rich and indomitable oral culture of African slaves in the American south. A hundred years later it became a rallying cry for the civil rights struggle of the 1960's. And now, it's a perennial favourite at Christmas concerts and church services across North America. We'll air a documentary on this holiday spiritual, produced by the CBC. Listen in at 7 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 21.

Marie's Crisis by Kevin T. Allen Jim has been playing piano at an infamous bar for twenty-some years. He was trained young by his strict, religious, and secretly-loving father to embrace music "Soli Deo Glorio" (only for the grace of God). Jim's dad could never approve of a musical career that wasn't religious and this weighed on the both of them for years. Yet Jim states, "What I do does good...it helps people get through things" and although a Christian's mission may be to proselytize, "you can't really do that without having a drink with the town whore." Hard to Say by Bente Birkeland Former state-park ranger Ed lives alone in a quiet, isolated area of Maine. At the age of 90, Ed reflects on his second marriage, revealing a relationship characterized by love, loss, loyalty, and uncertainty. A Voice Of Warning by Anne Penman A heroin overdose left Jade blind and mute and unable to take care of him...

Swords to Ploughshares by Alix Blair Matthew wanted to be a soldier forever; then he went to Iraq. While raiding houses and hunting for Saddam Hussein, he came to find that farmers are the world's most powerful force. Upon his return to the States, he decided to become a farmer too. Now, he'd like to go back to Iraq, but not as a soldier. I'm Relatively Human by Selena Simmons-Duffin We meet Marty who once seemingly had it all: a loving wife, a beautiful home, a great job. He threw it all in the wind to realize a deep, life-long desire and became a woman. Perhaps her story is less about the transition but what happens after you have arrived at your destination and are forced to consider what has been gained and what you've lost. My Criminal Life from Blunt Youth Radio Project Finally, a step into the mind of Mark, a young man who feels hopeless against the cycles of drugs and violence in his life. After being in and out of the Long Creek Youth Development Center...