KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

Americans love to buy stuff. We buy everything from computers to baseball cards to Barbie dolls to scrap. In this episode of the Listening Lounge, we air several portraits of buyers and collectors, including two profiles of shoppers that Diane Richard and I interviewed for Consuming Desire , a 2005 documentary we produced for Chicago Public Radio. You'll meet Fadia, a woman who sometimes uses her sister's credit card to buy jewelry at a department store and Rolf, a collector of fine ceramics. We'll also air "The Junk King," a story produced by Joshua Gleason of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. "The Junk King" features a Main junk dealer who dreams of creating a museum filled with his finds. And finally, we'll hear reporter Eric Molinsky's take on planned obsolescence — it's called "Built to Fail." Tune in. The show is free.

Burial At Sea by Adam Allington All across America today people are gathering at village greens, town halls, churches and cemeteries to remember those fallen in service of their country. Bill Bricker was a captain in the Marine Corps during WWII and was wounded during the campaign for Okinawa. For Bill, Memorial Day always invokes a particular memory that colors his observation of the holiday. Jennie's Secret by Linda Paul Take a look at this picture above. Maybe you can figure out that the Civil War soldier on the right is a woman. But the guy sitting next to her sure couldn’t, and neither could the rest of her fellow soldiers. They didn’t conduct physical exams back in those days the way the military does now. The army’s policy, one observer quipped, was "don’t test the eyes, count ‘ em." I Have Not Yet Begun To Rot from The Memory Palace In which we hear the story of Revolutionary War hero, John Paul Jones, and the Civil War hero who found his coffin...

We'll listen to extended field recordings from the Polar regions of the earth. Douglas Quin is an award-winning sound designer, naturalist and composer. His latest project is called "Fathom." It's an album of minimally edited underwater field recordings released on Twin Cities' own Taiga Records. Fathom contains four underwater soundscapes —two each from the Arctic and Antarctic. The recordings have been gathered over a period of 15 years, capturing an extraordinary palette of sonic voices, events, spaces, and textures. To the human ear, these soundscapes are haunting and otherworldly; yet they are very much of this world - though out of earreach ... Until now.

It's sinking in among Americans that the nation's largest wave of immigration did not happen a century ago. It's happening now. About 35-million of us were born in other countries. That's one in eight residents of the United States. Immigrants come from all over the globe, but Latino immigration is remaking the country. And not just on the coasts and in the Southwest. Siler City, North Carolina used to be the kind of town where almost everyone, black and white, had roots going back a century or two. Characters on the Andy Griffith Show mentioned Siler City, and the actor who played Aunt Bee retired there because it reminded her of Mayberry. It was just about the last place a Spanish-speaking immigrant was likely to land. That started to change in the 1990s. Today, thanks to chicken processing jobs that no one else wants, Siler City is about half Latino. John Biewen and Tennessee Watson of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University produced this portrait of...

Flatline Days by Catherine Spangler Hilary Hebert can’t control what kind of parent she will be on any given day. Sometimes, she lets her kids draw all over the walls and she draws along with them. Other times, she lectures them for doing the same thing. Hilary is learning how to manage her mood disorder while raising kids at the same time. Speaking to My Heart from Blunt Youth Radio Nikki, who's serving an 18th month sentence at the Long Creek Youth Development Center talks about what it's like to be separated from her young children. Fifty-four Years by Erin Calabria In January 2009, Maine law changes, granting all adult adoptees access to their original birth records. Lois Pelton, a birth mother who secretly surrendered a child for adoption in 1954, is afraid that her secret will be discovered. Meanwhile, her son, Andre Drapeau, begins to search for her. Mother Daughter Dresses from Story Salon Live Shirley Scott recalls longing for individuality in the face of a mothe...

Teen Mom from Radio Diaries Producer Joe Richman has been giving tape recorders to young people to document their lives. He introduces us to Melissa who didn't mean to get pregnant. But now, after 12 years of living in the foster care system, she's trying to build the family she never had. Melissa is realistic about her situation, but it is clear that she is determined to be a great mother. Tupperware by The Kitchen Sisters Tag along with Tupperware dealer Lucky Laurel into the noisy world of Tupperware conventions, regional meetings, and of course, those signature Tupperware parties. Note: Only the round containers "burp". Muriel's Message by Mira Burt-Wintonick Memories of a much-beloved grandmother resurface when an unlabeled box of audio cassettes is discovered in the basement. One tape is titled "Muriel's Message." What might this message be? A long-held family secret? A confession ? A revelation? Motherly advice? Grandmotherly guidance? ...