KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

Listening at the Border by Jay Needham "The static is just like an electronic ocean wave. It's just white static noise and then it fades out, in, and out again. When you do hear a voice - it sounds like a voice in a coffee can sunk to the bottom of a lake. It's almost unintelligible - in fact it is to probably 95% of those who hear it. That's where the training comes in." Former military linguist and audio spy recounts his activities and the psychological price he paid. We See It All by Aaron Henkin "Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory." A photo lab technician ponders our life as he sees it every day, through thousands upon thousands upon thousands of personal snapshots.

“That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.” We all know the quote, the triumphant story. It seems written in stone. But Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong came within inches of tragedy when they landed Apollo 11. Moon Grafitti imagines what it might have sounded like if things had gone a little differently. Based on a contingency speech written by William Safire for Richard Nixon titled “In the Event of Moon Disaster.” The story was created by Jonathan Mitchell for a new public radio series titled, "The Truth." Credits: produced by Jonathan Mitchell edited by Hillary Frank Matt Evans as Neil Armstrong Ed Herbstman as Buzz Aldrin John Ottavino as Richard Nixon

Every year, an estimated 65,000 undocumented students graduate from American high schools. Raised entirely in American culture, they finish high school only to find themselves in a peculiarly American limbo. "American Dreamer: Sam's Story" is a first-person longitudinal half-hour radio documentary sharing the experience of one of these kids.

Reporter Jake Warga went to Iraq and plugged into soldier's iPods and asked them what they were listening to, why they liked the song, and what their lives were like. Their music choices form a soundtrack to the soldier's narrating their own war stories. Many had been deployed multiple times, and offered perspectives on how their (and our) roll has changed since the 2003 invasion. Over everything from "Indestructible" by hard rock's Disturbed to C&W's "Kiss My Country Ass" to Streisand's "Send In the Clowns" to one soldier singing us a gospel song, we hear their experiences serving our country -- told to the tunes in their personal mp3 players.