KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

Huzzah, it's pledge drive time! Won't You Be Our Neighbor? Please consider opening your wallet just a little to keep awesome stuff on the air at the hippest little radio station in town . These next two weeks we'll be playing some of the best short pieces from shows over the last year. You can give us a call at 612-375-9030 and pledge your support for member-supported, independent public radio. Or you can easily contribute at the KFAI website too - be sure to mention "Listening Lounge" as your show of choice! Last night we played Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by Neille Ilel about Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher throwing a no-hitter while on some not-so-performance-enhancing drugs. This appeared in our Strange But True Baseball Stories episode from last spring. Next, we heard about a different sort of pirate: Indonesian Pirates . A story about dudes with machetes who rob cargo ships from “mic-slinger” Kelly McEvers . And we closed...

Welcome to the Star Party by Ashley Cleek The story is about a dark night sky festivals at Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine. Dark Sky Festivals started around a decade ago, as park rangers and astronomers noticed that light pollution was slowly diminishing the night sky, causing the stars to disappear. But further research has shown that light pollution also disrupts animals' circadian rhythms, altering feeding times and in turn ratios of predator and prey. In addition, scientific studies now show that the disruption of humans' circadian rhythm could be one cause of breast cancer.  Stellar Guidance by Tom Niemisto Celestial bodies are a curious mystery to gaze up at on a summer night.  Human cultures have a long history of creating stories and myths about the shapes stars seem to take on. Stars also have served a practical purpose for navigators on ocean bound vessels.  With the help of a sextant and nautical chart it is possible to deduce a prec...

The Voices of Vern Nash by Thelon Oeming How many times do we try to avoid eye contact with some mentally disturbed person on the street or in a train station shouting at their tormenting demons?  Well, the day Thelon moved into an apartment in a working class area of Toronto, he saw a hunched-back man shouting to himself in the middle of the street. Soon after, the sounds of an accordion filled the air and Thelon discovered that this tormented man was Vern Nash, his new neighbor. As a radio producer Thelon’s first instincts were to record Vern. Then he thought maybe he could even help him. Here is a daring story about the contact of two people who live in different worlds yet just across the street from each other. We played a truncated version of this program some time back -- t his time around we're going to let the whole simply told and profoundly human tale unwind on air for you.

A Really Happy Kid by Will Everet A new generation of post-war Iraqi children is coming of age. One of them is ten-year old Ossama Ahmad . He vividly remembers when family fled to Syria and it comes out in his artwork. Reporter Will Everett met the ten year old on a recent trip to Damascus and files this reporter’s notebook. Ink and M16s by Mujahid Suliman In a war you have your typical players. They're the soldiers, the medics ...and the artist. Following in Winslow Homer 's footsteps, Steve Mumford decided to go to war. Two weeks after the Untied States invaded Iraq he flew to Kuwait and made his way up to Baghdad with is pen and paper. A Soldier's Story Set To Gunfire by Noah Nelson Acclaimed first-time filmmaker Danfung Dennis worked for several years as a war photographer. He came to feel that his still photos didn’t portray what he was seeing and hearing on the ground. So Dennis outfitted his Canon 5D Mark II with a jerry rigged ...