KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

Splash by Richard Halten  The Sunshine Skyway bridge spans the mouth of Tampa Bay on the west coast of Florida. It carries thousands of cars everyday. It's also become one of the top ten places to end your life . This is the story of the many who jumped , one lucky guy who survived, and how broken bones and a collapsed lung made him a new man. Kenny Hooper and Kerry Davis from StoryCorps For 25 years, Ken and Kerry have been part of a team that maintains the structure of the Golden Gate Bridge . But we 'll hear how their work involves a lot more than just making repairs. Not only is t heir workplace is a destination for tourists, but also for far more desperate visitors who have made the bridge one of the world's leading suicide locations. 

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Echoes in the Dark from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening With no scientific ‘ explanation ’ for the phenomenon of the echo , it was natural for Neolithic peoples to assume it was a spirit voice. Certain echoes sounded like the galloping hooves; others like fluttering wings. Some echoes appeared to come from the rocks themselves, they moved, they were uncanny – all this hinting at a ‘ spirit world ’ within.  The Beat of Drums from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening Words are only one way to communicate - humans have found many more. Professor David Hendy travels to Ghana to hear the talking drum, a language made of drumbeats that once carried messages through the rainforest like a telegraph signal. Plus a treasure from the Pitt Rivers Sound Archive - the sound of Bayaka pygmies of the Central African Republic preparing for a net hunt. How do non-verbal sounds carry information… and how do they bind us together as a group?

Bogging In Again from Radio Netherlands Seamus Heany was an Irish poet, playwright, and recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. He died earlier this week at the age of 74. Perro de Jong talked to the poet at the 2006 Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam. Seamus spoke about the perils of discarding history too soon -- and about the need to go back to memories and places of the past when the world makes us feel lost. Heany's poems brought readers into nature; but he was also a great describer of the physical world, fascinated by the solidity and weight of everything around us all.