KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

The Noisy, Everyday World of Ancient Rome   from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening As the Roman empire grew, the city sucked in exotic goods, tastes, smells, and, --of course-- sounds from all around the world. In mind-bogglingly narrow street-ways you'd find b ellowing animals, street-hawkers, the babble of a dozen languages ; some inhabitants loved this sensory over-load , but others ran from it.  What would we have heard had visited the city in its heyday? And  here could Romans go to get some peace? The Roaring Crowd   from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening Professor David Hendy   of the University of Sussex  travels from  the barrage of sound  that was  the London Olympics to the ruins of the Roman Colosseum . He will explain to us the  visceral impact and  power of the collective crowd: how it showed approval ... and what happened when it was displeased .

Love and Robots by Anton Foek Dr. David Levy ,  an expert in artificial intelligence,  argues that the automata we once deemed cold and mechanical will soon become the objects of real companionship as well as human desire. He explores many aspects of human relationships and how they have changed over time. Levy believes it inevitable that these same attachments will eventually extend to love for robots . My Sex Robot by Audrey Quinn Brooklyn make-up artist Jessica Jacobs desperately needed a job . Because she had experience sculpting and special effects for the movies , a friend asked her to take over on a very special assignment. We'll hear how this girl-next-door became the woman behind the world's first sex robot, Roxxxy .  TI-99/4A from The Optimist What could be more fun than a Texas Instruments home computer , a dot matrix printer, and a text adventure game on a cassette drive!? Well, all of this and some poorly written BASIC progra...

The Boundaries of Love  by Daniel Estrin Yes, love has the power to  blossom in stubborn places , but can it survive in such a complex and difficult maze? We'll hear about a homosexual couple -- one gent from the West Bank and the other from Israel -- who try their best to navigate love in perhaps the harshest environment in the world for their relationship to bloom. Speaking the Truth of the Moment by Marian van der Zon A look at honesty in relationships . A quest to discover the ethics and effects of using brute honesty to negotiate the complexity of sexual and non-sexual relationships. Is anything short of total candor  sufficient? Where do the moral boundaries lie?

Studs Terkel's Weekly Almanac from WFMT Studs Terkel , the prize-winning author and radio man, was one of the first disc jockeys in the country to play folk recordings. His well-known shows aired on WFMT 98.7 Chicago between 1952-1997 (and are still rebroadcast today.) Here, in a recording from 1955, he interviews two giants of the American music scene, Pete Seeger and Big Bill Broonzy . Pete and Big Bill also perform a variety of folk songs and blues  tunes. A LP record of the radio program was later released on Folkways Records.