KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

In Good Hands  from The Truth We here at The Listening Lounge are big fans of producer  Jonathan Mitchell 's work -- and this week we're gladly featuring another audio adventure from his series, The Truth.  The folks at  The Truth  develop stories as a collective, often improvising the dialog on location. The recordings are then taken to the studio for editing,  sound design , & score. They are yielding extraordinary results thus far and t onight, they will be taking us urban spelunking.  If you're not already out doing it yourself,  Urban Exploration  is the risky hobby of  infiltrating  private areas  barred from public-access  or poking around long forgotten ruins.  In this story  (which stars another Listening Lounge favorite,  Emily Tarver ,) a  pair of explores  sneak into an abandoned subway tunnel and stumble onto... you'll just have to  tune-in  and hear.

Oh Coqui! from Long Haul Productions The Coqui , a tiny, but very vociferous tree frog, is the national symbol of Puerto Rico. It is beloved in folklore and in song. But while the coqui’s lusty “croak” is a cherished part of the Puerto Rican soundscape, lulling residents to sleep every night, it’s a different story on the big island of Hawaii . Coquis showed up on the island as stowaways a few years back. And because the frog has no natural predator there, they’re proliferating like crazy -- 'taking over' some locals would say. Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister bring us the story of Hawaii’s reaction to the coqui’s invasion.

Carnival from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening Feast days in Medieval Europe were noisy affairs – the streets filled with processions, animal baiting, games and mystery plays. Professor David Hendy of the University of Sussex tells the story of a Somerset town where a ‘ church ale ’ got out of hand and the party went on for eight weeks. Then, as now, being raucous in the streets was a way for the dispossessed to literally make themselves heard – and revelry could easily tip into revolt. Restraint   from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought a new emphasis on self-discipline in every day life – and with it a revulsion against noise of every kind. City authorities banned singing and feasting from public squares and tore down maypoles , while town-dwellers raised petitions against noisy neighbors . Spitting, snorting and breaking wind – once part of everyday life – were now a cause for wrinkled...

The Mystery of Opal Whiteley   by Dmae Roberts and Dorthy Velasco Opal Whiteley  was a naturist, writer, and dreamer who lived in a fantasy world of kindness and magical creatures in the  Cascade Mountains of Oregon . At age six, w riting with  colored pencils  on scraps of butcher paper, s he began a secret  diary   about her time in the woods, talking with the wind, and her love of nature .  Opal  was long considered by her family as an odd child; what they didn't know was that Opal was schizophrenic. The illness seemed to manifest itself in a heightened sense of awareness of the sights and sounds around her. Her heightened sensibilities and her genius for  expressing herself  combined to create the most  fascinating  diary ever written.  It became wildly popular -- but  due to it's  sophistication  was later condemned as a hoax . The controversy took a toll on Opal and  eventually ...