KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

The Persistence of Desire by John Updike Written in July of '58 and originally published in  The New Yorker on  July 11th the following year, the short story is read here by the author in 1969. Triumphantly known as a cataloger of civilization ,  Mr. Updike describes writing his early stories in a small, rented, musty office in Ipswitch  by saying, "I felt that I was packaging something as delicately pervasive as smoke, one box after another, in that room, where my only duty was to describe reality   as it had come to me -- to give the mundane its beautiful due." We'll listen intently as Updike itemizes  the human experience  through a character who is eventually "dismissed into a tainted world where things evaded his focus." Clyde lived in Massachusetts with his wife and 2 children. He was visiting his home town in Pennsylvania and had arranged an appointment with Dr. Pennypacker because he had an annoying twitch in his eye. In t...

Some people buy stuff on CraigsList. Other people sell stuff on Craigslist. Then there's radio producer Emily Hsiao. She prowls CraigsList for story ideas. And what she found is essential listening. Hsiao met Bruce, a middle-aged man who was looking for a tattoo artist to cover up the offensive ink on his arm. Turns out Bruce spent a lot of his life doing heroin and robbing drug dealers. Also: We hear stories about a man who loses his voice to illness and a woman who buys too, too much. It's our pre-Black Friday tale for Listening Lounge listeners. More here: Leaving a Mark by Emily Hsiao, winner of a 2014 Third Coast International Audio Festival award. Parts of Speech by Emily Kwong, winner of a 2013 Third Coast International Audio Festival award.  Consuming Desire , excerpt from a 2005 documentary  by Diane Richard and Todd Melby.

What happens when you can get a horrifying, rare disease and there's no real cure? And the best medicine has to offer isn't enough? That's what happened to Jack Rodolico's wife. In "This is Crohn's Disease," Jack chronicles her illness and their efforts to make her life better. The microphone and recorder are there during doctor's visitors and painful treatments. This is a touching story that also gives listeners insights into how doctors think and treat disease. The story is one of several science stories produced as part of the Public Radio Exchange's STEM series . Reporter  Jack Rodolico  works at New Hampshire Public Radio. Also on the program, a story from Eric Molinsky titled, "Take Me To Your Leader." It explores how some Native Americans see a similarity between alien invasion movies and the European-American invasion of their homeland.

Life in the City  from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening Professor David Hendy considers the comforts and irritations of next-door's noise . As cities grew, neighbor's hullabaloo became increasingly hard to escape. We will explore the writer Thomas Carlyle ’s grumpy attempts at soundproofing, before travelling to New York to imagine the teaming, boisterous world of the Lower East Side tenements in the early twentieth century. Capturing Sound from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening Sounds were ephemeral until recording technology made it possible to capture them. Professor Hendy of the University of Sussex introduces bottled moments from the past, including the voices of Robert Browning and Florence Nightingale as well as 9/11 answerphone messages.