KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

Interrogators Without Pliers by Matt Thompson The Chinese strategist and philosopher  Sun Tzu wrote in 'The Art of War' that 'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.' Which is obviously brilliant advice --  but finding out about the enemy is not often straightforward. In this program, Julian Putkowski sets aside all moral questions about torture and instead thinks about efficiency. What is the most effective way to extract high quality information out of the enemy? Surprisingly, Julian's unlikely role model is the enigmatic Nazi, Hanns Scharff.  " Master Interrogator "  Scharff gently extracted a wealth of information from downed US fighter pilots by being both friendly and shockingly hospitable .  He gained the reputation of magically getting all the answers he needed from the POWs, often with the prisoners never even realizing that their words, small talk or otherwise, were important pieces of t

Outside the Dying by Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller This is the dramatized journal of research biologist Julie Conaron. After a sharp decline in his health, Julie's husband was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ( ALS ), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Not knowing what else to do, she decided to keep a diary of her difficult , heartbreaking experience -- from the impact of the news, to becoming the care-giver , and eventual survivor of the man she loved.  Winner of the Silver Reel Award for Radio Drama  from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. Distance from The Memory Palace The incredible and sad story of how the death of his wife inspired the  accomplished  and famed painter S.F.B. Morse to change our world . Over the next 45 years he would perfect and invent the electromagnetic telegraph and accelerate the speed at which humans communicate forever.

When You’re Lonely, Life is Very Long from Theory of Everything Tonight, we let Benjamen Walker connect the dots for us -- After moving to New York alone, writer Olivia Laing discovered  the truth about loneliness . She says it is a gift . Also, Eric Klinenberg explains why more and more people are choosing to live alone and why cities like New York must invest in housing that singletons actually want to live in, such as the types they have in Scandinavian countries. In Denmark when someone dies alone , and no one claims the body, the authorities put an ad in the newspaper calling for Possible Relatives . This is also the title of a photo-book by photographer Tina Enghoff . She tells us about the pictures she took of the apartments after the dead were removed. Some of these bodies went undiscovered for months.

Music While You Shop, Music While You Work  from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening What if history had a sound track? What would it tell us about ourselves? Professor David Hendy of the University of Sussex demonstrates how it has been used to soothe us , to cheer us , and even make us productive over the past hundred years. We'll also hear extremely rare recordings from wartime episodes of the much-loved BBC series, ' Music While You Work .'  An Ever Noisier World from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening The twentieth century brought attempts to distinguish between ' necessary ' and ' unnecessary’ noise .' In New York, the authorities tried to clean up Coney Island fairground, banning barkers from using megaphones and targeting street sellers, newspaper boys, and buskers. But the volume of modern life has risen inexorably. We will travel to Ghana’s capital, Accra , a city so loud that visitors describe its streets as a visc