KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue from Joyride Media In 1977 Pacific Ocean Blue became the first solo LP to be released by a member of the legendary Beach Boys. Dennis , the band's surfer, drummer and free spirit, emerged from the shadow of his older brother, pop genius Brian Wilson , and shocked everyone with a sound and style unlike any other. Today, it stands as cult-classic. Throughout this one-hour special, Dennis Wilson's friends and family recall how he developed his musical voice - one that was full of surprises, but also one that reflected Wilson's dark, moody, hard and fast lifestyle .  Plans for an even grander follow-up album, Bambu, were left unfinished at the time of his drowning death in 1983, but many songs from those last sessions were filled with a hopefulness that belied his tragic decline.

Inside the Adoption Circle from Transom Adoption reveals some profound but basic aspects of the human story. It’s an act of caring, love and bravery. An emphatic and ancient statement about human nature, it is also rife with questions about identity. Producers Viki Merrick and Samantha Broun wanted to get to the personal stories that live inside those questions. They recorded first-person voices from all sides of adoption. Stories about living with questions and searching for answers. In this special hour-long episode we hear from birth families, adoptees , and adoptive families including  instances of   both open adoption and international adoption.

Bringing My Father Home by Will Coley Will stumbled on an article in the New York Times about the upcoming anniversary of the Southern Flight 242 accident . It was on that flight, when Will was seven years old, his father died in a commercial plane crash . He already knew of course, it’s a fact he simply grew up knowing, but Will had always been reluctant to learn the details about the disaster that took his father away from him. 15 years later he was finally ready to visit the crash site. Will also chose this pilgrimage as his first ever  radio project . It was a big, difficult journey and took far longer than he'd expected, in part because it was so deeply personal . Tonight, we hear the results of his search.

The Ecstatic Underground  from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening The sound-world of the first Christians was filled with the subdued voices, measured singing and solemn prayers that would later  echo  through the medieval churches and cathedrals of Western Europe. Early Christians needed to be quiet to avoid persecution - but they often weren't.  David Hendy  explores the  ecstatic sounds  of the underground in ancient Rome. The Bells   from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening In the Middle Ages the peal of the  church bell  was one of the most dominant features of the soundscape. Every time it rang out, religion’s hold over the  secular world  was signaled loud and clear. Professor Hendy of the  University of Sussex  visits one of the oldest church bells in the UK and explains that the sound’s power lay in ancient, pagan associations. Inscriptions written on  bells  were understood t...

As a brain scientist, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is an expert on strokes – especially her own. In “Split Brain,” she gives a fascinating and terrifying personal account of her own life-altering stroke. When it struck, she knew exactly what was happening, and watched as one function after another shut down. In this production with “Love + Radio,” she shares the experience in vivid detail.

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 mindbogglingly 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 ...

Prison and Pregnancy by Audrey Quinn The United States incarcerates six times as many women as it did thirty years ago. Many of these women are already mothers , and four percent of incarcerated women enter prison pregnant. What happens to the babies born in the correctional system? What happens to the children left behind, as their mothers serve out their sentences ? Visiting a Prison Nursery by Shannon Heffernan What happens when a women gives birth behind bars ? Usually those babies are sent home with family members or put into foster care. But some prisons are trying an alternative: prison nurseries. Reporter Shannon Heffernan spent six months visiting a prison nursery in Decatur, Illinois, to find out how the experiment in keeping families together, at least for the infancy stage, is working .