Roy Wilkins earned his professional chops as a Twin Cities journalist. But it was as an activist and director of the NAACP, says producer Britt Aamodt, that Wilkins helped change history with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Music journalist Bob Mehr wanted to write a biography of the Replacements, the Minneapolis punk/alt-rock group that formed in a basement in 1979, recorded great songs, influenced generations of songwriters and bands but then fizzled out in just over a decade. Britt Aamodt looks at Mehr’s eight-year journey to produce Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements.
Elizabeth, a Minnesota woman with relationship questions, and Pedro, a young man struggling with the death of his brother, were both patients of Dr. Brian Weiss, a psychiatrist know for his book on reincarnation Many Lives, Many Masters. Britt Aamodt looks at the story behind Dr. Weiss’ 1996 book Only Love Is Real, about his work with Elizabeth and Pedro.
Why do the University of Minnesota’s Golden Gophers and the University of Michigan’s Wolverines football teams battle over a Little Brown Jug? Britt Aamodt goes back to 1903 to find the origins of this unusual rivalry trophy.
In 2015, photographer Joel Sartore and National Geographic established the Photo Ark, a 25-year project to photograph every species held at a zoo or wildlife sanctuary worldwide. Britt Aamodt finds out what animals boarded the ark when Sartore visited the Minnesota Zoo.
Summer 2018, Jared Yost just finished mowing a lawn when he heard the sounds of an animal in distress. A kitten, or so he thought. Britt Aamodt has the story of Yost’s encounter with one of Minnesota’s wild feline species, the bobcat.
Growing up in 1950s St. Peter, Minnesota, James McPherson immersed himself in comics and books about the Army Air Corps in World War II. The Civil War was the farthest thing from his mind. Britt Aamodt finds out how thirty years later McPherson wrote what many consider the greatest single-volume history of the war between the states.
It had never been seen before, a fully-enclosed shopping mall that sprawled over 500 acres in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina. Britt Aamodt tells the story of Southdale, the mall that when it opened in 1956 became the model for a thousand imitators but left famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright feeling blah.
In 1920, Sauk Centre native Sinclair Lewis became a sensation with the publication of his novel Main Street. Now the pressure was on for a follow-up. Britt Aamodt turns the page on Babbitt, Lewis’ searing indictment of smug middle-class complacency.
In 2001, David Carter was an artistic director and writer at Minneapolis ad agency Fallon but his scripts for luxury car manufacturer BMW were turned into short films with over 100 million online views. Britt Aamodt looks back at the eight-part Internet-only series “The Hire.”