Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities

17 Unique Stations from Border to Border

MN90: Minnesota History in 90 Seconds a fun exploration of wide-ranging topics including sports, politics, environment, business, entertainment, pop culture, and more.
MN90 is fun exploration of wide-ranging topics including sports, politics, environment, business, entertainment, pop culture, and more.

MN90: Roy Wilkins, the Civil Rights Act and LBJ

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.

MN90: A Connecticut Yankee in Duluth

Mark Twain was born in Missouri, lived in Connecticut and traveled the world in 1895. One stop that year was Duluth, where the literary star’s one-man show got less than stellar reviews.

MN90: A Minnesota Monarch

The United States dispensed with monarchs in 1776. But the Minnesota legislature appointed a new one in 2000 and it has wings.

MN90: Dino-mite

What’s a big and tall, lived over 65 million years ago but now lives in St. Paul? If it’s an ancient reptile, then chances are it’s the Science Museum’s diplodocus.

MN90: The Song Catcher

Frances Densmore was a musician, but she spent her life recording North America’s Native American musicians. Over three thousand of her recordings, made in the early part of the 20th century, now reside at the Smithsonian.

MN90: The Ojibwe Codetalker

Lex Porter was Ojibwe. He enlisted in World War II. He had a secret, and his family only found out when he received a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor.

MN90: The Day Woody Guthrie Met Calamity Jane

Her name was Irene Paull but Woody Guthrie knew her as Calamity Jane. Named for the Old West frontierswoman, Duluth’s Calamity Jane used a pen instead of a gun to defend the rights of Minnesota’s lumbermen. And, as Britt Aamodt uncovers, she was also the subject of Guthrie’s song “Calamity Jane.”

MN90: Otto Walta, the Finnish Paul Bunyan

Paul Bunyan could swing an ax and fell a tree like nobody’s business. Of course, he was a myth. But Britt Aamodt learned that Minnesota actually did have a strongman lumberjack and he was real.

MN90: Dinkytown’s Demento

In the late 1950s, Barry Hansen was just another Minnesota kid attending Dinkytown’s U High School. But he was a kid with a passion for records, which, Britt Aamodt tells us, transformed the collector into the Demento of the Dr. Demento Radio Show.

MN90: The Beatles’ Minnesota Guitar

The Beatles’ press conference in Minneapolis, August 1965, played a part in—or rather, added guitar to—the group’s 1966 album Rubber Soul. Britt Aamodt opens up the case on the 12-string Rickenbacker guitar with the Minnesota provenance.

MN90: Minnesota’s Alaskan Farm Families

The Midwestern farm family was hard-hit by the Great Depression. The federal government sought to alleviate the plight of some 200 Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota families by relocating them. Britt Aamodt follows their story to Alaska’s rugged frontier.

Supported by...

McKnight FoundationMN Legacy