Bob Collins
It’s been 50 years since Dylan wrote his anthem. NPR’s Lynn Neary figures it lasts because it’s an anthem of hope, rather than looking at the past.
Even if its staying power indicates that sometimes, the times don’t change. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Arts & Culture
Occasionally, justice prevails for the innocent, but the story of Valentino Dixon, whose conviction for murder was vacated today after he served 27 years, tells us that there are likely innocent people in prison because they can’t draw pretty golfscape scenes. Read more →
The writer for Bert and Ernie characters on Sesame Street says he wrote for the pair based on his own life. Read more →
Alan Abel once created The Society for Indecency to Naked Animal, which believed that a nude horse is a rude horse and animals should be clothed. There are worse ways to be remembered. Read more →
We’re pigs. There’s no getting around it. It’s an art. Read more →
A local rock tribute band has been using blackface during the Prince portion of their shows. Nobody had a problem with it, a band member says. Until now. Read more →
The only real way to survive a Minnesota winter is to embrace it and face it head-on. That was the beauty of the Art Shanty project, in which artists create spaces on a frozen lake somewhere and people who aren’t the type to get pushed around by the weather visit, each experience changing from one shanty to another.
We’re going to need a Plan B, however, because the organizers have announced they’ll take the coming winter off. Read more →
The limits on free speech will soon be seen — or not seen, as the case may be — on Red Wing’s Barn Bluff, the western face of which has served for decades as a giant billboard for people who had something to say even though there’s a graffiti ordinance in the city. Read more →
During the ‘Walleye War’ of the 1980s, after federal courts upheld the right of Ojibwe people to spearfish off reservation land at night during spawning, WOJB helped with the overt racism that threatened violence.
Read more →
Reynolds was filling in for Johnny Carson (ask your grandparents) one night when his guest, Helen Gurley Brown, the editor of Cosmopolitan asked if he’d pose. Paul Newman had already said ‘no.’ Read more →
A letter in the Star Tribune today seems like an invitation to engage in one of our favorite spectator sports: watching and listening to theater- and concert-goers blow the whistle on their audience mates. It’s a problem even at “Hamilton.” Read more →
Mr. Bendo has been standing outside a muffler shop in Sioux Falls for years. The people of Sioux Falls have grown to like the guy who’s been standing over them since 1963. Read more →
One in 3 U.S. high school seniors did not read a book for pleasure in 2016. In the same time period, 82 percent of 12th-graders visited sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram every day.
So what? Read more →
Michael Barone’s radio career was launched when Garrison Keillor, who did the KSJR morning show, floated down the Mississippi River while recording artists. When the tapes back to the station didn’t arrive on time, Barone got his shot. He’s been on MPR ever since. Read more →
For all her pop hits, it’s the story of an aria that reminds us that we didn’t really know Aretha Franklin. Read more →