It's the first-ever episode of RacketCast, the new podcast experiment from Twin Cities news/arts/culture website Racket.

In this installment, we recap the week that was at our reader-funded publication, debate whether failing restaurants should seek crowdfunding life support, tease what we're working on next, and ask you, the gracious reader-turned-listener, for pointers about... what RacketCast should sound like in the future!

Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our intro/transition/outro music!

Want to advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com.

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Exactly 20 years ago, Twin Cities hip-hop greats Heiruspecs got their shot at the big time with A Tiger Dancer. On this episode of RacketCast, MC Chris "Felix" Wilbourn and bassist Sean "Twinkie Jiggles" McPherson reflect with us about the highs (giant shows, Harold & Kumar soundtrack) and lows (label expectations, snubbed Euro tour) that coincided with the release of their breakout 2004 LP.

This isn't the group's first reflection on that pivotal era—McPherson wrote with great candor about it in 2016 for City Pages—but it is the first via the audio format, the favored medium of such luminaries as Abbott & Costello, Terry Gross, and Bubba the Love Sponge. Our conversation is part Behind the Music, a whole lotta remember-some-guys, and a fitting anniversary victory lap for one of the best hip-hop acts to ever come outta Minnesota. (Cheap Trick emerges as a surprising/amusing enemy.) 

"This record is a really proud document for me and that moment. Only one of us was even 25 when we started meeting folks from [record label] Razor & Tie in their office in New York, and it was an amazing feeling," McPherson wrote in '16. "Probably the hardest part was that, on the level of folks we considered our competitors, we were doing pretty good. I don't have SoundScan access, but I believe Tiger [sold] about 13,000 by 2007 and over 10,000 in 2005. In the indie-rap world you were desperate to hit 10K, that was a big sign."

Ultimately, Heiruspecs never broke into the mainstream. Instead, they've settled into the enviable role of local music institution, rallying together each year for an annual concert that expanded in 2023 to the outdoor Heiruspecs Summer Classic mini-fest. The St. Paul crew is still doing pretty good, as you'll hear on this episode.

"It did feel like we had lightning in a bottle," Felix told us last week. "Maybe not the giant lightning strike that makes you as big as, fucking Journey or something, I don't know… But it really did feel like we had something that needed to get out, and we got it out there."

Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Depending on who ask, St. Paul educator/social media star Mandi Jung is either "the fun teacher" who cares deeply for her middle school students (that's according to HBO's John Oliver). Or she's the "anti-capitalist teacher [who] promotes anarchy" (that's according to Fox News).

We absolutely loved chatting with Jung, who regularly shares her funny and heartfelt insights into education, politics, and culture with her 158K TikTok followers.

"I'm like the queen of freak teacher TikTok," Jung says with her infectious laugh.

Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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There's no disputing it: This is the spookiest episode in RacketCast history.

First up, we've got Dan Suitor, winner of last year's skyway-themed flash-fiction horror contest, doing a bone-chilling reading of his spooktacular winning story, Skyway Hungers.

Then Em and Jay chitchat about their gun bingo and bigfoot conference stories (what a website!) before our seasonally appropriate guest arrives: Dawn McClain, leader of and investigator with the Twin Cities Paranormal Society.

Happy Halloween!

Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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A sincere and gratitude-stuffed "gobble, gobble" to all our RacketCast listeners ahead of this, the final episode before Thanksgiving.

As such, we're talkin' turkey—local folks deserving of our unenviable "Biggest MN Turkeys of 2024" designation, that is. (How did we possibly come up with this idea?) Em, Keith, and Jay go around the horn, picking the biggest fools, phonies, and/or foes of '24 and then riffing on 'em accordingly. If you're sensitive to overuse of gobbling sound effects, you may want to skip this ep!

Then, to honor our final turkey, we hear a dramatic reading from friend of the pod Scotty Gunderson, a Minneapolis-based artist and creative director making the world weirder and more mesmerizing through his storytelling studio Matter Level. 

Honorable Mention Biggest MN Turkeys of 2024...

• The Pohlad family
• AI
• The death of winter
• Pete Hegseth
• Hyperloop grifting 
• Epoch Times billboards
• The traffic-clogged revamp of northbound I-35W
• Kitty Cop Klub

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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A special bonus episode of our biweekly RacketCast? Believe it!

When Minnesota Public Radio's Cathy Wurzer reached out about the new TPT documentary she's co-executive producing, Broadcast Wars, we figured: hey, nice opportunity to run a Q&A about the doc, which explores the pioneering and often cutthroat world of Twin Cities TV news from the 1950s through the '80s. Hell, we could even plug the premiere event, which is set for 6 p.m. Thursday at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis (details here).

But then we got to thinking: The podcast gear is right over there, waiting and ready, would it be nuts to... put a celebrated local radio professional on our humble pod?

And that's exactly what we did. Enjoy our chat with Cathy!

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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In this edition of RacketCast, get to know Racket’s first-ever Picked to Click winner: Papa Mbye!

A terrific new album, Parcelles 16, helped vault the Senegal-born, Minneapolis-based musician to the top of the poll, and deservedly so. The music he makes—drawing from rap, electronic music, and indie rock—would have been unthinkable when the original P2C launched in 1991, and he’s only getting started. But now, as a Picked to Click winner, 25-year-old Mbye is already an indelible part of Minnesota music history.

Speaking of that history, Keith and Jay begin the episode with a "Remember Some Guys?" speed round of past Picked to Click winners, spanning back to when the best-new-band poll first appeared in City Pages.

And, at the very end of the pod, enjoy the Parcelles track "SENEGAMBIA."

Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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What were the biggest, strangest, buzziest, most important, least important, and/or riffiest Minneapolis politics stories of 2024?

Glad you asked! Because that's more or less what we posed to John Edwards, Taylor Dahlin, and Jason Garcia of Wedge Live!, a collection of folks who pay as close attention to such matters as anyone in town. They teed up eight topics, and we knocked 'em all down together as a roundtable of townie pundits. If you like what you hear, be sure to check out the guest-packed Wedge Live! podcast, which drops weekly via your preferred pod app.

Oh, and here are the two Racket articles referenced by Jay: "Bob Kroll Is a Professional Burger Boy Now" and "‘I Don’t Get Off On It’: Meet Will Stancil, the MN Man Caught In a Perpetual Twitter Fight."

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Did you that co-owner/editor Keith Harris is the only regularly published movie critic in all of Minnesota? Sounds wild, but we believe it to be true! As such, movies are a big part of the equation over here, though we've never addressed them via the podcast medium. To remedy that, we enlisted a silver-screen freak you know and love: Racket super-commenter Taco Mike!

Enjoy over an hour of Keith, Em, and Taco Mike discussing, debating, and, when it comes to the contested value of Kevin Costner, dueling throughout this year-end ep. There's agreement (Argylle stinks), there's disagreement (Joker: Folie à Deux... doesn't stink?), there's plenty of chatter devoted to whether movies are sexy enough these days.

Be sure to check out Taco Mike's movie podcast, I Can't Believe You Made Me Watch That. And here are links to the stories riffed on at the top of the episode: Park Point Break: Cargill vs. Duluth; Keith & the Train; Gun Bingo!

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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A special bonus episode of our biweekly RacketCast? Believe it.

Happy Lizz Winstead Day!

Minnesota comedy great Lizz Winstead is a legend of lefty media, having co-created Comedy Central's Daily Show as well as Air America Radio. Every holiday season, Winstead returns home for a show that recaps the year that was. And folks? Good god... what a year we've had in 2024. "Lizz Winstead’s Project 2024: This Super Weird Year In Review" will hit the Parkway Theater in south Minneapolis for two nights—Dec. 28 and Dec. 31—and before that Winstead was kind enough to drop by RacketCast to riff on Trump 2.0, the so-called manosphere, and her career in showbiz.

Learn more about Winstead's group, Abortion Access Front, here; buy tickets to her year-end Parkway shows right here.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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It's the first RacketCast episode of 2025!

Before '24 ended, we reviewed the year in music, bozos, politics, and movies, though we didn't have time to bite off a biggie: food 'n' drink. So, for this ep, we recruited two great dining writer/reporters—James Norton (Heavy Table) and Justine Jones (formerly of Eater Twin Cities)—to hashbrown out the year that was, assess the state of the local restaurant scene, and make bold predictions for what you'll be ingesting during the next 11.5 months.

Here are the two articles Em and Jay mention up top:

• How to Win Votes and Influence Neighbors: City Politics as a Way Forward in Dire Times
• Read an Excerpt From ‘The Many Facets of Eyedea,’ a New Oral History on the Celebrated MN Rapper

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Voters elected Mary Moriarty as Hennepin County's top prosecutor in 2022, which, given the sweeping sociopolitical changes since, feels like 1,000 years ago. Just over two full years into the job, how has Moriarty's progressive vision of restorative justice unfolded while Minneapolis remains under a national microscope? We asked the first openly LGBTQ+ Hennepin County attorney about her successes, challenges, and surprisingly elusive favorite restaurants. You can check out Moriarty's brand-new podcast, We Don't Have to Choose, right here.

And here are the stories we gabbed about during This Week In Racket. (P.S. Jay misidentified Todd Haug's post-Surly gig as War Pigs outta Iowa; in reality, he's at Indiana's 3 Floyds Brewing Co.)

• Shoegaze is Having a Moment and Twin Cities Bands Are Here For It.
• How Did Minneapolis Metal Band Powermad End up in David Lynch’s ‘Wild at Heart’?
• Meet the One-Woman Team Overseeing MN’s Online Encyclopedia 

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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A terrestrial radio DJ... on a podcast?! Believe it: We've got Dave Ryan, the 101.3 KDWB morning show host since 1993, on the pod to talk pranks, legacy, the evolving nature of Top 40 radio, and the ill-fated Booty Cruises. (Our conversation cold-opens with him dealing with a Colorado exterminator—how can you cut tape that good?) Be sure read Rachel Hutton's longform 2018 Star Tribune profile of Ryan right here.

And here are the three stories we yakked about during What I Learned in Racket:

• How Red Wing—Yes, Red Wing—Became a Minnesota Music Hotbed
• Why Do So Many of Minneapolis’s Best Sandwiches Come From Liquor Stores?
• ‘I Can’t Let It Go’: Inside the 74-Year Search for the Klein Brothers, MN’s Oldest Missing Persons Cold Case

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music

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We've got a double-header for ya, folks.

In the leadoff spot: Keith and Jay discuss Poised to Pop, Racket's annual predictions for the year's most exciting new local music acts. (It is very different from Picked to Click, thank you very much!) Hear Keith's scouting reports, then dive into some of the best rock, jazz, techno, rap, etc. sounds currently coming from the Twin Cities music scene.

On deck: Em and Jay chat with Chris Steadman, who's launching a new podcast studio called Good Judy Productions, and Celisia Stanton, whose Truer Crime podcast is about to enter its second season. Among the topics addressed: the challenges and rewards of pursuing ambitious, narrative-driven podcasts; the state of the local podcasting scene; and the philosophical approach of "podcasting from below."

Play... ball? Play... podcast? Whatever, you get the idea.

And here's our P2P playlist if you're scorekeeping at home.

• “Love Bomb” by Crush Scene
• “Bugz Bunny” by EssJay TheAfrocentricRatchet
• “Attaboy” by In Leiu
• “Smoke of the Midnight Lamp” by Kavyesh Kaviraj
• “Power Cord” by Lonefront 
• “Pink Puma” by Products Band
• “I Feel Perfect” by Rosie
• “Oil Light” by Yonder

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Did you know the Star Tribune recently launched its very first episodic, narratively driven podcast series, Ghost of a Chance?

Over six episodes, reporter Eric Roper and producer Melissa Townsend explore the lives Harry and Clementine Robinson, a Black Minneapolis family who owned Roper's south Minneapolis home in the early 20th century. "The Robinsons' lives are a window into the ambition, discrimination, and resistance that shaped the city that would become ground zero for an unprecedented global racial reckoning," the pod creators promise. It's a big ol' ambitious project that took almost five years to assemble, so we figured we'd get Roper on our less ambitious podcast to talk about it.

You can listen to Ghost of a Chance here. And you can listen to what, it turns out, is Roper's favorite podcast, Wood Talk, here.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Mitch Hedberg conceived his jokes with a deliberate eye toward timelessness. 

The Minnesota-launched comedy great’s widow, Lynn Shawcroft, confirmed as much during a 2013 episode of WTF with Marc Maron. And for about 15 years, the timeless comedy of Hedberg—surreal one-liners, musings, and wordplay delivered in his unmistakable stoner drawl—attracted a massive following. Jokes like, “I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too” and, “I like rice. Rice is great when you're hungry and you want 2,000 of something,” keep finding new fans through his albums and specials. 

But now, 20 years after Hedberg’s death, one artifact remains frustratingly elusive: Los Enchiladas!, the 1999 movie that he wrote, directed, starred in, and bankrolled. Shot in St. Paul, the super-goofy indie comedy set at a Mexican restaurant debuted at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival; an official release has never been secured, despite Shawcroft hinting at one for over a dozen years. All fans have is a rickety, leaked workprint version that’s available on YouTube. 

To celebrate the 25th anniversary* of Los Enchiladas! and to better understand its mastermind, Racket assembled a roundtable of core sources: Brian Malow, a comedian and Hedberg’s friend who co-starred and co-produced it; Jim Jorgensen, a veteran local actor who plays the over-the-top chef; Matt Ehling, a locally based filmmaker who served as co-director of photography; and Jeff Siegel, an Emmy-winning filmmaker who's currently years deep into making the definitive Hedberg documentary. (*OK, 26th anniversary by a couple of weeks—the famously chill Hedberg would forgive us.)        

“I discovered Mitch's comedy in the early 2000s, and I saw that he made this movie that played at Sundance. I was fascinated,” says Siegel, who hopes his doc will introduce a whole new generation to Hedberg. “I got to meet him a few times, and I was always asking him questions about the film. I wanted to see it! Mitch signed my copy of his first album, Strategic Grill Locations, with, ‘Jeff, Los Ench is coming, 2002.’ So, I have a longstanding fascination with the film.”

Us too! Let’s dig into the world of Los Enchiladas!, and maybe, just maybe, help drum up some excitement that’ll lead to the long-lost movie’s proper release.  

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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A fresh RacketCast ep, out one day early due to Wolves Fever gripping the state.

Is it unwise to keep calling our listeners "dummies"? Perhaps, but that's what we did with our Twins preview pod, and we're doing it again for this Timberwolves explainer featuring the great podcaster Dane Moore.

Dane joined us Wednesday afternoon from L.A., where hours later your T-Wolves trounced the Los Angeles Lakers to advance to the Western Conference Semifinals round of the NBA playoffs. As fans hop aboard the hoops bandwagon, the host of The Dane Moore NBA Podcast equips us with the requisite knowledge to root deep into the postseason, including a long-view look at the franchise, a roster breakdown, and also details about his own self-made Wolves podcasting empire. Awoooooooo!

Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• Life After HUGE: How the Twin Cities Improv Scene Is Evolving (and Even Expanding) Following HUGE Improv Theater’s Closure
• We Taste Tested the New Frozen Jucy Lucy Brand
• ‘The Park Is Vibrating’: How DJ Sound Systems Redefined Powderhorn’s MayDay Celebration
• 
  

And would you like to know the exact make/model of chest freezer Jay drones on and on about? Take a look. (Best Buy... please sponsor the pod!)

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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We're still figuring out what types of conversations y'all wanna hear on RacketCast, and our first experiment with a newsier, shorter installment was a certified hit.

So here's another bonus ep along those lines: our chat with veteran state Sen. John Marty (DFL-Roseville) about whether Minnesota should ban billboards. Marty's eye-catching new bill would establish a moratorium on new billboard construction, and eventually phase out existing ones as they age. If the bill becomes law, Minnesota would join Maine, Alaska, Vermont, and Hawaii as the only states who've declared war on the visual pollution that lines our roadways.

Of modest consequence? Sure, but the legislation aims to improve the state in a tangible way, which is more than we can say about two recent bad-faith trolling bills authored by Republicans in the House. (We asked Marty about both of those.)

Oh, yeah! If you don't have plans Saturday head to Insight Brewing for Smash Fest, where Racket's Jay Boller will be judging a smashburger competition featuring two recent RacketCast guests.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Twin Cities burger freaks: This is the episode for you.

The proprietors of two elite food trucks—Angry Line Cook (Jesse Hedman and Mona Negasi) and Burger Daddies (Nikki and Brian Podgorski)—dropped by our studio for a long conversation about cheeseburgers, building your business from scratch, and life in the trenches of the food industry. (FYI: Whenever "the burger group" gets mentioned, we're referring to the fantastic Facebook group MSP Burgers.) On April 26, Jay from Racket will actually be judging a blind taste test at Insight Brewing's Smash Fest (details here), which'll feature battling burger joints Angry Line Cook, Burger Daddies, Private Sector Provisions, and Garillers.

This episode of RacketCast is brought to you by...

TPT's award-winning music series Stage, which returns on April 7 with an electrifying new season, featuring never-before-seen collaborations filmed at the legendary 7th St Entry. This season brings fresh energy with standout pairings like Kiss the Tiger with Diane, Your Smith with Raffaella, and Cory Wong with Misty Boyce. Experience intimate performances and powerful storytelling from Minnesota’s top talent. Watch on TPT 2 and the PBS App, or catch exclusive previews on The Current’s The Local Show. Learn more here.

And also by...

Lodestone Coffee and Games is a friendly local game store and cafe, specializing in Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons and board games of all kinds. You can find tournaments, meetups or open play events every single day of the week. Lodestone also carries a massive selection of over 500,000 Magic the Gathering singles at lodestonegames.com, with same day pickup available, and free domestic shipping for orders over thirty dollars. If you are looking for an inclusive space with delightful milkshakes, check out Lodestone on Cedar Lake Road in Minnetonka, or at lodestonegames.com.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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What's going on up there in Duluth?

Plenty of stuff worth trying out ahead of your demise, that's for sure. Duluth News Tribune reporter Jay Gabler chronicled the exact number in his new book, 100 Things to Do In Duluth Before You Die. Jay, who you might remember from his time at 89.3 the Current, hopped on the pod to discuss the Zenith City's must-do activities, and he also gave us a nice rundown of the big talkers coming out of the Twin Ports; check out his book-release party dates here.

And here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket…

• An Educated Guesser’s Guide to the 2025 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival
• Grading the 2025 Additions to Target Field’s New Food Lineup
• I Came to Minnesota From Venezuela 2 Years Ago. Now I Have to Go Back.

•••

This episode of RacketCast is brought to you by TPT's award-winning music series Stage, which returns on April 7 with an electrifying new season, featuring never-before-seen collaborations filmed at the legendary 7th St Entry. This season brings fresh energy with standout pairings like Kiss the Tiger with Diane, Your Smith with Raffaella, and Cory Wong with Misty Boyce. Experience intimate performances and powerful storytelling from Minnesota’s top talent. Watch on TPT 2 and the PBS App, or catch exclusive previews on The Current’s The Local Show. Learn more here.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Late Tuesday, Gov. Tim Walz surprised around 40,000 state workers by announcing a mandatory 50% return-to-office policy for employees who live within 75 miles of their main work location.

“This policy change supports the economic vitality of office districts like downtown St. Paul, bringing foot traffic back to businesses and public spaces,” the governor's office says of the directive, which is set to take effect June 1. The move set off waves of online anger, with the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees union threatening legal action and even a strike.

RacketCast has never waded into breaking news territory, but considering the scope of this order and its abrupt timeliness, we asked MAPE President Megan Dayton to hop on the pod to discuss how her union's 18,000ish workers are processing the news. Spoiler: They've not been this pissed off in recent memory. Let us know if you enjoy this type of bonus episode, and we'll keep 'em coming.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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In the early '00s Aaron Gleeman's U of M journalism professors suspected he was chronically hungover. In reality, the young blogger was chronically exhausted from writing about baseball literally all night long. That set Gleeman on a path that includes Aaron's Baseball Blog (cute!), NBC Sports, Baseball Prospectus, and, since 2019, the Athletic, which is now the de facto sports desk of the New York Times. In our view? He's the state's ace hardball writer.

Gleeman joined Racket in our brand-new office/podcast studio to breakdown the state of the in-flux Twins franchise, the team's roster heading into 2025, and his own journey through the blogger-to-professional-sportswriter pipeline. (Apologies for any echoey sound—our audio paneling efforts are also in-flux.) You can—and should!—subscribe to and support his Gleeman & the Geek Twins podcast, featuring co-host John Bonnes, here; you can read all of his writing via the Athletic here.

But first: We debut a hit new segment known as Birthday Break Down. And here are the stories Em and Jay gabbed about during our regular segment, This Week in Racket:

• Let's Taco 'Bout Politics mayoral candidate Q&A series
• How Alive or Dead is Dinkytown in 2025? Depends on Who You Ask.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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The horror Davis Moturi and his wife, Caroline, experienced after moving into a cute white house on Grand Avenue in south Minneapolis has been well-documented. Moturi, a 34-year-old Black man, quickly realized his neighbor, 54-year-old white man John Sawchak, was determined to make his life hell.

Beginning in 2023, Sawchak's seemingly endless assault of racist remarks, violent threats, and disgusting vandalism barraged the Moturi household, according to Davis. He documented all of it, yet he says repeated pleas to the Minneapolis Police Department yielded indifference from law enforcement. Until, finally, Sawchak shot Moturi—the bullet shattered two ribs and embedded itself in his spine. Sawchak wouldn't be arrested until almost a week later.

Today, Moturi is still in physical and emotional recovery. (The prosecution of his assailant has been stalled after Sawchak was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.) Moturi body remains weakened, but he resolve to expose MPD's failings is as strong as ever. We invited him to share his harrowing story in a longform conversation on RacketCast.

"It has been hell, and people need to know what happened," Moturi tells us. "They deserve to know what happened."

Before all that, we debut a hit new segment known as Movie Minute. And here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: MN Man Shares Name With New Pope
• How Much Would You Pay for the Best Reuben in Town?
• Raising the Sausage Curtain: How Art-A-Whirl Helped Turn NE Minneapolis Into an Arts District

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Last fall Racket surveyed 44 Minnesota brewing pros and found that 63.6% believe the industry is in a positive place—not bad!

Last month Racket highlighted Axios reporting that showed a 10.8% boost in Minnesota craft brewery production last year—nice!

But David Berg, the longtime brewmaster at August Schell Brewing Co., isn't convinced by those types of cheery reports, and he recently got all up in our Bluesky mentions to say as much.

"The brewing industry is pretty much in dire straits right now," Berg says. "I think it's a disservice to the industry to present it in any other fashion. It's as bleak as it's been in the 20 years I've been part of it."

Are Minnesota breweries in trouble? And, if so, how much? As the number of craft breweries throughout our state shoots past 237, is the long-murmured-about "craft beer bubble" finally ready to pop?

We got Berg on the horn to pick his considerable beer brain about the darker forces that might brewing on his industry's horizon.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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It's a Very Special Episode of RacketCast!

No guests this week. Instead, three of Racket's four co-owner/editors—Jay Boller, Em Cassel, and Keith Harris—will share the origin story of our local news, arts, and culture publication, which'll turn four this summer.

All it takes? Four laid-off schmucks with a combined $4,000, plenty of Covid-era unemployment insurance, a dash of good luck, thousands of supportive readers, and the dream of keeping an alt-weekly-style news org alive in the Twin Cities. We think it'll be an entertaining listen for local news junkies, and, selfishly, we hope it'll help juice sales in the final moments of our prize-packed Spring Member Drive.

But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• After George Floyd’s Murder, MN Companies Pledged Millions. We Asked 14 How Much They’ve Given.
• Food Trucks, Craft Markets, Live Music—Tattoos? At Local Events, Pop-Up Flash Tattoos Are the Hot New Item.
• Flying V Is Where the Hardcore Bands Go to Rage

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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War: There's nothing worse. Yet the U.S. can't seem to stop waging it, with our latest target, Iran, being subjected to around dozen 30,000-pound GBU-57 "bunker buster" bombs on June 21. The illegal preemptive attack may have set Iran's nuclear program back by only a few months, according to one preliminary classified report.

One day later, President Trump floated the following via Truth Social: "It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!" Jeez, when in our recent history has regime change ever backfired?

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), meanwhile, continues to be one of the most steadfast anti-war voices in Congress, writing: “The strikes on Iran, ordered by President Trump and executed without congressional authorization, mark a dangerous and reckless escalation of an already volatile conflict in the Middle East. Military strikes will not bring peace... The American people are tired of endless war. We need to end this madness before more lives are lost."

To hear more from Omar, we contacted the congresswoman via video chat late Thursday for her take on Trump's new war and what can be done to stop it.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Punter. Activist. Rocker. Writer. Gamer. And, now, politician.

Ex-Viking Chris Kluwe endeared himself to (most) Minnesotans for eight seasons as he booted the ball while fighting for LGBTQ+ rights. From July 3-6, Kluwe will make his triumphant return to this state as a guest at sci-fi convention CONVergence in downtown Minneapolis. Before that, we caught up with him to talk about getting arrested, running for office, life after football, Minnesota memories, and whether or not Elon Musk is a video game poser (spoiler: he sure is).

But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• How One MN School District Killed Its Right-Wing Book Ban
• Brunch Buds: Bolé Ethiopian Cuisine Bowl(é?)s Us Over
• A Brief History of Alternative Pride in the Twin Cities

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Two veteran reporters from The Hill—Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin—drop by the pod to discuss their new book, Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America, which dropped this past April via Island Press. You'll learn about the accidental origins of PFAS chemicals, their consumer-facing ubiquity, and the massive health risk they pose to all Americans, including the ones 3M knowingly poisoned in the eastern Twin Cities metro. Fun! (Frazin wanted listeners to know about this forever chemicals regulatory update that occurred post-record.)

Before all that, we debut a hit new segment known as Dial Racket. (Call us! Details below.) And here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• Racket Goes to College: A Week of Student Stories
• How the Twin Cities’ Volunteer-Run Spaces Make it Work

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 1-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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After Racket's Keith Harris was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2022, he noticed how much the actual experience of having cancer differed from how we typically talk about it. He's joined on the pod today by independent journalist Taylor Dahlin (Wedge LIVE!, Twitter), who was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. Now that both are cancer-free, the two "survivors" (who feel weird about calling themselves that) have a long, breezy chat about disease, death, inconvenience, and other fun stuff.

Before the main event, we fielded three listener voicemails for Dial Racket, which you can contribute to by hitting us up at 619-RACKTIP. And before that, we gabbed about the following stories for our regular What I Learned In Racket segment...

• Minnesota’s Mighty Maker Spaces
• 36 Ways to Make Friends in the Twin Cities
• New 2025 MN State Fair Food: Predicting the Winners and Losers

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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The ghost of Jeffery Epstein, sex-trafficking buddy to the elites, continues to haunt Trump World.

Just this week the Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department warned Trump in May that his name is included in the Epstein files. (The White House called this "fake news.") Meanwhile, the drip, drip, drip of previously unknown Trump-Epstein entanglements keeps accelerating—videos, photos, sketches.

To discuss all of this, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith (DFL-Minnesota) joins us on this episode of RacketCast. Smith has positioned herself on the frontlines of the posting wars, sharing eyebrow-raising Trump-Epstein developments with the abandon of a lawmaker who, at 67 and with retirement fast approaching, has few fucks left to give.

But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• Meet Minnesota’s Rocketman: Inside the Incomparable Life of Ky Michaelson
• Let’s Try Bloomington’s Buzziest Egg Sandwich

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

This week's RacketCast is brought to you by CannaCon and also by Minneapolis Cultural Districts.

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For many Minnesotans, it wasn’t just another building on the North Shore—it was the beating heart of the North Shore. Over its 144-year history, Lutsen Resort had hosted countless weddings, family reunions, and friendly ski trips along the the intersection of Lake Superior and the Poplar River. So when the historic lodge burned down in early 2024, many folks were understandably heartbroken.

Then, almost immediately, suspicion around the owner, Bryce Campbell, began brewing. Dire finances. Unresolved inspection violations. Contradictory whereabouts.

The State Fire Marshal’s investigation remains ongoing, but North Shore journalist/author Joe Friedrichs is already hard at work on a longform podcast series called The Fire: A Lutsen Podcast. Friedrichs and his team have assembled almost 30 hours of audio, including interviews with ex-resort employees, fire investigators, Cook County residents, fellow journalists, and even Campbell.

"It's such an important story, and not just for the North Shore—it needs to be treated with respect in terms of production quality," Friedrichs says. "I'm just so interested in it… it's time to do [this podcast]."

You can support The Fire, which is due out this fall, via Kickstarter. Enjoy our conversation with Friedrichs.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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How does public transit work in the Twin Cities?

To find out, we invited Metro Transit GM Lesley Kandaras and bus driver Al Chang to our St. Louis Park studio. (Kandaras, a true company woman who has ridden all 60 MT routes, even took the bus there.) Transit enthusiasts should enjoy this convo about the successes, challenges, new developments, and total disinterest in building a subway system surrounding our town's bus and light rail operator.

But first! We engage in the second-ever (and possibly last-ever) installment of "Birthday Breakdown" to celebrate Jay's big 3-8. And here are the stories we gabbed about afterward during What I Learned In Racket...

• Racket’s Year in Review: August 2024-July 2025
• Best Budget Bites: $9.99 Roast Beef Sandwich From Maverick’s Real Roast Beef
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Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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In the grand tradition of this still-kinda-new podcast, we're bringing you conversations with smart and cool local sportswriters to preview upcoming seasons. The "for dummies" framing? The guests have nothing to do with that, and perhaps one day we'll stop the condescending approach. But today is not that day, dummies.

This week we've got Arif Hasan (The Athletic, Bleacher Report, Zone Coverage) on the pod, a veteran Minnesota Vikings cataloger and founder of the awesome reader-funded football website Wide Left. Hasan breaks down the fracturing sports media landscape, explains the top causes for optimism and concern regarding your Vikes, and even roasts the living shit outta the Green Bay Packers, a team that's near and dear to your host's heart.

But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• Helen Hoover: The Pioneering MN Nature Writer You’ve ‘Never Heard Of’ Finally Gets Her Due
• A Chronic Hater Attempts to Enjoy the Minnesota Renaissance Festival

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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No time for extensive show notes—this is an emergency! Listen to all four Racket owner/editors gab for an hour-plus about all the Minnesota State Fair official new foods we gobbled Thursday. Gov. Tim Walz even makes an exclusive cameo.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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A sincere and gratitude-stuffed "gobble, gobble" to all our RacketCast listeners ahead of this, one of the final episodes before Thanksgiving.

As such, we're talkin' turkey—local folks deserving of our unenviable "Biggest MN Turkeys of 2025" designation, that is. (How did we possibly come up with this idea?) Em, Keith, and Jay go around the horn, picking the biggest fools, phonies, and/or foes of '25 and then riffing on 'em accordingly. If you're sensitive to overuse of gobbling sound effects, you may want to skip this ep.

Did we miss any egregious turkeys? Call our hotline (619-RACKTIP, 619-722-5847) with your nominations—we'll play your voicemails on the next episode!

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Naomi Kritzer, author of the best Twin Cities election guide for 20+ years, drops by the pod to assess mayoral races, City Council races, Park Board races, and even the surprisingly exciting Board of Estimate & Taxation races. Study up—Tuesday is Election Day! Kritzer's latest book, Obstetrix, will arrive next summer.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Eternally cool director/author/personality John Waters—aka the “Pope of Trash” aka the “People's Pervert” aka the “Prince of Puke”—makes his triumphant return this Saturday to the Parkway Theater. That's where Waters, 79, will perform his new "Going to Extremes" show on a Minneapolis stage he has visited eight times in recent years—more like the "Parkway Pervert." Ahead of the gig we chatted about Walker Art Center glory holes, Coen bros friendship/fandom, fearing the Mall of America, and how, in 2025, nobody can take a freaking joke.

But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• Meet the Volunteer Pilots Flying Patients From Red States to Reproductive Care
• What I Saw at This Weekend’s Minnesota MAHA Fest Scared the Hell out of Me

This episode of RacketCast is brought to you by TPT's You Are Here: Wicked Minnehaha.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Sometimes, when you're a tiny media outlet with a biweekly podcast, several interview requests fall through and you're left with... three microphones and an hour to fill. And nobody can accuse us of not filling it! Inspired by a dictionary's tweet, Jay, Em, and Keith gathered for the first installment of BookCast, where we go 'round the horn to talk about—you guessed it—those papery, flippable lil devices we love.

But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• ‘Call It the Clown Car’: An Oral History of Minneapolis’s 35-Candidate 2013 Mayoral Election
• ‘Only Ugly Guys’ Is More Beautiful Than You’d Expect & Black Scholars, Trans Ancestors, and Video Games: ‘I Promise to Burn Forever’ Challenges Visitors to Remember

And here are the books we plugged...

• Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte
• Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights by Samuel G. Freedman
• In the Heart of the Sea: The Epic True Story that Inspired Moby Dick by Nathaniel Philbrick
• The Book of Love by Kelly Link
• Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
• The Times: How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn, and the Transformation of Journalism by Adam Nagourney
• Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
• Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich
• It by Stephen King

This episode of RacketCast is brought to you by TPT's You Are Here: Wicked Minnehaha.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Alt-weeklies: The four Racket founders/editors used to work at one, City Pages, before Star Tribune Media Co. flushed it and its 40-plus-year legacy down the tubes five years ago. And that fate more or less mirrors what's happening nationally with those spirited, smart, and sharp-elbowed publications that once covered news, arts, and culture all across this increasingly stupid land.

So last year when Tricia Romero, former editor-in-chief of The Stranger, released The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture, we were intrigued. And this week when Emma Silvers, an ex editor at SF Weekly, released this deep dive into alt-weeklies for her exciting new worker-owned publication, Coyote, we were doubly intrigued. Here's hoping all that intrigues you, because we—Racket's Jay, Jessica, and Keith—got Romero and Silvers on the line to talk for over an hour about the history, death, and possible new life of the scrappy little style of journalism we all love.

But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• Fall Arts Guide 2025
• At the Palace, Rilo Kiley Reminds Adults What They’ve Lived Through

This episode of RacketCast is brought to you by Minneapolis Cultural Districts.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Summoning our best Jocko Conlan voice: Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-rike!

You won't hear our guests—Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation President Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 President David Stiggers—use that word, specifically, to describe Friday's "ICE Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth & Freedom," which they helped organize with fellow labor leaders and clergy members. They can't say "strike" or "work stoppage" for legal reasons, but c'mon, you get the idea: Hundreds of local businesses, including Racket, are shutting down tomorrow and urging neighbors to observe a general-strike-ish day of no working, no attending school, and no shopping to protest the Trump's administration's authoritarian immigration assault on Minnesota.

Glaubitz Gabiou and Stiggers dropped by the pod to discuss this historic day of solidarity, how their members are enduring Operation Metro Surge, and why workers flexing their power matters more than ever.

Before all that, we discuss the Trump administration's siege on Minnesota in a loosey-goosey installment of What I Learned in Racket.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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You've heard Racket's Em Cassel co-hosting RacketCast, certainly. But have you ever heard her guesting on another podcast entirely?

That's the not-so-rare opportunity presented to you here, where you'll find a recent episode of Never Post that features Em and NP's Hans Buetow outlining the multitudinal crises (fraud, ICE, killing, general chaos incited by the fascist MAGA movement) gripping our great state.

Be sure to follow Never Post—a worker-owned, listener-funded, locally connected podcast "about what's happening with, to, and on the internet"—right here.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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It's our last podcast ep of 2025!

As such, we invited new Racket dining correspondent Kirstie Kimball of beyond beurre blanc to join fellow critic Em Cassel of Racket to hashbrown out the year that (almost) was in Minnesota food and drink.

Recs are offered. Shit is talked. And the seemingly ballooning craft beer bubble? You better believe it's speculated over.

See ya in 2026.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Wishing you and yours a joyous and spiritually fulfilling Black Friday. Make sure your frenzied consumerism arrives at What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To, the brand-new memoir from Mary Lucia.

The longtime Twin Cities DJ stopped by Racket HQ to talk about her book, and my goodness did we enjoy a long, fascinating conversation about Lucia helping launch REV105, becoming the drive-time star at 89.3 the Current, and enduring a stalker who turned three years of her life into a waking nightmare. These days, Looch is teaching the youth how to do radio at our favorite frequency, Radio K. (Editor's note: We're experimenting with new recording software, which slightly fucked up the intro recording quality... skip to the 25-minute mark to hear the Lucia interview in pristine sound.)

Catch two, count 'em two, upcoming What Doesn't Kill Me release parties—December 9 at the Granada Theater with past RacketCast guest Lizz Winstead (more info here) and December 10 at the Landmark Center with Andrea Swensson (more info here).

Before all that, we field reader voicemails for Turkey of the Year snubs and, of course, conduct another thrilling installment of What I Learned In Racket.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Small but mighty, the Minnesota Reformer continues to deliver some of the best Operation Metro Surge coverage in the state. We're fans, we suspect you're fans, so we figured: Let's get reporters Madison McVan and Max Nesterak on the pod to discuss their ongoing coverage of the federal invasion. Here's a link to Max's big feature story; here's a link to Madison's piece about ICE resistance going mainstream.

But before any of that, our own small/mighty crew engaged in a spirited round of What I Learned in Racket. Here's what we learned...

• They Asked for Donations to Buy $10 Burritos. They Raised More Than $10K.
• Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello Rouse Anti-Fascist Fervor at First Ave
• Gas Masks, Signal Chats, and a Honda Fit: Chasing ICE With Will Stancil

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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You've heard Racket's Jay Boller co-hosting RacketCast, certainly. But have you ever heard him guesting on another podcast entirely?

That's the not-so-rare opportunity presented to you here, where you'll find a recent episode of Pod Damn America that features Jay, Unite Here Local 17's Sheigh Freeberg, and host/occasional Racket contributor Anders J. Lee outlining the federal government's current occupation of Minnesota for PDA's national audience. We talk resistance. We talk media coverage. We talk labor solidarity. Jay incorrectly states that Michele Tafoya is competing against Mike Lindell for the U.S. Senate, when in fact Lindell is running for governor. 

Be sure to follow Pod Damn America—the preeminent "gothic socialist podcast" featuring comedic news commentary from Lee and co-host Jake Flores—right here.

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🎶 Take me out to the ball game 🎶

🎶 Take me out with the crowd 🎶

🎶 Buy me some peanuts and RacketCast (?!) 🎶

Calm down! RacketCast will remain free of charge for this (slightly delayed) season preview of your reportedly hopeless 2026 Minnesota Twins.

As always, for no reason in particular, we'll be framing it through the "for dummies" lens, though our guest is no dummy: He's Aaron Gleeman, the best damn baseball writer/reporter in town. You can—and should!—subscribe to and support his Gleeman & the Geek Twins podcast, featuring co-host John Bonnes, here; you can read all of his writing via the Athletic here.

And for the What I Learned in Racket enthusiasts out there, tough luck! We're short-staffed this week, so our usual hoopla-loaded gabbing up top won't hit—very '26 Twins-like, when you think about it—your ears this week. No crying in baseball and podcasting.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy Fancy Ray Day!

Well, actually, that honorary calendar date—as previously decreed by the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul—isn't until March 28. But we wanted to get "The Best Looking Man in Comedy" on our podcast well in advance of the "Fancy Ray Day Comedy Show" he'll be headlining next Saturday at Spring Street Tavern in northeast Minneapolis. (Click here for tickets.)

"Fancy" Ray McCloney is, of course, a Minnesota comedy institution, having worked the clubs since the '80s. He ran for governor in 1998. He has pitched your favorite places and products for decades, including a Taco Bell spot during the 2016 Super Bowl. He has officiated hundreds of weddings, "mostly for tattooed white people," he says with a grin. His TV appearances span from local cable access to Maury Povich to America's Got Talent.

Fancy Ray was an elusive guest to book (naturally, he wanted a coinciding gig to pitch), but we got him in the studio for a wide-ranging talk that touches on philosophy, riffing with Tim and Eric, poetry, his longtime friendship with Little Richard, and so much more.

Before any of that we get into 20ish minutes of What I Learned in Racket, in which we discuss...

• WE WENT FOR THE WINGS: A Visit to the Mall of America Hooters During Its Final Days
• ‘Wuthering Heights’ Is a Horny Bore; ‘The Bride!’ Is a Dizzying Clutter
• ‘It’s David vs. Goliath’: Inside the Fight to Kill Google’s Secrecy-Shrouded Hermantown Data Center

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What the hell is going on in North Oaks, Minnesota?

That's the question Minneapolis-based videographer/YouTuber Chris Parr set out to answer. In a video from last month titled "I Mapped Google’s ONLY SECRET CITY," Parr explains why North Oaks—an extremely wealthy north metro city of 5,200—doesn't appear on Google Street View, gets into the history of mapping in general, chats with multiple historians and a drone expert, and then gets hovering above the hidden city in question.

Enjoy our chat with Parr, and here's a link to his viral video.

But before all that, Em, Keith, and Jay went 'round the horn for our regular segment, What I Learned in Racket. Here's what we learned...

• Radish Farm Stop: A New SW Minneapolis Grocer That’s Like a Year-Round Farmers Market
• Yes, That Mancini’s: How a Legendary St. Paul Steakhouse Raised $35K for the Resistance
• Sack’s Back: MN’s Greatest Political Cartoonist Un-Retired Because He’s ‘So Fucking Pissed’ at Trump, ICE

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ever read this week's Racket feature story and think to yourself: "Boy, I'd sure love to hear an entire hour-long conversation about how Niko Georgiades helped launch Unicorn Riot, provided incredible on-the-ground coverage of the George Floyd uprising, and kept producing livestream video coverage into the present, including during Operation Metro Surge?" Boy, have we got a treat for you!

But, before all that, we've got our regular What I Learned in Racket segment, which this week includes an original poetry reading by Keith Harris—*snap, snap, snap.* Catch up below:

• ICE Cost Lake Street Businesses at Least $46M. These Weekly Cash Mobs Help Them Claw Back Profit.
• Corporate Communications in ‘Uncertain, Stressful, and Volatile Times’: How MN Employers Failed to Address the ICE Occupation
• Streaming the Siege: At Every Turn, ICE’s MN Invasion Has Been Captured on Video

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at advertise@racketmn.com. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.