RacketCast

Rare non-Minnesotan guest alert!

But don't fear: Journalist Meaghan Garvey is a denizen of the Upper Midwest, one who happens to be the author of a fantastic new book all about our cherished lil region, Midwestern Death Trip. In it...

For months Claire Luger has been sounding the alarm about a MAGA takeover of the Forest Lake Area School District. Luger's a special education teacher at a nearby district, a three-term member of the Wyoming City Council, a singer in the Minneapolis band the Silent Treatment and, relevant to that first sentence, a current candidate for the Forest Lake school board. She joined us to discuss what the hell's going on up in the hometown of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and also what it's like when the dolts at Alpha News attack your band for being—gasp!—anti-fascist.

Born into remarkable wealth, Mark Dayton could've loafed poolside, Billy Madison-style, amid the opulence that comes from being part of a dynastic Minnesota business family. Instead, he charted a remarkable life that includes stints as a U.S. senator, governor, and, most recently, rookie author of the compelling new memoir, Perseverance (read our review here). Dayton, 79, joined us for a 40-minute conversation to discuss all of that and more.

But first we engage in an abridged edition of What I Learned in Racket, followed by the debut of a controversial new segment: Rank Past RacketCast Guests...

Happy Labor Day!

To celebrate the only legit holiday, we invite labor journalists Sarah Lazare and Amie Stager of Workday Magazine on the pod to discuss their brand-new book, This Is How We Win: A Guide to Building Working-Class Uprisings. How, exactly, do we win? You'll have to listen to their expert diagnosis of the current state of organized labor to find out.

And before any of that, Em, Keith, and Jay engage in a perfectly fine round of What I Learned in Racket. Here's what they learned...

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.

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 th...

Since 2000, American TV viewers have gobbled up 838 episodes spanning the broader CSI universe—folks love seeing crime scenes investigated. Since 2010, Melissa Loren has worked as a real-life crime scene investigator with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a field she entered because of her fascination with another pop culture depiction of her work, true crime.

We got Loren on the pod because, well, her work is incredibly interesting. (She refutes this, though admits people run up to her at parties with eager questions.) Blood-splatter analysis. Bagging evidence. DNA matching. It's enough to make most jobs (podcasting co...

All month long wildfires have wreaked havoc in northern Minnesota. The Boundary Waters are shut down until October, tourist-starved Ely businesses are trying to stay afloat, and the smoldering could last well into winter.

To better understand the fiery situation we booked Art Gonzales, a fire behavior analyst with the Southern Area Complex Incident Management Team. A former fire fighter himself, he now studies and tracks wildfires around the country to help teams extinguish them. Gonzales has been doing just that up in Ely, and we stole some of his valuable time to get a crash-course...

Books! We love those papery, bound little bastards.

And we're guessing you, a supporter of local independent media, might also be a certified bookworm. As such, we're convening our second-ever BookCast council to gab about all things lit. This time 'round we've got a special guest: Racket contributor Deborah Copperud, who happens to have recently launched her own Minnesota-focused book podcast, Read Minnesota Books.

Deborah's lit coverage for Racket includes an interview with Mary Lucia about her memoir, a conversation with Deborah Jiang-Stein about her Twin Cities-focused flash fiction, a savage review Strib...

For 15 months our friends Jessica Lussenhop and Andy Mannix have been hard at work revealing sex crimes hidden within the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church.

The ProPublica reporters started their harrowing two-part series on Minnesota's North Shore, but the story of multi-generational abuses soon spiderwebbed across the country—the Dakotas, Wyoming, Washington. (Warning: child sex abuse is discussed at length.)

Lussenhop and Mannix take listeners behind the scenes on their important reporting to begin our interview, and then we take a hard tonal pivot to chat about their 2010s-era careers at City Pages, the dead al...

You there, dummy with some degree of affluence and PTO to spare: You don't know diddly squat about travel.

But Kyle Potter and Gunnar Olson, the team behind The Thrifty Traveler Podcast? It's their full-time job to scout for travel deals, report on industry developments, and, generally, make their audience smarter globe hoppers. We got the boys on the pod ahead of their big live recording session this Friday at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis (more info here) to make our audience, the aforementioned dummies, savvier travelers as summer vacation season heats up.

...

We're halfway through the Year of Data Center Backlash. Americans hate the massive AI factories, yet tech giants continue to foist them on communities amid the current AI arms race. That negative sentiment isn't difficult to understand: They're noisy, energy-sucking IRL avatars for a product that's promising to eliminate your job.

At least a dozen data center projects are at various stages of completion throughout Minnesota. Earlier this year, we brought you an in-depth look at the battle to stop Google's "Project Loon" hyperscale proposal up in Hermantown, and for this week's episode we're headed south...

Right after high school Courtney Kocak left sleepy Jackson, Minnesota, to chase her dreams in Hollywood. Did everything go as planned? Sure didn't! And in her brand-new memoir, Girl Gone Wild, Kocak weaves together a series of essays that address "ambition, delusion, drugs, sex, and misogyny," plus selling merch on the extremely shady Girls Gone Wild porno bus.

You can catch Kocak in conversation with author Kelly Foster Lundquist and Racket contributor Deborah Copperud this Friday at St. Paul's Acorn Bookshop (details here). Or on May 19 at Troubadour Wine Bar with past RacketCast guest Mary Lucia...

We've had investigative reporters, sportswriters, food critics, and music writers on RacketCast, but never anyone working the beat every Minnesotan actually cares about: the weather.

Remedying that is this week's guest Sven Sundgaard, a 23-year veteran of Minnesota's meteorology scene. We get into a little Sven lore, remember some storms, dive deep into climate change, address the state of local meteorology, gab about his real estate side hustle, and even fact check MSP Mag's 2022 claim that Sundgaard is our state's "most physically ripped" weatherman. And, as a cherry on top for those who make it 60+ minutes in...

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.

Just as he did last year, Dane joined us ahead of the T-Wolves postseason, right as casual fans begin hopping aboard the hoops bandwagon. The host of The Dane Moore NBA Podcast equips listeners with the requisite knowledge to (hopefully) root deep into the playoffs, including a roster breakdown, season recap, long-view look at the franchise, and even a therapy session cent...

🎶 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 wri...

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 pr...

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.

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:

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...

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 Lindel...

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...

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 podc...

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...

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 d...

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 turke...

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 +...

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...

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...

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...

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 reg...

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...

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...

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...

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-Ep...

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...

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!!!"...

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 ga...

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 Rack...

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 ho...

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 ri...