RacketCast

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 by Famousness. We don't anticipate its return. Here's what Em learned in Racket: Mud, Rocks, and Mental Anguish: A Novice Mountain Biker Attempts the Race Across Duluth 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 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... A Paean to Ye Old Mill, the Minnesota State Fair’s Worst (and Best) Ride I Took the E Line From Southdale to St. Anthony Main and Watched 4 Movies in Less Than 12 Hours And... well, Jay kinda goes on a rant. 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.

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 thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 comes to mind) seem like inconsequential wastes of everyone's time! But we're happy Loren gave us some of her time to better understand the science behind sleuthing through crime scenes. Before that! We tweak our regular feature, What I Learned in Racket, with everyone discussing just one story: our publication's big annual overshare report . Oh, and another thing! We very cutely (too cutely?) tease a big surprise we can't talk about yet, but now we can talk about: In addition to celebrating our 5th birthday on August 28 at Arbeiter Brewing Co. in Minneapolis, Racket will also be releasing its first-ever physical book; details and RSVP 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! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 on how Minnesota's wildfires are, well, behaving. Before any of that, Em and Jay get into a red-hot round of What I Learned in Racket. Here's what they learned... The City Slicker’s Guide to Twin Cities Auto Racing Minnesota’s on the World’s Largest Lake—Why Don’t We Eat More Lake Superior Fish? 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.

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 publisher Steve Grove's "résumé-padding" memoir and its "AI-evoking prose," and perhaps the only honest review of the drivel Liz Collin of Alpha News barfed up a few years ago. ...We like her. But before any of that we break new ground by inviting our guest to join us for What I Learned in Racket. Here's what all four of us learned: Old Dutch Stuffed Cheeseburger Chips Are the Snack of the Summer When Nice Folks Make Cruel Choices: Journalist Justin Ellis on MN’s History of ‘Unaccounted for Repression, Rage, Discrimination, and White Supremacy’ My Aunt From Minnesota Died 51 Years Ago. Decades Later, a Stranger Showed Up Claiming They Were In Love. Two Decades in ‘The Dork Forest’: Jackie Kashian on Pioneering Comedy Podcasts, Working With BFF Maria Bamford, and Coming Home to Acme 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.

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 alt-weekly from which Racket sprang. But first, as always, we get into a spirited round of What I Learned in Racket. Here's what we learned: Minnesota Museums, Theaters, and Stadiums Are Becoming More Sensory-Friendly. Why Aren’t Restaurants? MN Restaurants Are Addicted to AI Slop Advertising—Is It Even Legal? Do You Know What Your Representatives Are Voting on Next? This Website Does. 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.

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. Before any of that: We take listeners on a trip through What I Learned in Racket, where the riffed upon topics include... Every Bowl at Baba’s Hummus House, Ranked ‘I Felt Like I Was There 90% of the Time’: An Oral History of the Dinkytowner Café What Are People For? The Imperiled Boundary Waters, Late MN Nature Writer Paul Gruchow, and Me. This week's episode is brought to you by the Minnesota Antiquarian Book Fair . 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.

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 to chat with Aubree Derksen and Nicole Mills, two residents of Pine Island who are fighting like hell against Google's "Project Skyway." At the moment, they seem to be winning; earlier this week a judge ordered a temporary restraining order that halts construction of the 3-million-square-foot behemoth. Before we have that conversation, however, we begin the pod with our usual segment, What I Learned in Racket. Here's what we learned: Stillwater Is a Riverfront Parking Lot With Some Nice Restaurants Attached ‘Long Live Conrad!’: Musicians, Colleagues, and Loved Ones Remember the First Avenue Stage Manager I Want My CRT: The ‘Insane’ Demand for Giant Old-School TVs, Explained 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.

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 author Angela Pelster (deets here ). But before quite literally any of that, Em and Jay go through a speed round of What I Learned in Racket. Here's what they learned... A New Yorker’s Top 5 Pizzas by the Slice in the Twin Cities Viral Posts, No AI: Meet the Graphic Designer Wunderkind Behind the Timberwolves, Lynx --- This episode of RacketCast is sponsored by The Wild West Bank Sound: A Funky Flashback of Musical Memories . 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.

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: a pleasant reading of the weekend forecast—no quicker way to get that information! Before any of that, however, your hosts go 'round the horn in a thrilling installment of our regular intro feature, What I Learned In Racket... I Tried the Minneapolis-Made Camera So You Don’t Have To How Did Black Music Take Over the World? Ask Melvin Gibbs. ‘Minnesota Hardcore’ Producer David Roth Is the Ken Burns of Twin Cities Punk Cover Me Impressed: Are We Living Through a Twin Cities Cover-Band Boom? This episode of RacketCast is sponsored by The Wild West Bank Sound: A Funky Flashback of Musical Memories . The latest documentary from Twin Cities PBS takes viewers on a sensory trip to a corner of Minneapolis that shaped Minnesota music. From the early 1960s, Minneapolis’ West Bank neighborhood was an epicenter of the music world and proved an irresistible draw for artists from far and wide, an ever-evolving cauldron of creativity and cultures. This film bursts at the seams with memories, all visualized with rare and rich archival photography, footage, and ephemera. Stream on the free PBS App starting April 21. 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.

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 centered around our host's paranoid speculation that superstar Anthony Edwards might want outta town. Enjoy, dummies! The Wolves tip off against the Denver Nuggets for Game 1 of the first round of the NBA playoffs at 2:30 p.m. Saturday; you can watch via Amazon Prime. Before any of that, though, we chatted for 30 minutes during a regular installment of What I Learned In Racket... As Food Giant Sysco Tightens Its Hold, We Asked Local Chefs and Restaurateurs How Much to Worry An Educated Guesser’s Guide to the 2026 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival Grading the 2026 Minnesota Twins Walk-Up Songs This episode of RacketCast is sponsored by TPT's The Wild West Bank Sound: A Funky Flashback of Musical Memories . 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.

🎶 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.

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

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

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

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