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  • Eating the Iron Range: A Cultural Culinary History

    Eating the Iron Range: A Cultural Culinary History
    2025/12/04
    The 3 P’s–pasties, porketta, and potica–are beloved dishes on Minnesota’s iron range. How did they become quintessential iron range cuisine and why are they so important to ranger identity? To find out, Dr. Chantel Rodríguez speaks with guests deeply connected to the Range’s culinary history. Cookbook author BJ Carpenter explains how families prepared signature range dishes. Documentarian Mary Lou Nemanic traces the early immigrant waves that brought diverse ethnic foodways to the region. Chef Bryan Morcom shows how local ingredients like wild rice, walleye, and cabbage can be reimagined in Range food today. And restaurateur Tom Forti reflects on how his family’s century-old Sunrise Bakery continues to influence the flavors served at the Iron Ranger. Together, they reveal why preserving these traditions is becoming increasingly important as economic landscapes shift and tastes evolve. Minnesota Unraveled will return with more episodes starting February 5, 2026.
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    1 時間 2 分
  • Beaver Tales: From Minnesota’s Ice Age to Today

    Beaver Tales: From Minnesota’s Ice Age to Today
    2025/11/20
    At the Bell Museum of Natural History in Saint Paul, the lives of beavers across 2 million years are captured in two scenes. One is set in the Ice Age and showcases a giant beaver, an animal the size of a small black bear. The other is set in the early 1900s at Lake Itasca and captures the more familiar modern beaver chomping on wood and building a dam. Together, these scenes spark big questions: Why have beavers been important to Minnesota’s history since the Ice Age? How have they shaped the landscape and human activity? And how did we get from the giant beaver to the beaver we know today? To explore these questions, Dr. Chantel Rodríguez draws on multiple ways of knowing. Fossils, archival records, ecological science, and Indigenous storytelling reveal a complex narrative of megafauna, community relationships, environmental change, and global trade. Through conversations with paleontologist Nicole Dzenowski, environmental historian Hayden Nelson, and traditional ecological knowledge expert Michael Waasegiizhig Price, this episode examines not just what happened, but how we come to understand it.
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    1 時間 5 分
  • Ringside: Histories of Boxing in the Twin Cities

    Ringside: Histories of Boxing in the Twin Cities
    2025/11/06
    According to the history books, boxing faded from the spotlight decades ago. But in Minnesota, the gloves never came off. Host Dr. Chantel Rodríguez talks with longtime friends Sankara Frazier and Harry Davis Jr., who carry forward the legacy of their fathers – legendary coach Harry Davis Sr. and boxer Stanley Frazier – through their work at Circle of Discipline. And she speaks with Lisa Bauch, a trainer and entrepreneur whose Uppercut Gym helped open the sport to women and newcomers alike. Historian Gerald Gems helps trace the roots of the sport and its arrival in Minnesota. Together, they reflect on how boxing endures in Minnesota, not just as a sport, but as a way to build confidence, discipline, and community.
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    1 時間 3 分
  • Llewellyn Worldwide and New Age Religious Movements in the Twin Cities

    Llewellyn Worldwide and New Age Religious Movements in the Twin Cities
    2025/10/23
    Walk into almost any bookstore in October and you’ll see displays stacked with books on witchcraft, ghostly encounters and the paranormal. Look a little closer, and you’ll notice a familiar name on many of their spines: Llewellyn Worldwide. But did you know the world’s largest New Age publisher calls Minnesota home? In this episode, host Dr. Chantel Rodríguez and her guests Sandra Weschcke and Dr. Murphy Pizza explore how a Minnesota visionary turned a fascination with New Age spirituality into a global publishing powerhouse, and how that journey sparked the growth of New Age Religous Movements in the Twin Cities.
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    1 時間 1 分
  • Pedacito de Tierra: Music and the Puerto Rican Diaspora in Minnesota

    Pedacito de Tierra: Music and the Puerto Rican Diaspora in Minnesota
    2025/10/09
    Chicago and New York usually get the spotlight when it comes to Puerto Rican communities. But Minnesota? That might surprise you. Puerto Ricans are actually the state’s second-largest Latinx community, with more than 20,000 people calling it home. And for these Puerto Rican Minnesotans, music is a powerful way to stay connected to their heritage. In our opening episode of season two, historian and host Dr. Chantel Rodríguez explores this link with her guests. José Antonio Zayas Cabán is a multiple Grammy®-nominated saxophonist, whose latest work interweaves the voices of Puerto Rican storytellers and music. She also speaks with Tearra Oso, a bomba artist and culture protector who teaches and enhances one of Puerto Rico’s oldest musical traditions. Together, they reflect on how Puerto Rican Minnesotans have told their history through music, cultivating ties to both Minnesota and Puerto Rico, and finding harmony in that complexity.
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    1 時間 1 分
  • We're back! Season 2 begins October 9

    We're back! Season 2 begins October 9
    2025/10/03
    We are continuing our journey across the North Star state to follow the threads that pull us into the past and reveal our interconnected stories. This season, we’ll shine a light on the histories of boxing and the foodways of the Iron Range. We’ll take you along to a Minneapolis jazz club and discover how members of the Puerto Rican community use music to tell their stories. And we’ll explore the important role beavers have played in shaping the Minnesota landscape, from the ice age to today. These topics, and many more, will start hitting your feed on October 9.
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    1 分
  • Shared Roots: Hmong Foodways

    Shared Roots: Hmong Foodways
    2025/06/12
    We'd love to hear your thoughts about Minnesota Unraveled! Please fill out our survey ⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠. Think of your favorite meal. It’s so much more than just what you see on the plate. It’s the history of the ingredients, the recipes passed down from family members, the memories you have with the tastes and smells of it all. For the Hmong community in Minnesota, food sits at the intersection of community tradition, culture, and history. In this episode, historian and host Dr. Chantel Rodriguez speaks with three Hmong community members: Chef Yia Vang, of the restaurant Vinai, Pakou Hang, co-founder and executive director of the Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA), and Zongxee Lee, a Hmong herbalist. In each conversation, guests share the role food and foodways have played in their families, and the ways they’re looking to carry that forward for future generations.
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    50 分
  • Mapping History: Lesbian Feminist Cooperative Farms in Greater Minnesota

    Mapping History: Lesbian Feminist Cooperative Farms in Greater Minnesota
    2025/05/29
    We'd love to hear your thoughts about Minnesota Unraveled! Please fill out our survey ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Many histories of the LGBTQIA+ community are focused on metropolitan areas, but a recent mapping project has elevated the stories of a group of Lesbian feminist cooperative farms in rural Minnesota in the 1970s. In this episode, historian and host Dr. Chantel Rodriguez explores how living off of the land gave Lesbian Feminists a sense of freedom, safety and community. Chantel spoke with two guests: Leila Stallone, a researcher who works on the The Greater Minnesota Two-Spirit LGBTQIA+ History Map Project, and Meadow Muska, a photographer who documented life on the farm. Together, they share stories about how the decision to move into rural areas and build cooperative farms was an act of self-determination, community building and defiance.
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    58 分