Sixty-six days into Prohibition, the sheriff of Hennepin County was under arrest. The county attorney was next. A bootlegger, a brothel owner, and the highest law enforcement officials in Minnesota's most populous county had been running Canadian whiskey through Minneapolis in railroad cars full of scrap metal — and a federal court was about to hear exactly how it worked. Today's episode traces the Winnipeg Liquor Conspiracy of 1920, the Norwegian-American congressman from Granite Falls who wrote the law they broke, the Stearns County farmers who turned moonshine into a matter of survival and pride, and the city across the river that became the safest place in America to be a criminal — as long as you did your dirty work somewhere else.

On the evening of May 6th, 1965, six tornadoes, four of them among the most violent on the Fujita scale, tore through the Twin Cities over three hours. Thirteen people were killed. This is the story of the storms. It is also the story of a debate inside a Weather Bureau office, a physical key, and one forecaster's decision to repurpose Cold War infrastructure. This episode is dedicated to Paul Huttner, who retired on May 1 after forty years as chief meteorologist at Minnesota Public Radio News. He was four years old on May 6th, 1965. It is the night that inspired him to be a meteorologist. Thank you for your service to our communities.

On May 5th, 1975, fifty artists and neighbors marched through the Powderhorn neighborhood of South Minneapolis — one of the most culturally diverse communities in the state — with giant puppets, two accordions, and an idea. What they started that day, five days after the end of the Vietnam War, grew into one of Minnesota's most beloved civic traditions. This is the story of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre and fifty years of May Day in Minneapolis.