Minnesota Now

The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis is in production of an ambitious project. It’s producing three Shakespeare plays that tell a larger story, and it will be performed entirely by a core group of actors. Rehearsals began at the end of January, and the shows officially open in mid-April.

MPR News Arts Reporter Jacob Aloi has been in the rehearsal room. He joined MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer to share a behind-the-scenes look.

Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management is proposing changes to the state’s marijuana law, including one that would allow the issuance of a set number of temporary licenses.

MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer spoke to the interim director of the Office of Cannabis Management Charlene Briner about the office’s hope for the legislation.

U.S. health care is still in crisis after cybersecurity attacks on Change Health, the nation’s largest health care payment system. The CEO of the Minnesota Hospital Association shares the impact on hospitals in the state and their response to this growing threat.

Our Gen-Z voter panel is back with reactions to Super Tuesday, plus feelings on Nikki Haley’s suspended campaign.

The final numbers for meteorological winter are in — we get details from our meteorologist.

Plus, plans are in the works for the first ever Hmong Community Center.

Hmong leaders in Minnesota are sharing plans for the first-ever Hmong Community Center. After receiving funding from the legislature, the Hmong 18 Council is now in the process of designing a community hub. Council President Paul Xiong joined MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer with the details.

The first week of March marked the start of meteorological spring but it has already felt like spring for some time now. MPR News Chief Meteorologist Paul Huttner joins MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer with the final stats on this winter.

Forty million Americans between the ages of 18 and 27 are eligible to vote across the country this year. Among them are Cori Stockard, a junior at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus and Addie Raum, a sophomore at St. Olaf College in Northfield.

They joined MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer to talk about Nikki Haley’s withdrawal from the race, the uncommitted vote in Minnesota, and the general election that is now underway.

Hospital, clinics and pharmacies in Minnesota and across the country are reeling from a cyberattack. Change Health, which is a subsidiary of Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group was hacked on Feb. 21 by a ransomware gang known as ALPHV/BlackCat. A post on a hacker forum popular with cyber criminals claimed that United Health paid a $22 million ransom to recover access to data and systems.

The speculated ransom payment would be the second-highest ransom payment in U.S. history if confirmed. Now the federal government has said it is working with UnitedHealth Group in its response. In the meantime, the hack is still wreaking havoc on the health care system. Minnesota Hospital Association CEO Dr. Rahul Koranne joined MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer to talk about the impacts in Minnesota.

UnitedHealth Group has a statement on their website that reads in part, “We’ve made progress in providing workarounds and temporary solutions to bring systems back online in pharmacy, claims and payments. We continue to be proactive and aggressive with all our systems, and if we suspect any issue with the system, we will immediately take action.”

Even though it’s only the first week of March, gardeners across the state are seeing plants of all varieties sprouting. Who better to explain this odd gardening season than our resident Minnesota master gardener, Meg Cowden.

Cowden talked with Minnesota Now host Cathy Wurzer.

The following is a transcription of the audio heard using the player above, lightly edited for clarity

They don’t start to swell usually until early April. These kinds of things are out of our control. Perennials are responding to the temperatures that are obviously warmer and the end the daylight. So things are gonna start waking up, but the good thing is that if we moderate a little and don’t go totally crazy, these trees might hold steady.

They have started responding, but if our temperatures come back even a little bit, they’ll hold. My soil is still freezing. I mean, I checked it this morning, and like, my garlic isn’t up, although I know it’s up in the city for a lot of gardeners.

So it partly depends on your site. But yes, we might have no fruit this year, that could be a reality. I thought about that. If we get a really hard freeze in April — fruit trees can take some frost, you'd be surprised like, depending on the stage of the buds to temperatures, even down to 20 isn’t going to be 100 percent kill, it might not even be a 50 percent kill.

So that’s why I’m saying we have to find a way to kind of take each week as it comes and really see how the season unfolds. I don’t consider it a wash by any means.

If temperatures are gonna get really cold, you could cover them. I’m letting things ride. I’m more curious, what’s going to happen to them? Might some of them die? I don’t think so. And like, even if we had buds that have like, leaved out a little, those buds might die, but the plant is still alive and the plant has resources to push out new leaves.

So even if you get a little bit of leaf damage, I mean, we’d have to be going into like the teens or single digits, I think for things that have leaved out already to really have damage that’s going to make us all really fret. I tend to think we’re going to be okay.

I don’t think there’s going to be a lot more snow because we have all this ground cover and now we’ve got the sun and the sun’s warming the ground, it’s the opposite of last winter. Last winter I was not expecting an early spring because of so much snow cover. I think we’re hitting that tipping point where it’s going to be hard to get snow.

This is an emphatic yes. We have a new cold frame in our garden that my husband built last year and I started sowing things in it about four weeks ago. And you know, the sun doesn’t come back until February, so things aren’t really growing until later in February. But they germinated in about three weeks, and that was kind of my optimal ideal time I’d like to have seen them germinate. So I’ve got arugula that has germinated, head lettuce that germinated and radishes that have germinated.

Now, you’d want to check your soil temperatures. I’m a big believer in using your soil temperatures. You want your soils about an inch below to be at least 45 degrees, I use a meat thermometer, nothing fancy. Don’t buy an extra gadget, you don’t need it. But let your soil temperatures be your guide.

I also have sowed some onions outside under one of my low tunnels, but I also sowed some just in a garden bed. So I want to see when each of those will germinate. This is a great opportunity. We have an opportunity here to kind of rethink how we’re going to garden and I encourage people to reach for spinach, arugula, kohlrabi and cabbages could maybe work and yes, carrots, maybe like a little warmer peas, mustard greens, salad, turnips, radishes — all kinds of great things.

Some of those things you don’t really see in the grocery store, right? Maybe they don’t travel as well or they’re as popular. So there’s a great opportunity to kind of explore your palate and play with a little patch of earth right now.

I heard a bee, barely saw it. I saw a few insects over the weekend. It’s the temperatures, they’re coming out of dormancy. I know. it makes me a little worried, like what the heck are they going to eat? I don’t know. Even though we’re in early spring, I would still wait until sometime in April to do that. I typically don’t cut mine down until sometime in May.

It’s Super Tuesday! We’re hitting the polls and will hear from an MPR News reporter about what she’s hearing from voters.

Plus, Minnesota’s Secretary of State talks about election security and responds to the Supreme Court’s decision to keep former president Trump on the ballot.

Hundreds of thousands of seniors are aging alone. We’ll talk to a state expert about why, plus the resources available to them.

Nearly 30 percent of Americans are choosing “none” when asked about their religion. A professor from Augsburg tells us what it means.

With rising fears of ballot security, one city is considering counting November’s votes by hand.

The warm winter is throwing gardeners — and their flowers — for a loop. We’ll talk to a pro gardener.

On Super Tuesday, Minnesotans joined voters in fourteen other states in casting ballots in the presidential primary.

MPR News Reporter Estelle Timar-Wilcox talked to voters in Minneapolis Tuesday morning, including supporters of President Joe Biden, Dean Phillips, Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and uncommitted voters.