Minnesota Now

Lawmakers and activists gathered Monday morning in support of tougher restrictions on a suite of chemicals known as PFAS, or forever chemicals. This comes days after state agencies asked lawmakers for more than $45 million dollars for cleanup and management of PFAS. They have been used widely in everything from cosmetics to non-stick cookware to firefighting foam. Research has tied them to health problems like low birth weights and some cancers. And they don’t naturally break down. Instead, they circulate in soil and water and accumulate in the bodies of fish and other animals. So what can the state do to address the risks?

Matt Simcik joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to explain. He’s a professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota.

Old buildings can carry a lot of meaning for some people. That's why a group in Homer Township near Winona are organizing to save their old town hall building. Jeanne Nelson is a retired schoolteacher who lives in Homer. She joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to talk about her efforts and why the building is so special to her.

Jury selection begins in the state of Minnesota’s lawsuit against e-cigarette company Juul and tobacco giant Altria, which used to own part of Juul. Out of dozens of states that sued Juul beginning in 2019, Minnesota is the only one that did not settle. Attorney Willow Anderson is with the Public Health Law Center at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law and she joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to talk about it.

Growing inflation is squeezing budgets for people across Minnesota. And even though housing prices have fallen slightly since the summer of 2022, they remain high and out of reach for many. First-time home buyers are finding themselves being left out.

The tight real estate market is made even tighter by higher mortgage rates — and if you happen to find a house you like, it might be snapped up by a corporation flipping homes into rentals.

Some DFL Lawmakers at the Capitol are trying to make home ownership more obtainable by curtailing that practice.

For perspective on this issue, MPR News host Cathy Wurzer spoke with state Rep. Michael Howard, D-Richfield, chair of the House Housing Finance and Policy committee.

Minnesota Now sports guys Wally Langfellow and Eric Nelson joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to talk about Karl-Anthony Towns back on the Timberwolves, the Minnesota Wild, boys state basketball, the road the the Frozen Four, and the Twins.

Wally is the founder of Minnesota Score magazine and the cohost of "ten-thousand Takes" sports talk show. Eric is the other host of "ten-thousand takes" and is also the Minnesota Vikings reporter for CBS Sports Radio "Eye on Football."

Four chefs and one pastry chef from the Twin Cities have been nominated by the prestigious James Beard “Best Chef Midwest”. Finalists will be announced on March 29th. It’s a huge honor so we wanted to catch up with them this week. And since our show airs over the lunch hour, we’d thought we’d ask them - wha’s for lunch. MPR News host Cathy Wurzer spoke with Ann Ahmed, the chef and owner of the restaurants Khâluna, Lat14 Asian Eatery, and Lemongrass.

The pandemic has made it common for people to have endured extraordinarily difficult circumstances and lost something or someone dear to them. Without any sense of closure, that can be hard to deal with. University of Minnesota Professor emeritus Pauline Boss is an expert in family stress. She coined the term “ambiguous loss” in the 1970s. These are losses that leave people without a clear understanding of the ‘why’ behind the loss or much emotional closure. Ambiguous loss describes the kind of unresolvable grief many of us feel or have felt during the pandemic. Pauline Boss wrote a book about this during the height of the pandemic. It’s called The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change. Pauline Boss joined Cathy to reflect on the last three years of loss and change due to the pandemic.

Three years ago, Governor Tim Walz called for Minnesotans to “shelter in place” because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan was to flatten the curve, or decrease the number of people who were infected all at once so hospitals and ICUs were not totally overwhelmed.

Today, there have been more than 1.7 million documented cases of COVID-19 in Minnesota. As of March 23, 2023, almost 15,000 Minnesotans have died of COVID-19 compilations. In the U.S., the virus has claimed more than 1 million people. Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm has tracked the spread of COVID-19 since it’s very earliest days. He is the director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to talk about what he’s learned from the past three years, to look ahead, and his current personal battle with the virus.

Wednesday evening into Thursday is the beginning of Ramadan.

It is a holy month when observers fast from sunrise to sunset and turn inward to pray, reflect and spend time with loved ones.

The creators of the podcast The Digital Sisterhood hope to help people do just that.

The show focuses on the stories of Muslim women in a space where religion, faith and community mix with topics like like sexual assault and suicide. But the episodes are also full of happier and lighter moments like love and Twitter comments.

Since the show first launched back in 2021 it's drawn a huge international audience. At the end of last year, the podcast had more than 10 million downloads. Season three is due to be released.

Woodbury, Minn.-based Muna Scekomar is producer, editor and one of the founders of the show.

MPR News host Cathy Wurzer talked with her ahead of Ramadan on Wednesday.

I think it's a wonderful opportunity to reset and to take a pause from the drone of everyday. Everybody's hustling, trying to get something done for themselves.

But this is a time to look within, and one of the things I'm focusing on really is to re-center back into the fact that we're human beings in a world that is confusing and our guidance comes from our one true God. So really reconnecting with the Quran is my mission.

It was really interesting because I randomly picked that date because I'm quite a perfectionist, and I just needed a date to get out of my head and put something out there.

And so when we picked that date, it happened to be the first Friday of Ramadan and everybody in Islam, you know, everybody tunes into the more spiritual side, the less side that's about enjoyment and more on being aware and conscientious about our purpose.

So they found this to be a platform that was telling stories and really in-depth, vulnerable human stories that captured their interest in forced them — also challenged them — also to look within.

So I think that it was a beautiful marriage and a merger that we are going to continue the tradition of from now on.

Cadar Mohamud, who is the host, comes from a very empathetic place where it's like existing to care about others. I like to say at her core she's a sister, so it comes from that. She really brings it into the podcast, and when she's speaking you hear the fact that she cares about you as an individual.

And everybody says this where it's like, “I feel like I've known you for a very long time.” That was our first conversation. And it was beautiful that she carries that on.

I was like, “Hey, I love your vibe. I love your energy. It seems we really aligned and can we hop on a call?”

It was really out-of-character for me. I'm not the type of person who just reaches out, but it was it was about me just putting myself out there and not letting perfectionism getting in the path of my creativity and just finding the people. Because you cannot do anything without people without people who support you. There's nobody who gets to anywhere, walking it alone.

So it was me reaching out and God really wrote it that we were the ones who created this beautiful, beautiful platform. And so many other women across the globe have joined the creation and the production of it. I know you understand and MPR News understands more than anyone how much work goes into producing radio and telling stories.

I think what's taboo for us as human beings is to be imperfect.

And I think a lot of times media, social media, this perfectionist world — it continues to foster that. And so for us is more about reconnecting with the human, reconnecting with the fact that you know, we're not perfect, regardless of how much we try to show it.

And let's stop putting that ideal out there as the way to go and let's set the ideal as a person who's struggling we’re human beings you know, experiencing life for the first time. So let's go back and focus on that. And let's try to understand it together.

And one of the things is that oftentimes — and it's not unique to just Muslims — but when it comes to faith and the conversation of being faithful and being a human being, oftentimes that conversation is approached with a sense of judgment: “Oh, you should be holy or better than.”

But Islam was sent for the broken. It was sent for the weak, and we really try to bring that back into our conversations.

I think for me, one of the things as I've always said is: 2020, the year before I worked on anything, was the most successful year in my life.

Because oftentimes, the world calls us to measure success by how many people clap for us, and how many people validate you or value your work.

But 2020 was the year where I paused and I started to value myself as just a human. I used to really suffocate myself, because I was like, “Oh, you're a filmmaker that hasn't produced films. You're a producer that hasn’t produced.”

There were so many things eating me alive and there was the moment when I said, “I am valuable merely by existing, merely by being and I'm just going to take this — whatever is around me — and I'll start valuing people that way, not because of how entertaining I may be or how much I've produced.”

We're in a world of like productivity, productivity, productivity, but maybe just the experience of trying to be a better person — that is valuable. So when it came to the numbers and everything, it's completely shocking. I always say I'm still processing it. I think it's gonna take me another 10 million years to process it. But it's beautiful. It's beautiful.

It's phenomenal. It's life transforming. It's one of the most warming experiences to just be in a space where so many people feel love, have healed in some capacity by the work that you do, the work that you are honored to and selected to be a custodian of.

There's so many people that are part of the team. Beautiful Light Studios is precious to my heart and The Digital Sisterhood team as well is doing so well and bringing people together.

Taking the Sisterhood from digital to physical is just — I don't even know how to put into words. It was a phenomenal event. That was just put together with collaboration in the UK. First time I went to the UK with a modest vision, but it was just so phenomenal.

It keeps reiterating to me: We're all just human beings trying to survive life. and let's do it without judgement.

Dakota Dave Hull, the legendary Minneapolis musician who cut his teeth in the Minneapolis West Bank folk scene of the 1970s, is out with a new album.