We’re taking a brief break to recharge, so we’re diving into the archives to bring back one of our favorite episodes. Sit back and enjoy this classic release, we'll be back with a brand-new episode August 31.

It's May 1st, 1951. A nineteen-year-old from Alabama wakes up in Minneapolis to snow on the ground and has no idea what happens next. His name is Willie Mays.

Following the August 1862 attack at Lake Shetek, Minnesota, Santee Dakota warriors took two white women and six children captive into Dakota Territory. In November 1862, eleven young Lakota warriors marched 100 miles into a sub-zero blizzard to trade away everything they owned, their horses, blankets, food, and arms, to rescue eight starving hostages. They were mocked as "Fool Soldiers" and later imprisoned by the U.S. Army, but their act of moral courage defined civilian protection decades before international law.

In the late summer of 1918, wartime paranoia in Rock County, Minnesota, boiled over into extralegal violence. When John T. Meints Sr., a German-American farmer and Nonpartisan League supporter, exercised his legal right to dissent by refusing to support local war-bond drives, his community labeled his neutrality as treason.

We explore the harrowing story of John Meints, from the back roads of Luverne to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. It is a story of state-sanctioned mob rule, the weaponization of patriotism, and the quiet persistence of one man who demanded that equal justice under the law apply to everyone, even in the darkest moments of collective fear.

On August 18, 2007, an off-the-charts storm system dumped up to 15.10 inches of rain on southeastern Minnesota, claiming seven lives and submerging entire communities. We uncover the immediate human tragedy and the extraordinary utility crisis that followed. Discover how emergency crews in flood-bound Rushford fought a hidden contamination crisis, tracing abandoned 1800s wells beneath city streets and bank boardrooms to restore clean drinking water.

On August 17, 1985, fifteen hundred meatpackers at the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota walked off the job. What began as a stand against severe wage cuts and rapid line speeds spiraled into an iconic chapter of American labor history, complete with National Guard deployments, chemical gas on Interstate 90, and a bitter fight between rank-and-file workers and national union leadership. We break down the rise and fallout of UFCW Local P-9.

Long before the Twin Cities grew around Bdote, the prairie outside Fort Snelling hosted a quiet war over trade, alcohol, and tribal sovereignty. Discover the true story behind the August 14, 1830 arson attack on the St. Peters Indian Agency. Was it a freak accident or a mob-style message from John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company?  Learn how one stubborn bureaucrat stood his ground for two decades. A high-stakes clash between an unyielding federal agent and the corporate cartel determined to control the Upper Mississippi.

On August 13, 1973, TIME magazine put Minnesota Governor Wendell Anderson on its cover holding an 18-inch northern pike, declaring Minnesota "A State That Works." National media celebrated a Midwestern utopia defined by clean lakes, civic trust, and the historic 1971 "Minnesota Miracle" school finance reform. But beneath the polished image lay quiet, dangerous compromises, from Duluth’s polluted drinking water to deep-seated racial inequities and political self-dealing that led to the 1978 "Minnesota Massacre."

We examine the legacy of Minnesota's most famous magazine cover, how the state’s high-trust culture created the "Minnesota Paradox," and why our brand-new state flag reflects a direct reckoning with the sanitized myths of our past.

On August 12, 1940, over 45,000 troops descended on Camp Ripley for massive war games. Among them was the Minneapolis-Moline UTX—a monster machine that climbed white oaks and pulled 5-ton artillery through deep mud. Here is the true story of Minnesota's stolen industrial legacy.

On August 11, 1890, federal agents descended on Minneapolis and St. Paul to halt the first major criminal census fraud prosecution in American history. From graveyard name-copying to midnight raids and burlap sacks of fake schedules, discover how a constitutional tally became an economic weapon between two bitter rivals.

On August 10, 1887, fifteen men inside the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater pooled their savings to attempt the unthinkable: launch an inmate-funded, prisoner-edited newspaper under the strict Auburn penal system. Led by a convicted forger and infamous bank robber Cole Younger, The Prison Mirror challenged contract labor, gained national reach, and set a groundbreaking legal precedent for incarcerated press freedom. Discover the true story of how a small newsroom inside prison walls forever changed Minnesota history and American penal reform.