Alt-weeklies: The four Racket founders/editors used to work at one, City Pages, before Star Tribune Media Co. flushed it and its 40-plus-year legacy down the tubes five years ago. And that fate more or less mirrors what's happening nationally with those spirited, smart, and sharp-elbowed publications that once covered news, arts, and culture all across this increasingly stupid land.

So last year when Tricia Romero, former editor-in-chief of The Stranger, released The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture, we were intrigued. And this week when Emma Silvers, an ex editor at SF Weekly, released this deep dive into alt-weeklies for her exciting new worker-owned publication, Coyote, we were doubly intrigued. Here's hoping all that intrigues you, because we—Racket's Jay, Jessica, and Keith—got Romero and Silvers on the line to talk for over an hour about the history, death, and possible new life of the scrappy little style of journalism we all love.

But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• Fall Arts Guide 2025
• At the Palace, Rilo Kiley Reminds Adults What They’ve Lived Through

This episode of RacketCast is brought to you by Minneapolis Cultural Districts.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at [email protected]. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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In the grand tradition of this still-kinda-new podcast, we're bringing you conversations with smart and cool local sportswriters to preview upcoming seasons. The "for dummies" framing? The guests have nothing to do with that, and perhaps one day we'll stop the condescending approach. But today is not that day, dummies.

This week we've got Arif Hasan (The Athletic, Bleacher Report, Zone Coverage) on the pod, a veteran Minnesota Vikings cataloger and founder of the awesome reader-funded football website Wide Left. Hasan breaks down the fracturing sports media landscape, explains the top causes for optimism and concern regarding your Vikes, and even roasts the living shit outta the Green Bay Packers, a team that's near and dear to your host's heart.

But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• Helen Hoover: The Pioneering MN Nature Writer You’ve ‘Never Heard Of’ Finally Gets Her Due
• A Chronic Hater Attempts to Enjoy the Minnesota Renaissance Festival

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at [email protected]. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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No time for extensive show notes—this is an emergency! Listen to all four Racket owner/editors gab for an hour-plus about all the Minnesota State Fair official new foods we gobbled Thursday. Gov. Tim Walz even makes an exclusive cameo.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at [email protected]. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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How does public transit work in the Twin Cities?

To find out, we invited Metro Transit GM Lesley Kandaras and bus driver Al Chang to our St. Louis Park studio. (Kandaras, a true company woman who has ridden all 60 MT routes, even took the bus there.) Transit enthusiasts should enjoy this convo about the successes, challenges, new developments, and total disinterest in building a subway system surrounding our town's bus and light rail operator.

But first! We engage in the second-ever (and possibly last-ever) installment of "Birthday Breakdown" to celebrate Jay's big 3-8. And here are the stories we gabbed about afterward during What I Learned In Racket...

• Racket’s Year in Review: August 2024-July 2025
• Best Budget Bites: $9.99 Roast Beef Sandwich From Maverick’s Real Roast Beef
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Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at [email protected]. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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For many Minnesotans, it wasn’t just another building on the North Shore—it was the beating heart of the North Shore. Over its 144-year history, Lutsen Resort had hosted countless weddings, family reunions, and friendly ski trips along the the intersection of Lake Superior and the Poplar River. So when the historic lodge burned down in early 2024, many folks were understandably heartbroken.

Then, almost immediately, suspicion around the owner, Bryce Campbell, began brewing. Dire finances. Unresolved inspection violations. Contradictory whereabouts.

The State Fire Marshal’s investigation remains ongoing, but North Shore journalist/author Joe Friedrichs is already hard at work on a longform podcast series called The Fire: A Lutsen Podcast. Friedrichs and his team have assembled almost 30 hours of audio, including interviews with ex-resort employees, fire investigators, Cook County residents, fellow journalists, and even Campbell.

"It's such an important story, and not just for the North Shore—it needs to be treated with respect in terms of production quality," Friedrichs says. "I'm just so interested in it… it's time to do [this podcast]."

You can support The Fire, which is due out this fall, via Kickstarter. Enjoy our conversation with Friedrichs.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at [email protected]. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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The ghost of Jeffery Epstein, sex-trafficking buddy to the elites, continues to haunt Trump World.

Just this week the Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department warned Trump in May that his name is included in the Epstein files. (The White House called this "fake news.") Meanwhile, the drip, drip, drip of previously unknown Trump-Epstein entanglements keeps accelerating—videos, photos, sketches.

To discuss all of this, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith (DFL-Minnesota) joins us on this episode of RacketCast. Smith has positioned herself on the frontlines of the posting wars, sharing eyebrow-raising Trump-Epstein developments with the abandon of a lawmaker who, at 67 and with retirement fast approaching, has few fucks left to give.

But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• Meet Minnesota’s Rocketman: Inside the Incomparable Life of Ky Michaelson
• Let’s Try Bloomington’s Buzziest Egg Sandwich

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at [email protected]. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

This week's RacketCast is brought to you by CannaCon and also by Minneapolis Cultural Districts.

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After Racket's Keith Harris was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2022, he noticed how much the actual experience of having cancer differed from how we typically talk about it. He's joined on the pod today by independent journalist Taylor Dahlin (Wedge LIVE!, Twitter), who was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. Now that both are cancer-free, the two "survivors" (who feel weird about calling themselves that) have a long, breezy chat about disease, death, inconvenience, and other fun stuff.

Before the main event, we fielded three listener voicemails for Dial Racket, which you can contribute to by hitting us up at 619-RACKTIP. And before that, we gabbed about the following stories for our regular What I Learned In Racket segment...

• Minnesota’s Mighty Maker Spaces
• 36 Ways to Make Friends in the Twin Cities
• New 2025 MN State Fair Food: Predicting the Winners and Losers

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at [email protected]. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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War: There's nothing worse. Yet the U.S. can't seem to stop waging it, with our latest target, Iran, being subjected to around dozen 30,000-pound GBU-57 "bunker buster" bombs on June 21. The illegal preemptive attack may have set Iran's nuclear program back by only a few months, according to one preliminary classified report.

One day later, President Trump floated the following via Truth Social: "It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!" Jeez, when in our recent history has regime change ever backfired?

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), meanwhile, continues to be one of the most steadfast anti-war voices in Congress, writing: “The strikes on Iran, ordered by President Trump and executed without congressional authorization, mark a dangerous and reckless escalation of an already volatile conflict in the Middle East. Military strikes will not bring peace... The American people are tired of endless war. We need to end this madness before more lives are lost."

To hear more from Omar, we contacted the congresswoman via video chat late Thursday for her take on Trump's new war and what can be done to stop it.

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at [email protected]. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Punter. Activist. Rocker. Writer. Gamer. And, now, politician.

Ex-Viking Chris Kluwe endeared himself to (most) Minnesotans for eight seasons as he booted the ball while fighting for LGBTQ+ rights. From July 3-6, Kluwe will make his triumphant return to this state as a guest at sci-fi convention CONVergence in downtown Minneapolis. Before that, we caught up with him to talk about getting arrested, running for office, life after football, Minnesota memories, and whether or not Elon Musk is a video game poser (spoiler: he sure is).

But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• How One MN School District Killed Its Right-Wing Book Ban
• Brunch Buds: Bolé Ethiopian Cuisine Bowl(é?)s Us Over
• A Brief History of Alternative Pride in the Twin Cities

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at [email protected]. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

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Two veteran reporters from The Hill—Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin—drop by the pod to discuss their new book, Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America, which dropped this past April via Island Press. You'll learn about the accidental origins of PFAS chemicals, their consumer-facing ubiquity, and the massive health risk they pose to all Americans, including the ones 3M knowingly poisoned in the eastern Twin Cities metro. Fun! (Frazin wanted listeners to know about this forever chemicals regulatory update that occurred post-record.)

Before all that, we debut a hit new segment known as Dial Racket. (Call us! Details below.) And here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket...

• Racket Goes to College: A Week of Student Stories
• How the Twin Cities’ Volunteer-Run Spaces Make it Work

Subscribe to RacketCast wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc. • Wanna advertise on RacketCast? Email us at [email protected]. • Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 1-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode. • Special thanks to local band Van Stee for supplying our podcast music!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.