MPR News with Angela Davis

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The role of a liberal arts education in a changing world

May 28, 2026

Rising costs, student debt and shifting workforce needs are putting more pressure on liberal arts colleges to demonstrate their value. But some proponents say a liberal arts education is about more than just preparing for a first job. It's about building skills for the many careers and changes that come after it.MPR News guest host Annie Baxter talks with guests about the future of liberal arts and higher education at a recent event sponsored by the Citizens League and Macalester College.Gues...

Tell me something good: What brings you joy during stressful times?

May 27, 2026

For the past year, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about economic uncertainty, gun violence, war, divisive politics, suffering and fear.Times are tough — so, MPR News host Angela Davis decided to go out and find some joy. She recently visited neighborhoods and asked people to tell her “something good.” She first posed this simple question to people on the street in the fall of 2020 when the COVID-19 virus was spreading chaos and fear.Listen to what people told her this time around about wha...

Author Laurie Hertzel revisits the ghosts of her Duluth childhood

May 26, 2026

What does it mean to grow up in a family haunted by a tragedy? That’s one of the central themes in a new memoir by Laurie Hertzel, the former book review editor for the Minnesota Star Tribune. In “Ghosts of Fourth Street: My Family, a Death, and the Hills of Duluth,” Hertzel writes about growing up in Duluth in the 1960s, the seventh child in a family of ten children. Her father was a college English instructor with a quick temper. Her mother was often overwhelmed. And her family was changed...