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Annie Prafcke is a journalist who was born in Wuhu, Anhui Province in the People's Republic of China. She was adopted at six months old and raised in Fargo, ND. In her first podcast series Chinese Adoptees: Not Abandoned or Alone, she explores her own identity as well as the complex identities of three other adopted Chinese women.

Last month we heard about the triumph of the Salk polio vaccine. Polio was a dreaded disease that could paralyze and even kill, and children were the most vulnerable. Before a vaccine, little could be done.

Friday, July 16, 2020 - There’s been a lot of fuss about teaching Critical Race Theory in schools. But just what the heck is that? On the one hand, it gets characterized as criticism of America, and on the other hand as honest history. To get a more nuanced understanding of what this all means for North Dakota’s schools, we visit with Nick Archuleta, president of ND United, which represents teachers and other public employees. ~~~ Dave Thompson is here for a deeper dive into the latest news stories. ~~~ Matt Olien reviews “Black Widow.”

North Dakota is small and sparsely populated, but it has drawn a range of music acts over the years, some of them multiple times, with memorable shows. Some of those concerts have had attendance larger than some of North Dakota’s major cities.

“The Black Death,” as the bubonic plague was called, swept Europe in the mid-14th century and killed millions of people. Hundreds of years later, North Dakota also grappled with plague.

Wednesday, July 14, 2021 - Music host Scott Prebys visits with Geoffrey Littlefield, the author of “Nelson Riddle: Music With a Heartbeat.” Littlefield takes a deep dive into the genius of Riddle, with first-hand accounts from Riddle’s son and with never-before-seen photographs and anecdotes about Riddle’s experiences with legends such as Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, and North Dakota’s Peggy Lee. ~~~ Chuck Lura shares a Natural North Dakota essay that explores the outdoor opportunities in the Devils Lake area. ~~~ We visit with the other finalist for the North Dakota Leopold Conservation Award, Lance Gartner. He runs Spring Valley Cattle in Morton County. ~~~ Increasingly, farmers don’t own the land they work. That’s particularly true in the country’s breadbasket, and that can have environmental consequences. Harvest Public Media’s Dana Cronin looked at farmland rental data to figure out how the system is impacting the land itself. As she reports, farmers who rent appear less likely to use conservation practices.

On this date in 1832, George Catlin wrote to the New York Commercial Advertiser from the mouth of the Yellowstone River, saying: “The health and amusements of this delightful country render it almost painful for me to leave it. The atmosphere is so light and pure that nothing like fevers and epidemics has ever been known to prevail here – indeed it is proverbial here that a man cannot die unless he is killed by the Indians. If the Cholera should ever cross the Atlantic, what a secure, and at the same time delightful refuge this country would be for those who would be able to reach it.”

Have you been hearing this bird song this summer? We have been hearing these calls frequently this summer emanating from a small thick stand of aspen and shrubs. It sounds like there are several birds in there. But occasionally we get the opportunity to see the source, which is a catbird, or gray catbird to be more precise. No doubt some of you recognized the song.

Thursday, July 15, 2021 - Nationally, about 4% of children live in households that do not include their parents. Most often, they’re with grandparents or other relatives. North Dakota is now offering a new program to provide support for those caregivers. Christiana Pond is the project navigator for “Kinship-ND.” ~~~ We share a clip from Sunday’s Great American Folk Show as we hear from the Irish duo “The Breath.” ~~~ Tom Isern shares a Plains Folk essay, “Swimming Under the Fire Hall. ~~~ Sue Balcom is here with another episode of Main Street Eats. Today’s topic is garden pests.

By the early 1900s, amateur mechanics in North Dakota were building their own motor cars and whizzing down dirt roads at the mindboggling speed of eight miles an hour. The other rage of the time was aviation. North Dakotans were in on that, too. In 1910, Archie Hoxey was created a sensation with the first successful North Dakota flight at Grand Forks. And there was Frances Klingensmith, the first woman in the state to get a pilot’s license. She gained national fame as a stunt pilot and a racer. Even more famous, Carl Ben Eielson is known for flying over the arctic ice caps.