MPR News Presents

Speeches, documentaries and debates.

Beyond 'Reality' TV: Inside the Lives of Older Singles
In this special, Dating While Gray host Laura Stassi sifts through research and talks to older singles about our dating lives and how we’re navigating new romance around already established family commitments.
Activist, influencer Marley Dias speaks at annual MLK Breakfast
Marley Dias founded the 1,000 Black Girl Books initiative with the goal of increasing the number of books in school libraries with Black girls as a main character. Dias told the crowd at the annual MLK Breakfast that the recent debate around banning books about Black, LGBTQ+ and other identities from school libraries has taken her mission to a new level.
Valerie Jarrett speaks at annual MLK Breakfast
Former Obama White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett spoke at the 2023 MLK Breakfast. The annual event is presented by UNCF and General Mills. Jarrett talked about the inspiration she takes from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., when she first met Michelle and Barack Obama and what to expect from the new Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side.
At this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival, Kitty Boone, vice president of public programs at the Aspen Institute, asked three national media leaders why trust in the news has eroded — and what media organizations can do to win it back.
Local journalism is dying, and national media organizations are making radical changes to fight public mistrust and stay afloat. Local and national media leaders came together at the 2021 Aspen Ideas Festival to discuss the problems plaguing journalism and how to solve them.
Hyper-partisanship and gridlock, massive populist protest movements, low public satisfaction with government performance — something seems to be broken in American democracy. Here are two ideas for fixing our political system from the 2021 Aspen Ideas Festival.
This year’s Aspen Ideas Festival featured a conversation with the Minneapolis North Community High School’s football coach and one of his former players.
For Labor Day, we broadcast an episode of the MinneCulture podcast about restaurateur, labor organizer, and civil rights pioneer Anthony Brutus Cassius. The program is hosted by Minnesota chef and food writer Mecca Bos.