MPR People

Like your Thanksgiving Day feast, Giving Thanks combines traditional fare with unexpected delights. For Thanksgiving 2003, we've invited some wonderful guests to the program, including Wendy Wasserstein, Donald Hall, and highlights from the Broadway production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. (11/01/2003)

"I preach a theology of mess and failure and mistake and false starts," says Anne Lamott. MPR's John Birge talks to the author about the inauspicious characters of her novel Blue Shoe. She also reads from the book. (05/13/2003)

LIKE YOUR THANKSGIVING FEAST, Giving Thanks combines traditional fare with unexpected delights. For Thanksgiving 2002, we've invited some wonderful guests to the program, including John Updike, Anne Lamott, and Donald Hall. (11/01/2002)

LIKE YOUR THANKSGIVING FEAST, Giving Thanks combines traditional fare with unexpected delights. For Thanksgiving 2001, we've invited some wonderful guests to the program, including Patrick Stewart, Michael Feldman, W. S. Merwin, Katy Butler, Bill Holm, and Ellen Kushner. (11/01/2001)

It's the most famous aria in the world. Everybody knows it - but not everybody knows what it's about. So we called in the experts from the Minnesota Opera's production of The Barber of Seville. Listen to baritone Ryan Taylor and conductor Emmanuel Plasson as they join MPR's John Birge to deconstruct Figaro. (04/05/2001)

Like your Thanksgiving Day feast, Giving Thanks combines traditional fare with unexpected delights. For Thanksgiving 2000, we've invited some wonderful new guests to the program, including Studs Terkel, Tom Bodett, Lynne Rossetto-Kasper, Donald Hall, Bill Holm, and Ellen Kushner In addition to Garrison Keillor and Bill Moyers, a rare recording of Charles Laughton returns to Giving Thanks. His spellbinding story connects his personal discovery of Chartres Cathedral with an excerpt from Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums and the 104th Psalm. It's a moving and powerful tale, giving thanks for the discovery that art connects us all to the creative spirit, offering a beautiful focus for the program and the day. (11/01/2000)