Social Issues

People who watched a preview screening of "North Country" Friday night gave the movie an enthusiastic thumbs up. About 500 people were invited. Most were extras and others who helped when the movie was shot on the Iron Range last winter.
Many Minnesotans will feel the sting of rising natural gas prices this winter. For those with no flexibility in their budget, heating assistance money is the only thing keeping them from financial ruin.
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina laid bare the racial tensions that always seem to lie just below the surface. Commentator Jonathan Odell has been thinking about race relations, and just how little the races actually relate. Odell, a native of Mississippi, lives in Minneapolis. He is the author of "The View from Delphi," which explores racial tensions in the South before the civil rights movement.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week in a case involving doctor-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. Bioethicist Jeffrey Kahn talks about the right to die and the questions it raises in the medical world.
Author Ruben Martinez has thought and written about the migrant experience in the United States and Mexico. He talks with host Kerri Miller about what living in two worlds means for workers and their families.
Over the last decade, states across the country have increased their efforts to address sex crimes. But many experts say the legal system does a poor job dealing with sex offenders. How should society treat predatory criminals? And can treatment really help sex offenders?
One of the great voices of American theater has fallen silent. August Wilson, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and one-time St. Paulite, died of liver cancer Sunday in Seattle. He was 60 years old.
Minnesota author Walter Kirn's novel, "Thumbsucker," gets the Hollywood treatment as of this weekend. His story is about a disaffected teenager growing up in a dysfunctional family in Stillwater.