Garrison Keillor's Podcast

Prairie Home Productions

Funny, poignant, sentimental, and sometimes controversial thoughts of the day.

garrisonkeillor.substack.com

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20 episodes
Updated April 11

Episodes20

Newest first

April 11 · 7 min
The one-armed man at the concert
Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C Major, the “Jupiter,” was his last, a symphony he never heard, composed in the summer of 1788, three years before his death, along with two other symphonies, a piano sonata, other chamber works, by a 32-year-old genius...
February 14 · 7 min
Gearing up to go on the road
Some days I glance at the front page and see the name RUMP in three or four places so I flip back to the Lifestyle section and maybe find a wine review, “Fresh and vivacious with chewy tannins and bursts of flowers and fruits.” The deranged man with...
February 7 · 7 min
An old man's winter night
A Times story reporting that college students in a writing course do better when they go offline for a month makes perfect sense to me, same as if you say a writer does better at a laptop in the public library than shnockered on a sailboat in a storm,...
Oct 18, 2025 · 8 min
Remembering you but not the rest
I remember when I was a kid, our family driving home from Sunday night gospel meeting and stopping at A&W for root beer floats, how beautiful they were after an hour of contemplating eternal damnation. I remember being sent to Aunt Jo’s house when...
Sep 13, 2025 · 8 min
What we learn from air travel
This all came crashing down last Monday night at JFK when I boarded a Delta flight to Seattle around 5 p.m. I consider JFK to be as close to a prison camp as I care to get. The Delta terminal is vast and crowded and ugly, endless lines at Ticketing,...
Jun 28, 2025 · 8 min
My weekly walk to church and back
Forwarded this email?...
Apr 12, 2025 · 7 min
The sweet day draws near
And now I worry, as old people do, about the kids I see who are growing up in the dreadful clutter of American life, the gizmos and social media bullying, and can they find delight as I did in skating on the frozen Mississippi and discovering Liebling...
Apr 5, 2025 · 7 min
The perils of pedestrianism
And so you have men on bikes racing through narrow gaps on jammed avenues with a backpack full of shrimp curry and pad thai, meanwhile an elderly man (me) on his way to the drugstore to pick up some Alka-Seltzer stands on the curb, peering into the...
Mar 29, 2025 · 7 min
My plan for the next four years
Life is good once you master the art of Deletion. Every day my laptop is full of emails asking for money to do worthwhile, even noble, things, which, if I donated to them, I’d soon be living in a cardboard box in a vacant lot, and so I click on...
Mar 22, 2025 · 7 min
Mother the queen of my heart
I was not a good son. A good son is one who visits his mother regularly and I was too busy to do that. I ran around a lot. Sometimes I traveled in fancy company. I was once in a movie directed by Robert Altman and financed, in part, by the Pohlad...
Mar 15, 2025 · 6 min
Living in the present, a day at a time
I live in the present. If I were to think about the future, I’d be alarmed about the utter demise of journalism and the self-degradation that many U.S. senators are eager to accept and the use of cryptocurrency to enrich the Chief Executive by tech...
Mar 8, 2025 · 7 min
It's never too late to be normal
The lust for world domination does not make for the good life. It’s the life of the male raccoon who battles for preeminence and winds up in a ditch being pecked at by crows. It’s not for sensible people. Be at peace, read books, cherish your friends,...
Mar 1, 2025 · 6 min
A wonderful night in Lubbock
I intend to enjoy defeat and go back and read Shakespeare, whom I wrote C-minus term papers about in college using terms like “well-structured,” “complex,” “buttery.” I’m going to travel to Dublin, Stockholm, Rome, where a person can become absorbed...
Feb 15, 2025 · 7 min
A tale about close neighbors
I do not understand the neighbors, actually, such as why their summer house has LANDSCAPING and LAWN ORNAMENTS. A summer house is for relaxation, it isn’t to demonstrate craftmanship. You are supposed to sit on the porch and read Proust, you are not...
Feb 8, 2025 · 7 min
A man on the porch by the river
When I was 12, I was a teacher’s pet, so I was a target for playground bullies. A boy told me my teeth were green and rotten and I believed him and stopped smiling. And I believed that the Second Coming was imminent and though I was a Christian I...
Feb 1, 2025 · 7 min
A primer for my friends of middle-age
There is always an excuse for not exercising, a religious prohibition, some hereditary syndrome that makes you feel desperate when you breathe hard, an allergic reaction to your own perspiration, but these can be overcome with help. My excuse is that...
Jan 25, 2025 · 8 min
It's never too late for a revelation
My steak arrived and I hated it. It was tender to the point of being gelatinous. It was rare, not medium rare. It wasn’t chewy, as steak should be. It was sort of like eating raw liver. But when the waiter came by to ask if everything was okay, I...
Jan 18, 2025 · 7 min
Happiness and the price of groceries
I like Trader Joe’s because the clientele is half my age or less and I stand with my cart in a long double line with college kids and mothers of tiny children and I listen to fragments of phone conversations that are fresh and fascinating to me. These...
Jan 11, 2025 · 7 min
A good weekend in Georgia
I’m grateful that, as a kid, I got to experience “visiting,” when the family got in the car and dropped in at someone’s house and sat around and visited. We kids sat quietly and listened to the elders reminisce about their childhoods, which could be a...
Jan 4, 2025 · 6 min
Thank you for reading this
Cranberries are the heart of Thanksgiving dinner. You don’t want a gourmet dinner that distracts you from your life blessings, so you serve turkey, a profoundly average dish. Every turkey dinner is about as good as any other turkey dinner. Same with...

Garrison Keillor's Podcast

The one-armed man at the concert

Gearing up to go on the road

An old man's winter night

Remembering you but not the rest

What we learn from air travel

My weekly walk to church and back

The sweet day draws near

The perils of pedestrianism

My plan for the next four years

Mother the queen of my heart

Living in the present, a day at a time

It's never too late to be normal

A wonderful night in Lubbock

A tale about close neighbors

A man on the porch by the river

A primer for my friends of middle-age

It's never too late for a revelation

Happiness and the price of groceries

A good weekend in Georgia

Thank you for reading this