Thank you for eight great years!

Seventy years ago this week, Drs. Edward Kendall and Philip Hench, along with Swiss chemist Tadeus Reichstein, were awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize in medicine for their discovery and medical implementation of cortisone.

We talk with people from all corners of the industry to see how they think growth can be sustained in Rochester’s creative scene, and what the future of music will look like in this city.

Nobody knows exactly what the next few months will bring. Good news on the effectiveness of various vaccines brings hope, but a lack of federal aid leaves small businesses without a safety net when they need it the most. Inevitably, some of our favorite businesses will not survive the winter. For the businesses that do get through, though, what world will await them on the other side of the pandemic? How will things change?

Katie Smith, Olmsted County’s elections director, says her office has received a ballot from roughly one-third of Olmsted County’s registered voters already — that’s over 30,000 ballots already, and she says that number is still going up fast.

It may seem like the anti-vaccination movement is a recent fad. In recent years, the pseudo-scientific coalition has gained a foothold in some circles, leading to various outbreaks of diseases long considered eradicated — including a 2017 outbreak of measles in the Twin Cities. But on the latest episode of the Rochester Rundown, Dr. Priya Sampathkumar, chair of infection control at Mayo Clinic, says this is not a new problem for our society.

Covid-19 has upended the music community at large — on the local, statewide and national levels. Today on the Rochester Rundown, though, we take a look at what Med City musicians have been able to do in the first half of 2020 — without live shows to play, it’s been all about recorded music. It’s a small roundup… just a snippet of the best music to come out of our city so far this year.

This week on the Rochester Rundown: a report on racial disparity in Rochester, specifically how it relates to this pandemic. Public data shows people of color, Black people in particular, are taking on a disproportionate share of Olmsted County’s Covid-19 cases. It is a microcosm of a much larger issue, one that can’t be captured in a single podcast — but today, we’ll start to tackle what’s behind this health disparity, and how gaps in wealth, education and housing all play into one another.

In 2015, two hopeful orthopedic surgeons arrived in Rochester for the first time. In the past two years, they have become famous for something completely different. After a meteoric rise to stardom, however, it’s come time for them to move on — but not before giving one final shout out to the city. This week on the Rochester Rundown, the story of Drs. Elvis Francois and William Robinson, otherwise known as the singing surgeons. Hear from the doctors themselves on what they learned during their time in the Med City as well as what the future holds — in medicine and in music.

With early absentee voting for the upcoming primaries set to begin one week from today, Olmsted County election officials are preparing for an anticipated surge in mail-in ballots due to the pandemic. For this upcoming election cycle, the county expects somewhere around 50 percent of voters to cast ballots absentee, an unprecedented figure likely to impact how we think about voting now and in the future.

Seven students organizing against injustice; a police chief seeking to build trust; and a mayor reconciling past wrongs with the hope of a better future. This week on the Rochester Rundown, we hear from a chorus of local voices on policing, racial justice and the shortcomings of the city we call home.