Ages ago, I was shopping at a south Minneapolis Walgreens for sick kid essentials when the store’s automatic doors parted to let in the greatest disc jockey of all time. She was clad in a denim miniskirt and leather jacket, with a shag that framed her pillow lips, and her indoor sunglasses signaled rock n’ roll. I was so stunned by her aura that I left my baby Tylenol in a basket on the floor for a blue vest to reshelve and fled to the parking lot.
That DJ was Mary Lucia, who worked as 89.3 The Current’s afternoon drive host from 2005 to 2022. During her MPR tenure, not everyone treated Lucia with Walgreens merch-dropping awe. In her new memoir, What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder To Relate To (University of Minnesota Press, November 25, 2025, 192 pages), Lucia acknowledges her polarizing effect in an essay about music programming. “Meet me,” she writes. “It is I, rogue DJ. The cilantro of radio.”
The What Doesn’t Kill Me portion of the book’s title refers mainly to Lucia’s stalker. It all began when Lucia’s pug Smudge died and she talked about it on the air. One of her listeners that day, with whom Lucia had a brief and cordial email exchange, turned out to be a disturbed individual whose next correspondence was a package left for Lucia at MPR’s St. Paul headquarters that contained ten pounds of raw meat.
Lucia documented the stalker’s subsequent harassment: sympathy cards, creepy photographs, and threats of death to her dogs. When the stalker recorded violent messages on Lucia’s personal voicemail and left ominous offerings on the front steps of her home, she involved law enforcement. Lucia writes about the futility of restraining orders, the humiliation of being victim-blamed after playing recordings of sexually explicit threats in MPR conference rooms, and the frustration of navigating a legal system not designed to deal with nonviolent crime.
MPR management doesn’t look great in the book, and neither does the Minneapolis Police Department. Many of the men who were in positions to help Lucia were blasé about the stalking. They encouraged Lucia to brush it off and buy a gun.
Lucia reflects on the ironic cruelty of the stalker’s crimes. He took her warm, relatable on-air persona—a major, inimitable talent—and weaponized it against her. As the stalker acted on his sick delusions, ramping up the after-dark torment outside Lucia’s home, she grew withdrawn and paranoid. She contemplated pulling a geographic to New York City or Memphis. After her harasser was caught and charged, Lucia took a leave of absence from MPR as she prepared to read a victim impact statement at the stalker’s sentencing.
In between the stalker saga chapters are essays about blacking out and kissing a '90s Brit pop heartthrob at First Avenue, the death of Lucia’s epic vinyl collection, a midnight escape from childhood molestation, Prince and addiction, and the anesthesiologist who hassled Lucia for a musical favor at her appendectomy. Incredibly, in an earlier draft of this review, I called these “essays on lighter topics.” But as I list them out, they’re not light at all, save for the hilarious imagining of how Lucia’s cats might behave as airplane passengers.
This speaks to Lucia’s brilliance in curating an emotional arc via set list. Her life’s soundtrack can’t be all dirge, ballad, and requiem. When she’s writing about family members’ deathbeds, cold-turkey narcotics detox, or a knife-wielding fan at the corner of Judson and Nelson, Lucia makes these events funny, entertaining, and touching, like maudlin lyrics set to a bright pop chord progression. For readers who know Lucia as Paul Westerberg’s little sister, he’s in the book too, a gem of a big brother who shows up hilariously in a couple of very non-hilarious moments, providing levity, tenderness, and nicotine in just the way you’d expect from the former frontman of the Replacements.
Lucia has a Sedaris-ian worldview that transforms the mundane into wry comedy. Here she is on public radio’s office hierarchy: “First News, then Classical, then us weirdos who came to work hungover and regularly hosted unbathed bands fresh off the tour bus into that expensive recording studio that had been donated by some dead rich codger.” Ordinarily, I don’t care what anyone’s dog ate for lunch, but if Lucia’s typing? Sign me up for every disgustingly inedible noun.
The writing isn't always perfect—a editor could have freshened up a few clichés and cut some cringey early-aughts slang like “mad skills” and “down for the cause." At times, I got greedy. I wanted Lucia to reveal the Prince story she teases, then swears she’ll never make public. Sometimes she tells more than she shows, writing sentences like “I was completely unhinged” and “I unraveled a bit.” I wanted a fuller picture of what Lucia’s unhinged looked like.
Then again, she owes me and the rest of us nothing. She didn’t have to publish anything about how she trailblazed alternative radio, survived the attention of a criminal psychopath, or maintained her dignity when her employer sent a cease-and-desist-but-also-thanks-for-listening letter to Lucia’s stalker. (Please, someone in the comments, speculate on the identity of the drivetime shift grubbing station manager Lucia calls “Potsy”!)
Lucia’s reflections on what it’s like to be a regional celebrity made me think about that long ago Walgreens shopping trip. While I should have handled my blue basket more responsibly, I’m glad I didn’t approach her and stammer something stupid. Our parasocial heroes, no matter how relatable they seem when they’re on the job, deserve to shop for antacids in peace.
What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To is a gift. It’s a gift for every MPR listener who misses Lucia’s weekday pug stories, deep cuts, and contralto delivery. It’s a gift for victims. And, although they probably won’t read it, it’s a gift for insensitive middle management types who need to learn empathy.
What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To Launch Event
When: December 9, 2025, 6 p.m. doors, 7 p.m. program
Where: Granada Theater, 3022 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis
In conversation with Lizz Winstead. Find tickets ($41.42) and more info here.
Mary Lucia in conversation with Andrea Swensson
When: December 10, 2025, 6 p.m.
Where: Ramsey County Historical Society, Landmark Center, 75 West Fifth Street, Suite 317, St. Paul
Find tickets and more info here.
