Main Street
Ashley's Finale
(upbeat music) - Welcome to Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Craig Loomenshine. In the second half of today's show, we'll visit with our in-house movie reviewer, Matt O'Lean, and also with Dave Thompson. He's Prairie Public's news director. But first, for 10 years, my co-host, Ashley Thornberg, has delighted listeners and guests alike with insightful, thought-provoking conversations and features that told the stories of authors, actors, creative, and what she would say is her forte, people with weird hobbies and passions. She's also from this region, while Holla North Dakota is her hometown and really felt it a privilege to report about the fascinating people and places that make up our region. As you might have heard, today is Ashley Thornberg's last day co-hosting Main Street. She sat down with Prairie Public Program Manager, Eric Deathridge, for this look back and a look ahead. - If you've listened to Ashley Thornberg long enough, you know she's a bit of a daredevil. There was that time that she rode shotgun with the UND aerobatics team. - There's two Gs, two and a half look left. You guys see what the airplane's doing now? As we come over the top, we'll relax. You can look up and see the ground in the-- - Oh my God! - And all in the name of normalizing nerds, in this case, a guy who studies arachnids, she led a tarantula crawl on her head. - This is a tarantula. Her name is George, she's about eight years old. It's a scary looking animal. It's old, it's harmless. But did you know she's kind of a gumshoe too? - A coworker and I were just sitting down in front of the building, soaking up some sunshine. And this guy was just casually walking by and said, "Is this your car?" And both of us said no. And then he took out a sharp object. I don't know if it was a key or a knife. I didn't see it, but he just went, "Stab the tire." - Oh my God! - And then just kept walking. And my colleague and I kind of looked at each other and did the whole like, fight or flight thing for a second, which we humans are very good at. And perhaps especially women are more conditioned into sort of that free zone. And I didn't have my phone with me, so I looked at her and I said, "Hey, call the police, non-emergency line." And take a picture of this guy, tell them what just happened, and I'm gonna let him get a block ahead of me. I followed on the opposite side of the street and just walked with him while she was on the phone with the police so that we could be giving updates of like, "Hey, he's over here." And we just followed him for a while and let the police know where he was. And hopefully they took him to a place where he can get actual help that he needs. - She credits a couple of things for that kind of hustle, her empathetic personality, in this case, channeling her inner Jason Bourne after interviewing the Minnesota author who took over the spy thriller series, Yoga, and that's gonna come up a few times today. And of course, naturally, her DNA. - Definitely like this whole, I could do that. I get from my parents, they're a bunch of weirdos. In particular, my mom was pregnant with my older sister at the time, and my dad was working at WCCO Radio, the CBS affiliate in the cities. And I think she might've been a stringer for Minnesota Public Radio at the time, I don't remember. But covering a court case that actually went on to change, based on my dad's behavior, it went on to change precedent. It was the first court case where they ever allowed recorded testimony to be released to the press. And that was because my dad had requested it and been so thorough in his work on that court case. But he was out to dinner with my mom while covering a different court case. But he happened to also be aware of this bank robber case that was happening in Minneapolis. It was a Skyway robbery. This woman was going around robbing banks in the Minneapolis Skyway system. And he recognized her and he looked over at my mom and this was pre-cell phone days, this was 1978. And he said, that's a bank robber that the FBI is after. You stay here. Great thing to say to a pregnant woman. (laughing) You stay here, I'm gonna go and follow her and call the FBI. And so he gets up to leave and starts walking out the restaurant and my mom goes, be careful, Bob! (laughing) Cover blown it down to either. You know, apparently not, but anyway, so he goes and he calls the FBI and says who he is and who she is and where she's at. And then he's like, okay, she's leaving. I have to go keep falling. And then every few blocks, he would just pop in to the local donut store or whatever and get on the phone and call the FBI and then keep doing it and call the FBI until finally the FBI agent and my dad were able to meet up and then they followed together and then they caught her. Wow, so that was an FBI informant/jason-born character. Yeah, you know. He planted a seed. I guess, I guess, like I said, my family is... Weird, okay, but tracing it back to the more obvious DNA and roots and trend setting in your life, your dad was a radio guy. Yeah, so was my mom. Yeah, they were both radios, so tell us about their careers and how you became interested in this. Well, my dad picked telecommunications as a degree, I believe because it was the longest word major at the time. And he was like, "That sounds good reason." It could be because it started with tea, just like Thornburg, and he just went for it. My mom was actually an English major and used to do lots of things for her college, including working on the newsletter and she was very active in Nobel laureate conferences and bringing the King of Sweden. She was on an organizing committee when the King of Sweden came to town. Oh, I know, a big childhood embarrassment for me is when I bowed to the princess instead of curtsying. Uh-oh, is it immortalized? It's, I don't know, I'm pretty much over it, not really. Explains things. Anyway, and yeah, so my parents actually met at a Nobel conference. Oh, wow. And yeah, and they, yeah, they were just always active and interested in people. I think that's probably the common denominator is understanding people's motivations for doing things is where this comes from. Obviously, yeah, that's it. So yeah, you got your interest in finding out what makes people tick from your folks, you'd say. I would say, and then more to put more of the Ashley spin on it, I was also just chronically shy. I was practically non-verbal. I had one friend, you know, like through high school, pretty much. I mean, I had a friend group through junior high and then they all, it was one of those. Yeah, junior high, yeah, yeah. And then it was hideously unpopular, very shy. I always wanted to talk to people. I just did that, hung out in that freeze. Freeze state. I would like to say the radio is a perfect place for a shy person. It is. But you were a, but you got on the other medium. Well, I'm also a little bit of an authority pleaser. And so I put myself in a position where I would get fired if I didn't learn how to talk. Or we're curting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so for me, and I started off in television, honestly, but for me being forced to do that because it was part of my job, it was like having a crutch. I mean, it's no different than that. I gave myself the crutch and the tool to go from a space of like discomfort into a space of growth. Whether it's chasing down tires, slashers, all her folks in the Minneapolis skyway, or exercising her body and mind, actually always seems to be in constant motion. And she says yoga is a big reason why. You know, yoga is an approach to life. And it gives you the time, space, tools, opportunity to examine your motivations and your movements and see if they are in line with your greatest good. What is the most amount of good you can be doing at any one time? And is the way that you move through life in service to that. And whether that is through slowing down, being really mindful, you learn how to listen on a different level. You don't listen with your ears, the way that you and I are talking. You learn to listen to a voice that isn't going to come the way that maybe that the human voice sort of sounds. Like you learn to listen on a deeper sort of gut level and intuitive level. At least that's how it manifested for me. And the postures, each of the postures is designed to bring about a certain action or response. And it's very much, I mean, I'm obviously a storyteller and I very much gravitate towards narratives. And so I love the stories behind each of the poses. And so when you're in something like a cobra pose, you are doing things like channeling the ability to listen without ears. And so you're listening on a deeper or at least just a different level. But you're also learning how to move sort of seamlessly and how to lift yourself up without the structure of the human skeleton. And you learn to see things in the yoga pose that are also happening in your life. And very much we try to dissolve that boundary between what's happening on the inner world and what's happening on the outer world. And just noticing that what's happening here is happening somewhere else. What's happening in the body is happening outside the body. And vice versa. Mirroring the natural world in the way is kind of what you're describing. Right. And then it gives you the opportunity to do things. Like if you're practicing a warrior pose, what are the times I need to be a warrior and I need to put in the effort and I need to do the work? And then something like a happy baby, like what are the times I'm supposed to just sit here and find play and find relaxation. And at once be allowed to experience the expansiveness of human emotion and the range of human emotion without being controlled by it. It's a very subtle but profound effect. It's like, yeah, you're gonna be angry and you're gonna be mad sometimes, but try not to just be in a reactive state. So you move from a place of reacting into a place of being more proactive, from reactive to proactive. How has listening for you changed and how has that incorporated into your job now? I've learned to get out of my own way, at least a little bit. I used to kind of go in the room, remember that sort of authority pleasing self and I was way a little hesitant to say over research because I still very much do my homework. I always read the whole book, you know, like that kind of thing. But the interviews were about me in the beginning and proof that I had done the research and that I knew this and I knew what this word meant and things like that. I used to do that early in my career to show the guest that I did my homework. I did my homework, look at me, grade me, grade me, grade me. I am such a Lisa Simpson, you know, classically going back, that grade me, grade me, grade me when the school's on strike. Like I still feel that. But for starters, just the sheer amount of content that we put out, like I can't actually be an expert in microbiology and chemistry and ornithology and playing an instrument and experience homelessness. Like I can't do all of those things and had to kind of learn that it is not about me, it's being the channel, it's being the bridge. And we do this again in yoga, I'm just supposed to be the channel for whatever is supposed to come out. I'm supposed to just be living in a state that allows for my highest good to come out through my actions. And so I'm practicing that in the radio studio by getting out of the way and letting it actually be about the guest. And that was a pretty profound turning point. I can't even listen to my old stuff 'cause. - Yeah, who can, it's hard going back years as you're gonna hear a lot about it. - Yeah, I just want to gag now. - That was giving us a sense of humor. - So the listening, I'm gonna drill down on this a little bit too because one of the things that resonates of the many things that you say that are profound and stop and make you think, even to the most cynical of minds and hearts, is that listening will solve more problems than politics ever will. What do you mean by that? - I mean that on a core basic foundational level, people want to be heard. And much of our acting out, whether it's stabbing a tire or passing a law that is designed to disenfranchise somebody else, might be coming from a space of having been hurt. I mean, not everyone is gonna do the thing in yoga that you're supposed to do, which is sit there and deal with it. And a lot of my yoga practice has been crying and being in a state of pain and working through traumas and hardships and things that have been difficult or when things didn't go the way that I wanted to and sitting there and processing those again so that I'm not in a state of reaction. And most of this society isn't doing that. I think you could spend eight seconds on social media and realize that everybody just wants to send out the incendiary comment designed to bolster their own self-esteem, but also tear somebody else down. And if your entire basis of self-esteem is kind of coming from hurting other people, that's where I feel like if we could just get so much better at listening to each other and realizing that 90% of us, 90% of our things we have in common and the reason we choose to focus on those couple of differences could be for lots of different reasons. The more violently you cling to an identity, the less authentic it actually is. And so if you can first do the work of listening to yourself and being very clear with who you are and what you want to accomplish in this life, you can allow other people to be their best selves. - What would be a favorite moment or maybe a couple of favorite moments over the years on Main Street? - I think a couple of key turning points for me have been I used to hate interviewing Jack Russell Weinstein so hard for far is John Oliver offering a million dollars to a Supreme Court justice to retire. Is it moral, is it ethical for comedians and then political satirists to be actively trying to interfere with the process? - I think it's a brilliant stunt by John Oliver because I think-- - Jack the host of my philosophical just goes throughout every new life and the most honorable currents, yeah. - And I think he'll enjoy hearing this. But I just, I didn't want to do it. I was convinced, no, I can only deal in facts. I don't deal in ambiguity and in philosophical debate. And some of that is sort of that childhood. Like I was raised a little bit, let's just say Lutheran, Midwestern, I'll say that. I was raised in sort of that Midwestern tradition of like, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, but that in some ways led to me not feeling confident enough to speak up. And so engaging in debate and argument was something that I was always very afraid of. And just again, always wanting to be over-prepared and knowing what answer to expect doesn't really allow for free form conversation. - Or a word Jack usually takes a question. - Or a word Jack, yeah, I never know where Jack is gonna go. And so to have gone from this space of, I didn't want to do it, I really avoided it. Like I just would not do it to being way over-prepared and trying to quote philosophical maxims that I didn't actually understand and weave it into the conversation to some of my best conversations with Jack. One in particular, I didn't realize I had been scheduled to interview him, I was on vacation, it got scheduled while I was gone, I missed the memo, I walked into the studio, he walked, I walked into the office, he walked in five minutes later. And I was like, oh, are we talking? Yeah, and it was, and we did a 45 minute conversation. - Probably one of your best, right? - Yeah, and you know, to me he is such an embodiment of being the educator and being the teacher. There's no separation between Jack and philosophy. And so I really admire that sort of like constant teaching and helping other people evolve. A crazy story is the Prime Minister of Iceland and she was coming to a tiny town in North Dakota and no one else was gonna be able to make it and I didn't have, I didn't reach out to her, I didn't have contact and like nothing, but I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna go, I kind of had that feeling mountain. - That mountain, right. - Yeah, and I was just like, I had that gut feeling, some of it is because I'm up from that area, so I knew it's a small town. I get in the, I grabbed my gear, I get in the car, I actually got pulled over for speeding and I told them that I was on my way to go, to go see the Prime Minister of Iceland 'cause I thought it was gonna make me sound. - Yeah, if I actually throw it very speeding, take it now. - And the cop, I swear to God said, oh, you're going to the deuce. And I was like, 'cause it's called August the deuce and a celebration of Icelandic heritage and I show up and the parade was just getting started. So I, because I got pulled over, I didn't give myself quite enough time. The parade gets going, it's mountain, it's like four blocks. So the parade didn't last very long. And then like, there she is and there was no security. Like, I mean, if anyone had guns, it was not obvious. There was no people who looked like Jason Boren standing around. - What do you hope will be the legacy of your term? I know you've done a lot for gender, equal pay, pledging for a carbon free Iceland by 2040. If you had to pick one thing. - Climate change is actually a flagship that I want to see something real happening before I leave office because it's a very important issue for all of us and we're heading for a carbon neutral Iceland in 2040. She was very sweet and I got to rely on my long time authority, pleasing quick memorizing, you know, I had memorized her cabinet and the last like four prime ministers and some of her policies she had talked about the most. And then we just had a really great conversation. - And then later on you went to Iceland to go see, you know, this is how public radio actually is, right? She goes to Iceland with her husband, and she goes to go see Wilko. - I mean, wow, it's Wilko. ♪ The song will shine ♪ - Did you want other moments? - What? - The first person I ever interviewed at Prairie Public. - Yeah, who was that? - Joan Baez. ♪ It ain't you again ♪ - The folk singer is known for interpreting the work of other musicians as she is for being a songwriter, something she almost wasn't. - I didn't even occur to me before I'd have been a songwriter for the first 10 years 'cause I came to music by-- - Oh, wow, well, I just name-dropped that one. - I mean, I cannot. That one is an in-dropping kind of name. And I didn't even work in radio. I worked in membership at the time, and I overheard our now retired director of radio bill say that, you know, one from the news department was available to do the interview, and she was coming to town to do the show in Bismarck, and I was like, well, I've done, 'cause I had been in TV before, and I were interviewed Joan Baez, but, you know, I had done interviews, and I was like, I can do it! Pick me, pick me, pick me! It's like, put me in couch, I'm ready to play, except for sports, I can't. That's not me. - It's in the band microphone, yes. - She performed again for the 50th anniversary of the Newport Folk Festival on August 2nd in front of Pete Seeger. - Pete is a riot. I think one of the high points of this last appearance with him was that my band and I do a version of a hymn called Angel Band, and we just stand around a microphone and we sing this four-part harmony. We just sing it full throttle, and they said, I wish I'd seen it, but they said Pete was climbing the rafters on the side of the stage to hear it. - I'm 90 years old. - Yes! It was a big talk of the town, and I was so flattered. I mean, what a moment. ♪ Oh, come ♪ ♪ Angel ♪ - She was delightful. And I actually had Todd McDonald's did the edit for me because I had never even used the software. I had no idea how to edit. Those are my favorites. So even though I kind of name-dropped with Joan Baez and with the Prime Minister, the everyday people doing amazing things and doing the best they can with what they have right here in North Dakota and being in this sort of privileged state at all times of them opening up and sharing their stories with me and their passion, but also hearing from educators who have written books about their experiences with the Indian boarding school. And I know I remember not being able to breathe in a conversation once as a woman talked about her dad being tied down and beaten at one of these schools because he had refused to beat another child. And for people to feel like they need to tell that story and be able to tell that story, like that is one of those, it's both a privilege and a responsibility, but that they would trust me with a story like that as something I will, I'll never forget and I'll never take lightly. (upbeat music) Ashley Thornberg, your radio companion, reflecting on her decade plus career as co-host of the show you are listening to right now, Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Eric Deathridge coming up on this Ashley's last Main Street. She'll give a few shout outs and thank yous and you'll hear from some of her co-workers as well as people she's collaborated with and interviewed over the years, although return the favor and give a few shout outs to Ashley back, so stay with us. (upbeat music) Capitol Shakespeare of Bismarck presents Hamlet, July 17th through the 21st of the Prairie Amphitheater located on the lawn, just south of the main entrance to the North Dakota Heritage Center. Follow the grieving Hamlet as he seeks to avenge his father's death and plummets the kingdom and the madness. Performance is starred at 6.30 p.m. and are free and open at the public with free will donations accepted. Limited concessions available, lawn chairs or blankets are encouraged. Capitol Shakespeare's Hamlet, July 17th through the 21st in Bismarck. Welcome back to Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Craig Blumenshine. My co-host and friend Ashley Thornberg's last day on Main Street is today and Eric Deathridge, program manager here at Prairie Public, continues his conversation with Ashley. So Ashley, you're taking a bow. We're giving you the moment to take a little bow. Yes, you need to learn to curtsy. We don't care where I'm showing you now that you've done yoga for years. Gosh, you should be able to find the curtsy. I can, I can tell I can see. But okay, let's give a little shout out to some important folks in your professional life here at Prairie Public and on Main Street in particular, this program that you are so closely identified with. I applied for the job at the same time as Doug Hamilton. And for those of you who knew Doug Hamilton, you knew I was never gonna get this job over Doug. Doug, for those that are new to Main Street, let's just fill them in. Doug Hamilton was a TV anchor. I know a lot of us grew up watching him and he had a, you know, authority on it. He had a voice about butter. Yeah. He was just, he was just a broadcast. He grew up in a journalism family. Yes. But then was also an actor. So we had that sort of performative element. He applied to be host and Skip was the producer. And when I applied, I think Bill and John Harris got together and discussed breaking that into two positions. Skip volunteered to cut his own hours and therefore pay in order to have me come on. So for starters, (laughing) Yeah. Skip should definitely get a shout out here. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. I worked, I worked at the same station as Skip 10, 15 years after he did and people were still talking about him at KVOI. Just one of the nicest human beings. Yeah, he's an incredible human being. And I think Bill, taking somebody in membership and saying, yeah, you can interview Joan by us. (laughing) So much of that, you know, starting from a position of believing in the person first, you know, Bill married me. He married me and my husband and it was beautiful. And then, I mean, rest in peace, Doug Hamilton. I got to sit in on a master class of how to do an interview. And I'm really excited for the direction that Anne Alquist and you Eric Deathridge are taking the station in. We are obviously living in a world where we do need more of that and being able to be responsive. Yeah. - You're doing Craig Blimenschine, your co-host, so it's done a really nice job of co-hosting the show, being together in the room. - Yeah, and he has such a very different skill set from me. What he is really good at is putting systems into place so that things, things I was wasting so much of my mental energy on. - Yeah, he's good at finding efficiencies. - He's good at finding, putting these systems in place and finding efficiencies. And then he also, I just have never met anybody who is so, he's almost relentlessly happy about things. - He's got a very positive energy. - He's very, yeah. (upbeat music) - We're gonna pull the curtain back on why you're leaving us. - Granny Gerhard and Sue Skiliski at the Humanities Council are two of the bravest, weirdest. - Ah, fits in, yep. - Most thoughtful and engaging humans that I have ever had the pleasure to meet. - So what's your official job title and what are you going to do now? - I'm trying to sell them on Vibes coordinator. (laughing) - They have a podcast, a 100 watt podcast, a spread light, not heat. And I am looking forward to working with the whole team there. - You have developed a relationship with your listeners over your long career here, very public, probably starting with Joan Bias. - Yeah, me and her are our besties now. - So whether, you know, people have been listening for the entirety of your career here or even recently, I think that you forge a connection. You tell me all the time about being recognized pretty much everywhere you go by your voice alone and people tell you how they've been impacted on what you do. - Yeah, it's funny because I feel like I'm speaking into the void so often because many times I'm not actually even in eye contact with the person I'm talking to and it actually surprises me still when people say, "I heard you on the radio and I'm like, "But how did you know about that?" Oh, you heard me, you know, literally broadcasting and across the state, but it still feels weird that people hear it and... - All right, so as you say goodbye to Prairie Public, what say you, Ashley Thornberg, to your listeners and fans? - I was gonna leave five years ago. This was supposed to be a placeholder job for me while our kid was still young and while the business that my husband was growing was still needed a certain amount of flexibility from me. And I didn't mean to fall in love. So I would love to thank the listeners for... their greatest gift of all, which is the act of listening and I hope that they continue to do so. That was Ashley Thornberg, her last day on Main Street and with Prairie Public is today. We as her colleagues will miss her presence on our air and in the office, as will her many fans. I personally have delighted in Ashley's humor and her soul searching and truth seeking all in the course of conducting her probing and revealing interviews. Here's what some others had to say about Ashley. - So when Ashley first came to radio, I was the only other woman working in the Fargo office. So it was really nice to have not just another woman around to relate to, but also one my own age. She's always had great ideas, asked great questions and has worked really hard to do every story she sets out to tell justice. She's going to absolutely kill it at her new adventures. - You know, it's been great having you around the office all these years, lots of interesting discussions and some great travel tips came out as a result. Been wonderful working with you. Good luck on your next endeavor. - She's engaging, smart, interesting and she will be sorely missed here at Main Street on Prairie Public. That's really been a joy working with Ashley. - One of the ways in which Ashley has helped me think about how we do our work is when she shared a moment of vulnerability where she talked about how she was learning how to be a storyteller because she had been a story catcher. And so she was eager to develop the tools of being a storyteller and she's going to do well. - I really like the way Ashley does interviews. She's engaged with a subject and brings us listeners into that engagement. - One of the things that I really, really appreciate being interviewed by Ashley is her quickness, is the way that she takes great joy in building kind of thematic or content bridges. - She's the best interviewer I've ever met. I'm a very big public radio person and I have listened to some of the great and I think she's one of them. There's just a joy and a pleasure in her voice and she is going to be missed. - Ashley is the radio version of a great utility player in baseball. Plug her in anywhere. She's a producer, a show engineer and a super host. Ashley and former host, the late Doug Hamilton, were a good combination. - Certainly she's had some fun with kind of what I consider sort of stunt stories. But then those are memorable where the tarantula was on her head or she'd fly an upset down in an airplane or viewing a solar eclipse from the air. One thing, sort of a collection of things that stands out to me is the interviews that she has done with people from the indigenous nations of our area. - Ashley has been a privilege to work with. She has been somebody who, besides being constantly working on trying to find ways to be better, she is somebody who wants to get out there, take a chance, be adventurous, do things. And that's the best reporter's journalist do that. So we hope we'll be seeing Ashley around and certainly expect to hear more from her and wish her the best absolutely. (upbeat music) ♪ All you see is a chance ♪ ♪ Take it ♪ ♪ The balance ♪ ♪ Take it ♪ ♪ Because it's all ♪ ♪ All you ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ All you see is a chance ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ All you see is a chance ♪ ♪ Take it ♪ ♪ All you see is a chance ♪ ♪ Take it ♪ ♪ One more man ♪ ♪ All you see is a chance ♪ - You've heard from some of our colleagues and collaborators reflecting on working with our own Ashley Thornberg. Today is her last day co-hosting the show with me. I'm Craig Blumenshine and we'll hear from Ashley one more time at the end of the show. So don't go anywhere. - Support for Pray Public is provided by Basin Electric Power Cooperative, a consumer-owned generation and transmission cooperative, and owner of a large coal-based carbon capture project in Bula, North Dakota, with over 35 million metric tons of CO2 captured. (upbeat music) And there is the fanfare. That means it's time to go to the movies with our movie reviewer, Matt Oley. Matt, welcome back to mainstream. - Hi, Craig. - All right, Matt, let's play a clip from this week's movie, Kinds of Kindness. - This is it. Do you think you can do it? ♪ Sweet dreams are made of the years ♪ ♪ Who am I to disagree ♪ - Open your eyes and look clearly at what's going on around you. We might all be in danger. ♪ Some of them want something ♪ - So Matt, after you saw the show, did your opinion change on what you thought it was going to be coming into the show? Is this one of those movies where you just weren't quite sure? - I knew it was going to be strange because the director is your host Lance the most. His movies are always strange, very strange and weird. You know, sometimes with movies, they're not just good, they're not just bad, they're somewhere in the middle. And I think this film falls somewhere in the middle. I wanted more from this movie. I think he kind of returns to his early Greek roots of films like Dogtooth and The Lobster, which are just crazy strange films, but they kind of worked. Since then, he's had this interesting marriage of weird and commercial success with the favorite and poor things, which made him almost mainstream in sort of a weird way, like a Wes Anderson way. But now I think he's just going back to being weird. It's three different stories and the stories all involve a character named R.M.F. played by Yargo Stefanakos. Story one is death of R.M.F. Story two is R.M.F. is flying. Story three is R.M.F. eats a sandwich. The only linking thing in the story is him and all the main actors, Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Defoe, they all play different characters in each segment. A little star power there. Lots of star power, but they don't really link together, except that Willem Defoe appears to be playing some kind of sex cult leader in parts one and three. I like the second story better, the middle story. But by the end, my view is kind of like what was the point of this. And I think a lot of mainstream audiences are going to say the same thing. Right now on Rotten Tomatoes, 49% score with audiences, 72% with critics. So I think this is going to be a maddening plot for a lot of mainstream audiences wondering when's this movie going to end. I don't think it's a bad film. I think it's solidly done. It has that land the most weird thing that we've come to expect from the Greek freak as he's called. Maybe I'm putting two high expectations because of poor things. I thought the cinematography wasn't great either. His cinematography is usually so interesting and I found it a little bit dingy and underwhelming. The cinematographer didn't grab me at all. So that was disappointing as well. It's an interesting film. Jesse Plemons is kind of the star of the movie, I would say in all three parts. He almost has a bigger part than Emma Stone. It's my least favorite land the most film since killing of the sacred deer, which is my least favorite Jorgos land the most movie. I don't think it's going to make a lot of money. I don't think it's going to win Oscars. It's not going to be up for Oscars, the way the favorite and poor things was. Ultimately, I'm a little disappointed in this movie, but I'm glad I saw it. He's trying to do what Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino just do better. They really do these Altman when he was alive anyway. These multiple plots, interweaving storylines, you're kind of led along and you're really expecting some kind of big resolution at the end and we never get it with kinds of kindness. The whole RMF titles of the three stories really makes kind of sense because the same character is in all three parts. Jorgos Stephanocos, to my knowledge, never utters a line in the three parts as RMF. So, I just think Anderson does this better. Tarantino does this better. I'm not sure Lanthamos does this better. I think he'd have been better off maybe focusing the whole film on this whole sex cult leader played by Willem Dafoe and kind of luring people in. That might have been a little more interesting, but in the end, I was just a little bit underwhelmed and a little bit disappointed, but it's not a bad film. It's not a horrible film. It's just Lanthamos has set the bar really high. And I think the film is just weird for the sake of being weird. And it needs to be a little, I need something else. I need something a little bit more. Matt, this director, he's been up for other Academy Awards. Twice been nominated for best director, 2018 for the favorite, 2023 for poor things. His film Dogtooth was up for the foreign language. Phil Mosker in 2010, he's got a screenplay nomination in there for the lobster. So, he's getting a lot of Oscar nominations, but I don't think it's gonna happen with kinds of kindness. And we've been to the movies with our movie reviewer, Matt Olien. Thanks for joining us again on Main Street. Of course. (upbeat music) ♪ Extra, extra, read all about it ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Gather around everybody ♪ And there's Dave Thompson's Walk Up Music. Dave is our news director here at Prairie Public. We meet once a week to review the news. It'll be a quick one though today, Dave, how are ya? I'm doing well, Craig, how are you? I'm doing very well. Thank you, Dave. The group that is trying to get recreational marijuana on the ballot has turned some signatures into the Secretary of State's Office. Right. New Economic Frontier, which is headed by former Bismarck Mayor Steve Bock. And they've got over 22,000 signatures. They needed about 15,000 plus. And if I were a betting person, I'm likely thinking that this one is going to appear on the ballot because the Bock and Group was very careful about getting the signatures and getting them right, the forms and the signatures correct so that you can't use BIS for Bismarck or FGO for Fargo, for example. You have to write out Bismarck or Fargo if that's your address. Well, we may see the question in November right now. Right, we sure could. Dave, a group has released now new guidance for the use of artificial intelligence in our state's schools. Right, it's Department of Public Instruction. And they're doing that because AI is becoming more and more a thing. And there's been some concerns about how do you use it in a classroom as a tool? And they're worried about students might just use AI to write book reports or something like that. So there's some guidelines that the state is giving to local school districts. And how to use AI? A lot of software that schools will use in the future will have it, so this will be technically geeky to follow for me, but very, very important for everyone really. I think it is very important, right. Dave, we'll get to the 988 Lifeline. It's now commemorated. It's two-year anniversary. It's sad we have to have it, but we have it. It's sad we have to have it, but it's kind of a good thing because you don't have to dial 1-800 number to get some help. You can dial 988 and get help almost immediately. And yeah, it's a real concern about mental health and suicide thoughts. And if this helps, and I believe it is helping to cut down the amount of suicide in North Dakota and getting help to people who are in crisis, it's a good thing. Are we going to be talking about a NOR, the CODEN, as a VP candidate next week? Let me put it to you this way. I would be betting no, but then again, you never can tell. Dave, it's always a pleasure to visit with you. Thank you so much for being with us. A quick version, though. All right. All right, Craig, thank you so much. [MUSIC PLAYING] Madeline reviews a movie. That's coming up. Support is provided by Drs. Kirk Koyer and Phil Sondrel of Urgent Med, providing personalized walk in medical care for all ages seven days a week in South Fargo. Urgent Med where urgent care doesn't feel like urgent care. This is Dakota Daybook for July 11th. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner came to Chicago not for the world's fair like thousands of other people, but for the annual conference of the American Historical Association. On this date, in 1893, Turner put the finishing touches on his frontier thesis, a speech he would give to the conference the following evening. Turner argued that the settlement of the American frontier was the foundation of a uniquely American culture. With the Homestead Act enticing settlers out to the Great Plains, North Dakota played an important role in that cultural foundation. Turner said the taming of the American wilderness and the settlement of the Great Plains explained the evolution of an exceptional American culture. Turner said American democracy came out of the American forest and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier. He said, in the crucible of the frontier, the immigrants were Americanized, liberated, infused into a mixed race, English, and neither nationality nor characteristics. Americans embraced the vision of the bold pioneer taming the wilderness. In 1893, Americans of European descent considered their culture to be the height of human accomplishment. Like Turner's address, the world's fair embodied an attitude that marginalized some groups. Civil rights leader Frederick Douglass was ridiculed when he tried to organize a colored people's day at the fair. Native Americans were also left out. When a staff member complained that Native American exhibits were, quote, used to work up sentiment against the Indian by showing that he is either savage or can be educated only by government agencies, she was fired. Turner laid her back away from his thesis. Although he never acknowledged the role played by non-whites, he recognized that settlers like the Norwegians and Germans from Russia brought their culture with them, creating a country that was more patchwork quilt than a single bedspread. Even as Turner found more nuance in the development of the country, Americans embraced the Old West as a symbol of American exceptionalism. It has been romanticized in novels, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, movies, and television. John Kennedy evoked the pioneers who tamed the West in his new frontier speech. In 1982, Ronald Reagan said the conquest of new frontiers is a crucial part of our national character. The frontier may be gone as a reality, but the romanticized interpretation, right or wrong, remains embedded in the American psyche. Today's Dakota Datebook written by Dr. Carol Butcher. I'm Annal Quest. Dakota Datebook is produced in cooperation with the State Historical Society of North Dakota, with funding by humanities North Dakota. We'd like to thank the North Dakota Council on the Arts for supporting arts programming here on Prairie Public. And that's a wrap for this edition of Main Street. Thank you so much for joining us today. And now, a moment I've been dreading saying, I'm saying goodbye to my friend, Ashley Thornberg. Ashley, you are on the team that hired me along Bill Thomas. I believe that, let's see, Skip Wood was in that group. You guys are nothing but pros. It has been a pleasure for me to work with you. I appreciate your patience. Your kindness. But most of all, Ashley, you are dang good at what you do. Thank you. - Well, thank you, Craig. And, you know, in some ways, it's been the easiest thing in the world to be good at this because the people of this region have been so fascinating and generous and loving and kind. And I just really want to share. - I'm a professional, huh? - Yes, you are. - I guess I'm not. So crying in baseball. I just want to share how much it has meant to be to hear the stories and the passions and the interest and the vulnerabilities of everybody who has shared them with me. They didn't have to do that. And it is something that I will hold in a very special place in my heart. So thank you listeners for listening and for sharing. - Ashley, can I throw one thing out there? - Sure. - Do you know what show number we are on today? - Oh, I have absolutely no idea. - Let me tell you, I'm looking it up. Ashley, this is show 6,411. You have been involved in thousands of Main Street for our listeners. - It has been a remarkable honor of my life. Thank you. - Ashley, one more time. Enjoy the rest of your day. That's it for this edition of Main Street. We'll be back next week. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)