Main Street
PBS Kids Writers; Tom Isern: A 1924 book; Ari Shapiro and 'The Mole.'
Support for Prairie Public is provided by Bill Dean, real tour with better homes and gardens, real estate alliance group of Bismarck, serving the Bismarck Mandan area from homes and ranches to rental properties. More information at buildenhomes.com. (upbeat music) - This is Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Ashley Thornberg, coming up in the second half of today's show, NPR's Ari Shapiro. You know him as one of the co-hosts of All Things Considered. - I've been a fan of this show since its very earliest days. - But guess what? That's not the show we are talking about. We learned what he is up to, but we are going to start today with instilling a love of reading and writing in kids, as we hear from the winners of the PBS Kids Writers Contest, and we hear now from two of the organizers of that. Joining me today is Christine McClellan. She is the communications manager right here at Prairie Public. Christine, thanks so much for joining us today. - Thanks for having us, Ashley. - And I also have in studio with Nick Kirsten Ness. She is the communications and outreach specialist here at Prairie Public. Thank you for joining us today. - Thanks, Ashley. - And we are going to talk about these adorably written and illustrated books from the PBS Kids Writers Contest. First, Christine, why don't you remind our listeners what this is? - Yes, yeah. Maybe long-time listeners know this segment well by now. It's a lot of fun that we get to do every year. We at Prairie Public have been hosting the PBS Kids Writers Contest for years and years and years, probably 15 plus by now. And it's a contest that we do every, we kind of started in January and it wraps up in March or April of every year where we invite kids from all over our broadcast region to write and illustrate their own story and send it in. And then we have a panel of judges that choose a winner for each grade level and we send out prizes and it's lots of fun. - And Kirsten, is this your first year involved with the project? - Yes, this is. - Okay, so, I mean, be honest, it was terrible, right? - Oh, terrible, from the get-go. I knew it would be a bad time. No, I couldn't believe that I had the opportunity to do this every day to read these children's stories. - What do you mean by opportunity? Walk us through what it was like to be able to read these? - Absolutely, so we received them through the course of the contest and I would take them in, read them and then record them and was able to pass them on to our panel of judges. But it was eye-opening to see what kids are thinking about, what they hang on to, and then what they put down on paper. And what stuck out to you? - Kids hang on to a lot, they have, yeah, it was really surprising to kind of see, wow, this student picks something up in class and then was able to, through writing and illustrating, really create something of their own through it. - Well, let's listen to the kindergarten winner here. This is Kate Jacobson, a day at the park. - A day at the park. - Written and illustrated by Kate Jacobson. One day I woke up and decided to walk to that park with my little sister. We got ready to go. We got dressed, had breakfast, brushed our teeth and started walking. - Good habits. - When we got there, we saw a beautiful waterfall flowing into a pond with ducks happily swimming around. We saw flowers by the waterfall, like tulip sand roses. We went to the playground. My little sister wanted to try the monkey bars, but she was scared. I just did her up and helped her go across. She was happy I helped her and she gave me a hug. We walked back toward the waterfall to have a picnic. We ate sandwiches and fruit while the sun set over the pond. Then we walked home. It was a great day. - Oh my gosh. - I know. - The edge. - Just as adorably illustrated as you would expect it there. And so many things stand out to me for this. First of all, just the idea that she has this structure and she has this routine. Like you wake up, you brush your teeth, you go down for breakfast, you do this. But what I really liked about this one is when she helps her sister across the monkey bars, like you get a sense of what it feels like to be in this teeny, tiny body of a big responsibility. And you kind of forget that 'cause like me, I think about childhood and all I think about was like, my older sibling's picking on me. But I think a little bit deeper and I'm like, actually my older sister kind of, she did a lot of work. - Well, they're sisters. - They're sisters. - Yeah, you get to see the perspective of someone that you didn't experience. - Yeah, yeah, well, and then not for nothing, just that she used it toward. We walked toward, absolutely. Excellent vocabulary, yes. - Yeah, you get a kind of sense here of how important it is for parents and for teachers to be reading. - Oh, yeah. - So about kids. Christine, do you coach the judges at all on what you want them to be looking for? - Yeah, we do give them a rubric and they have different things that they look at, like creativity, but they also look at word count and if there's a beginning, middle and end to the story. And a lot of our judges, I mean, they are experienced teachers and librarians and they're just knowledgeable about this stuff anyway and they know like where a kid's vocabulary should be or could be at their age and if they're doing that well. So they're, I mean, we kind of lean on their expertise too. I mean, we do have the rubric, but we're like, you guys know what you're doing. So just, yeah. - Yeah. - And Christine, you mentioned we've been hosting this contest for more than a decade here and you've been at Prairie Public for a while now. - Have you seen certain themes? Like, can you tell what's popular on TV or whatever kids are doing? - Oh my gosh, yeah, I mean, some kids just, yeah, they do even write in like TV characters into their stories, like pop control or, you know, whatever's popular at that time or. Sometimes there are trends in like, what's popular with kids right now? And it's not like I like know that regularly but I'm like, oh my gosh, so many kids are writing about llamas this year. That was a couple of years ago, but 'cause there must have just been some sort of like, trend with llamas. - Sure. - I don't know if there was a trend this year if you've noticed, Kirsten. - I had, I would notice if classrooms submitted and so it was very clear that some folks were sitting together. We had one, which was like Mario's castle and then the other was Bowser's castle. - Oh sure. - The other one was like really mowling this video. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Exactly. - Yeah. - We did have a Wild Crats themed story, which I felt PBS. - Oh, that's cool. - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, good. - Yes, kid. - Good homework. - Some due diligence. - Yep. - Well, let's hear from the first grade winner here and this is a delightful story that actually kind of reminds me a little bit of Bob Ross here and his philosophy towards painting. - The beautiful oops, written and illustrated like Wendell and Andress. One day at art class, I began painting a butterfly. I was having fun and painting really fast when I realized I made a big mistake. Oh no, I put too many wings on my butterfly, I exclaimed. What should I do? I raised my hand. My art teacher came over to help and I told her what happened. She said, make it into a beautiful oops. What does that mean? I wandered to myself. Then I got my idea. I turned my butterfly into a flower. Now I knew what my art teacher meant. You can make your mistakes into something beautiful. The end. - You know what, I'm 41 years old and I feel like I still need to learn that lesson. - I'm like, what an impactful lesson for that art teacher to just have said that off the cuff to this little girl. And then she really took it to heart and remembered it. - Yeah, do you ever hear from the teachers or the parents too about the kids? - Yes, I know with this one in particular, they were able to bring the story to the art teacher and share it with your teacher, which is incredible too. - I know, I know, to just think about the impact that that sentence had on that kid that will stick with them. - Right. - For a really long time. - Yeah. - And so you see obviously the creativity and like you were mentioning kind of story structure, but also the opportunity for them to share the wisdom that is like percolating in their brains, which is so beautiful. - Well, right, 'cause when I make a mistake on something, my reaction is to be like, "Ugh!" and I clench my teeth, I clench my fingers, you know, and I'm like, "Calm down, take a breath, "like let's turn this into an oops here." - Right, exactly. - So, and beautiful for teaching us. Yes, a beautiful oops, you know, that's... You know, let's just make that a challenge to our listeners right now. Send us an email to mainstreet@praypublic.org. If you can think of a good, beautiful oops moment or maybe an opportunity here next time, you make a mistake, try to think of how to make it into a beautiful oops instead. We are visiting today with Christine McClellan, Communications Manager here at Prairie Public. Also in studio with me is Kirsten Nestle Communications and Outreach Specialist again here at Prairie Public. And we are visiting about this year's PBS Kids Writers Contest. Christine, how many people submitted? How many stories did the judges have to go through? - This year, it was 173. It kind of goes up and down every year. It's changed with the times and some teachers find more time to work it into their classwork that year and sometimes they don't. And so 173 though is a pretty good number for us. - Yeah, what is the process of getting involved in this? Is it just open to any body that age, essentially homeschooled or public and private schools? - Yeah, we have had homeschool children submit stories before. Yeah, we welcome anybody in grades kindergarten through third grade. If you're in our broadcast region, then you're eligible to win. But we've even had like sometimes like someone's grandma lives in our area and she asks her grandchildren from somewhere else can enter and we accept any story. - Yeah. - I mean, if you would say no to a grandmother. - Yes, not allowed. - You just can't do that. - Yeah, so yeah, we get stories from all over North Dakota and into Minnesota and Montana. And then we always get a couple from Canada as well. - You know, I didn't even think about this sort of multi-generational idea here too. And the importance and power and impact here of different generations of people. And this idea even that yeah, you don't just drop your kid off at school and that's like the only place they're gonna learn is really obvious that that's just patent, they fall. - Yeah, yeah, and a lot of parents really, they tell us that they appreciate having something to give their kids to do that's like creative and productive and they know that they're sending it in and it's kind of a more serious deal than just telling your child to write a story for, you know, and that's great too. But yeah, and they've asked us, like when their kid ages out of the contest 'cause right now it's kindergarten through third grade. We hear from third grade parents saying, oh, is there something else that we can have our child do next year because we've really loved entering every year. And so we actually are next year planning to expand the age range. We haven't decided exactly how old, maybe even into high school, but yeah, because we've heard from so many parents that they just like entering every year and even once it's done, they want something else. - Well, yeah, and that even opens the opportunity for, you know, maybe the fourth, fifth, and sixth graders have to do something else. - Yeah, maybe follow a prompt or we were thinking for high schoolers, they could be poetry or it could be like wide open, like where you could write a screenplay or something. - Yeah, just kind of exploring their creativity and accepting. - Well, it's an interesting invitation here in thought exercise, even at Prairie Public, you know, with this mission to educate, involve and inspire the people of the Prairie region. And it's one thing to sort of say we have a project and you're gonna do it this way. But talk a little bit about both of you, if you could. When parents come to you or when teachers come to you, and I know you're not specifically in the education department, but doing the communications, doing the outreach work and what it means in your duties to be responsive to the demands that are coming this direction. It's a two-way street. - Mm-hmm, yeah, I mean, yeah, we're here to ultimately serve the people in our region. I mean, we're not, we don't wanna like make too many rules or like cut people off if they get too, you know, like we wanna listen to what people want from us. And so, yeah, we appreciate the feedback that parents give us. And I mean, there's always a limit to what we have the capacity to do, obviously. We wish we could do it all, but. - We're only human. - Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I mean, we love hearing from like what people want from us, 'cause that's the only way we know, like if they're gonna be receptive to the projects that we do, so. - Definitely. - I think that's what's so beautiful about this project specifically, is that it is fully storytelling, self-expression, and an opportunity to build self-confidence. And really, they have, as you mentioned, a word count and a minimum number of illustrations that they need to create. But then, it's their original piece. And so, you get to just fully see who they are, even as tiny, tiny little people. - Yeah, well, we've heard from the kindergarten and first grade winners here and gotten a sense of what it means to be a big sister or learn from your mistakes and grow. We are moving on to second grade here. And for starters, just way more detail and color in the illustration. And so, you get to see the motor skills a little bit more developing here. But also, considering things from a totally different perspective, and we are going to hear, not so much a story about people. - What pets do on their days off by wearing them, dude? Have you ever wondered what your pets do while you're gone? What do you have in your suspicious? Are you gonna find out? - The suspicious is the dog. You know, right after you travel in the garden, he crosses his dog door and heads outside. Do you know, just what he'll do as soon as he gets out? We'll go to a tree and bark at the squirrels. When he is tired of barking and is tired of sowing. He'll go to a tree with the birdhouse and dig up his favorite bone, which of course is where he hides it. - In parentheses, no way. - Excuse me. - That's the darlin cat. Oh, she's a trouble-naked one. When you're gone, she will set the sofa and pillows. She also scratches the walls and tables, but hey, you have a pet cat for you, you should. Also, after she has taken her after a nap, she'll go over to the fishbowl and do some indoor fishing. Finally, I'm going to tell you about some fishy business and because of the indoor fissure, the fish is desperately swimming to the bottom of the bowl, trying to avoid some wet paws and claws. And that is what when you get anything worse, there are all those holes in your yard, corn marks and everything, and the cat always has wet front paws. - The hog. - That we often really dig up. Listen, we'll mount the cuddle with his mother and father, along with three brothers and one sister. He made this book at age eight years old and wishes to become a published author when he grows up taller. (laughing) So now we've got future time horizons here. - Exactly. - These kids are thinking about us. - Yes, the impact that they want to make on the world. - Yes. - All right, please tell me these stories are published online because we have started to see these illustrations. Where can people go? - They can go to our website, prairiepublic.org. We still have kind of a feature on our homepage that you can click on and read the winning stories. And you can read, we're not listening to them today, but we also have Red Ribbon Favorites, which are the runners up for each grade level. And those are just as excellence. - Yeah, well, I mean, at some point, it must have been actually quite difficult to narrow it down to just one for granted. - So difficult. - Yeah, the judges do a really good job. I wouldn't want that job. (laughing) It is so hard. I mean, they are always kind of like close. I mean, they're all so great. So they're all so special and so unique too, as we've seen today. - Yeah. Well, let's finish off here with our third grade winner, because of course, there's no talking about living here without at least some references to the weather and how it can impact our imaginations here. - The Smoke Up by Addison Valley. One day, I was with my friends playing games and I saw an old rusty snoke up, so I picked it up and started to look at it. Inside, there was a big mountain that looked like Mount Everest. As I was checking it out, it started to glow. When I touched it, it sucked me in. I saw a mountain standing right in front of me. I think it was Mount Everest. Next to me, I noticed a big snowflake with a giant red coat. Suddenly, the snowflake smiled and said, "Hi, my name is Shelby, the snowflake." I asked her, "Where are we? Mount Everest, we are heading up the mountain to go to the annual winter party," she replied, "That sounds amazing," I said, so we headed up the mountain together. On the way up the mountain, Shelby and I saw little shops that are selling hot cocoa and fresh cookies. They smelled so good, so we decided to buy some to eat on our way. They were delicious. Finally, we made it to the top. Next, I realized that all the people were gingerbread people. Their houses were made of candy. And it smelled so good. Suddenly, someone appeared and I asked Shelby, "Who is that?" Shelly replied, "The queen of gingerbread town. The queen said very loud and clear. Let's party." (laughing) We all sang and danced and had some hot cocoa and went sledding. I kind of missed home, so I went to the queen and asked, "How do I get home? You must go to the library and find the book called Winter Wonderland." I quickly headed to the library and sitting right there was the book I was looking for. I started to read it, but the book only had one sentence in it. It said, "You have to make a wish." I thought, "I will make a wish to go home." When I opened my eyes, I was back home. My friends were staring right at me. They said, "Where were you?" I said, "It's a long story." (laughing) - That's a great way to end the story. It really is. - It's a long story. - Yeah, and what I really like about noticing the difference in the second and third graders here is in the reading, you hear much more of the change of voice. Like there was inflection. Like I think as much as our second grade winner is going to become a published author, I can see playwright, in which there was sort of that actor/performer quality in the voice. And then now here in the third grade, we're starting to go on quests. - Yeah, oh, you're right, yeah. And introducing a lot of, like we've got some smell, lots of different like visual elements added into, which is very cool. - Yeah, it's nice to see how the world becomes sort of bigger in a very different kind of way. - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, all right. Well, we have been visiting today with Kirsten Ness Communications and Outreach Specialist here at the Prairie Public. Kirsten, thank you so much for your time today. - Thank you. - And Christine McClellan Communications Manager here at the Prairie Public. I thank you so much for your time today. - Thank you, Ashley, this is always so fun. - We'll have a more main street coming up right after this. Here's Chicklera with Natural North Dakota. - If the cottonwoods in your area have not started releasing their cotton, they will be soon. It's that time of year. It may surprise some of you, but cottonwood trees are diatious, which means that they're either male trees or female trees. The casual observer may not notice the male cat cans on the male trees or the female cat cans on the female trees for that matter. But most everyone will know a female tree when the fruits open and those miniature cotton balls, each with a very small seed starts to waft away in the breeze. If one looks closely at one of those little cotton balls, a small seed, maybe a 16th of an inch long, is in the center of a dense, tuft of silky hairs. The number of seeds a tree can produce is mind boggling. It's been estimated that a female cottonwood tree may produce around 25 million seeds a year. Some estimates put it as high as 48 million. The seeds of most plants native to North Dakota must go through a dormant period, often not able to germinate until the following spring or summer. Not so with cottonwood seeds. There is no seed dormancy. The seeds are viable when dispersed, but viability drops rapidly after a week or two. So if the seed does not quickly find a site suitable for germination, all bets are off. A good site for the seed to germinate would be one where the seed lands on moist soil and full sunlight and no vegetation nearby. Then the young seedlings continue to need moist exposed soil with plenty of sunlight. Drawing out and shading, for example, by overtopping plants, decreases the chance of becoming established. As such, cottonwoods are often associated with flood plains and sandbars, long rivers and streams, with spring flooding. Cottonwood is a fast growing tree. Seedling growth is rapid, particularly during the first three or so weeks following germination. Roots may grow to be a foot and a half deep and lateral roots two feet by the end of the first growing season. But they're still susceptible to damage from heavy rains, flooding, fungal infections, for example, damping off, and other factors. If there are some cottonwoods you see on a regular basis, make a point to consider how they became established on the site. A small window of moisture, light, and other factors had to be just right for them to become established. I've put links to more information on cottonwood trees along with the text of this natural North Dakota. You can access them at www.crickpublic.org. That's Chuck Lura, who was a longtime biology professor at Dakota College at BotDough. And he published research on ecological aspects of grasslands in the Northern Great Plains. In retirement, he continues to share his natural North Dakota essays for the Prairie Public Audience. After the break, we'll hear from our longtime friend, Tom Ezern, and another of his Plains Folk essays, and Ashley Thornberg visits with longtime NPR all things considered host, Ari Shapiro, on his newest project. That's after this. For Prairie Public, I'm Danielle Webster. Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan, Texas, and other states throughout the nation have been seeing a new scam occur around their housing programs and the North Dakota State Housing Finance Agency is worried they could be next. Kind of a large number of states within our locale that have had their Facebook pages fraudulently copied and now asking for personal identifiable information of an individual who are seeking public housing assistance. And so we wanted to be proactive and just let the public know to be mindful of potential scams that are asking for personal identifiable information, especially those that are looking and hoping to be able to get into public housing or to be added to a wait list. The scam web pages ask for a fee to get on housing assistance waiting lists or ask people to share personal information like their social security number. Housing and planning development director Jennifer Henderson says this is the first widespread housing scam the agency has noticed. She says they are unaware of any victims of the scam in North Dakota, but anyone searching for housing assistance could run into one of these scam accounts. - It could be as simple as somebody on Facebook, Googling, how to apply for housing assistance and coming up with a Facebook page that looks very much like North Dakota housing or other local public housing authorities such as Fargo housing or Burleigh County housing. And they would maybe have something posted that says our waiting list is open. Click here to pay for a wait list fee or something like that. And so it's gonna look very similar to our Facebook pages, but do know that we do not request personal information through social media. - Henderson says the State Housing Finance Agency also never asks for a waiting list fee. People who see any strange requests or websites can call the agency to make sure they don't fall into a scam. And the North Dakota State College of Science will soon be offering an aircraft maintenance program. College President Dr. Rod Flanagan says NDSCS received a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration for that program. He says the college is in the process of putting the program together. Flanagan says it will be a joint effort between NDSCS and the Fargo Jet Center. - The plan right now is to have lecture in our facility. And then the labs will be at one of the Fargo Jet Center buildings. So yeah, we're looking forward to it. It should be a great program. - Flanagan says there is a demand for trained aviation mechanics. - It's the same with so many industries right now. There's a lot of gray hair in these kinds of industries and they really are looking at, trying to fill the pipeline with new talent and with a new generation of aviation mechanics. - Flanagan says the plan is to launch the program in the fall of 2025. For Prairie Public, I'm Danielle Webster. - Capital Shakespeare of Bismarck presents Hamlet, July 17th through the 21st at 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 in the madness. Performance is starred at 6.30 p.m. and are free and open to the public with free will donations accepted. Limited concessions available, lawn chairs or blankets are encouraged. Capital Shakespeare's Hamlet, July 17th through the 21st in Bismarck. - Welcome back to Main Street, I'm Prairie Public. In the second half of today's show, we'll learn what longtime NPR of all things considered host Ari Shapiro is planning as he visits with Ashley Thornberg. But first, who is Collel Ganon? Well, he was a farm boy from McLean County and he embarked on a journey to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1918 with high hopes. He returned to Bismarck a few years later, disillusioned and weakened by illness. Despite these setbacks, Ganon published his heartfelt book of poems, Songs of the Bunchgrass Acres in 1924, which captures the essence of the Prairie and its significance in shaping great Plains regionalism. Tommy Zern shares his story in this Plains Folk essay. - In 1918, a farm boy from McLean County, Collel Ganon entered the Art Institute of Chicago full of hope. Two or three years later, disillusioned and debilitated by Diphtheria and influenza, he was back in Bismarck. In 1924, he published with a pay-to-play publisher, Gotham Press of Boston, his book of poems, Songs of the Bunchgrass Acres. Wherein' he declares, "The city has its features, but I like the Prairie best. They're wanting me to listen to them now." As Ganon listened to the Prairie, the cries of the coyote and curlew, I think we should listen to Ganon now a century later. We will have ready opportunity to do so. For the digital press at UND is preparing a centennial reprint of the book. I've been asked to provide an appreciative forward, and here are my initial thoughts. There are two good reasons we should listen to Collel Ganon. First, because he is significant. Second, because he is delightful. The significant part first, you know, take your medicine, Ganon is an exemplar of his generation of great plains region lists. The people who brought the great plains as an intellectual construct and a cultural common place into existence. In her fine book, Grasslands Grown, the historian Molly Rosen describes the process by which boys and girls from the prairies absorbed their sense of place from the very soil. In Bunchgrass Acres, Ganon writes, "For my calloused feet have known the tread "of the trails, the bison trod." Such boys and girls went out into the larger world as Ganon went to Chicago, saw things, and also connected with other prairie boys and girls and got to talking about what they had in common. From this emerged, says another historian, Richard Dorman, a larger regionalist sensibility in the arts and sciences and letters. What I've been calling lately the regional project. So Ganon, back home in Bismarck, commenced writing about the opportunity for an architectural renaissance on the great plains. To make use of the rock carried here is glacial till and lay up permanent walls under sweeping roof lines with grand windows to let in the sunlight. This rustic ideal he built into his own Bismarck residents, the Cairn. He float tripped the Missouri River with his kindred regionalists Russell Reed and George F. Will to get grounded in flora and fauna and indigenous culture. And he painted, including his murals in the Burleigh County Courthouse, a commission secured for him by Reed. But the poetry, back to the poetry in Bunchgrass Acres. The better known North Dakota poet of Ganon's generation was James W. Foley, who was both more sophisticated and more hokey, deployment of dialogue, that sort of thing, than was Ganon. But Ganon just has more to say and he says it with heart. Many of his poems treat iconic features, the past flower, the prairie rose, the magpie, the upland plumber. But most touching, I think, is to a captive coyote. And Ganon insists that in his part of the Plains, we must say it coyote, two syllables, not coyote. Here Ganon reflects metaphorically on the future of a great Plains fenced and confined, gazing with a sad and empty longing to the level prairies where the West Wind plays. More on Ganon's sublime and heartfelt verse later this year, I promise, when the book comes out. That's Tom Esern, a longtime contributor to Prairie Public. Dr. Esern is an award-winning historian and a distinguished professor of history at North Dakota State University. Next, Ashley Thornberg visits with NPR's Ari Shapiro, one of longtime hosts of All Things Considered. It's one of NPR's flagship programs. What's the newest endeavor for Shapiro? We'll find out in Ashley's interview. Ari, thanks so much for joining us today. A pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. What made you want to host The Mole? I've been a fan of this show since its very earliest days. It started out on ABC and was hosted by Anderson Cooper. The show has always been hosted by a journalist. And I'm not a huge reality TV junkie, but this has just always been a show that I've loved. It's actually the only show I ever submitted an audition tape to be a contestant on 20 years ago. And so to be able to host it now is just like a dream come true. Do you still have that audition tape? Please tell me you watch it. Absolutely not. And if I did, I would bury it deep in a pile somewhere. Well, I'm curious. Covering news, which is obviously something that you are doing on All Things Considered and then now being on a competitive reality show and hosting there. How does each of those separate but weirdly overlapping spaces kind of highlight your understanding of the human condition? Well, look, there's a specific and a general answer to that question. And the general answer is that I really like using every muscle group from the serious to the silly. But the specific answer is that I think in life, we have this tension between the individualistic instinct and the teamwork instinct. Do I look out for number one or do I try to help the people around me? And the mole is kind of built on that tension where you got to work as a team to add money to the pot, but somebody is secretly working against the team. And you have lots of opportunities to help yourself and hurt the group. And so that tension between individualism and teamwork is something that all of us everyday experience in our lives and is at the heart of this game. And then the other thing that I think journalism and the mole really have in common is that as a journalist, I'm often asking myself, who's lying to me? Am I getting spun? Who's telling me the truth? And that's another question that is at the heart of this game. Because you know someone is lying to you, maybe more than one person, and you got to try to figure out who that is. And so many of us, even who are not journalists, I think in our daily lives deal with this question of like, am I being spun? Am I being lied to whether it's by people around us personally in public figures that this game provides a kind of like, I don't want to use the word safe space, but like a low stakes scenario to explore those questions that we're kind of plagued by all the time. So even you didn't get to know who the mole is? Thank goodness, because I was afraid that if I did know, I would accidentally give it away. And there was actually one moment where I was sure I had figured it out. And I sat down with the showrunner David, who was the only person who knew. And I was like, well, David, I figured it out and good choice. And David was like, oh, well, how did you figure that out? And I explained it in great detail. And David was like, well, you know, as you go along, just make sure to keep a little bit of doubt in your head so it doesn't look like you know who it is, so you don't let on to the other players. Of course, I was totally wrong. It was not that person. No. So how does that make you feel about your ability to trust if someone is lying to you on all these things? You know, the truth is I actually am inclined to trust and believe people as an investigative reporter. You know, at various points in my career, I have been a justice correspondent, a White House correspondent. And so you have to be tough and skeptical. And you know, you get multiple sources. But in the mall, everybody is playing a game of deception. Everybody is pulling like a double, triple bluff. And so it's fun because, like I said, the stakes are low. Like, I wasn't going to get sent home. I was the host. I got to stick around and see what happened no matter what. You know, I'm thinking about what you said about individualism and collectivism earlier. And this is a very Western style show. The Americans in the show were from a Western, very individualistic society. Malaysia, like many other Asian societies, a little bit more on the collectivist side of things. Talk a little bit about how that showed up and if it influenced the show at all. Well, it's actually based on a concept from Belgium. Okay. And the show started in Europe and has been running there constantly, steadily, for like the last more than 20 years. In the U.S. it ran for a few seasons on ABC and then went away and then Netflix just rebooted it. The thing that makes Malaysia such an incredible place to do the show is that every episode is in a different location. And so as we filmed that we were moving from skyscrapers to jungles to caves to tropical islands, Malaysia provides more of a setting and a context than like an immersion in the culture. And so while we were heavily dependent on the Malaysian crew that worked with us in addition to the production company that put on the show, this was not, you know, a documentary piece about the culture of Malaysia per se. And so there wasn't a lot of that kind of like collectivism versus American individuality juxtaposition in the show. But I really do think that question of whether you look out for yourself or for your community is something that is universally human and that everybody can relate to on some level or another no matter where they grew up or where they come from. Did it make you think about what choices you would make if you were the mole? It made me think about how bad I would be at being the mole. I think I would not, honestly, it's such a difficult role to play because you have to lie to everyone around you. It's not like you get to clock out at the end of the day and go home and tell your spouse, "Oh, I had such a tough day lying to everybody." You're really in this bubble and the only person who knows you're the mole is the showrunner. And so these people who you're really getting to know and becoming friends with are people who you have to lie to every day for six weeks doing very intense things together and not everybody can withstand that kind of pressure. I'm not sure that I would have been able to. Well, right, and I wonder about the people who, you know, you formed these incredible groups in just six weeks and then you find out that someone you thought you could trust was the mole, like that? That's kind of playing with the human psyche a little bit here. Yeah, but they all know that someone is the mole, right? So there's not a question of is someone lying to me? It's who is lying to me. And then you have people who are sabotaging. You have people who are purely incompetent. You have people who are playing a game of strategy where they want to make everybody believe they're the mole to throw them off the scent of the real mole. So there are all these layers of you know things are going wrong and you're trying to figure out why. And that's the fun of it. It's like, is it this? Is it that? Am I just being paranoid or is this person actually undermining me? Those are the kinds of questions that defuse the game. Even as you're going to these kind of like blockbuster popcorn movie settings and seeing these spectacular missions play out. You know, this moral dilemma is so common in literature and in television. Why do you think we're so drawn to watching or reading people make moral and ethical decisions? Oh, you can go back to ancient Greek comedies and tragedies or Shakespeare or like the stories or the Bible. The stories humans have been telling for as long as humans have been telling stories return to these same themes. They are the preoccupation of humanity. And so, you know, watching the mole on Netflix might be a very 21st century way of approaching these themes. But the themes are as old as humanity itself. Earlier you said that you love using every muscle group from Sirius to Silly. Did you get to show off your parkour skills and use those muscles? Not at all. No. Back in my 20s, I was a very serious practitioner of parkour. And then I started, which for people who don't know, is kind of like urban obstacle coursing. You do like vaults and jumps and leaps and scale walls. But I started spraining the same ankle over and over and over again. So I decided it was time to leave my parkour days behind me. You know, I got to stand there in a suit and comment on how spectacularly they failed or succeeded at any given mission. Was it ever weird? Like at what point did you say, "This is really happening?" Oh, it was deeply weird. You know, I've been on the radio for more than 20 years. And so at this point, I'm very comfortable with hearing my voice on the radio. I am not at all comfortable with seeing myself on TV. This was my first time doing that. And I felt completely like a fish out of water. Although to flip the metaphor, the thing that I kept thinking was, it was like I was being thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool for the first time while surrounded by Olympic swimming coaches who were there to make sure I didn't drown. Because even though it was my first time and I had never done anything like this before, there was no risk that I was going to fail because too many people who are incredibly good at what they do and make a career out of this were there to ensure that I succeeded. All right, Shapiro, thank you so much for your time today. Oh, thanks for having me. I hope you enjoy the show. Support for Prairie Public is provided by StageWest, presenting Andrew Lloyd Webber's Musical Cats for 12 performances June 30th through July 18th at 730 p.m. at Ascension Health Plaza at the Lights West Fargo. Jellicle Cats come one, come all. Tickets and information at westfargoevents.com (upbeat music) Women in America won the right to vote in 1920. The new Broadway musical on Suffragettes, Suffs, tells the story of the different women who made that possible. I would say that as a black woman in 2024, it feels very relevant. Also, how much immunity did the Supreme Court really give the President on the next morning edition from NPR News? 4 a.m. Central to 9 a.m. Central, here on Prairie Public. This is Main Street from Prairie Public. I'm Craig Blumenshine. Poetry from Studio 47 comes to us from Patrick Hicks, writer in residence and a member of the English faculty at Augustana University in Sioux Falls. Today, he shares a poem by Mary Swander, who began to love language when her mother read to her, allowing her to have stories become part of her soul. (music) This is Poetry from Studio 47. Welcome. Today's poet is Mary Swander. Swander was born on November 5, 1950, and she grew up in both Eastern and Western Iowa, a bicostal experience, as she has called it, living near the shores of the Missouri and the Mississippi. After high school, she attended Georgetown University for three years before returning home and completing her BA at the University of Iowa. She then received her MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, also at the University of Iowa. When asked about what got her interested in writing, she had this to say. I got interested in writing because my mother used to read out loud to me as a child. I loved the sound of language and thought poetry was the coolest thing. Reading readiness, they used to call it. Then, I was a very shy kid, terrified of speaking out loud, so as therapy, they threw me into children's theater, more terror. But I learned to love theater and learned to build characters and drama. We also lived with my Irish grandmother. She and her friends were wonderful storytellers. Stories became part of my soul. Her books include "Succession, Driving the Body Back, Heaven and Earth House, Out of this World and the Desert Pilgrim." She has won the Carl Sandberg Literary Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Discovery Award. For many years, Swander taught at Iowa State University, and she served as the poet laureate of Iowa. She is the Executive Director of Ag Arts, a nonprofit that promotes healthy food systems, and she is the artistic director of a theater troupe. Her plays have been performed around the country. She lives in an old Amish schoolhouse in Iowa where she writes and grows an organic garden. Today's poem is "Letter." I don't think it needs much of an introduction. It's a wonderful observational poem because here the narrator, presumably Swander herself, is simply admiring the natural world around her. Just reading this poem makes me want to go to a lake and climb into a sailboat. This is "Letter" by Mary Swander. There are waves here breaking into splinters like smashed glass upon the rocks. There are lines and creases on the rocks. A man swimming near the shore looks at them, then is gone again. There is a fish. Its fin shaped like a scimitar rises on a wide blank sea. It's a dark day. There is a cloud here that hangs in the air and droops like a flag in validation. There is a woman. There she sits and smiles and smiles with her hand on the tiller of the moon. That's Patrick Hicks from Studio 47 which is recorded at Augustan University and is produced by Peter Folliard. Dakota Date Book is next. This is Dakota Date Book for July 1st. Alf Paulson had the great adventure of his life in 1945. Born in Alamo 30 miles north of Williston in 1921, Alf Harry Paulson was the son of burnt and cursed to Paulson, both of whom had been born in Norway. Alf worked on his father's farm in Divide County into World War II. He joined the U.S. Army in December 1942, and his strong, wiry frame got him noticed. Even more noteworthy, he was proficient in Norwegian. The OSS Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, was recruiting soldiers for undercover sabotage of German war efforts. In particular, the OSS was looking for men for extra hazardous duty behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Norway. Because Alf Paulson spoke Norwegian, the OSS asked him to volunteer for hazardous duty. Alf replied that the whole U.S. Army was hazardous, so they signed him up. He became a member of the elite Norwegian Special Operations Group, nor so, joining 74 men from the famous 99th Infantry, Norwegian Battalion. Paulson got trained for winter and mountain warfare, including hand-to-hand combat, plus intensive parachute and ski training. He also learned about demolitions. Finally, in March 1945, Operation REPA began. REPA, the Norwegian name for Grouse, was the codename for this top-secret mission. 35 specially selected men, or led by Major William Colby, who would later become Director of the CIA. They flew to Norway. The goal? Blow up bridges and rail lines to trap 150,000 German troops in Norway, preventing them from joining the final battles in Germany. Only 16 nor so men, including Alf Paulson and William Colby, successfully parachuted into mountainous Norway. These 16 commandos worked with Norwegian resistance fighters to destroy the Tongan railway bridge connecting northern and southern Norway, and later, they dynamited a mile and a half of railway tracks, successfully delaying rail use by the Germans. World War II ended May 8, 1945, and on July 1st, the Minneapolis Tribune published news that Alf Paulson and his fellow Norway invaders were on their way home. Alf Paulson came back home to farm near Crosby. He had served in the only combined ski parachute operation ever mounted by the U.S. Army. Today's Dakota Datebook written by Steve Hoffbeck. I'm Ann Alquist. Dakota Datebook is produced in cooperation with the State Historical Society of North Dakota, with funding by humanities North Dakota. Arts Programming on Prairie Public is supported in part by the North Dakota Council on the Arts, a state agency developing, promoting, and supporting the arts in North Dakota. Support for Prairie Public is provided by the Bush Foundation, investing in great ideas and the people who power them, introducing the recipients of the 2024 Bush Fellowship. Learn more about the 2024 fellows at bushfoundation.org/fellows. Thank you so much for joining us today on Main Street. We are deeply grateful for the gift of your time. Tomorrow on the show, we'll meet educator, activist, and community builder Fred Edwards. He's one of this year's Bush Foundation Fellows. He works to uplift voices of the global majority. We'll be looking for you again Tuesday, right here on Main Street. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]