ALEX LASSITER: Hello, lovely people! It’s Alex Lassiter with the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.

There’s an old saying that goes like this, “only two things are certain in life: death and taxes.” You know who said that? Benjamin Franklin. A dead guy who ended up on the 100 dollar bill which, ironically, can be put toward taxes. And even though #Y.O.D.O. (you only die once), you can expect taxes to roll around at the same time every year. However, every year varies.

I know a lot of people think tax law can be boring, but it can be kind-of like the Wild West of finance. I mean, just when you think the dust is settling, BOOM! There’s a new sheriff in town. This year is different for me, even on an individual level. I’m a student who’s had three jobs, lived in two apartments and ran a side hustle selling Pokémon cards on eBay. 

TAMMY NAPLES: Tax is interesting just because it changes every year. I mean, it especially has changed in the last 10 years. But, it really does change at a minimum. Everything’s just changing with inflation every year, so nothing is the same every year.

 I study this. I deal with it every day and I don’t know what my tax return’s gonna look like next year because of all the changes that could come. Whether there is legislation or not, there will be changes.

 LASSITER:  That was Tammy Naples. She’s an expert in tax law and a professor with the Carlson School’s Masters of Business Taxation program, or MBT for short. We talked a lot about how fluid tax law is and how quickly it can change. And after a presidential election that resulted in a new sitting president, some of that law was bound to change pretty quick.

DAVID HORN: The new Trump administration is, as I’m sure most people are aware, is they’re going after federal agencies and cutting staff. One of the main targets is the IRS. But I think it’s been up to about 12,000 layoffs of IRS personnel. They also put a spending freeze on the Internal Revenue Service indefinitely, meaning they cannot increase their budget, meaning they can’t hire more people down the road. So it’s causing, obviously, a little bit of turmoil within the agency, as with all the agencies that are impacted by this.

LASSITER:  David Horn is also a professor with the MBT program at Carlson, and the number of layoffs he gave is now close to 15,000. This sounds a little troubling, especially since we’re getting so close to the deadline to file.

So will these layoffs affect how long it will take for people filing taxes to get their return back? And what about people getting audited? Will people be more likely to take advantage of the situation and cheat on their taxes?

HORN: You’re probably going to start to see down the trickle down effect. They’re gonna examine less people, less corporations and the messaging from the administration is that they aren’t laying off people that are processing returns.

So if you’re filing a return, theoretically, according to the administration, it should still get processed in a timely manner. Now obviously, when you have these mass layoffs, and they just announced they want to reduce the workforce of the IRS by half going forward, that’s going to cause morale issues with people within the agency.

LASSITER: You know, it’s funny. Working adults who file their taxes actually have quite a bit in common with college students because a lot of them love to wait right until the assignment is due to turn it in.

If your professor suddenly loses their right hand, it would definitely take a little while extra to grade your paper. Okay, it’s a bit of a grotesque metaphor, sure, but with the IRS losing so many employees, could we expect to see the same thing on their end this year?

HORN: Most of the staff reductions within the IRS are on the enforcement side—so if you think about people coming out to audit your tax return if they find a mistake. Not so much on, like, processing returns.

The administration has said that these layoffs won’t impact the processing, but I’m a little bit dubious about that proposition. My advice is, if you have any concerns about your return being processed timely is to do it soon. If you haven’t done it yet, get it in as soon as possible because the closer you get to the filing deadline, there’s just a tidal wave of returns being filed on April 15.

LASSITER: Naples got her family’s taxes done early, so she got to serve as the sort-of “trial run” for whether Horn’s theory of lower morale among IRS agents would be correct.

NAPLES: I have four teenage daughters. I filed their tax returns and was wondering as I submitted their refunds, whether they would come or not. They did. They did. We actually just got ’em this past weekend. But there is a lot more uncertainty, I think, of just when those refunds are coming. 

LASSITER: And mine actually came in pretty quickly too, which is just another reason to get yours done early. Cause there’s really no telling how it’ll look when we actually hit the deadline. And hey look, student-to-student, there’s no shortage of reasons to care about doing your taxes. In fact, if yours are simpler than mine (which they probably are), then you should absolutely take advantage of that fact and get ‘em done.

HORN:  I would venture to guess that an average college student is probably not working full time. If you are working full time, you’re probably a W2 earner with relatively low income. Nothing against that, you’re here to get an education not necessarily start a career. In which case then yeah, you’re probably not paying a significant amount of taxes.

NAPLES:  I think that sometimes the biggest barrier for students is they either forget to file or they think, “Oh, I don’t need to. I don’t, I won’t owe anything. So, you know, it’ll be fine.” But really they’re missing out on those refunds. For a typical student, they shouldn’t have too much complexity.

As you get older, you’ll itemize deductions. That causes much more documentation for charitable contributions and medical expenses and taxes and all these things. Most students don’t have a significant amount of itemized deductions to need to do that, so their tax returns should be fairly straightforward.

 LASSITER: Now, working for a boss gets you a W2. I’ve had three of those. Living in an apartment gets you a Certificate of Rent Paid. I’ve had two of those. But if you’re running a side hustle like, say, I don’t know… selling Pokémon cards on eBay, you may need to do a little bit of extra work if you’re at a high enough income threshold.

HORN:   If you get a 1099 as opposed to a W2, you are classified as an independent contractor. When you’re an independent contractor, it’s kind of similar to a trader business. You would report all that income that’s reported to you on your tax returns, but then you can take deductions for any expenses that you incurred associated with that activity. So you can take mileage on your car, if you had to buy a uniform. Just basically any job-related expenses or any expenses incurred related to that activity, you can generally deduct.

LASSITER: Now, because not all of you are running trading card stores on eBay, this probably won’t matter to a lot of you right now, but the threshold for taxable income from eBay sales is going down next year, by a lot. Right now, you get taxed if you sell $5,000 or more worth of stuff. Next year, it’ll be $600 or more. So if you’re selling anything on eBay—not just trading cards—you might wanna keep that in mind.

As you grow further and further into adulthood and start to try earning money in more varied ways, like selling stuff on eBay, it can turn into a lot to manage. Making sure you have all of your forms organized won’t only make it easier for you, but it’ll also help in making the jobs of the tax agents filing your returns as simple as possible. Which, in a funky year like this, will help a lot.

NAPLES: You see more and more organizations are switching over to “log into a portal and download this 1099 or what have you.” And I know that can be difficult, especially for students where they have multiple jobs and multiple, you know, they’re moving and all different addresses, different portals and passwords.

It sounds simple, but a lot of it just can be compiling all that information, right? Making sure that you’re not missing a 1099 or missing some type of W2, whatever it is. But making sure that you have all that paperwork, ’cause you don’t wanna miss out.

LASSITER: And I know, I know—after all the work of, y’know, working, and then filing and then waiting for that fresh, fresh return to hit your bank account, it’s really tempting to go out to a fancy dinner or pick up that slick pair of new kicks you’ve had your eye on. But our Carlson professors both had the same advice of not blowing it all in one place. Instead, they suggested you play a couple rounds of the waiting game.

NAPLES:  An IRA would give you a tax deduction so it would minimize your tax liability, potentially increase your refund and that would start your retirement savings.

I know that’s hard to think about when you’re just starting your careers. But you are aware of time, value of money, and starting, when you’re 21-22 an IRA, you will thank yourself when you’re 62, when you’re retiring because of the compounding effect of that.

HORN:  It’s my PSA I give to all my students, invest as much as you can, as early as possible. 40 years from now, you will be thanking yourself for doing it. So I always like to plug that one in there.

LASSITER: Look, I get it. I’m not really jumping for joy when tax season rolls around. I don’t have a special date marked off on my calendar with a big ‘ol red circle. But especially as a student, this stuff is important to know. And for someone with quirky taxes like me, or an international student, or a student with dependents, it helps to know a little bit more what you’re doing. 

So talk to your mom, talk to your dad—talk to anybody in your life who can help you out. And get those taxes done, so that way you can stroll in through those saloon doors and say to yourself, “I’m the sheriff ‘round these parts.”

And don’t forget, taxes are due April 15, so you’ve got a little under two weeks as of the release of this episode to get yours done if you haven’t already.

This episode was written by Alex Lassiter, and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in. So please feel free to send an email to the podcasting@mndaily.com inbox with any questions, comments, concerns or story ideas that you want to see us to produce this next season. I’m Alex Lassiter, and this has been In The Know. Take care, y’all.

ALEX LASSITER: Hello, lovely people! It’s Alex Lassiter with the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.

The United States of America just underwent a really big change last week. And no, it’s not political, or financial or social. It was temporal. On Sunday, March 9, most Americans woke up early when their iPhone alarms went off an hour ahead of time. This is Daylight Saving Time. It’s a period some people celebrate and some people dread, but everybody has to participate in.

And yes, it is Daylight Saving Time, not “savings.” You’re saving time on daylight, not stashing it away in a savings account.

On the first day of the rollover, I wasn’t even aware the change had happened, to be entirely honest. I wake up late on Sundays normally, so when I got up to go to church and the sun was already really high in the sky, I didn’t think anything of it.

I was made much more painfully aware the day after. I was cat sitting for my friends, and the cat eats breakfast really early, at 7 a.m. She swatted me awake, like a cat does, and I went into the kitchen to give her her food. By the time I got back to the living room, which I was crashing on my friend’s couch, the sun was already shining right through this giant glass window my friends have in their living room. 

And my body was still used to it being 6 a.m., but at 7 a.m., the light was just creeping over the horizon. So I wasn’t really used to that yet, and the sun would’ve been a lot higher an hour ago. Needless to say, I didn’t end up falling back asleep that day. Everything was thrown out of whack for me.

AKINBOLAJI AKINGBOLA:  Standard time, which is what we’re in now, during the winter, that more naturally aligns with our—with most people’s sleep schedules. So, it’s darker sooner. There’s sunlight in the morning, so it’s very easy for us to fall asleep naturally at night and then wake up with the sunlight.

What happens when we spring forward, we’re having more sunlight in the evening and then less sunlight in the morning. So the exact opposite effect happens. So people tend to stay up a little bit later and then have more difficulty waking up in the morning. And so the net effect there is less sleep overall.

LASSITER: Who you just heard from was Dr. Akinbolaji Akingbola, a sleep medicine expert from the University of Minnesota. He says the week after the initial daylight saving change is kind of rough on everybody, but it has the greatest effect on people who are either late to bed, or early to rise. 

AKINGBOLA: The majority of the country is either in school or working, so working 9 to 5, going to school 9 to 5. We think about people’s sleep schedule based off of that large population norm.

And some people have a delayed sleep schedule, so they go to sleep later than the average person does. I think the people that are most impacted are the people who are already delayed. I think Daylight Saving Time can delay them further if they’re not being very thoughtful about when they’re going to sleep. And so, they may already be struggling with not enough sleep at baseline if they’re delayed.

LASSITER: But body health isn’t the only thing being affected by this sudden switch in time. There’s this study published in the journal Current Biology that’s being referenced by all the cool neuroscientists these days. Akingbola was actually familiar with it when I brought it up while we were talking. It was a 20-year study on how the shift forward with spring Daylight Saving Time actually increases the amount of fatal auto accidents during the following week. I know, I know, really cheery subject matter.

AKINGBOLA:   There are studies that show in that first week, following Daylight Saving Time, there’s an increase in public safety accidents. So, driving accidents in the morning, cardiovascular events, in the following weeks. And again, like I said, I think those things are just primarily all driven by the acute sleep loss.

Whenever we go to sleep, what we’re doing is we’re giving our body the chance to regain alertness to get us through the next day. And so with not enough sleep, and then also with not having adequate sunlight in the morning to help us more quickly become alert, the accidents are just from decreased alertness, decreased vigilance in the morning time.

LASSITER: Now, by this point in the podcast, I’d hope you guys know that I am a college student. And furthermore, I was a college student on spring break during the production of this episode. So both of those rolled together is a recipe for disaster when it comes to sleeping in. 

However, most working adults don’t tend to have spring breaks from their jobs (unless you have, like, a really cool boss). For many, this also means taking an early morning commute. During Daylight Saving Time, you may be operating on less sleep, and less sunlight as well ,on your way to work.

That Current Biology study picked up on this, too. Over the course of 20 years that it was conducted, it determined that there’s an approximately 6% increase in fatal car crashes nationwide the week following the spring daylight saving change.

AKINGBOLA: With less sleep, our reaction time, how alert we are, how vigilant we are, how much we’re scanning, how we’re taking in our surroundings, all those sorts of things are diminished.

LASSITER:  It was interesting enough reading about this being a nationwide trend, but I was curious to see if Minnesota specifically also saw an uptick in the amount of car crashes after the daylight change. So, being a college student on spring break with nothing but spare time, that’s exactly what I did.

I looked through the Minnesota State Patrol’s website to track Minnesota car crashes as they happened, and that’s exactly what I did in all of the days following the spring daylight change. I took note of when auto accidents were happening, and how.

Okay, so bear with me on this next part, because the timing is about to get a little bit strange. But there were no accidents, period, the morning of the roll forward. In fact, there was only one reported accident that day, and it happened at night, not in the morning.  However, the next morning—that same morning, by the way, that I was struggling to fall asleep because of what the cat did to me—there were two reported accidents that had occurred within 20 minutes of each other. The first happened at 9:21, and the second was at 9:38.

These accidents happened at around halfway past nine, but their bodies didn’t know that. To them, they were still operating on the internal schedule of it being around 8:30, not 9:30. And you see this trend continuing as the days go on. 

There was another crash on Tuesday morning at 8:37, which somebody’s internal clock might have told them was 7:37. One on Wednesday at 7:36, which would have been 6:36. Then two more, this time within five minutes of each other on Wednesday—one at 7:53 (or 6:53) and the other at 7:58 (or 6:58). Again, these people may have been driving at a slightly later time, but their bodies may have been telling them that it was still an hour earlier. 

It is important to note as well that there were no crashes on Thursday or Friday. Fortunately, also, none of these morning accidents were fatal and they only resulted in injuries. Before the daylight saving change, most accidents happened in the afternoon or the evening unless they were a result of that inclement weather that we had a few weeks back.

This could have been just a wild coincidence, because these crashes weren’t the only ones happening during the day, but I couldn’t help seem to notice that the pattern of increased crashes in the morning seemed to line up exactly with the Current Biology study.

To see if I could find some more answers on this, I reached out to Sergeant Troy Christianson of the Minnesota State Patrol. I was hoping I could talk to one of the responding officers to see if this was a pattern they noticed frequently, or even to see if I could find out more about the circumstances of some of these crashes that had happened in the past few days. He declined the request for an interview.

TROY CHRISTIANSON: They’re both active investigations, so I can’t make any comment on either one.

LASSITER: How much detail are you able to provide?

CHRISTIANSON: Nothing. Nothing. Nothing until they’re closed.

LASSITER: The Minnesota Department of Public Safety also wasn’t able to help me out. So without that extra data, my theory remains just that, a theory.

Although I will say, according to the Current Biology study, the largest increase in crashes is seen during the week of the Daylight Saving Time change, in the morning particularly (between 4 and 8 a.m.). This lines up pretty closely with what we in Minnesota saw in the reported accidents during this time period.

AKINGBOLA:  The thought is more accidents in the morning, after less sleep. And then also, the sunlight in the morning is also very helpful in making us become more alert. And so those combinations of things being absent, I think are some of the things that contribute to the fact that there’s more accidents in the morning.

LASSITER: So, what does that mean? Should we just get rid of Daylight Saving Time as a whole?

AKINGBOLA:  If we think about it in a more broad public safety viewpoint, it’s not just with car accidents where this decreased sleep time where people are at risk. We also know, for instance, that school-age children who have earlier start times are, in essence, having less sleep. There is an increased risk for school age children in things like major depression and suicide.

I think that question is a little bit easier to answer. Is it worth it? I would say so. Whether it’s less depression in our children, less suicide in our children, less car accidents in the adulting population. So I think those sorts of things definitely would make it worth it in the grand total.

LASSITER: And I know. I know, this can also seem like a lot of big, scary things being thrown at you all at once. But Akingbola reminds us that the most important thing to remember is…

AKINGBOLA: While we know that there are risks associated with Daylight Saving Time, less sleep, sleep deprivation, I also don’t want patients to be so alarmed where they become so fixated on their sleep. I think that becoming so hyper aware of your sleep can also make getting sleep difficult. 

I always tell my patients, you know, taking a big step back. All like you have to do this, you have to do that, like all those things. There’s a lot of things that we should do, we shouldn’t do. But if you’re able to fall asleep, stay asleep, wake up, feel rested, whatever it is that you can do to make that happen.

LASSITER: Daylight Saving Time is a big change for a lot of people around the country. And yeah, especially in the spring, it’s got a lot of negative effects. That Current Biology study went out of its way to emphasize that the changes we see in the spring, aren’t seen when we gain an hour back in the fall. So “springing ahead” can be a lot more daunting than “falling behind.” But if you just prepare yourself one day at a time, you’ll wake up feeling refreshed enough to enjoy those extended evenings.

This episode was written by Alex Lassiter, and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in. So please feel free to send an email to the podcasting@mndaily.com inbox with any questions, comments, concerns or story ideas that you want us to produce this next season. I’m Alex Lassiter, and this has been In The Know. Take care, y’all.

ALEX LASSITER: Hello lovely people, it is Alex Lasseter with the Minnesota Daily and you are listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota. Today’s episode is a little bit different. 

I’ve got another guest in the studio with me today, and her name is also Alex, Alex DeYoe. She did an article earlier this month about mayoral candidate Emily Koski and her campaign. And so, it’s a little bit weird. We’re doing like a Q&A about a Q&A, but Alex, why don’t you introduce yourself and let people know just who you are, what you do around the office?

ALEXANDRA DEYOE: I’m Alexandra DeYoe, or Alex. I’m a third-year journalism student here at the U, and I mainly report for the City Desk, so I cover, usually legislative politics or city politics, city council. Sometimes I do stuff with policing or just like small businesses. A little bit of everything, just about the city around the University campus.

LASSITER: Super cool, so it’s like a kind of catch all. How long have you been doing that for? 

DEYOE: Oh my god, about a year and a couple of months now. 

LASSITER: Really? 

DEYOE: Yeah. 

LASSITER: Wow. 

DEYOE: Been here a while. 

LASSITER: What brought you here? I don’t know if I’ve ever asked you that since we’ve worked together.

DEYOE: No, I don’t think so. Well I, after my freshman year, I applied for the Daily in the summer. Got the intern, like, intern position. But yeah, I just want to be—I’m a journalism major—I want to write. And I wanted to get experience as soon as I could. 

So I thought, “Well, I’ll give it a shot, even though I’m just a freshman.” I had no writing experience. And for some reason, the editor was like, “You’ve written before?” I was like, “No, I haven’t, but thanks for hiring me anyway.” And I just stayed on for the longest time now. 

LASSITER: This Q&A with Koski that you did, was this like, how par for the course was this within your reporting? Was this something new, or had you done stuff like this before?

DEYOE: I’ve done a couple Q&As before. I actually, in the fall, I think it was around October, I did a Q&A about Reverend DeWayne Davis and his mayoral campaign. So it was kind of like my second go around with another mayoral candidate. So it’s like, I kind of already knew the field a little bit. So, it wasn’t a very hard story to cover.

LASSITER: What inspired you to do this one, you know? 

DEYOE: Honestly because no one at the desk yet had, like, talked to her yet. And even though she, I think she announced her campaign at the end of last semester. I think around, like, November, December-ish. And so I was like, “Well, it’s kind of, like, high time to talk to her about, like, why she’s running.” 

I mean, she’s a city council member, I think, for the past two years. So it’s like, I want to know, like, “Well, why transition from a city council member to a mayor candidate, even though you kind of work alongside the mayor currently,” like, it’s kind of interesting, so, yeah.

LASSITER: Yeah, it is a really interesting dynamic, isn’t it?

DEYOE: Yeah. 

LASSITER: I was curious to hear about the process behind that. How did you go about, OK, so you have this idea in mind. How did you go about reaching out to her and being like, or her team, even, and being like, “Hey, this is something I want to do, let’s make it happen.”

DEYOE: Yeah, well, it’s interesting with city council members because, for Emily, she has her, obviously, her campaign page, and she has an informational email that anyone can email her, but then she also has her assistants for the city council. 

So I contacted both of them to see which one would reach out to me first and it took actually a while for her assistants to get back to me. So I had like email them up multiple times be like, “Hi, please just talk to her for like 15 minutes.” 

LASSITER: Yeah, I know the feeling.

DEYOE: Right, and so that’s how it usually works. It’s like you have to contact their like policy aides or policy assistants, and she had two of them, and they thankfully got back to me, and then they forwarded me to her campaign manager, and that’s who I set up the interview with.

LASSITER: Gotcha, and so how did that process look? Was it just like, on the before side, or did it, like, did she just show up, or did you show up to her thing, or like, her office?

DEYOE: It was actually over the phone which I, for like Q&As, I don’t really prefer that. I like the in person stuff because usually the conversation gets a little bit more in depth. But she was on a tight schedule. I was on a tight schedule. The phone call worked.

But yeah, I mostly just interacted with her campaign manager and that’s who helped me set up the interview with her and she, I gave her my phone number. She called me and yeah, it was like Friday night and I called her and it was fine.

LASSITER: So what was it like actually talking to her? Like, how was that? How was that vibe? Was it like a little bit uncomfortable at first? Did you have time for a pre interview at all? Or did you just dive in straight to the questions right after she or you picked up the phone? 

DEYOE: I mean, with city council members, they’ve been interviewed before usually, so they kind of know what’s going on so usually I don’t have to to tell them about the process at all. I kind of just introduce myself, you know, “I’m a student, third year journalism student, I work for the Daily. I want to ask you about your mayoral campaign, like your priorities and stuff.” And I said, “Oh, do you have any questions for me? Nope. Okay.” 

We go right into the interview. And after like the first couple of questions, it becomes more conversational after a while, which is like the best position you can be in cause when it’s just back and forth question answer, it gets so repetitive and boring and you don’t really find out about the person, but no, she was really comfortable. She was really open. 

Yeah, I wasn’t really intimidated by that kind of interview, because it’s like, well, she knows what’s going on, and I know what’s going on, and it’s not like we’re talking about anything, like, super in depth or controversial. It’s just like, trying to get to know her, and stuff like that, and like, introduce her to the readers of the MN Daily and stuff, so.

LASSITER: How did you go into that interview separating, or finding a balance, rather, between her campaign and her campaign platform and her as a person. How did you really bring that to the forefront during your interview?

DEYOE: Well, when I do interviews about campaigns, I always want to start off with them as the person. So I asked, “Well, what motivated you to become a council member?” And, you know, I found out with some sleuthing, some googling, researching about her before I talked to her, that her father was actually part of the city council. And so she’s kind of grown up around this atmosphere of inner city politics, local politics, and yes, I tried to figure out her background, her history at Minneapolis. 

She’s from Minneapolis, so it was really easy to get to know her that way, because I live in Minneapolis also. And after that, just kind of like, “Well, talk to me about your campaign. What are your priorities? What are your goals? What kind of challenges do you think you’re going to face?” If you look at her, you know, city council member career, she kind of voted on par with like Mayor Frey’s thinking or his opinions. And then recently within the last year, she’s kind of strayed away from that a little bit. 

So I kind of asked her, “Well, why are you? is it because you were always kind of in the back of your mind plan to be mayor?” And, you know, she dived into that with me a little bit. And yeah, I don’t know. It’s just kind of, you have to build off the conversation as you go and it’s kind of hard to anticipate questions. So I try to be very vague when I’m writing my questions out before the interview. Cause like, you have to kind of be flexible and like, be resourceful with it. 

LASSITER: What were like, how did you go about like crafting the direction that you wanted the interview to take? How did you actually go out formulating that? 

DEYOE: Well, for all of my interviews, I always research the person I’m going to be talking to. Even if I can only research them like 10 minutes before the interview actually starts. Because sometimes I get referred to people as other interviews are going on. Like, “Oh, you just talked to this person.” It’s like, okay, well, darn, I have to start all over again. 

LASSITER: Now I’m spinning around on a dime.

DEYOE: Exactly, right? But no, I try to research about them. Try to look at, especially when it’s a politician. Try to look at like, past, like, bills they passed. Or like, initiatives they had. And of course, I talked to my editor, Jack O’Connor. He knows a lot about the city council and how it works, and he follows that type of political stuff all the time because he’s a poli-sci major also. And so I asked him, you know, “What do you expect from me? What kind of questions do you want me to ask her?” 

And when it comes to Q&As, I always have to send the list of questions that I have to Jack so that he can kind of approve them, quote unquote. But yeah, I just kind of try to find their background, and then I steer the conversation in that way, I guess. 

With mayoral Q&As, you always have to ask like the, “What’s your priorities? What challenges do you think? Why do you think there should be a new mayor?” That’s like the top three questions you have to ask. But then other ones I’m like, I can kind of pick and choose.

LASSITER: I’m curious to know if you learned anything during the interview that you didn’t know about beforehand. And if so, what that was?

DEYOE: That’s a good question. Honestly, this one didn’t really surprise me as much as to compared to other Q&A interviews that I’ve done. I’m really trying to think if she surprised me with anything.

LASSITER: Or even just like stuff that you already knew, but it’s like, “Oh, I didn’t know that detail.” Like that’s something I wasn’t quite fully versed on, I suppose. 

DEYOE: Actually one thing that did surprise me is I asked her, you know, “What kind of challenges do you expect to happen as you’re campaigning?” And she asked me to like expand on that question. I thought it was a very clear question of like, you know, for some people, when they run for mayor, they don’t have, like, the background you do. 

People know who you are. You’re a city council member for Ward 11 versus, you know, Dwayne Davis. He’s only been in the area since 2013.

He needs to get his name out there, basically. That’s his biggest challenge. So I presented that example to her, and I was like, “Well, maybe a challenge for you is, like, getting your coverage outside Ward 11.” Because Ward 11 people know you. But, you know, I, the University is in Ward Two. Do you think students know you that well compared to like Robin Wansley who’s Ward Two city council member?

Yeah, and she was like, “Oh, that’s a good point. Maybe that will be something that I’ll have to address later on as I’m going through my campaigns.” That kind of surprised me a little bit that like that question for her wasn’t really a consideration 

LASSITER: Yeah, and so, you know sitting down going through the whole process just step by step. What would you say was like the biggest difference between your very first mayoral candidate interview and this one? 

Were there any glaring, I mean you were obviously more storied, and you were more, you had like a little bit more experience the second time than the first, as anybody does, doing something for the second time compared to the first time. But what would you say are the biggest differences? 

DEYOE: I mean, I think the major difference with Emily Koski compared to other ones is that she’s already in city politics. She doesn’t have to, like, enter into it or, like, introduce herself to, like, the city of Minneapolis, whereas the other people kind of have to. She’s already well versed in inner city politics, and she knows the playing field pretty well, and she feels confident that she can run for mayor and possibly win to be mayor. 

That was kind of different, because it was, like, talking to someone who’s an expert already about Minneapolis, whereas other people are not. Not saying that they’re not experts, but it’s like they’re not experts in like the city council game. You know what I mean like, she knows kind of how it works in there for two years like she knows what’s going on.

LASSITER: That she knows the strats. 

DEYOE: Exactly. 

LASSITER: Yeah, okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. And so when it came to questions that you had asked her during the interview, obviously the story was edited for length and clarity. What questions did you ask during the interview that didn’t make it into the story? 

DEYOE: Honestly, I think most of the questions made it in. However, what you see of her responses isn’t her full response. I have to be very, like, selective, because I can’t make the story, like, a thousand words long even though she said a lot. I think one of the longest responses she had was what her priorities were. And I know people when they are explaining their goals in just context and just talking, they kind of go everywhere. 

And so she would start off with like, I know she mentioned like police reform and continuing that and making sure to hold police accountable. But at the end of her response, she also went back to that. So it’s like, “Well, which one do I add in?” So it’s kind of like I have to prioritize like, well, what’s the most important thing for readers to know about her? So when you read the story, there’s like three chunks of quotes under that question because that’s not it wasn’t all together. I had to like dissect it a little bit. 

You know, I mean, so that’s always hard. It’s like well, I don’t want to like erase something that she said that maybe she thinks is important But it’s like well, she’s not in the room with me while I’m writing the story, obviously. So it’s like I can’t have the creative freedom to dissect the interview how I wanted to.

LASSITER: That would be a little bit of a hamper to the process for both you and the politician to have them looking over your shoulder as you’re typing it out. 

DEYOE: Very intimidating, yeah. 

LASSITER: I’m glad they don’t make us do that. 

DEYOE: I’m very thankful also, yeah. 

LASSITER: So what would you say? I mean, you’ve gone through this process twice now, you’re probably going to go through it again. What would you say to someone who has never interviewed a politician before, was the easiest part of setting this story up, from conception, to reaching out to people, to actually getting the interview done, to writing it. What was the easiest part of this entire process? 

DEYOE: Honestly, with Q&As, it’s some of the easiest stories you can write because it’s just quotes. I don’t have to paraphrase anything. It’s fantastic. I don’t have to explain anything. I don’t have to problem solve or critical think about it. 

I just paste her quote and make sure that I remove the, ums, you knows and likes and whatever and make her sound a little bit better. The most intimidating part is actually doing the interview and making sure that my questions are clear and concise and that they make sense to her and that we’re on the same page. 

LASSITER: Yeah. Speaking as a podcasting interviewer, that is all of my job is to interview somebody and be like, “Okay, this is exactly what they said. This is going in the story. Super great. Super easy. Did they actually say it?” Because then if I don’t have the audio of them saying it becomes immediately so much harder. 

DEYOE: And it’s not like you can script them. You can’t tell them what to say. They have to say it kind of organically and you just have to hope that they say what you want them to say in a way.

LASSITER: And it’s like, there’ll be times during an interview where I just like clip that in my mind. I’m like, “Oh, that was a banger quote. I’m going to put that, I’m going to put that in the story.” And then it’s other times I’m listening back to the audio and I’m like, “What, how did I miss that? That’s such an awesome quote.” I wish I got them to expand on that more, but it’s like, it’s, it must be super. 

I remember doing Q&As back when I was on admin and it was really, really great just like having that, like you just get their stuff, you get their quotes and you put them right in the article. It hurts so bad when you see something that you wish you had them expand upon. And it’s so much harder.

DEYOE: Yeah. It happened with Emily Koski, actually. She mentioned something about addressing homelessness in Minneapolis. And I was like, “I should have asked a follow up question about that.” But I thought in the moment that it was, it sufficed. But it didn’t. 

I should have, like, had her elaborate on that. And even Jack was like, “Why didn’t you have her elaborate on that?” I was like, “Jack, don’t rub it in. You’re a big bully. Don’t rub it in. Stop.” So yeah. 

LASSITER: What would you say that your favorite part is about being on the interviewing side of people? Cause I know a lot of our listeners, probably they go off for job interviews a lot. What is your favorite part about being on the other side of the recording device? 

DEYOE: I honestly, I’m a very curious person, so I just love asking questions. And I love it when somebody says something, and I go, “Oh, I can, like, ask him a follow up question about that guy.” I come up with a question on the spot. That always feels so good because it’s like, they can tell that I’m really listening to them and trying to understand them. 

But it also feels really good when I ask, especially a politician, whether it’s, like, a city council member or a senate member or a house member, and I ask them a question, they go, “I never thought about that. That’s a good question.” Yes. I won. I won. So. 

LASSITER: Oh, that’s super awesome. Well, is there anything else that you’d like to share about your experience with this story? I mean, it’s pretty clear cut, straightforward. But like, it’s such an interesting perspective, getting to know about it from somebody who’s, you know, a Q&A about a Q&A.

DEYOE: Yeah. I don’t know what else to say. I think we covered a lot of it. Yeah, I don’t know, Q&A stories are always a breeze. They’re always just like, it’s kind of a nice break, because sometimes I do policing stories, like I reported on the DOJ agreement, and it’s like, “Oh my God, it’s a lot of jargony stuff.” But when Q&A’s it’s just so clean cut. It’s like a nice little vacation a little bit. 

LASSITER: It’s like for office workers that week where you only answer emails and you have no meetings. 

DEYOE: Exactly what it’s like. Yes. 

LASSITER: Thank you so much for your time, Alex. It was a pleasure having you on the podcast doing a Q&A about a Q&A. 

DEYOE: Of course, anytime. 

LASSITER: And for the rest of our listeners, I’m also Alex. This has been in the know. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or recommendations for episodes you’d like to see this upcoming season, please feel free to send us an email at podcasting@mndaily.com. And we will see you in the next episode. Take care of y’all.

ALEX LASSITER: Hello, lovely people! It’s Alex Lassiter with the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota… is what I would be saying, if we were staying in-state for the focus of this episode.

Many, hopefully all of you, know that a few weeks ago a series of wildfires roared across Los Angeles county, burning for close to two weeks. When one looked contained, another would sprout up in a different area of the county. These fires have caused at least 29 deaths and have displaced countless people from their homes.

Reagan Rogers, a University student from L.A. county, says she got to see exactly how damaging these flames were to those people close by her.

REAGAN ROGERS:  These close family and friends of mine had lost their entire lives, and I know for them it took even longer to really come to terms with that. Especially for those of my friends who lost pictures or mementos of loved ones who had passed. 

It’s just, I truly can’t wrap my head around the emotional toll that that would take—not only just the logical toll of trying to figure out what to do with your life now, but just having to deal with, kind of the things that you really can’t replace.

LASSITER: Rogers is from south Pasadena, and one of the first things she talked about with me about was just how many people underestimated the size of L.A. county. It’s a lot larger than people think, leaving more room for the fires to spread and requiring more help in keeping them contained. If you’re not from L.A., like me, then you may have not even known where south Pasadena is, also like me. It’s just 10 minutes south of where the Eaton fire broke out.

Rogers says wintertime in California is the dry season, so wildfires in general can be more common. But she had no idea how these fires had gotten so big, so fast. She only found out once it was too late—her, and other nearby residents like Cora Murray.

CORA MURRAY:  I was actually sitting at my desk at work, where I was studying wildfire home insurance. So I got the notification on my phone, literally in the middle of reading a report about California’s insurance crisis. And it was very dystopian in the moment. I had a feeling as soon as I saw it, I knew that it was going to be big because we had gotten the red flag warnings. 

So my heart just kind of sank because I knew it was coming. I obviously, I didn’t know the extent of the destruction. It was beyond what I could have ever imagined, but, you know, I had that feeling in my chest.

LASSITER: Murray does work as an undergraduate research assistant for the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, an initiative centered around researching the climate and, get this, wildfires. This was right up her alley. Murray is a senior at the University of California, L.A., and is studying environmental policy. Because of her specialty in wildfires, Murray was able to see the warning signs right away.

MURRAY: The first thing was obviously the winds. I knew that this was an unprecedented wind event. We’ve been getting warnings for a couple of days that we were going to be experiencing extremely high winds, and you know, you could see it when you were outside. You could feel it.

When I was walking to work that morning, I remember having stuff fly into my eyes, and I actually just put on sunglasses. I didn’t need them because it wasn’t bright out, but I just wanted to stop stuff from getting in my eyes. So as soon as I saw that there was some ignition, I knew it was going to be big.

LASSITER: For someone like Murray, who does so much work researching wildfires, it’s a little bit easier to recognize the signs. Rogers saw those same signs that Murray did, but without the proper technical expertise or proper notice from the state of California, the meaning behind them wasn’t apparent—not until things started to heat up, at least. Until it became a roaring blaze, the sparks snuck up on her.

ROGERS:  My parents and I had gone to dinner, so we got home and we knew that we were on a wind advisory warning, but nothing had really started yet. So,  we got home and the power was out, so we just kind of thought it was associated with the wind because it was pretty aggressive. I think it was like 30 miles an hour at the worst where I am. So we didn’t really know that the fires had already broken out.

And then suddenly we had gotten a evacuation warning, so we were told to prepare for further instruction, but we weren’t on an evacuation order yet. And that was when we started kind of getting notice from friends and family that they had out evacuation orders and that they were closer to the fires.

LASSITER: In little less than a few hours, the outlook had gone from a clear blue sky to hazy and uncertain. Though she was a safe distance away, the next few days weren’t any more reassuring to Rogers. She could see the billowing black smoke from her home. The air quality worsened, and the flames cast an eerie amber glow overhead.

ROGERS:  We, in South Pasadena, never had an evacuation order. We stayed on a warning for, I believe it ended up being six days. And so we were safe in the valley where we are. I think it’s a mix of just it feeling really surreal and also being grateful that I didn’t get to that point.

But also in a way having survivor’s guilt that, like, we were so close. And, and I know these people who are losing their homes and I just, I feel bad that there’s so little you can really do. 

LASSITER: Fortunately, Rogers never needed to evacuate. In fact, she didn’t even leave her home until coming back to the University of Minnesota for the start of the spring semester. And though they came close, Murray and the rest of the UCLA student body didn’t need to evacuate either. However, this wasn’t Murray’s first time worrying about an incoming wildfire. Her first encounter—the one that fanned the flames of her passion for environmental policy—had come just a few years earlier.

MURRAY:  I’m from a town called Lafayette. It’s a small little suburb, but there was a fire in 2019 I believe.  That was, you know, the closest I had ever been to fire, and I evacuated. I went down to my grandma’s house in San Jose, and just having to decide what you put in the trunk of your car, and potentially never seeing your home again is an experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It’s horrible.

LASSITER: The part that people don’t like to talk about, or think about, is that when some of these people pack up to flee from a natural disaster like a wildfire, it’s the last time that they’re ever going to see their home. Entire livelihoods were lost. Not just houses, but businesses and schools. Students in the middle of their semester were suddenly dislocated. 

Just picture that for a second. You’re getting ready to go to all of your classes, see all of your friends, finish out your senior year… and then, nothing. No certainty. No safety. Just worry and unrest. And to make things worse, this year of all years, there’s no guarantee that they’ll get covered by their fire insurance.

ROGERS: State Farm and Allstate in Palisades and a lot of L.A. county removed their fire insurance for residents in around October/November. So once they knew that the wind and the dry conditions were coming in the winter, they took away the fire insurance that people have been paying for who knows how long and then these people lost their homes to a fire. So a lot of people do not even have the insurance coming through to help them rebuild or restart a life somewhere else. 

MURRAY:  We’re in the middle of a reform right now for homeowners insurance, and I don’t know how these fires are going to affect it. I don’t know. We’re, basically there’s a crisis of homeowners insurance where there’s affordability issues and accessibility issues. Accessibility is much more important because it’s, you know, whether you’re even able to get insurance for your home.

We keep permitting these areas and allowing for more development to happen there and allowing for rebuilding to happen there after fire, which is a very complicated issue. You know, it’s like, these people who have lost everything, they should be allowed to rebuild. But at the same time, should they be allowed to rebuild the exact same structure in the exact same place if we know that it’s vulnerable to fire? And, you know, if they do rebuild there, should they be guaranteed insurance?

LASSITER: Though the fires have come back under control and the rebuilding efforts can begin, it will likely be a process that takes years and costs billions. We’re only a few weeks out from the start of this disaster. The natural part is over—the financial part has yet to begin. And though the fire has died down, what Murray says we need to be on the lookout for next is the water.

MURRAY: Right now, L.A. is experiencing some really intense rainfall, which is, you know, necessary for replenishing our water. But at the same time, it could lead to some really devastating floods and some really devastating mudslides in those post-fire areas. 

Yeah, and it’s going to be carrying all of that fire debris with it into our water system, too. So, you know, we could be seeing pollution at a large scale that I don’t know if we’re prepared for. I don’t really know anything about the water system. I’m sure that people are preparing for it. This has happened before, so I would assume they know what they’re doing, but it’s just scary to see one kind of disaster after another.

LASSITER: Murray is still back in L.A. county. She’s starting her final semester of her senior year and watching as people pick up the pieces from the fire. While she’s a stone’s throw away from the damage, a conversation with Rogers, who flew back into Minnesota for her next semester, is as close as some people can get to knowing someone affected by the disaster.

ROGERS: I think it’s hard, and this is no one’s fault, living here in the Midwest. You’re so far away from California, it’s, you would have no reason to understand it.  People would ask me when I got back, “Oh, how was your break? You’re in California. Like, did you see anything about the fires? What was that like?” And I was like, “well, I am in Los Angeles County. Like, I did have an evacuation warning. Luckily I was safe and that kind of stuff.”

But I think it always shocks people to know that Los Angeles County is so large and I think people, when they saw it on the news, would assume that the fires were in, like, Hollywood, which, you know, is just kind of what everyone pictures L.A. to be.

Even for the people who maybe are wealthier, or who are celebrities, like, they’re still humans, and they lost their home, and everything that they own, everything that they know, they have children who lost their schools. Where are they gonna go to school? It’s the middle of the year. I just think it takes a lot of humility that you don’t usually have unless you live there, and that’s totally understandable. I just, I feel like that’s the biggest thing about it.

LASSITER: Here in Minnesota, we are so far removed from all that went on in L.A. county, and I mean like Rogers said: that’s nobody’s fault. Not many of us will likely pack up all of our belongings and move closer to the fires so we can relate to people more. In fact, we are coming out of a cold front in Minnesota—there’s probably not many people who can relate less to what residents of L.A. county are going through. We may not understand, but we can acknowledge. We may be colder, but we don’t have to be cold. If you know anyone who lives in L.A. county, or has family who may have been affected or friends, reach out. Just trust me, they will appreciate hearing from you.

And if you can give monetarily to help with the relief efforts, you can donate to the American Red Cross, the California Community Fund or GoFundMe’s 2025 Wildfire Relief fund, all of which are linked below. Or if you want to do your own research and find your own charity to donate to, be my guest. Just research smartly, there’s a lot of people trying to take advantage of this disaster to scam folks. Thank you for listening to this episode.

It was written by me, Alex Lassiter, and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in. So please feel free to send an email to the podcasting@mndaily.com inbox with any questions, comments, concerns or story ideas that you want us to produce this next season. I’m Alex Lassiter, and this has been In The Know. Happy new year and take care, y’all.

Read about Red Cross relief efforts and donate HERE.

Donate to the 2025 GoFundMe Wildfire Relief Fund HERE.

Donate to the California Community Fund HERE.

ALEX LASSITER: Hello, lovely people! It’s Alex Lassiter with the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota. 

I’m turning 22 a day after this episode’s release, but I never really had a coming-of-age. Sure, we have milestones and markers for the general United States population, like getting your driver’s license. But I’m still a child at heart, and the best I got was the government slapping me with the ability to pay taxes and go to war when I turned 18. So I wanted to unwrap what it means to come of age in other cultures across the globe.

Rabbi Yitzi Steiner, who works with the University of Minnesota chapter of Chabad, sat down with me to talk about the Jewish traditions of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.

YITZI STEINER:  A Bar Mitzvah is generally when a boy, a male, turns 13, and a Bat Mitzvah is when a girl turns 12. The general definition is when they, when a boy turns 13 and a girl turns 12, at that point they become what’s called obligated in mitzvot. What is a mitzvah? A mitzvah is a commandment that God has given to the Jewish people, there are generally 613 of them.

In other words, up until they turn 13 or 12, and it’s more of an education. They’re learning the practice. But they only become responsible, like, using the term obligated, but it’s responsible for it when they turn 12 or 13. So, to a certain degree, you know, we say that that’s when they become a man and that’s when they become a woman.

LASSITER: Once a boy becomes a Bar Mitzvah (son of commandment), or a girl becomes a Bat Mitzvah (daughter of commandment), they are able to partake in upholding these commandments, like prayer for men or, for women, lighting candles to usher in Shabbat — which is the period from Friday to Saturday evening. The preparation for becoming Bar/Bat Mitzvah is a lot. You start a year in advance memorizing from the Torah, the Jewish holy book.

STEINER: It’s very complicated to read from the Torah because in the Torah itself, meaning in the actual scroll, it just has the letters, meaning there are no vowels. And there’s an actual tune. Every word has its own tune, but in the Torah itself, you don’t have the vowels and you don’t have the tunes. 

So you need to take a book that has the vowels and has the tunes, and then you kind of, match it up with the Torah. So it can take a very, very long time. Now couple that with a child that never went to Hebrew school; doesn’t know how to read Hebrew. So they got to start with just learning the Hebrew alphabet, starting to learn how to read it, then learn the tune and so on.

LASSITER: After the preparation is finished, the young man or woman suddenly has a lot more responsibility. Much like a Bat Mitzvah, a Quinceañera sees a young woman beginning to make her transition to adulthood. Karen Mary Davalos, an anthropology specialist with the University’s Department of Chicano and Latino Studies, spent the former chunk of her career studying the tradition.

KAREN MARY DAVALOS:  A Quinceañera is the coming of age celebration, usually among Mexican or other Latina/Latino cultures. And this coming of age typically involves, you know, a public presentation of a young person and a party, you know, a celebration of people coming together.

That’s how you make things public. And some families continue to see it as a, almost like a sacrament, a Catholic sacrament, and they’ll attend or ask for a mass at a church. Some people want to liken it to other coming-of-age.

LASSITER: Originally, Quinceañeras were only celebrated by la clase alta, or the upper class, due to how expensive the celebration after the mass was to put on. Immigrating from Mexico to the United States made the celebration more accessible for some families.

DAVALOS: So, the upper class were predominantly the ones who could afford and celebrate, but people would migrate to the United States and notice that they could either because of new economic means or because you know, no one around them could claim, “Well, you don’t belong to that class of people.” So they would use it to assert their class status in the United States. Like it takes a village to raise a person. It takes a village to pay for a Quinceañera.

LASSITER: Both the Bar/Bat Mitzvah and Quinceañera are ways of taking the next step in one’s faith and journey to adulthood. It doesn’t automatically mean that they’ve fully grown up, like, “Hello, I am in my young teens. Look at my own-able real estate and my taxable income. Goodbye forever, Mom and Dad.” No, it just signifies that they are ready for more responsibility — to move forward into growing into that role.

STEINER:  Judaism is is very much, very, very detail oriented — very, very specific. Everything is within Jewish law. There are hundreds of laws and customs in how Judaism evolved.

Every single week in synagogue, part of a portion of the Torah is read. And in order for someone to read it, they need to be Bar Mitzvah. They need to be 13 years old to read it. So it’s generally celebrated or prepared for where the Bar Mitzvah boy would read the Torah in the synagogue. It’s not a must, it’s just more of a tradition that has evolved over the years. 

DAVALOS:  Not like, “Oh, all of a sudden at age 15. From quince años, 15 years, you’re all of a sudden now a woman.” No, it was becoming a young person who’s on her path to womanhood. There’s not like one day you’re all of a sudden an adult. 

But that pressure is so great in this society, in our culture, that maybe without a distinct ritual, I’m just thinking as an anthropologist, we mess up young people and make them think that it’s supposed to happen in one day. And then they feel like failures for not having achieved that.

LASSITER: Though both ceremonies, in recent years, have developed a bigger focus on the party aspect, which Steiner says is especially prevalent in American culture, the tradition itself is more important than whatever the culture tacks onto it. The tradition is what gives it meaning.

STEINER: I think the only myth that I would like to dispel is the idea that a Bar/Bat Mitzvah is a party. That is a byproduct of what a Bar/Bat Mitzvah is.

In the big picture of things, it’s such a small — it’s a minuscule part of what the actual celebration is. Because at its core, it’s celebrating the fact that the boy or girl is now become responsible for mitzvot.

DAVALOS: That kind of community formation, I think, is really significant in the face of the pressure to assimilate, the pressure to forget your culture, to leave behind your culture or the myth that if you forget your culture, if you adopt this so-called generic way of being an American, then you’ll have success.

And I think a Quinceañera, a celebration, then shows, well, that’s not necessarily the case. Because people joining together and helping each other out in raising a young girl, and in celebrating her passage into womanhood is another successful way to be in a community.

LASSITER: Of course, Steiner and Davalos were both once kids themselves. Kids who would one day also have to come of age.

DAVALOS: I didn’t have a Quinceañera myself. I come from a family of three girls and one boy. And my father was like, “There’s no way I was going to do that for you. Yeah, like, we can’t afford one. So why, if I can’t afford one, how are we going to do three?”

LASSITER: But despite not having had a Quinceañera herself, Davalos has been to her fair share and has seen firsthand the traditions that come with it.

DAVALOS: Usually, the Quinceañera and her family usually approach the altar and the priest will give a special blessing and he might, the priest might bless some of the items that are bestowed upon the Quinceañera. A rosary or a medallion with Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Or a medallion that’s a crucifix, or a Bible, or some other object that the family wants the Quinceañera to have to commemorate the event. And then she might present a rose to, if there’s a shrine for Our Lady of Guadalupe, she might present a rose to her, you know, kind of like a woman guiding another woman — a holy sacred woman guiding another young person.

LASSITER: Steiner, on the other hand, did have his own Bar Mitzvah when he turned 13.

STEINER: So my Bar Mitzvah, I studied, prepared a year before to practice to read from the Torah. I went to a Hebrew school where I learned. I knew how to read fluent Hebrew, but still took many months to be able to prepare and practice for my Bar Mitzvah. So my own personal Bar Mitzvah was, so it started a year before with practicing.

 And then Saturday night was a large celebration in the hall of that hotel for the entire community that my parents were a part of. And people, guests came from out of town and all of my friends were there and parents came and there was a nice celebration.

LASSITER: Traditions like Bar/Bat Mitzvahs and Quinceañeras have great standing in their home countries and in the United States, but some cultures celebrate the coming-of-age in a much different way.

One such example is the “bullet ant initiation” of the Sateré-Mawé people in the Brazilian Amazon. It’s such a niche tradition that none of the faculty members in the Portuguese Studies department even knew about it when I asked. So, I had to do a bit of my own research.

The tradition goes like this — once a boy from the tribe turns 13, he searches the jungle and collects bullet ants, a particularly sting-y kind of ant, to be sedated and sewn into the inside of a glove. When they wake up, the ants are angrier than ever, and I think you can see where I’m going with this. Over the course of several months, each boy will have to wear the glove over 20 times, for around 10 minutes at a time to prove he is ready for manhood by the amount of pain he can endure.

There’s also land diving, a tradition among the men of Pentecost Island in Vanuatu. Once a boy turns seven or eight, he’s allowed to join the adults in jumping from a nearly 100-foot tower with a vine tied around his ankles — like bungee jumping. When a boy makes his first jump, his mother holds onto an item from his childhood, and throws it away after he’s finished — representing his transition from boy to man.

DAVALOS:  You know, as an anthropologist, I would say every society has coming of age celebrations, rituals that mark a time in people’s life and a movement from one stage of life to the next.

We have fewer of those because most cultures around the world are patriarchal, meaning they favor the patriarchal side. Masculine men experiences over women, female, feminine experiences. And because of that, there are more cultures and more celebrations for men.

There’s nothing wrong with people coming together and having a celebration and especially celebrating womanhood in a patriarchal context. I always thought that was so magnificent, you know, like to put so much attention on being a young girl in a society that doesn’t value womanhood. 

LASSITER: It’s a process, growing up. One day you just look back and recognize the person you are now is not the same as you were a day ago, a week ago — a year, a decade. But you never really do stop growing. I know a few fellow adults who might benefit from sticking their hand into a glove full of ants to help ground them in the pain of adulthood. I also know a few people who had to grow up way too young and take that proverbial leap of faith off their own personal land diving tower and become an adult before their time.

Having one day when that switch gets flipped is a bit of a blessing— it gives you a definite calendar marker that, “Today is the day I became a man.” Not only that, it gives you the drive to start making choices and taking on responsibilities that will follow you for the rest of your life. Even if it is something as simple as getting your driver’s license, it might include a little bit of pain, a little faith and a lot of patience, but it can help you realize that a part of growing up is actually getting to grow.

This episode was written by Alex Lassiter and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in. This was our final episode of the season, so feel free to send a message to our email inbox at podcasting@mndaily.com with any questions, comments, concerns or ideas for episodes you’d like to see us produce next year. I’m Alex, and this has been In The Know. Take care, y’all.

ALEX LASSITER: Hello, lovely people! It’s Alex Lassiter with the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.

I love Hallmark movies. There’s something just so cozy about them. But you’ve got to admit, they’re a little cheesy. I was binge watching some a few weeks before Thanksgiving (don’t judge me) and I started to recognize just how similar some of these plots were. I flipped from one Hallmark channel to another by mistake, and the movie I changed to was at the exact same point narratively as the one I’d left. Different movies, exact same scene. It raised the question — what goes into making a Hallmark movie, and can you shape Christmas magic from a formula?

The first part of this mystery to unwrap had me reaching out to Sara Marsh, a teacher of theatre arts & dance at the University of Minnesota and freelance actress in the Twin Cities. Marsh had actually had a featuring role in a Hallmark movie. She played Helen, the female lead’s sister, in 2016’s Love Always, Santa. I wanted to learn a little more about her personal experience on-set and if her experience being in a Hallmark movie had influenced her perspective of them.

SARA MARSH: Sometimes the atmosphere just calls for something a little more hopeful and a little warmer. 

And I think we, I think we’ve seen that kind of happen across the board. And I think that Hallmark really exemplifies that. And so, you know, when you get a script, it can read in kind of a corny kind of way. And what I, what I tell my students is you really have to take it seriously and invest it with intention because when you do that, it won’t come across that way.

LASSITER: Marsh was in and out after eight days of filming. The whole movie, including the time Marsh was on-set, took only two weeks. Filmed in January and released the next December. Funnily enough, it was filmed just shy of an hour south from our Minneapolis studio, in Northfield, MN.

Even though it sounds cramped, Marsh says she had an amazing time filming, and a little over a week was still more than enough time to bring home some great memories from on-set.

MARSH: You move very, very, very quickly. Like, if you nail a take on the first take, they don’t—there wasn’t a reason to go back. My first day on set, I had a long scene of an emotional, my character had an emotional breakdown, sort-of revelation. It went well, I got it on the first take and they were like, great, let’s move on. And I said, wait, wait, wait, I was like, “Can I do it again?” 

And the director came out and he was like, “You got everybody crying in there, you nailed it. Why?” And I was like, “Well, I just think I could do a little better.” It was a bold ask, but I, you know, and totally blew the second take immediately. Blew it. Just blew it. I mean, just blew my lines immediately. And I was like, “Oh, I shouldn’t have asked. I should not have asked.”

LASSITER: Hallmark movies are just filled to the brim with that cozy Christmas spirit, even behind the scenes. The experience Marsh had on-set was so amazing and genuine, but also optimized. And for a company like Hallmark, which puts out around 40 new movies a year now, I still wondered if, before filming started, you could optimize further by following some kind of formula to map out the plot to your own Hallmark movie. After I did some digging, I discovered I’m not the only one who’s asked that same question.

Three years ago, Senior Vice President of strategy at Salesforce Marty Kihn asked himself if he could combine his passion for data with his love for Hallmark movies, and generate an all-new plot using AI.

MARTY KIHN: I thought, well, you know, can this—is generative AI at a state now where it can actually write an outline for a Hallmark Christmas movie? Because I was a big fan of these Hallmark Christmas movies, you know, I just enjoy them. But they’re quite formulaic and I’ve always wondered what’s the formula, like, is there one or there are two formulas?

So I got interested in that question. And then my end result was, you know, can I actually train a computer to write one of these? Not the whole script, but just an outline. 

LASSITER: So how did Kihn do this? By whittling down each movie to fit within one of eight themes. There’s the setback, the “boss falls in love,” the travel mix-up, the alternative life, the large business takeover, the rivals-to-lovers, the imposter and the family crisis. You can read more about each in the original publication.

Kihn had wanted to see if language models like GPT or text generation like Markov Chains could take these themes and use them to generate an original plot for a “ready-to-film” Hallmark movie. The results were… less than magical.

KIHN: This was before GPT 3. So generative AI, this is only two years ago, generative AI wasn’t a thing. It could generate sentences that sounded okay, but if you went longer than that, you were looking at thoughts going through paragraphs, and it could not sustain thought. 

LASSITER: Kihn settled on these eight themes by grabbing info from the descriptions of over 100 Hallmark movies and turning them into tokens. So names like Jack and Jill turned into <MALE> and <FEMALE>. Large companies became <BIGCORP>, and the hometowns where the protagonists spent their Christmases became <SMALLTOWN>.

By noting the characters, settings, and archetypes of the movies and generalizing them into placeholders, Kihn had essentially reverse-engineered the Hallmark secret formula.

MARSH: I feel like they can tend to be formulaic, but it’s a formula that works. That’s not a negative criticism. It’s just a criticism in that it’s something that I notice. It’s a plot line and a story arc that works well, that people respond to.

LASSITER: Like with the streamlined shooting schedule Marsh signed onto, optimizing people, places and large story beats sets up a sense of familiarity.

Tianxi Li, an assistant professor of statistics at the U, uses newer versions of GPT in his line of work. While Kihn’s hypothesis used GPT-2, Li works with GPT-3 and GPT-4 for pattern recognition.

TIANXI LI: They do not really have predefined labels or groups they want to know. But they have this heuristic assumption that there are, you know, a small number of classes for the plots or the stories you want to formulate, and then you would vary each type a little bit to really create a new plot.

LASSITER: The biggest issue with Kihn’s process? The tech of the time. With newer generative AI software, however, Kihn’s theory of formulaically generating a full comprehensive plot that’s pitch-ready to any Hallmark exec could, in theory, be within reach.

KIHN: If you have good descriptions, you can actually train the model or point the model on those descriptions and then instruct it, you know, create a story based on these descriptions that’s similar to them, but different in these ways.

And you can, you could tell it, you know, the characters names and you could tell the setting and you could give it further guidelines and what would come out would be, I’m sure, pretty acceptable.

LI: And that complicated part is how you specify a model, a machine learning model to do that. But the basic logic is still, you just find patterns.

LASSITER: Whether you think they’re formulaic or freeform, you can’t deny that Hallmark works. People watch those movies. People like them. I like them. And, according to Marsh, people need them. No matter how you feel about Hallmark movies, they have an undeniable human element to them.

MARSH: There’s struggle, there’s tension, there’s, you know, there’s a climax and there’s a resolution that usually is positive for Hallmark. And I think especially, you know, especially in the last five years, there’s just been a lot of uncertainty in the world and people need something to feel good about and they need something to feel hopeful about. 

And I think Hallmark does a really great job in doing that, you know, they do, they give you something hopeful and something heartwarming and sometimes we need something warm and it’s fun to be part of that. 

LASSITER: There are, of course, good and bad Hallmark movies in the same way there are good and bad Netflix movies and Marvel movies. For me, a good Hallmark film is like a blanket or a toasty fire. It’s the same warmth, but they’re reliably warm. And you just can’t get that level of warmth and familiarity from a cold, emotionless machine. 

KIHN: It’s really a human point of view. I think what machines are good at is taking what’s been done before and generating versions of it. If it’s not on the internet, GPT is not going to know it as a fact. So if you’re actually doing reporting, like, this conversation has never happened before, so it would be hard for a machine to generate it I think. 

That’s one, and then the other one is anything related to feelings and empathy. So, you can have much more genuine kind of human interaction coming from a human. 

MARSH: They were totally game with a little bit more improv than some directors and some writers and some sets are. So that was—that made it very, very different and really a lot of fun for me.

It was very spontaneous. It was very alive. It was very present. And that was, that was really fun for me. So they didn’t mind if I tried things or incorporated things and it was really fun. So that made it a lot more alive and a lot, a lot different than other stuff I’ve done.

LASSITER: I will always love Hallmark movies, no matter what age or era. Whether they’re good or bad, serious or campy. As long as they’re made with heart. A sense of formula and familiarity could free up focus for the writers and actors. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with every film, they get more time to pour the best parts of themselves into that particular movie. And like in Love Always, Santa, which I highly recommend the watch, you may find something magical.

This episode was written by Alex Lassiter and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in and feel free to send a message to our email inbox at podcasting@mndaily.com with any questions, comments, concerns or ideas for episodes you’d like to see us produce this season. I’m Alex, and this has been In The Know. Take care, y’all.

ALEX LASSITER: Hello, lovely people! It’s Alex Lassiter with the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.

As we get closer to the end of the month, one of my favorite things to do after the Thanksgiving parade is done being marched, the feast is tucked away and the game has been played, is to crack open my laptop and start browsing for the best Black Friday deals. Aside from the holidays we talked about in my last episode, Black Friday is the last major event in November that really kicks off the rush of “buy, buy, buy” that takes up most of December.

Now, you may be wondering, “But Alex, you just talked about all of these other holidays in November, why didn’t you do Black Friday in that episode? Make this one about how dolphins are secretly plotting to take over the world like I’ve been emailing you about for the past two weeks!”

And I get it, my dear listener, I really do. But retail and consumer studies lecturer Jaye Thompson says technically, Black Friday isn’t an officially recognized holiday, and y’all know how I love my technicalities.

JAYE THOMPSON: A lot of people have the idea that Black Friday is a national holiday or something of the sort. And just to be clear, as far as I know, as of today, it is not a federal holiday. It is not a bank holiday. It is simply just the day after Thanksgiving that is known for these deep discounts and consumer excitement.

LASSITER: And the reason it’s called Black Friday? It seems to all come down to whether your business had an overall profit or a loss during the year.

THOMPSON: And when it’s profitable, you are in the black. You use black ink and it is just normal. When it is a loss, you write “in the red.” And so you use a red pen to denote that your business achieved a loss this year.

And so that concept of taking a holiday and turning your business around from in the red to in the black is where I’ve always learned as just a human, a student of the industry, my own personal knowledge of the case. That’s what I always thought Black Friday was about, like making sure your business was profitable for the end of the year and you close your books.

LASSITER: But, is that really where the name comes from? According to an article by History.com, in the ’50s in Philadelphia, a huge crowd would come in for the yearly Army vs. Navy college football game. There was lots of shopping that happened the day before the game each year during that crowd surge. 

Cops couldn’t control it, and so they nicknamed the time Black Friday in anticipation of a time of year they dreaded. This is also where the image of consumers trampling each other to be the first to grab a doorbuster deal in pop culture media comes from.

Of course, retailers didn’t exactly want this to be the customer perception of Black Friday. So when a name change to “Big Friday” didn’t work, they instead gave it the whimsical spin of it being about business expenses, and that stuck.

THOMPSON: I was around during the ’80s and the ’90s when all this was a big thing. And, you know, we had the Cabbage Patch Dolls and the Garbage Pail Kids, all the coveted items that you, y’know, we didn’t have the internet to find out where they were.

You just had to go out to the store that day and find them and wait in lines. And like, I do have memories of chasing down the exact item I saw in a catalog and, you know, my parents going in with cash and trying to find it, you know? And it was exciting. It was kind of dangerous.

LASSITER: When I was a kid, I certainly remember seeing Black Friday advertisements popping up and thinking to myself, “Oh man, I wonder how crowded the stores will get this year.”

But after a certain point, I started seeing ads for this weird new day called “Cyber Monday,” where you could shop online and get the same great deals as Black Friday without the hassle of going into the store. Retail and consumer studies professor Hyunjoo Im says once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the shift to online shopping became a mainstay.

HYUNJOO IM: Our audience is familiar with all those Black Friday shopping, staying overnight in the parking lot, waiting in line and stuff like that. That’s kind of craze going on with that doorbuster deal that they want to get into. Online shopping, certainly you can do a lot of those stuff without needing to go through that type of physical environment, which is nice.

Even before the pandemic, we started to see the online sales spiking up because the Cyber Monday deals were coming up and Black Friday deals were also showing up online too, so people were going online. Maybe they pay a little more, maybe they know that, but at the same time, they also pay for that small little difference by not having to go through that ordeal themselves.

LASSITER: Though Black Friday kicks off the shopping spree season pretty late here in the States, the rush to ring in the holiday season overseas has already started.

IM: This is really, like, almost the holiday mood that you go out and buy gifts and buy some things, and here are the best deals of the year. So you get to treat yourself, treat others. It’s a lot of deal-driven excitement plus that mood of holiday. It’s kind of crazy that at least maybe about a decade ago, Black Friday really began on Black Friday, like after Thanksgiving. But I mean, we see Black Friday deals now, it’s Nov. 11, which is actually Singles Day in China.

THOMPSON: In the United States, we participate in Singles Day. It’s a small holiday, three point something billion dollars. But for them, it’s like almost $14 billion a day. And it goes on for 11 days starting today to celebrate gifts to yourself if you’re single.

LASSITER: Even though it takes us a little later than Singles Day to get in gear in America, the holiday shopping season starts off with a pretty big bang. Thanksgiving is Day One, then comes Black Friday, and then Small Business Saturday — a day encouraging consumers to support smaller stores. 

THOMPSON: Then you have what they call Sofa Sunday, and now Cyber Monday, which is Black Friday now trying to become Cyber Week, right? So those five days are huge in the United States, almost 200 million people engage in that. And so it’s a big deal, right?

LASSITER: Thanksgiving for the turkey, Black Friday for the blowouts, Saturday to shop small, Sunday for sectionals (and other furniture) and Cyber Monday to shop from behind your computer monitor. This five-day stretch of buy, buy, buy results in one of the biggest moneymakers for retailers nationwide, all year. Research from Statista projects over $39 billion of revenue during Cyber Week 2024 — two billion dollars more in revenue than last year.

Im says there are actually some psychological reasons behind why the act of buying with a discount catapulted Black Friday into a mainstay holiday.

IM: There’s a classical concept called “deal proneness,” or some kind of an emotional excitement that deals create. It’s not just about me needing this product or wanting this product. Sometimes it’s about getting the best deal and that kind of proves that you are a good shopper. So for a lot of people, it turns into almost like a game, like, “How much of a better deal that I can get?”

LASSITER: So, that’s how you get a holiday that spans generations like Black Friday. By implementing deals that feel special or exclusive, you turn shopping into a game that the whole family can play.

THOMPSON: For me, as a child, like, it was a huge tradition to go with, like, all the generations shopping on Black Friday. Like, my mom, my grandma, my sisters, my aunts. We would all go out as, like, a family event, we would always eat lunch at the Ruby Tuesday. 

It just is what we would do. And so like the tradition element and shopping as a family, I don’t know. I feel like culturally that’s not, I don’t see a ton of that anymore.

LASSITER: If you’re wanting to take the leap and join the herd of mall crowds, Im and Thompson both have advice for any intrepid shoppers looking to gear up and brave the wilderness.

IM: I would say it’s probably better to go to the store that you’re familiar with so that you know the store layouts and where to go and what to pick up. Do your research ahead of time. Have a list of stuff that you want to check for sure so that you don’t just, you know, weave through those crowds and get lost. It’s gonna be a “go in, pick up the stuff, and then get out as soon as possible” type of scenario.

This is not the environment where you can enjoy the shopping environment with your friends and just chat and, you know, look around. This is not a window shopping kind of an environment. It’s more of a very goal-driven environment. So you have to be ready for that. 

THOMPSON: Not only do we have the first mall ever over at Southdale which I encourage people to go check out—they’ve done some remodeling recently. Across the street you have the Galleria and Ridgedale which are two luxury retailer malls. 

You have the other end of the spectrum. We have two outlets in the Twin Cities — Albertville and Eden Prairie. That’s big-time, right? Most cities only have one.

And then we obviously have the flagship Mall of America, you know, the largest mall in America and tons of entertainment to be had there. So I think it’s just, yeah, “Why aren’t you getting out there?” 

Go see what it’s like. Malls have changed. They’re now not just for shopping, they’re for entertaining as well. So we’re lucky to be here in the Twin Cities with all this retail action and so I encourage people to enjoy it. 

LASSITER: Whether you’re staying in-state or traveling, hunting in the wild or surfing the web, Black Friday has evolved to fit any need of any shopper. It’s both interesting and a little bewildering to see. It makes me wonder if in another five years, we’ll be back to fighting each other over which Amazon drone is delivering our package. 

And knowing a little more about why we flock to stores and sites to get a steal on these deals makes me feel a little more confident in my choice to stay snuggled up at home and cracking open my laptop to shop.

This episode was written by Alex Lassiter and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in and feel free to send a message to our email inbox at podcasting@mndaily.com with any questions, comments, concerns or ideas for episodes you’d like to see us produce this season. I’m Alex, and this has been In The Know. Take care, y’all.

ALEX LASSITER: Hello, lovely people! It’s Alex Lassiter with the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.

Welp, it’s that time of year again, if not a month late. Those of us in close proximity to the University know that it’s time for our homecoming parade. This year, since I’m a senior, it marks my very last parade at the U. So I figured, what better way to cap it off than to take a look behind the scenes and see how it all comes together?

A lead planner for the parade, marketing major Caitlyn Nguyen, signed on for her first and last year in the role. Each year, the roster of parade planners is fully selected anew and this year, Nguyen made the cut.

CAITLYN NGUYEN: I actually really enjoy planning the parade as it’s a huge event. It’s one of, if not the longest standing tradition here at the University. So it was definitely daunting, but being able to figure out the ins and outs, and seeing how much effort and passion that goes into homecoming, especially the parade. 

LASSITER: When Nguyen dove in, she had some big shoes to fill. She started later than usual, in March of this year as opposed to the usual parade planning start time of January.

NGUYEN: That’s probably like the very first thing that we do is that everybody who wants to be in the parade, whether it be student groups, departments or we do have external entries that come in.

We’re like, “Hey, parade applications are open. If you want to be a part of it, please apply.” And then it’s open from, I believe, April until end of June. And then we go through it as a team and we go through each entry, making sure that they’re showcasing pride and spirit for the U, but also following our handbook. It is such a big event, so many people go to it.

LASSITER: Not only that, but as you may have noticed if you’re a student at the U, the parade is actually happening a month later than usual, in October instead of September.

Needless to say, the logistics of planning an outdoor parade a month later than usual in Minnesota includes planning for a way colder environment.

NGUYEN: It’s been a journey trying to figure out everything because we had a lot of concerns about weather and it gets dark super quickly. So having to work with our vendors but also just the students in the office and our homecoming team about how can we make this an enjoyable year for everybody because homecoming is such a prominent week here at the University, with all the changes happening. But, like, put our own twist to it, put our own spin to it. And we had to move a lot of our events indoors, but it worked out perfectly.

LASSITER: As a lead planner, Nguyen was involved in vetting the groups that applied to be a part of the parade. One of these groups was the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences Undergraduate Student Board, or CFANS USB for short.

Sophie Schneblin, the president of the student board, and Emma Kapinus, the vice president, have been hard at work preparing to represent CFANS in the upcoming parade. Part of what they want is to include as much of CFANS’ student population as possible.

SOPHIE SCHNEBLIN: So we a lot of times ask our representatives. So we have representatives from student clubs and organizations, from various different years in school from all different kinds of places.

Majors, clubs, organizations, sororities, fraternities, as many people and as much representation as we can get kind of in our little part of the parade is what we strive for.

EMMA KAPINUS: I want to say last year we had over 20 in our full group. Not sure on exact breakdowns from each category, but I would say it was over 20 in our group last year walking with us.

LASSITER: Once they’ve gathered up the people they want to represent the school, Schneblin and Kapinus told me they want to look into the crowd and see fans of CFANS.

SCHNEBLIN: One of the ways we do it is by what we pass out. We are very intentional about it. Of course, the University of Minnesota, more specifically CFANS, is home to the Honeycrisp Apple. So we were like, yes, we have to pass those out like that is us. That is such a great representation of what we are.

KAPINUS: So this year as similar to last, previous years, we will be having a tractor, which is provided to us through the farmhouse fraternity, which we are very grateful to have. And then we’ll be passing out honey sticks. We have apples.

SCHNEBLIN: I think just general swag that we have.

KAPINUS: Yeah.

SCHNEBLIN: Someone told me a story once of, like, a kid who, like, tried to give the apple back after we tried to give them an apple because they were just appalled that we were giving out fruit at a parade. Honestly, if I was a little kid at a parade I probably would have reacted the same, but I just think that’s so funny.

LASSITER: Like the house that gives out toothbrushes on Halloween.  

SCHNEBLIN: Exactly.

KAPINUS: Or, I think last year, the amount of people wanting us to, like, throw the apples at them. Which, I know I appreciate that they want the apples, but I’m a little nervous. That’s, there’s a lot of people standing around. That seems like an accident waiting to happen.

LASSITER: Yeah, if you throw the apples at them, you’d probably have to throw a liability waiver at them, too.

SCHNEBLIN: Yeah, right? Sign this first, then I’ll throw it. 

LASSITER: Alongside the CFANS undergrad student board and their tractor, some other unique groups will be crawling along the parade route in their own way. Like the waterski team with their boat, the nordic ski club with their roller skis and the St. Paul Bouncing Team with their, well, bouncing.

But of course, no one marches down University Avenue better than the Pride of Minnesota — the UMN Marching Band. Zainab Adebayo participated in the parade her previous three years at the University, but this will be her first homecoming in her new role as block captain, the second-in-command to the drum major.

ZAINAB ADEBAYO: To practice for our parades every time before our football games, we have something called GSR, which is Gopher Spirit Rally. And that’s essentially where you just kind of march around the stadium.

So we don’t really necessarily have to practice for the homecoming parade just because we’ve been practicing, like how to march in a parade since like our State Fair performance and every time we do GSR.

So yeah, I would say we practice by doing that and then anytime when we have our rehearsals, like, Monday through Thursday on non-game weeks. We’re just practicing like a high step or chair marching. So that kind of helps condition us a little bit.

LASSITER: And then after playing at the parade, the marching band has to rally yet again to play at the football game the very next day.

ADEBAYO: It can definitely be a little bit hard having to transition to that just because our call time for some of our 11 a.m. games are like 5 to 6 a.m. So definitely having to make sure we get a lot of sleep the night before, which can be a little hard, but.

LASSITER: Sorry, did you just say the call time for an 11 a.m. game is at 5 or 6 in the morning??  

ADEBAYO: Yeah, we’ll straight up have to show up in rehearsal, in block at like 6 a.m. And, yeah, we’ll rehearse our halftime show or like pre-game drill.

LASSITER: With a full roadmap of plan to parade to postgame, homecoming seems a lot more homey. It’s a little sad because, even though it’s a month later than usual, it is still my last one. By the time homecoming weekend does roll around, I’ll be nearly halfway through my senior year of college. Things are going to start zooming by quicker and quicker. So even if something doesn’t happen when you’re used to it taking place, savor it, because at least it’s happening at all.

This episode was written by Alex Lassiter and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in and feel free to send a message to our email inbox at podcasting@mndaily.com with any questions, comments, concerns or ideas for episodes you’d like to see us produce this season. I’m Alex, and this has been In The Know. Take care, y’all.

ALEX LASSITER: Hello, lovely people! It’s Alex Lassiter with the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.

As some of you may remember, I hosted a podcast back in April about training for a marathon, and that went about as well as it could go for someone who hadn’t trained for a marathon in years.

The sweat has spread, my breath is non-existent, my butt hurts for some reason, but I’m done.

If you listened to that episode, you may remember that Christopher Lundstrom, the professor of that class I ran with, was unavailable for an interview because he was in Paris. What you may not have known is that the runner he was training, Dakotah Lindwurm, not only qualified for the Olympic games, but ran in them and placed 12th overall. With the Twin Cities Marathon coming up at the start of October, I thought, if there’s any time post-Olympics to revisit this topic, it’s now.

DAKOTAH LINDWURM: It’s always the same type of workout. So you can compare, lightly, apples to apples. Of course, when you’re doing stuff that’s over like a hillier course, it’s harder to compare. We bumped up the mileage going into the Olympic trials up to 130 miles a week, and that seemed to work. So we kept that for the Paris training also.

LASSITER: Of course, Lindwurm didn’t go to the Olympics straight away. I mean, she wasn’t entered into a random drawing like the Hunger Games. Like every other athlete wanting to participate, Lindwurm had to earn her spot by running in the Olympic Qualifier Trials in Florida.

LINDWURM: For like two or three miles, I kind of knew I was in the position that I was going to make the team, but you can’t ever celebrate too early. And I was not really allowing myself to think too deeply about what was happening. 

But as soon as I crossed the finish line and it was very cemented that I would make the team and I was the third person to make it. I don’t know, like there’s not really words to describe what it’s like when all your dreams come true. It was the best day of my life for sure.

LASSITER: Lundstrom is a three-time Olympic Trials qualifier himself, and said a lot of his own training experience helped him to coach Lindwurm both before the trials, and in preparation for the games.

CHRISTOPHER LUNDSTROM: I guess the other thing is just thinking about the frequency of the really long, hard workouts. I think there’s a tendency to want to just pile on more and more. And somebody like Dakotah can really handle a lot of heavy training. But there is still a diminishing return and a point at which you’re working just for the sake of working versus actually getting some positive adaptations from it.

So, yeah, I definitely learned a lot and I’ve always been somebody who observes what everybody else is doing and tries to learn from all the different ways that people train.

LASSITER: Since the games were in Paris this year, Lindwurm and Lundstrom had to hop across the pond. I’m sure many of us, myself included, thought there was all this fanfare surrounding the athletes coming out to the host city. Maybe a space shuttle gets rented for each country so they can land in style? I dunno. But I found out, the commute to Paris was a lot more simple than I could have imagined.

LINDWURM: I think a lot of people think that all Olympic athletes travel together and like there’s this one plane that we’re all on and that’s not true. You kind of just fly out of wherever is convenient for you and they’re very flexible on when you want to go out.

Obviously, people are competing at different times. I was one of the last events, but I was actually out there a few days before the opening ceremonies. So yeah, we flew out of Minneapolis. I chose to use all of my miles to upgrade to Delta One, just to have a more comfortable flying experience, especially because I was still in the thick of training.

And yeah, it was definitely difficult. I think it took me a good week to get on Paris time, but once I was on their time zone, I felt very ready and comfortable.

LUNDSTROM: Yeah, I went over later. I was only there for the last few days before the marathon. So it was a little, probably a little bit more of a whirlwind for me getting in and landing in Paris.

LASSITER: Now, I’d imagine many of us haven’t actually competed in the Olympics before, so we can really only imagine what the atmosphere is actually like in the days leading up to your event. However, after landing in Paris for her very first Olympic games, Lindwurm got to experience it firsthand.

LINDWURM: It’s so hard to describe because it’s the thing I’ve worked for for so, so long and you have this, like, little belief that you can do something crazy like that and then it comes true and it almost feels like a fever dream. From the opening ceremonies, being on a boat with LeBron James chanting, “USA! USA!” with everybody in the rain. Like, that was a highlight for sure. 

During the opening ceremonies, I actually talked to and got a picture with Anthony Edwards, the Timberwolves all-star. So that was really special. I’ve become a fan over the last couple of years. And this last season with him was so much fun that I really geeked out when I saw him.

And then being on the starting line and looking left and right and seeing the best marathoners in the entire world. And knowing that when I crossed the finish line, I’d forever write my name down as an Olympian was just, I mean, it’s super special. It’s unlike anything else that I could ever think of.

LASSITER: Once the opening ceremonies had concluded, Lindwurm stayed in an AirBnB, far away from the cardboard beds the other athletes slept on. Though in case you were wondering, she did sleep on them for one night and told me they weren’t actually that bad. 

Aside from talking to her teammates, she kept herself in a bubble to help her sleeping, eating and training schedules stay consistent and healthy. As the day of the race approached, nerves were running wild. Both Lindwurm and Lundstrom were beside themselves with anticipation.

LUNDSTROM: I would say, for me, the really nerve wracking part and all of that is a couple, two, three weeks beforehand when you’re just hoping all the training and the preparation has been correct and that you’re not overdoing it, you’re doing enough and all of that. But from the point of the gun going off, I was just trying to really enjoy being there. 

LINDWURM: I think like the moments before was probably like the calmest I had been. That whole morning felt really, really calm for me. The day before, like the 48 hours leading up to it, I felt like I was a nervous wreck. So I was a little bit worried that I was using all my adrenaline, but I woke up and I was like, “Well, time to go to work, time to do the thing that I’ve been dreaming of doing for the last six months.”

It was different than any other race because obviously just being the Olympics had set up slightly different. And it was a lot of like, hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. They brought you to like a tent where you  stood and waited for like five minutes and then they’d rush you off to a different room and then you had to stand there and wait.

So it kind of just felt like, “Oh, I just want to get started.” Like, let’s get this going so that I can get to the finish line as fast as possible.

The first three miles were incredibly chaotic. Easily the most chaotic racing I’ve ever been a part of because it’s quite narrow and there’s so many people all together at that time. So I was just trying to stay on my feet for like the first three miles and focus on taking the shortest path, but also not getting tripped up. 

And then after that it was really just trying to, I try to go blank in my head is what I say, or like, just go brain dead for as long as possible. So you’re not really thinking about the pain or thinking about how much you have ahead of you. It really wasn’t until I got out to Versailles that I was like, “Oh! Oh my gosh. I’m nearly, I’m halfway done. I am feeling really good.”

LUNDSTROM: I had a chance to be about near the halfway mark where Dakotah had caught back up to the lead group and then in fact went up into the lead. So to be able to see that firsthand, right near the palace of Versailles, as far as Olympic experiences go, it was pretty iconic and amazing.

LINDWURM: Yeah, when I originally crossed the finish line, I didn’t know what place I was in for sure. It wasn’t until I got to media that I was told I was in 12th and I was pretty much immediately disappointed, um, because I knew, I could see 10th and I was like, “Oh, that would have—10th would have been really, really epic.” But I was just trying to keep a positive attitude. And I mean, 12th is something I can still really be proud of.

And I’m super happy with my race, but just as an elite athlete, I’m always going to want a little bit more. But it was pretty emotional. Like the moment crossing the finish line, because I knew that like forever, I could call myself an Olympian and I had a race that I knew I could be proud of. I’d be remiss to not mention I got engaged immediately after the race. So that’s definitely a highlight.

LASSITER: And once Lindwurm crossed that finish line, that was it. A few short hours later, and the closing ceremony was wrapping up. Lindwurm and Lundstrom went home. How do you even celebrate something as monumental as finishing an Olympic marathon?

LINDWURM: The first thing that I did, we landed and we were Ubering back to our home. And while we were Ubering home, we also Uber Eats’d Chipotle. We had been missing Chipotle very dearly.

LUNDSTROM: You know, I went from Paris to London, met my family in London for a little vacation afterwards. So I’m going to tell you what I did when I got to London, which was walk into an air conditioned AirBnB. There was no air conditioning anywhere I was staying in Paris and it was very hot. So I just sat down and enjoyed that nice cool air.

LASSITER: Even though she’s fresh off the 2024 Olympic Games, Lindwurm said she’s going to run again in 2028, and even as far out as 2032. She wants to keep going until her body physically won’t let her any more. And who could blame her? Even just getting to live out her Olympic experience vicariously through our interview gave me a glimpse into what it must be like to be a professional athlete.

The hours and hours poured into training, the mental preparation, meeting people you never thought you’d get to meet and walking up to that starting line like it’s just another day at the office. It’s truly an experience like no other. And the best part? I got all that without having to actually train for the marathon myself.

This episode was written by Alex Lassiter and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in and feel free to send a message to our email inbox at podcasting@mndaily.com with any questions, comments, concerns or ideas for episodes you’d like to see us produce this season. I’m Alex, and this has been In The Know. Take care, y’all.

ALEX LASSITER: Hello, lovely people! It’s Alex Lassiter with the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.

Well, gang, we’re back! And things are looking pretty busy on the UMN campus! This happens every single year, the U turns into such a ghost town when summer rolls around. But the second classes start back up again, it’s a swarm of students scrambling to cut their way through the crowd and get to class on time. In all the hustle and bustle of a fresh new school year, it’s easy to forget to relax.

Fortunately, there are quite a few events on the University campus that students can partake in to unwind and meet new people. One of these weekly events is trivia, co-hosted by Calvin Hume, where students can test their knowledge on various subjects like history, pop culture and Beyoncé.

CALVIN HUME: Well, I went to every trivia my freshman year and I just, I loved it so much. I loved the people who were hosting and I was like, I thought it’d be really cool if I could take over that someday and then, one random day they just said, “We’re hiring, come apply!”

And then I was like, “Okay,” and then I applied, got the interview, and got the job. I thought it just seemed like a really good place to get a community and make a lot of friends, and I’ve done that so far, so it’s been a really good opportunity.

LASSITER: And through this position, Hume found his community. His co-host, Noah Schmidt, wanted to help make the space more welcoming to people seeking community, and get really creative with planning the themes.

NOAH SCHMIDT: I would just say that when I was a freshman, I just tried out some of the events, and I always went in thinking they seemed kind of fun. I always had a lot more fun than I thought I was going to have. And so it’s just a great way to hang out with your friends with, like, a specific something to do.

I really liked the Audience Choice Trivia we did at the end of the year last year. Just because we just like mashed a whole ton of the recommendations people did into one big trivia. And that was really fun. And also I got to make a Muppets round where people had to guess the silhouette of the Muppet. And that was a big hit. It was super, it was so much fun.

LASSITER: And the themes don’t stop there! This semester, attendees will be tested on their knowledge of reality TV, comics and RuPaul. Your expertise on niche topics will be stretched to the limit no matter where you come from, even if it’s from a galaxy far, far away.

SCHMIDT: I’m really excited for Star Wars trivia, just because that’s over Homecoming, and so I know that usually the energy around Homecoming events is a lot higher and more fun. And also, we have a lot of fun prizes and stuff picked out, and it’s going to be a really good time.

HUME: And that was really fun, because me and my old co-host Crystal, we both dressed up. I wore a Stormtrooper costume. We had cardboard cutouts. We kind of went all-out for that one, and that one was really fun. Or Glee Trivia, which was the first one last spring. Because that one we had, we brought it in like a slushie machine. Gave out slushies to all the people who came. 

I think they’re just a really fun time for any student. That’s not just freshmen. We have lots of regulars who’ve come every year of their college experience and they’ve come up and told us, like, “Yeah, we’ve been coming since freshman year and it’s been such a great tradition.” And, like, these traditions are what really has bonded a lot of friends and made people meet new people.

LASSITER: So I paid a visit to Thursday trivia to check it out for myself, and it was about as high intensity as I was expecting.

The crowd that popped out filled up the entire gameroom. And some of the questions were really cool. There was a whole section on events from just this past summer and a portion where players had to guess a whole song by listening to a small sample.

On the way out of the event hall, I caught up to a group of players and stopped them to ask about their trivia-going experience. Turns out, they’d also had a tradition of visiting the trivia hall since freshman year.

TRIVIA GROUP: As freshmen, you know, there’s like, I don’t know. Everyone’s always looking for like more things to do and we saw a trivia was happening on Thursdays and we’re like, “Hey, this might be something fun for us to do, you know?” And we went as a giant group and it kind of came out as a tradition whenever we could.

LASSITER: So you guys have been coming since, like, freshman year-ish?

GROUP: Pretty much, yeah. Yeah. With a few, like, other friends. But yeah, like, we just kind of went as a big group. Just, yeah, kind of just, I think we’d, like, meet up in the dining hall, and we’d be like, “Let’s go to trivia!” So then we would go just as a big group. It was fun.

LASSITER: Have you guys ever won?

GROUP: Nope. Never won, but we’ve gotten so close. We’ve gotten third place. Multiple times. And second. And second. Multiple times. That’s why we keep coming back.

LASSITER: Trivia takes place every Thursday in Goldy’s Gameroom in the basement of Coffman Memorial Union. It, like Bingo on Wednesdays, is a consistent event that students can attend weekly with friends, making it super easy to slot into a busy routine filled with classes and work. But what if you’re looking for something a little more spontaneous?

Jordan Martinez, a social event planner with Student Unions & Activities, organized a ton of upcoming events, like tote bag making on Sept. 20 at Coffman, and a Wes Anderson movie marathon on Sept. 27 at the St. Paul student center.

JORDAN MARTINEZ: I really find it that a lot of people enjoy the craft events that we host on campus. The resources of just having a free event and things for people to do on weekdays, or weekends instead of going out and stuff. Like we have an opportunity to change that and just give the students something else to do. 

We know that it’s always hard to, like, meet new people on campus. But we just encourage those that are interested in it to just come and stop by and we’ll be more than willing to, like, hang out with you and talk to you about stuff that’s always happening on campus.

LASSITER: Last Saturday, I took a trip back to Coffman Memorial Union, this time going behind the building for a bonfire event featuring games, tie-dye shirts and s’mores.

A swarth of students, freshman and beyond, had shown up to ring in the first Saturday of the new school year. And I won’t lie, it certainly helped that there was a food truck. I’m not kidding when I say that when it opened up, people were getting out of line for the main event in favor of the flavor. When I asked a group of girls waiting in line to get some munchables what the main reason they came to the event was, they all shared the exact same answer.

So what inspired you, yeah, to come out to this event tonight? Like, what was the main draw for you?

GIRLS: The food. The food. The food. The food, and they had like a movie going on, and they had more than like one thing happening at the same time. Yeah, definitely, there was, like, stuff, yeah. And it’s free.

LASSITER: Yeah, the variety and the freeness of it all? That’s super great. So have you guys actually been inside the space yet?

MEREDITH ANELLA: Yes, I tie-dyed a shirt. 

CAMDYN ORTH: And then the food opened up, so we came over here, but there’s s’mores that we probably will go try out.

LASSITER: So the food really is the main draw of tonight?

GIRLS: Oh, 100%.

LASSITER: I do not blame you, absolutely, it looks like good food.

The freshman girls you just heard, Grace Pierce, Camdyn Orth and Meredith Anella, said they hadn’t seen anything with this level of interactivity.

The girls had come from a Gopher football game earlier in the day, and had also visited a lot more campus events than I had back in my freshman year. They said the wide variety of activities helped them to form new connections.

ORTH: Like I’ve met so many people, like going out and doing things. Like it’s a good opportunity.

ANELLA: It’s like you don’t have to just come here and talk to people, like there’s stuff to do. You could start a conversation next to the person you’re tie-dyeing a shirt with. Like, you don’t have to walk up to someone and be like, “Hi.”

GRACE PIERCE: Everything you go to is going to be a new opportunity and a new memory. So, like, why not go and enjoy campus while you’re here?

LASSITER: There are a ton of super unique one-time events happening all throughout the year, but even the consistent ones like Bingo each Wednesday and Trivia each Thursday change their themes every week, so the questions and prizes can keep you coming back again and again.

And of course, a huge thanks to the Student Unions and Activities for putting these events together. The U is a really big campus, and in the swirling whirlwind of class and work and life, sometimes we just forget to slow down and say hello to the people around us. But it becomes just a little bit easier in an event space like these. Plus, if I’ve learned anything from hosting this episode, you can get anyone to come anywhere if you’re offering free food.

This episode was written by Alex Lassiter and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in and feel free to send a message to our email inbox at podcasting@mndaily.com with any questions, comments, concerns or ideas for episodes you’d like to see us produce this season. I’m Alex, and this has been In The Know. Take care, y’all.