It was an excellent year for the Plain Talk podcast. Our audience grew by leaps and bounds and is larger than ever.

For that ,we have you to thank, dear listener. Thank you for tuning in.

This Christmas, we wanted to reflect on the year that was, and the year that's ahead of us. On this episode of Plain Talk, Chad Oban and I talk about the highlights (and lowlights) of 2024.

The Doug Burgum era of North Dakota politics came to an end, and the Kelly Armstrong era has begun. The North Dakota Republican went through a bruising primary season, but emerged after the general election as dominant as ever. At the national level, former President Donald Trump became president once again.

We talk about all that, and more, and also look ahead to what 2025 might have in store for us.

And, most of all, Chad and I and everyone involved in producing the Plain Talk podcast hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday.

If you want to participate in Plain Talk, just give us a call or text at 701-587-3141. It’s super easy — leave your message, tell us your name and where you’re from, and we might feature it on an upcoming episode. To subscribe to Plain Talk, search for the show wherever you get your podcasts or use one of the links below.

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McLean County State's Attorney Ladd Erickson has not been mincing words in his reaction to some of President Joe Biden's pardons that impact our region. He's called them "ridiculous" and "despicable," though he wants to be clear that this didn't have anything to do with politics.

"Some of the stuff that President Trump said he's going to pardon is despicable," he said on this episode of Plain Talk. But at least one of Biden's pardons is very, very personal to him.

Erickson was involved in bringing Hunter Hanson to justice. Hanson defrauded dozens of people to the tune of about $11 million, but as Erickson explained to us on the show, his victim pool is larger than that. Whole businesses, some of which were the pillars of their small, rural communities, collapsed as a result of Hanson's actions.

And President Biden commuted his sentence. Why? "I have no idea," Erickson told us, "and that's one of the frustrations."

Also on this episode, Sen. Dale Patten, a Republican from Watford City, weighs in on the controversy over the proposed Maah Daah Hey National Monument. A group of activists are pushing hard to get President Biden to create this monument with an executive order on his way out of office, but Patten says it's far too big a decision to be made unilaterally in Washington D.C.

"This is 140,000 acres," he said. "This is twice the size of Theodore Roosevelt National Park."

He also said that Biden using the authority of the Antiquities Act would be in appropriate. "It's a circumvention of congressional intent when wilderness is declared a national monument."

Patten said his criticism of the project isn't political. "As the proposal sits, I don't care who the president is, there would be opposition." He would prefer that local stakeholders in North Dakota -- from agricultural interests to industrial interests to tribes and all levels of state and local government -- work together on a plan to address whatever protections these lands need.

"Do we need to include the federal to do that? No we don't," he said.

If you want to participate in Plain Talk, just give us a call or text at 701-587-3141. It’s super easy — leave your message, tell us your name and where you’re from, and we might feature it on an upcoming episode. To subscribe to Plain Talk, search for the show wherever you get your podcasts or use one of the links below.

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A national survey reports that a shocking number of Americans under the age of 30 condone the murder of health industry CEO Brian Thompson, an act allegedly committed by Luigi Mangione.

Me and Chad Oban discuss that survey on this episode of Plain Talk. Do the people justifying the murder of Thompson understand that people they don't like so much might decide to play by the same rules? What happens when other sorts of political extremists begin justifying violence this way?

Also on this episode, a coalition calling itself Together for School Meals has formed to begin advocacy for legislation that would pay for school lunches for all North Dakota students. Tony Burke, a government affairs director for the American Heart Association, which is one of the groups in this coalition, joined us to make the case for the initiative.

"It's broader than just school lunches," he told us, arguing that it's "about healthy students."

How much will the initiative cost? How will it be implemented? What impacts will it have on existing federal funding for North Dakota's school lunch program? We asked, and Burke answered.

If you want to participate in Plain Talk, just give us a call or text at 701-587-3141. It’s super easy — leave your message, tell us your name and where you’re from, and we might feature it on an upcoming episode. To subscribe to Plain Talk, search for the show wherever you get your podcasts or use one of the links below.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts | Episode Archive