Mike Rusch hosts "the underview.," a podcast focused on regional conversations about belonging in Northwest Arkansas. The goal is to move beyond national political divisions to find common ground through shared local values. The Bentonville High School graduate says he grew up thinking he'd have to leave Arkansas to be successful, but now explores how residents can build community together despite disagreements. Ozarks at Large's Matthew Moore spoke with Rusch about his approach of starting conversations with curiosity rather than predetermined solutions, covering topics from corporate influence to faith's role in regional identity.
Matthew Moore: Mike Rush grew up in Northwest Arkansas. Mike is also the host of a podcast called "the underview", a show he calls a regional conversation about belonging. He's a graduate of Bentonville High School. He's lived here for 40 years, but he says as a teenager and young adult, he wasn't sure Arkansas was a place he could stay.
Mike Rush: Even though this was the state, the land of opportunity at the time, this was not a place well known for opportunities for advancement outside of retail. Obviously, our state has had a history of being economically depressed. I grew up with this mindset that if I wanted to be successful, if I wanted to achieve things, those things couldn't happen here.
I don't know if that came from the environment or my own self-talk, or maybe that's what every teenager thinks. But that was a mindset I carried.
Honestly, we moved here from Austin, Texas, at the time. My earlier years before growing up in Arkansas were based in other places that maybe had more of a vibrancy I understood. That didn't mean the vibrancy wasn't here. It was just something I was not aware of.
Matthew Moore: Bentonville looks a lot different now than it did when you were a high school student. How has that changed? Are you able to experience that as someone with hindsight, or is it a bit of the boiled frog — hard to recognize how much change has happened because you've been here for much of it?
Mike Rush: That's a great question. It may be a chicken-and-the-egg kind of thing. We bought a home in downtown Bentonville about 12 years ago, and it was right around that time that things really started changing — with the opening of Crystal Bridges, demand to move downtown, housing vendors moving in.
I think all at that same time, things started to really change. We experienced that, if I'm honest, from a place of privilege — being in downtown Bentonville and watching the redevelopment of downtown, trails coming in, people from all over the world moving in as Walmart continued to grow. It just created a beautiful place.
As Crystal Bridges opened and Downtown Bentonville Incorporated started creating First Friday events and farmers markets, it feels like we got to experience the change in real time. It was a significant change, and from a quality-of-life standpoint for my family, it was one we welcomed and enjoyed.
I could not afford my house today if I needed to buy in that area. I understand our story is probably not typical, and we've been very lucky to be in the place we are to see the change we have.
Growth and changes have been a challenge, and I think that's a lot of my curiosity — growing up here and asking, what is happening here? What's going on? Why are the challenges that we have the way they are? Why are people making the decisions that they are? I think all of that gets rolled up into a pretty bow I've been trying to unpack for a very long time.
Matthew Moore: The podcast you're the host of is called "the underview". Significance to the name?
Mike Rush: "The underview" is taken from this idea of a legal brief that if we're going to have a debate, the most likely counterargument to wherever we start is going to be X, Y, or Z. We put that in "the underview" in the form of a debate to basically say, I hear you, let's move on from that. This is not going to be our typical conversation where we're going to debate the things that have already been in the public record or debate the things we've already settled in some way. I wanted to start from somewhere else.
I think our national dialogue has been at this place of national ideologies. The goal was, can we change that? Those national ideologies become brick walls we don't seem to be able to get around as a culture. Can we change that to a regional-based conversation? Can we talk about the things you value? Those values become pliable, things we can agree on together even though we may apply them in different ways.
If I understand the values you have about this place and we share this place, then the idea would be we have to be able to find common ground or at least a common appreciation for each other, even if we disagree. We share this space and this place, and ultimately we're going to share in its fate as well.
Matthew Moore: Why do it in podcast form instead of just in a private dialogue?
Mike Rush: The podcast came out of all those private conversations that, when we sat with people — whether it be at the city level, working in the nonprofit world, or in advocacy — seemed to be able to move people toward solutions. The question was, can we take some of these conversations we're having and, just from living here for as long as we have, use our relationships with people making significant decisions about what happens in this area to bring them into a more public forum?
This has allowed us to take those conversations about values and hopefully spread them to a larger audience who can begin to understand and participate. Frankly, we can start our conversations at a different place.
I took a philosophy class in college, and one of the things that stuck with me was a phrase the professor said: one of the best ways to have a conversation is to start it by saying, "I don't know, but let's find out."
Matthew Moore: I hear a lot of that in your conversations — you come into them not necessarily with ignorance but without a solution, inviting your guests to find out together. You're talking about education, tourism, Tyson — a lot of different things — but with that ethos of, "I don't know the answer, but let's find out how to get there together."
Mike Rush: Thank you. I'm just driven by natural curiosity. I think everybody is. If that's the posture we can take, it's going to open us up to things we don't understand.
I'm a 50-year-old white male who grew up in a pretty privileged area of the country with a great economic story. I have to realize that is not the universal truth of what's happening in this place. Part of this is me trying to remove my biases and be open to how others view it. My belonging cannot come at the expense of someone else.
If we're all able to belong in this space and have a reasonable dialogue about what that looks like, that belonging will help mine as well. I don't need to have the answers. I believe the people who live in our community and work on these problems probably have really good solutions, or at least they're trying from a place of best intentions.
It can't start with me telling you what I think. It has to start with me listening, asking questions, and being in a posture to listen, learn, and be changed by it. If I come into a conversation saying, "Nothing you say will change my mind," we're not going to get anywhere.
Matthew Moore: You talked about how when you go into conversations, you have a bit of a preconceived notion or an expectation of how the conversation is going to go, and you're perpetually surprised. Can you give an example of one of those?
Mike Rush: Oh, gosh. I feel like I could give you an example from every conversation I've had. Maybe let's talk about back in July, when you had a conversation with Olivia Pascal, talking about the three big Fortune 500 companies based here in Northwest Arkansas — J.B. Hunt, Walmart and Tyson.
Matthew Moore: What were the preconceived notions you had going into that conversation, and what surprised you about what Olivia had to say?
Mike Rush: Part of that conversation with Olivia was the starting premise that there are just things in this area we're not supposed to talk about. On one hand, I understand — I've lived here, I feel that. It causes me to pause in some of those areas. But I think these conversations are important, because if there are things in our community we can't unpack, and if we love this area but can't critique it, do we love it?
The reality is these companies didn't come out of nowhere. They're unique to the Ozarks in that they were local companies. I don't know if they ever dreamed they would be the size they are, but they are, and that's our reality today. As you deconstruct and look at the history of how this region formed, how power formed, how politics formed, you can't negate that these corporations have played a role in that.
When you step into uncomfortable spaces about trying to talk about things that may be, as Olivia said, taboo, it gives us freedom to have a different conversation — not critique for the sake of critique, but critique in the interest of moving forward together.
How do I have belonging when certain entities — corporations, nonprofits, whatever they may be — have such an outsized influence on what this place is becoming? I think peeling those conversations back and opening them up is important.
I don't know if that answers your question about what was most surprising, but the process of being uncomfortable in those conversations is key. You know yourself here at NPR, it’s uncomfortable because you don’t want to create controversy for the sake of controversy. You don’t want to critique for the sake of critiquing. The biggest obstacle is making sure we understand motivations going in.
I've had a lot of feedback on that conversation — much of it really good — about maybe giving permission to have conversations most people would be uncomfortable having, including myself.
Matthew Moore: What are conversations you haven’t had yet that you’re looking forward to — whether it’s a topic or a specific person?
Mike Rush: When you orient a conversation around belonging, everybody has a voice in that. Literally, I could have a conversation with half a million people — half a million episodes — and I’d learn something from every one.
One underlying theme when we talk about belonging, especially over the past two seasons, has been this element of faith and its relationship to belonging. How does Southern Bible Belt culture play into that? How do politics play into it?
There’s no one person who can speak for that, and no single perspective that is “right.” There are a lot of different perspectives. As we’ve touched on those topics in previous episodes, people have shown they want to understand how our faith systems — not just exclusively Christian, although that is the majority influence here — shape our understanding of belonging and influence how we grow.
Matthew Moore: When I hear you talk, one of the words that bubbles up into my mind is dignity. When you think about the conversations you’re having and the episodes you’re producing, what does the word dignity mean to you in the framework of what you’re doing here?
Mike Rush: Dignity is the essence of who we are as human beings. I think Brene Brown said dignity is one of the only human emotions you can’t give to yourself. It’s something that can be taken from you, and something that can be granted to you, but you can’t give it to yourself.
As a society, it’s important we reinforce and recognize the dignity every human being carries simply because they’re human. We should build it up, not take it away. Unfortunately, our national politics often feels like it’s in a constant state of taking away that dignity.
We need to start from seeing each other not as labels or political colors but as neighbors and friends who share a space and will share the consequences of what we decide to do here.
Someone once asked me if I considered myself a patriot. I’m a Marine Corps veteran — I’ve worn that flag and raised that flag — but patriotism, in its roots, means you and I will fight together, in a good way, for the preservation of our shared space, whether we agree or not. Concern for our local space, rooted in seeing each other’s dignity, is what will hold us together and move us forward.
Matthew Moore: When you hear from folks who listen to the podcast, friends or strangers, what feedback surprises you the most?
Mike Rush: People often want me to go farther. They want me to push harder, to be more inflammatory — not necessarily in a bad way — but I want to preserve a space where everyone feels welcome to come to the table. Pushing harder one way or the other might make people listen for a moment, but it can also entrench us.
The hardest thing is finding that ground where people feel we can all meet and have a constructive conversation. People have firmly entrenched positions, which is why the format of these conversations — sometimes an hour or more — lets us work through those positions so that, whether you agree or not, we at least come to a place of understanding.
Matthew Moore: I think what I hear from you is you’re not interested in creating silos — maybe the opposite, like a meadow, where anything can grow and flourish, and any well-reasoned idea is welcome.
Mike Rush: Our culture and institutions already do a good job of creating silos. They don’t need my help. National and state dialogue can also create silos — you’re on my team or you’re not, no middle ground. And with social media, I can look at your feed and think I know everything about you, except I don’t actually know you.
I sometimes purposely go into conversations that will be uncomfortable or that people might not agree with, for the principle of being inclusive of all perspectives. Usually what prevents us from doing that is fear, and I refuse to be afraid of those conversations.
We’re afraid to reckon with certain things because we fear that if injustice was done in the past, injustice must be done today to make it right. But I don’t hear that from the indigenous or formerly enslaved communities I’ve spoken with. Justice, reconciliation, and repair mean being honest about our history, hearing perspectives, and then asking, “What do we do about this today?”
We need to create systems and institutions that prevent injustice from happening again and that recognize people’s inherent dignity. We can’t go around hard topics, erase them, or pretend they’re not there. We have to go through them.
If that opens up conversations between people who otherwise wouldn’t sit at the same table, then as a community we’ve made progress. I see that happen all the time, and that encourages me to keep pushing into those spaces.
Matthew Moore: Mike Rush is the host of the podcast "the underview". He joined me last week in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio Two. You can find "the underview" wherever you listen to podcasts.
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