(theme music) (theme music) Welcome to a new season of prairie fire.

I'm your host Sarah Edwards, now it's not often we get visits from high profile Hollywood writers and actors here on this show, but this episode is going to be an exception.

Bob and Bill Odenkirk grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and they've built careers as top Hollywood comedy writers.

Two time Emmy winner.

Bob Odenkirk launched his career writing for second city in Chicago, and then Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

He started acting in The Ben Stiller Show and had a recurring role in The Larry Sanders Show.

Odenkirk created and starred in the HBO sketch comedy series mr.

Show with Bob and David from 1995 to 1998 he's best known these days for his role playing the shady lawyer Saul Goodman on the AMC series, Breaking Bad and the spin off Better Call Saul in 2025 he released the action film nobody two, which follows the success of the first nobody film.

Bob's younger brother Bill Odenkirk had a much different route to comedy's top writer ranks.

Bill Odenkirk was drawn to science after high school, earning a PhD in inorganic chemistry before he began pursuing comedy writing.

He joined his brother Bob as a writer for mr.

Show, and then went on to write episodes of Tenacious D Futurama and many episodes of The Simpsons.

More recently, he's written episodes of the Netflix animated series disenchantment.

Bill and Bob Odenkirk.

Welcome to Prairie Fire.

Hi.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here.

You guys grew up in Naperville, Illinois, and from what I've read, you were kind of raised by a really dynamic mother and a father who was kind of not so dynamic.

Let's put and you know, I found What's the opposite of dynamic?

I guess you wrote a bit of your mother's obituary.

It says, as great and committed as Barbara was as a mother, Walter was a polar opposite, and never seemed fully committed to the enterprise of having and raising a passel of antecedents.

So how do you think that that difference between your mom and dad kind of helped you you all kind of become especially comedy department most guys, when you grow up, you try to be the opposite of your dad.

So that was that meant we worked really hard, and we had fewer children.

And, you know, we, I think we, we to be sort of like honest, in a way that's very personal.

We're both sort of deeply responsible people, and so are many of our brothers and sisters.

It's almost like we're that's actually a challenge, right?

Is like, I don't know by if you think the same thing.

I think, yeah, I know.

I think it taught us a negative, positive lesson to sort of be present for your your family and and responsible, but you can overdo that too, right?

And, of course we will, and then our kids will do the opposite, yeah.

So it's a wonderful, terrible cycle.

It's kind of, you know, you also kind of allude to, you know, the great things about growing up.

It was a lovely we had a great time and and we had a lot of tension.

In the background was tension and uncertainty, and then in the foreground was laughter and goofing around and energy.

And, well, my mom, we should say there were seven children in the family.

So my mom, it was like, growing up in the army, you kind of like had to obey orders, and then you were kind of forgotten about.

So we had a lot of freedom.

Just spent days doing whatever we wanted.

Naperville is a pretty safe town, and so we could just be on our own a great deal.

Now, Did you are you guys the only ones who went the Hollywood direction and everybody else is responsible and has 401 K, you know, Bob was the one was really interested in entertainment industry in general, yeah, but no, Bob was really into improv and all that stuff at an early age.

And I, I kind of, you know, we were very close, and still are.

I was into science, and I pursued a chemistry degree, yeah, could you yeah?

Pack that a bit, because there's a huge difference between getting your BA in chemistry and then getting your master's PhD, discovering a new molecule and then going to come, yeah, I What is, while I was in, while I was in graduate school, or before I hit graduate school, Bob had gone to Saturday Night Live, and which was, you know, really exciting for him and for me too, because it's the first time I went to New York.

Was to see him at Saturday Night Live and hang out.

And so, you know, Bob included me in a lot of his writing and what he was doing at the time.

And so I got a taste of writing and meeting a lot of great writers, Conan O'Brien, Robert Smigel, these are big names, obviously, Conan, everyone knows.

But, you know, it was a, it was a safe way for me to kind of leave science and go into into writing and comedy, which I really loved and really grateful for.

What Bob did.

Bill helped me a lot too, because so when Robert Smigel, a famous Saturday Night Live writer and a famous comedy writer of our time, one of the greats, he would rely on me.

We had been roommates in Chicago, and I would help him.

When I went to Saturday Night Live I'm relying on Bill as a voice outside of the show who has time and interest to sit around and hear my bull and also pitch me his bull.

Yeah.

So it was gradual process, as crazy as it sounds, but still, you know, when I got out to Hollywood and was working at the Simpsons and Futurama was another show I'm still writing for.

You know, a lot of those people had advanced science degrees or law degrees from like Harvard and Yale, that the Simpsons, and in particular the Simpsons and Futurama are two shows that I would be curious someone to find out the advanced degrees at those two shows.

How many people at those two shows have doctorates?

Yeah.

Well, there's a lot of people with law degrees.

As I said, too, lot of people, law makes more sense, though, because it's about logic and it's about language.

And so I get that connection to comedy.

You know, a lawyer almost, you know, is paid to think around a problem or to turn something inside out, and that's what you do as a comedian, right?

So that makes sense.

Chemistry, not so much, and the others, not so much, you know, but it did.

But they, they exist.

It's real.

What do you think?

And this is a question that's been on my mind since I moved back here seven years ago.

What do you think of good, solid Midwest upbringing?

What is it about this area, the state, the people that you meet, that that you've taken with you that adds to your success today.

I know it's a weird kind of expansive question, but Well, there's Midwestern comedy comes out of Chicago, right?

I mean, look at all the great star night live performers and stand ups too, who came from Chicago.

I think you have a humility when you live in the Midwest, you feel, you know, obviously Second City is the name for a theater and and it's a name that was borrowed from a name first Chicago, the second city.

It's you're the underdog, you, you and you.

And as a result, you have a suspicious chip on your shoulder towards all the whatever's happening, whatever's hype and happening and and that's good for comedy, because that's what comedy does.

Comedy undermines.

Growing up here lends itself to that look at that perspective on the world that wants to poke at the world and doesn't take things seriously.

To turn that around.

Why do you guys, you know, it might be good time to step back.

And, you know, why do you continue to do comedy?

Why do you continue to poke?

And you know, you could be discovering another moment, retiring in the because it's fun.

You laugh.

It is fun.

And I think, you know, look, I mean, I'm don't write particularly political material, but I think that you know you you're anything you're writing is examining something important or maybe even mundane in life that you have a question about or bothers you, usually just irritates you, and so as long as there are irritating things in the world, yeah, comedy, yeah, yeah, so please keep irritating us.

You know, nobody quits show business.

You can't show business quits people, yeah, but show business quits you, yeah, that's true.

That's true.

May I ask next projects, what you're working on, what's coming up?

Oh, yeah, go ahead, Bob.

I had a movie just three days ago play at TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival, a real fun movie, a comedy action film called nor.

Normal.

So that's done.

That'll hopefully come out next year.

And then I have a documentary I climb Machu Picchu with my old comedy partner, David Cross, and it's a documentary about friendship, really, with a lot of comedy thrown in and a little bit of history and a lot of huffing and puffing and so that hopefully will play somewhere, will be available next year.

We're cutting it together.

Now I'm working on a show that my son wrote.

He's a funny writer and and I'm going to develop a few more films.

I'm going to take a break because I've sort of worked straight for about a year and a half.

Two years I did a Broadway show, I did two movies, I did the documentary and other things.

So I'm going to just take a break and do that thing where you ask yourself, you know, what would I want to put out there now?

And I do know, I'm going to try it a couple more action films, because, strangely enough, it has just been very fun.

It's really fun to pretend to beat up a lot of people.

It looks pretty painful.

Nobody to know.

And Ouch, yeah, but it's fun.

It's really fun to do.

Can I ask you a question?

Yeah, do you ever get hit?

Actually hit?

The truth is, the stunt guys that are around you are incredible pros, and they're so their job is number one to make sure you're safe.

That's their number one job, and then number two is to make you look good.

And so they should work harder, but they, I'll tell you, they would, they wouldn't do it, but I would almost hit them sometimes, because I'm a little less skilled than them, but they even catch that.

They're just sort of very overt.

And I must get the only way you get hurt.

Yeah, you get bruised a little bit.

Oftentimes you hit your hands on things, because when you go to the actual set, it's some it's very often dimension wise, not quite exactly what you trained in.

When you train, you train with they set up cardboard boxes where the walls will be and but then when you're at a real place, there's like pipes and stuff that wasn't there.

And so my experience now I've made three action films, is that when you when I get hurt, it's I usually hit my hands on some thing that wasn't really a part of the dimensions that we practiced in.

It's no big deal.

So my project, yes, yes, yes, right?

I'm working on where I just finished a light of season, Futurama, which I'm doing writing from here, from champagne with other writers.

But that's the blessing in zoom has been that as a writer, you can live pretty much anywhere.

We have a couple of writers for Futurama live in LA.

One lives in upstate Washington.

One lives in North Carolina and Nova Scotia, and we all meet on Zoom.

So it's been fantastic.

We wrote a project together about a year and a half ago with David really a great, great project that did not make it all the way to the screen because the will all the reasons that things get killed, but it's a really good one, but that, sadly, was purchased and then killed.

But we'll do more together.

Yeah?

Well, Bill's got the right idea.

No, while you can write from home, no wildfires, yeah, I know, yep.

Wait a second, will a this is called Prairie Fire.

Oh, that's true.

Touche, I can't believe you.

Bob Odenkirk, do a show that is celebrating the worst thing that can happen in the Midwest.

Remind you of the very worst thing that could happen.

For your information, it is about the fire that we made.

Well, the metaphor created the metaphorical prairie fire so that we know that that's just awkward.

Bob and Bill Odenkirk, thank you so much thanks for having us.

It was so much fun having them here.

But now I want to switch from comedy to culinary.

A few months ago, I was having my hair done at the salon by my stylist, Maggie, and she mentioned that she had just been out for the best meal of her entire life, and the restaurant was in the tiny town of Lexington, Illinois.

And I said, Well, that sounds like a really great story.

We hope you think so too.

So how did I end up in Lexington?

Well, I remember being on a bike ride and riding through here, and I was just like, it's such a cute little town.

The building used to be a train depot, and the place was quite.

Light and dark.

And I was just like, hmm.

So I just kind of went up to the porch and just put my face up into the window.

And I was just like, Oh, that's really beautiful.

So we come back out, and they opened the door, and as soon as they, like, opened the door, and I rolled in here, there was, there was just a smell.

It smelled of old wood.

I was just like, this is the place.

This is the place I was born and raised in, Bloomington, normal.

So I've lived in central Illinois my whole life, a lot of hanging out in the kitchen, watching Mom Dad also kind of being a single father.

You know, both single parents, my brother and I were always really, really close.

Steve was two years older than I was, and so I was kind of the pain in the butt tag along.

School never really was my cup of tea.

I wanted to have too much fun.

My brother played guitar, and then was in a reggae African band here in Bloomington that he kind of got together with some buddies, and then I was like, Well, I want to do that, you know.

So I learned how to play bass guitar, and both Steve and I are people who like working with their hands.

And my brother and I, we painted.

Painting wasn't necessarily something I really wanted to do, but I, no matter what I do, I really want to do it.

Well, I know I had always had an entrepreneurial spirit that, you know, I got from my mom, and I knew I always wanted to do, like a cafe or food or something like that, you know, in a way.

So 2008 I was like, I had enough money in the bank, and then I taught myself kind of how to cook, in a way, a guy who worked for me when I was painting, he was from Mexico, and he took me to this little, this little hidden taco kitchen, and It was really, really, kind of like my aha moment, kind of like with food, and you walked in there, and it was like being privy into a part of a community that existed in Bloomington that you wouldn't get to be part of unless you knew somebody who knew somebody, everybody coming in, sharing tacos, eating food.

And I was like, I've got to do this.

And so I kind of took that as a model.

How do I start something?

I wanted to have my own business.

I'd been my own boss forever.

I like being my own boss.

And then there was a guy who I worked with, and he's like, Hey, John, what are you doing?

Man, what do you want to do?

You know, what's your what's your end goal?

So I'm talking to him about this and and they were talking food trucks and something like this.

And he's like, hey, just want to show you something.

So on the way back, we drive by this place, and he shows me this English double decker bus that was parked in Bloomington.

And I'm like, I'm like, well, that's gonna be a food truck.

This is where the kitchen's gonna be, and this is gonna be, like, I knew exactly I had already envisioned it all out.

And we started a food truck, and we built out this English double decker bus, and we had a kitchen on the bottom.

We had seating up top of like, 23 people.

We brought something to Bloomington, normal that, you know, at the time, only big cities saw I started doing my own little underground restaurant out of my house.

We did brunches and we did little tasting menu, and it was like all word of mouth.

We called it the underground.

It was a beautiful space, and like, one long communi table, and then, like, my kitchen kind of butted right up to it.

Our initial run of it, I remember we planned the menu, and we did this seven course tasting menu out of this cookbook called Le pigeon, which was a restaurant that we both idolized in Portland, Oregon, and it was just perfect.

The music was right, the vibe was right, the food was right, and it was just like, it's still, I still see people who were there, and we still talk about it crystal clear of just like our most favorite food experience.

You in a way, this is a scaled up version of the underground.

You can see that in the way we've kind of set up the dining room.

It feels a little bit like somebody's living room.

Tables are close together.

It's not a large space.

Vision of the food was rooted in seasonality and using local produce through a European lens, kind of the concept of hot, low, right?

You know, elevated stuff, but like, in a casual way, which is not, you know, I don't want it to be stiff.

I wanted great service and Genuine Hospitality and excellent food.

John is incredibly friendly, but he is demanding.

It's you.

He's got a high standard that he wants to see, and he wants every guest to see.

We'll have chicken and seafood so and then our starters are where we really kind of get to be a little bit more adventurous.

We always do, like a handmade pasta too.

I love doing pasta, things that I can get locally as much as I can outside of, obviously, the seafood, for me, the place has kind of become what like restaurants should be in that we are really looking for as local as possible when it comes to our purveyors and producers, and we just try and get as local as possible.

The seasons are really what's dictating what's going on and what's coming off of the farms.

So we have our herbs in the garden in the back, you know, so, like, we're doing a corn torte lonely, which is so ridiculously good.

The menu is built a little bit like the definitely, like, you know, our shareables.

It's how I love to eat.

We want you to try all of this different stuff, because there's so much deliciousness on the menu, and especially if you have, like, a group of people, like, to me, that's just a fun way to eat.

People have been like, why am I going to get oysters out in the middle of nowhere?

And I'm like, well, because it's probably about three days out of the water only, which is almost as good as like they're as good as you're getting on the coast.

I'm working with purveyors that all of your top big city restaurants are working with.

I don't know, you win people over with flavor, right?

The challenge is getting people out here.

When I saw John was opening the restaurant out here.

It seemed a little crazy, because I had never really thought about the town before.

I'd never really come out this way.

So the first time I came out here, you know, we drove down Route 66 and it was just such a, such a joy just getting here and finding the restaurant.

The town itself is very, very kind of scenic.

You know, it feels like a small town in Illinois, and the building itself, being a train station from the 1800s is really kind of crazy.

Where else you gonna find that?

If we were in Bloomington, we would be packed all the time.

So it's just getting people to, you know, visibility, getting people to come out here, there's still, like, a ton of people who don't know who we are.

I love what I do.

I love coming into a kitchen that I'm surrounded by windows this building inspires me 100% to come in here and be in it's like, it's like, it's magic.

John talks a lot about the sort of the Japanese philosophy of kaizen getting 1% better every day, and that is really what we do.

I have so much room for improvement.

Still feel like I've only just scratched the surface of things.

Yeah, that's what keeps me rolling.

And finally, we'd like now to introduce you to a woman who's making a real impact on the Champaign Urbana music scene.

Her name is Joy Yang, and she's created a unique music education program that stems from her love of piano and another really unusual instrument, the My name is Dr Joy Yang, and I'm a performing artist, and I perform piano and Theremin, my mom was a mandarin teacher in China, and my dad was an engineer at a TV station.

So neither of them were musicians, and they were just interested in classical music since I was a young kid and enrolled me in lessons.

It was a turning point when I met my piano teacher, Nita mon am at the age of 16, and she was really a teacher that instilled the love of the music into me.

I really had a strong technical foundation, but she introduced me to the culture of music as well as the history, and allowed me to blossom into someone who had pursued music as my career down the line.

I used to want to be a fashion designer when I was younger, then I wanted to be an actress, and it wasn't until I was 19 that I decided to focus more on music and education.

So my undergraduate degree was at the University of New South Wales, and during my fourth year, I came to the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign for study abroad for one semester, and that's when I fell in love with this community and this campus here.

At the end of my study abroad semester, I went up to Chicago and I went to one of my friends jazz performances and the drug.

Um, had a mini theremin.

It blew my mind, like I didn't think it was real.

Then I went back to Australia, and I was auditioning for a course with Dr Adam Hulbert, and I mentioned wanting to learn the theremin.

And he was like, No, no way.

I've got a theremin in my office.

So I started borrowing Adam's Theremin two to three times a week, and that's how I started learning Theremin on my own.

The theremin is a synthesizer.

It's the only instrument that you can play without touching so it uses electromagnetism.

There's the upright rod, which is for pitch, and the horizontal one, which is for volume or dynamics.

The closer I move towards the upright rod, the higher the sound becomes, and the closer I move to the horizontal rod, the softer it becomes.

So it's a bit of coordination that's involved, and it's a lot of listening.

I find this instrument to be very freeing, because the piano has 88 keys, and the pitch is pretty much set for each key, but the theremin is more similar to a voice or violin, because we can access the sounds that are between every note.

I think having these two instruments side by side and merged together, my performance creates my own unique voice.

Okay, share one thing that you're grateful for today or this week.

Who wants to start?

It's definitely not easy to pursue performing as a career.

So I wanted to do both things at the same time, having been in this community in Urbana Champaign, I wanted to build something here in the community that would leave a lasting impact while I also pursue my performing career.

I formed the interdisciplinary Institute after I graduated to continue my research in the community.

The interdisciplinary Institute is a stem plus arts hub.

It's a creative hub for self expression and exploration.

So instead of just purely music lessons, for example, what we aim to do is to have a scientist, a music musician, a dancer, together to see how we can create a unique performance.

We hold lessons, workshops, concerts and events, both at our location and in the community.

I really wanted to start this in Champaign Urbana, and as it becomes more successful, possibly replicate this in other cities.

With the help of the people in this community, we have such a rich range of community members, students, graduate students, professors, that all come together, and we also aim to reach marginalized audiences.

But I think that was really good.

You pretty much have it memorized, right?

Being a third culture kid existing in liminal spaces, having moved around a lot and growing up in many different countries, one of the main challenges I've had personally is discovering my identity that's been a consistent theme through my artistic creations and pursuits and music has really helped me connect with myself deeper, as well as with my collaborators and the audience you experience.

I really believe that whatever we want to do, if we're really passionate about it, we're always going to find a way to make it happen.

If we really have something valuable to offer, then there will always be a way to make it sustainable.

I For more information about the interdisciplinary Institute or any of our stories on Prairie Fire, visit will.illinois.edu/prairie fire.

We leave you now with one last performance from joy Yang.

(music)