The Good Life – November-December 2019

WRITTEN BY: MEGHAN FEIR • PHOTOS BY: URBAN TOAD MEDIA
Scott Hennen, the popular conservative host of What’s On
Your Mind? (aired on WZFG 1100 AM and stations across
North Dakota), has been a part of talk radio since the ‘80s,
but he started working in the radio industry years prior.
Hennen’s parents were on the air, enveloping him in a world
of entertainment, information and opinions. With radio
programmed into his DNA, Hennen began working at a station
part time before he turned 12 years old. By high school, he
was working full time at the local station in his hometown of
Montevideo, Minn.
As we visited in Drekker’s Brewhalla, Hennen told me more
about his life, career and what’s on his mind.
Good Life: What’s one thing from your childhood you
wish would get popular again?
Scott Hennen: Atari video games. They were the most
primitive thing. You move the little square at the bottom
and you had to catch the Ping-Pong ball when it came on
the screen. That’s what passed as a video game when I
was growing up.
GL: If you wouldn’t have grown up with such an
influence in the radio industry, do you think you still
would’ve ended up in radio?
SH: It’s hard to say. I feel like it’s almost genetic
because you don’t know anything else. I had a very
good friend in high school whose dad was a funeral
director and they owned a funeral home. I would go on
a couple of “body runs” with them, as they were called.
I actually thought, “I could do this.” I was fascinated
by it and wanted to help people who were grieving. In
the conversations I had with people who had lost loved
ones, I kept thinking of what a tough time that would be
and how I hoped they had faith at that point. Funerals
often bring people to the faith that often wouldn’t
have come to it otherwise. They wonder where they’re
going. That was a way to connect my faith to another
profession. But all I’ve ever known is radio, so it was a
thought exercise more than anything.
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