STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: The nation's newest presidential library is opening this week. It's not the Obama library in Chicago. Rather, it's in the Badlands, in Medora, North Dakota, and it honors Theodore Roosevelt. President Trump visited yesterday, and we got there last week. It's a big complex built into an even bigger western landscape that makes the building look small.
What did this landscape mean to Theodore Roosevelt?
ED O'KEEFE: This landscape healed him.
INSKEEP: Ed O'Keefe of the Roosevelt Library was looking across a valley to the rugged cliffs on the far side.
O'KEEFE: I mean, he was depressed and dejected. He looked out into these rugged buttes and this incredibly, impossibly, almost grotesque at times landscape and saw both the fragility of life and its possibility.
INSKEEP: The future president came out West on a train after his wife and mother died of disease on the same day, Valentine's Day, 1884.
O'KEEFE: I mean, I, for a long time, thought that when TR came out to the Badlands, he had a death wish, that he didn't care what happened to him next. I think that was wrong. I think he had a life wish. I think this is the place that renewed his spirit, gave him the power to go on, and he just lived every single day to the hilt.
INSKEEP: Ed O'Keefe, our guide here, is a former TV producer who wrote a book about the women in Roosevelt's life and became CEO of this library.
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INSKEEP: I just want to note how great it is to be seeing these exhibits while people are still climbing up on ladders and moving equipment around.
O'KEEFE: You...
INSKEEP: You're almost there. You must be close.
O'KEEFE: It's like we're having a dinner party at 8, and you've come at 2.
INSKEEP: He welcomed us to look around as curators finished installing displays.
O'KEEFE: Oh, the elk horns are in. Wow. I haven't actually seen them in person. This is amazing.
INSKEEP: We're looking at the horns and skulls of two elk, which gave a name to Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch. You can hear O'Keefe's enthusiasm as if it's all new to him, even though he's heard the Roosevelt story his whole life.
O'KEEFE: Growing up in North Dakota, it is state law that you are interested in Theodore Roosevelt...
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
O'KEEFE: ...Because Theodore Roosevelt came to North Dakota and lived as a cowboy and a rancher for the better part of two years, and he said he never would've been president, except for his experiences in North Dakota. It also didn't hurt that I went to Red River High School, home of the Roughriders.
INSKEEP: Ah.
O'KEEFE: Yeah.
INSKEEP: Why don't you describe who the Roughriders were?
O'KEEFE: Oh, the Roughriders were the cavalry unit, the volunteer regiment that Theodore Roosevelt put together to win the Spanish-American War.
INSKEEP: That was 1898, when Roosevelt recruited volunteers, including western cowboys and gunslingers, to supplement the U.S. Army. As you can see on a video in the museum, Roosevelt himself - a little older by then, overweight, nearsighted - led his men in an uphill charge in the climactic battle of the war that established an American empire.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #1: At last, the Americans captured San Juan Forest, and their victory was their final triumph.
INSKEEP: His conduct made him famous and, within three years, made him governor of New York, then vice president, and then president upon the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #2: At the dawn of a new century, America booms with industry.
INSKEEP: Roosevelt became president during the Progressive Era. He attacked corporate monopolies and established national parks. The library itself honors Roosevelt's belief in conservation.
O'KEEFE: We're going to be the first and only presidential library to achieve the Living Building Challenge. So...
INSKEEP: Which is?
O'KEEFE: ...Zero waste, zero energy, zero water, zero carbon.
INSKEEP: The roof slopes down and touches the ground, and it's covered in grass in a way that brings to mind an old western sod house. Visitors here will be able to hone outdoor skills, like using a play rifle to shoot targets on a range.
O'KEEFE: Yeah.
LILLY QUIROZ, BYLINE: Oh, God. All right.
O'KEEFE: There's the trigger.
INSKEEP: Our producer, Lilly Quiroz, did not really need much coaching.
QUIROZ: I am a little trigger-happy. I'm not going to lie.
O'KEEFE: You said you were born in Texas, right?
INSKEEP: And in a reproduction of his White House office, we asked President Roosevelt questions.
Press and hold the button to talk to TR.
O'KEEFE: Yep. And ask him...
INSKEEP: So I could ask a question.
O'KEEFE: Ask him anything you'd like.
INSKEEP: A video projection of TR answers through the use of AI.
Why do you always say the word bully?
AI-GENERATED VOICE: (As Theodore Roosevelt) Well, well, I use bully to mean something grand or first-rate, like saying splendid or good for you. I picked it up young and never let it go.
O'KEEFE: Working with Microsoft, we have gathered over 300,000 records - everything TR ever said, everything TR ever wrote.
INSKEEP: Some people might be disturbed by it, though. Did you have a moment of wondering if you really wanted to do this, to bring Theodore Roosevelt to life in this way?
O'KEEFE: Well, I think, yes. I mean, of course. We - AI is so new, and it is moving at such a rapid rate that we wanted to experiment with it and see what was possible but do it with the proper guardrails and with the proper data.
INSKEEP: The library says it paid authors if their books were used, and the TR bot is forbidden from offering opinions on current events that Roosevelt himself could never have known. In another room, the library does feature current leaders who read one of Roosevelt's most famous speeches.
O'KEEFE: "Citizenship In A Republic."
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GEORGE W BUSH: (Reading) So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
INSKEEP: I know that voice.
O'KEEFE: I bet you know that voice.
INSKEEP: George W. Bush.
Every living former president and other famous figures read Roosevelt's speech about the "Man In The Arena."
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JOE BIDEN: (Reading) It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles...
GARTH BROOKS: (Reading) Or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
OPRAH WINFREY: (Reading) The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.
JOSE ANDRES: (Reading) Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.
INSKEEP: Joe Biden, Garth Brooks, Oprah and Jose Andres, as heard in the new Theodore Roosevelt presidential library. He's a Republican president, also beloved by Democrats. His face is on South Dakota's Mount Rushmore, and his legacy is now honored in this library, one state to the north.
(SOUNDBITE OF HERMANOS GUTIERREZ'S "HIJOS DEL SOL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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