The Show for May 19, 2026: The legislative pay debate, an FLDS documentary and more

Arizona lawmakers have taken on an issue this session that’s always touchy: giving themselves a raise. We turn to the one state that doesn’t pay its lawmakers any salary. Plus, a new Netflix documentary goes inside an FLDS enclave in northern Arizona.

Transcript

LAUREN GILGER: Hi, I’m Lauren Gilger, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday, we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here’s today’s episode.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning and welcome to The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, what happens when you pay state lawmakers more money, or no money at all? And a new Netflix docuseries brings up perennial controversies in the polygamous enclaves of Colorado City, Arizona.

But first, it is the end of the school year and lots of high school graduates are looking forward to college next year and figuring out how they’re going to pay for it. One important step in doing this is filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. It’s been a long uphill battle though to get more high school graduates to fill it out.

Well, some good news on that front this year. Those FAFSA completion rates are going up, way up here in Arizona by almost 20%, and they could get even higher. There are lots of reasons why, and here to tell us more is Bill DeBaun, senior director of data and strategic initiatives at the National College Attainment Network. Good morning, Bill.

BILL DEBAUN: Good morning. It's good to be with you.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for coming on. So, Arizona's FAFSA completion rates are are way up, like I said, 20%-ish. Talk about that context though, how do we stack up still to the rest of the country?

BILL DEBAUN: So, Arizona has had one of the strongest bounce-back performances in terms of the number of FAFSAs completed statewide for the class of 2026. That's really encouraging. In terms of the overall percent of seniors completing though, still have some room to grow. Around 41.5% of seniors have completed a FAFSA for the class of 2026, that's running about 14 percentage points behind the national average. So, still some room to make up there.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. All right. I want to back up for a moment, Bill, and just talk about why it's hard to get people to complete the FAFSA. Like, it it seems simple enough, like this is a way to get the federal government to maybe help you pay for college. Why don't all the students fill it out?

BILL DEBAUN: Well, there's all kinds of of reasons. I would say that filing the FAFSA has gotten a lot easier over the past year or two. We have a speedier, smoother, simpler process. But, you know, students don't always have a clear vision for what they want to do after crossing the high school graduation stage. Sometimes they're worried about affordability. And, in some cases, they, you know, are nervous about filling out what they see as a complicated form and could just benefit from a little bit of assistance doing so.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. I know there's also some reporting out there about some students who are from ... mixed-immigration status families who are basically afraid to fill it out. Like, afraid to give the federal government their information. How does the federal government use students' information here? Should they be concerned?

BILL DEBAUN: Well, data submitted through the FAFSA is only supposed to be used to determine and award federal financial aid. But, you know, NCAN cannot assure, cannot guarantee mixed status students and families that data submitted as part of the FAFSA process will continue to be protected.

And so, what we've been advising students, families, the field, in terms of advising students whose parents may not have a Social Security number, is to advise them on a case-by-case basis about the risks and benefits of submitting a FAFSA. It is true ... there is a little bit of risk if the data aren't used and protected properly. On the other hand, completing the FAFSA is the the only way to get access to federal financial aid, which is really important for college affordability.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, tricky situation. OK, so the last time I think we talked about the FAFSA on The Show was a few years ago when the federal government had rolled out a sort of overhauled, supposedly simplified new FAFSA form, right? And it was kind of a mess. It was delayed. There were glitches. People were very frustrated. Has the process gotten better? Is that part of why we're seeing these rates go up a lot right now?

BILL DEBAUN: It sure has, yeah. The class of 2024 rollout was a mess, I think would still be a generous way of describing it. But, now for the class of of 2026, right, we have seen record-high high school senior FAFSA completion rates nationwide. We ... are setting a new record basically every week now.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow.

BILL DEBAUN: And, that's good not just for the for FAFSA completion sake, but also because it represents students getting connected with financial aid that can help them pay for education and training after high school.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. I know that here in Arizona, the Arizona Board of Regents, the Department of Education, have have really pushed to try to get these completion rates up. Do you know what's working here and around the country?

BILL DEBAUN: So, yeah, Arizona has a really great FAFSA completion ecosystem. You know, you've got the Board of Regents, Department of Education, you know, non-profits like Education Forward Arizona pulling together. And so, you know, there's a couple of different things we can point to.

They had a 50-by-Fall initiative, which was challenging high schools to uh either reach a 50% FAFSA completion rate by by New Year's or to increase their FAFSA completion rate. They revitalized the College Goal Sunday campaign, so there were statewide FAFSA Saturday events and and kind of coordinated workshop dates. And so, the idea here is that when students and families want or need assistance, either completing the FAFSA or exploring pathways after high school, that there are events, experts, programming out there that they can reach out to and and get some support from.

LAUREN GILGER: There are some states, Bill, where there are policies, basically laws about this, right? What do those states look like? How many students will complete this form there?

BILL DEBAUN: So, yeah, we call these, these policies universal FAFSA policies where completing the FAFSA becomes either requirement for students or the district, you know, as as part of high school graduation. And there are nine states nationwide now that require this in some form or fashion. We see states with universal FAFSA policies getting a big boost up the FAFSA completion leaderboard, something like four out of the top five states, six out of the top 10, and eight of the top 15, all have some kind of FAFSA completion requirement.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow, OK. Last 30 seconds for a very important question here, Bill. What's the impact of this? Like, as we see these completion rates go up, will we see more kids go to college? Will we see more kids from low-income families go to college?

BILL DEBAUN: Historically, there's been a very tight association between FAFSA completion and immediate college enrollment. And when I say college here, I mean both education and training, a wide variety of pathways after high school graduation. And so, yeah, when we see more students complete the FAFSA, especially for students from low-income backgrounds, that means that they are unlocking federal financial aid that makes these pathways more affordable and hopefully helps these students pursue the, the, you know, the pathways, the careers that they are most interested in.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. Bill DeBaun, senior director of data and strategic initiatives at the National College Attainment Network, joining us. Bill, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.

BILL DEBAUN: ... Thanks very much. Appreciate your time.

LAUREN GILGER: This session at the state Capitol, lawmakers have attempted to to tackle an issue that’s always been a bit of a tough political sell: giving themselves a raise. Many of them argue their salary of $24,000 a year is just not enough to live on. We’ve seen several lawmakers leave of late, citing low pay as one of the reasons.

But as Gov. Katie Hobbs pointed out, it’s intended to be a part-time salary. The session is supposed to last just four months, though that hasn’t happened in years. Now, legislators have a host of ideas about how to increase their pay. Maybe it’s a 30% of what members of Congress are paid. Maybe it’s a bump to $35,000 a year. Maybe it should be $48,000 a year. Maybe it should be 60% of what the governor makes.

None of those proposals has made it all the way through the legislative process at this point. But that is not the case in our neighboring state of New Mexico. There, lawmakers at the so-called Roundhouse in Santa Fe narrowly approved a proposal to not just raise lawmaker pay, but to pay them at all.

That’s because New Mexico is the only state legislature in the country where lawmakers get no salary, zero, zilch. But that could be about to change if voters approve this measure. I spoke more about it with the Albuquerque Journal’s Capital Bureau Chief, Dan Boyd.

DAN BOYD: Well, it in actually in New Mexico's constitution that, you know, legislators should not be paid a salary. That said, it has been an issue that's come up in recent years. There's been proposals to to pay legislators a salary, and they have increased the per diem amount that they are paid, which is intended to cover lodging and food expenses. They also can qualify for a legislative pension plan.

But this idea of actually paying legislators a salary has been kicking around for a few years, but finally kind of got across the finish line at the Roundhouse this year and it's headed to voters in November.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So, let's talk about what that proposal looks like because it's a pretty big deal, it sounds like, that voters are going to get to decide on this. In the past, voters there have not been so favorable to this idea though of paying their lawmakers, is that right?

DAN BOYD: That's right. I mean, I've done some research and it's been years since it's actually gone before voters, so I think everyone's curious here kind of what voters' view on this year's proposal is going to be.

But this would be setting legislative salaries, aligning them with the median household income in New Mexico, which currently is about $64,000 is the projection. Obviously, that could increase in future years based on inflation. But that would actually be higher than the average legislative pay nationwide.

So to go from not having any salary to kind of above the national average would be a big jump, and I think there's a lot of questions on how that might really change the nature of the Legislature here.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So, let's talk about that because having an unpaid Legislature, it seems to have shaped the way that the session works there, right? Like it sounds like they're pretty quick. People are supposed to have other jobs, other careers.

DAN BOYD: Yeah, that's right. Historically it's been a citizen legislature in New Mexico with the idea that there's farmers, there's ranchers, there's teachers — folks from all different walks of life. And they come to the Capitol for 60 days in odd-numbered years, 30 days in even-numbered years. They pass a budget, you know, they pass some other bills, but then they leave and they're kind of done for the year.

Obviously, the Governor can call them back for special sessions if there's an emergency, but that's kind of the way things have worked here for a number of years, and I really think that this, if approved by voters, could change that. There could be more of an appetite for longer sessions and maybe a more powerful legislature instead of deferring a lot of power to the executive branch.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, so having a short session like that with this citizen legislature, it does seem to probably give the Governor more power than it might in another state where the legislature is in session much longer or all year.

DAN BOYD: Yeah, I think we saw that during the the pandemic, that the Legislature just wasn't in session for a lot of it and and so it fell on the Governor to issue a lot of public health orders, emergency funding, things like that, and and it did raise some some questions about kind of how much authority the Governor should have. But ultimately, the Legislature kind of didn't insert itself in some of that. And and now with this proposal, I think that that dynamic could be changing.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so let's talk about who's behind this proposal because it seems to have to do with who's representing the state today. Like, many lawmakers have left — and we've seen this happen in Arizona as well — where they say, “I simply can't afford to do this. I don't have a job where I can take 30 or 60 days off every year and make enough money to support my family.”

DAN BOYD: Yeah, that's right. We've seen several legislators here for exactly those reasons step down just say I can't make this work financially, I have a family, you know, I need to make ends meet and pay the bills.

And so we have seen New Mexico's Legislature in recent years increasingly um, you know, becoming uh more heavily female. We now have a House of Representatives here that's a female majority, the overall Legislature is a female majority, one of the few states.

And really, this push to pay legislators a salary has been led by female legislators. And specifically in this year's session, it was some younger women who were recently elected who really led the push and just said, “The Legislature needs to be more reflective of the state as a whole and and by doing this, it would it would allow some folks right now who can't serve in the Legislature the chance to at least consider doing that.”

LAUREN GILGER: It's interesting. What does the other side say here? Like, has there been pushback to this proposal? I know it was a party-line vote, but it's a Democratic majority Legislature, right? Those who are against it, what do they argue?

DAN BOYD: Yeah, I mean, I think that they argue that, you know, some people might then get into it for the wrong reasons, for personal enrichment rather than kind of the good of the state.

Interestingly, even the governor — who's a Democrat, Michelle Lujan Grisham — she said she had kind of mixed feelings about it, that it could change and make the Legislature feel a bit more like Congress, and maybe some of that access and things like that would change.

But she also said that maybe it would get some folks to to run for the legislature who would be good fits and who would bring some assets to the table who haven't been able to to do so for financial reasons in the past. So even some people like that, who may have kind of mixed feelings about this proposal.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think we've seen a similar debate here from lawmakers who say sort of, if you don't pay people a living wage and expect them to be lawmakers for even part of the year, I mean, you're going to get a lot of maybe independently wealthy people, maybe retirees, things like that. Is that what you've seen there as well?

DAN BOYD: Yeah, yeah, I think that that's exactly right. And obviously some professions that maybe is easier to take 60 or 30 days off a year. There's a number of lawyers here in the New Mexico Legislature, but also a lot of retirees There's not as many, there's I think one current teacher, I don't think there's any doctors still currently in the New Mexico Legislature.

So I think this idea of a citizen legislature may be kind of rooted in the past a little bit, and it's kind of arguable how accurate it still is at this point.

LAUREN GILGER: It's interesting. So, I mean, as we mentioned, this has not been a super popular idea with voters in the past, and it is sort of a hard political sell, right? Because especially right now, prices are so high, people are grappling with cost of living issues. Do you think voters will be supportive of paying legislators right now when lots of people can't make ends meet?

DAN BOYD: Yeah, I haven't seen any polling yet, but I I think those factors you mentioned, especially with the gas prices we're seeing in recent months, I think there will be some skepticism and and I think it'll be incumbent on supporters of this idea to really try to lay out an argument of of why this is justified.

I think the fact that in past years — even though it's been a number of years ago — that these type of proposals have failed when they've gone to voters is kind of a sign that it is a tough sell politically. And even here in New Mexico, there had been previous uh proposals to set up an outside commission to pay legislators, different kind of formats, and they settled this year on this model of tying it to the median household income. So, I think it is just politically awkward for legislators to, you know, to vote on a pay raise for themselves.

LAUREN GILGER: Always is. All right, well, lots to watch for coming out of New Mexico. That is Dan Boyd, the Albuquerque Journal's Capitol Bureau chief, joining us from Santa Fe. Dan, thank you so much for coming on, interesting stuff.

DAN BOYD: Hey, thanks for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, the new self-proclaimed prophet of Warren Jeffs’ fundamentalist Mormon offshoot is at the center of a new Netflix docuseries.

RACHEL DRETZIN: When Warren Jeffs went to prison, Sam began to amass followers. Over time, he began to tell the people that believed in him that that he was a new prophet. There were about 50 people from three separate families who became acolytes and followers.

LAUREN GILGER: We’ll hear from the docuseries’ executive producer. But first, a Tucson-based news outlet spent several months asking its community what they wanted to read about and what issues they thought were important. Among the results, more coverage of housing and homelessness, roads and infrastructure, and immigration. And readers said they want solutions-based reporting. Caitlin Schmidt is co-founder, editor, and publisher of Tucson Spotlight, which conducted the survey with the help of a grant. She spoke with my co-host, Mark Brodie, about the findings, and they started with what the thought process was behind asking the community what it wanted, what it didn’t want, what they were thinking.

CAITLIN  SCHMIDT: Yeah, so back in, um, I want to say 2020, when I was working at the Arizona Daily Star, um, I created a solutions journalism beat there and launched it with, um, basically a listening session project similar to this. Um, and we surveyed people around the community, um, trying to get ideas of stories, trying to get ideas of, um, you know, problems that they wanted to learn more about solutions to, etc., etc. And, um, that went really well, and it was very helpful in guiding, um, how we set up that beat and what we did with it. So, after we launched Tucson Spotlight, um, and I heard about this grant, it seemed like a great opportunity to really build our newsroom around what the community said that they wanted and needed.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so what did the community say they wanted and needed?

CAITLIN  SCHMIDT: Yes, um they wanted more news and better news. Um, the the biggest complaint that we had from people about, you know, why they maybe weren’t accessing the news, um was that it made them feel hopeless, um and it was too negative skewing. So, very quickly, um, you know, I mean, we we started getting those answers like in the first round of surveying, and so we very quickly adjusted our editorial strategy to ensure that we were never running just only hard news stories on a single day. So, we would always couple a hard news story with, um, either a solutions piece or a news feature or a story about somebody doing some good in the community. So, um, it was it was a good way to kind of build our processes and teach teach our team, um, you know, really what what folks felt like they weren’t getting, um and people responded very favorably to that. So, um, that was I think our first big takeaway was, you know, it’s not that people didn’t want to consume the news or that they were driven away by paywalls. They were driven away by the content because it just felt too dark. And I think we all in the news industry, it feels like we’re drinking from a firehose every day, and so we don’t want our audience feeling that way, too.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so how do you try to balance that between the news that, you know, the hard news that, you know, can be a little bit unsettling or upsetting or depressing, but, you know, is also important to for readers to know versus the stuff that will, you know, make them feel good?

CAITLIN  SCHMIDT: Yeah, I mean, and that’s the beauty I think of solutions reporting is that it’s not fluff. Um, they’re not puff pieces, you know, they’re not it’s not junk news. It’s, you know, deep investigative reporting about the responses to social problems. So, people are learning as they’re consuming the news, um they’re getting the information that they news that they need about the problem, but they aren’t getting, you know, beat over the head with it over and over again. And when it comes to some of these problems like homelessness and climate change, I mean, I think everybody knows that’s an issue, um but what they don’t know is what people are doing to try to address it in different parts of the community.

MARK BRODIE: Were you surprised at how often the issue of housing and homelessness came up?

CAITLIN  SCHMIDT: Um, you know, I really was not. Um, I think, you know, it’s for for anybody that covers local government or follows local government or, you know, state or federal government, I mean, I think that’s issue is at top of mind right now. We have a growing population of unhoused people and it’s not the people that we used to see be unhoused. It’s people who are a paycheck away from losing their homes or being evicted. So, um, I I wasn’t surprised, but I was surprised to see that that really it transcended demographics. Like every age group, um every group that we talked to, homelessness was the top answer. So, I think it just shows how widespread of a concern that that is in our community.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, I want to know if you think that sort of speaks to maybe the concern that people have or at least the awareness that people have about what a big issue that is.

CAITLIN  SCHMIDT: I think so, definitely. I mean, you can’t ignore it if you’re out in public. It’s it’s a reality that’s on many street corners in the community um and when you’re confronted with it in your face every day, I think people really have a desire to know what the people that they elected into office um that were paying taxes to, what, you know, what they’re doing to solve these problems.

MARK BRODIE: I’m particularly interested in what people told you about their use of social media for getting news, in the sense that it wasn’t necessarily because they thought it was the best source, but it was almost just like the easiest place to find it.

CAITLIN  SCHMIDT: Yeah, um I mean, and yes, definitely. And that also kind of transcended generations, too. The social media users weren’t just, you know, confined to the younger generation. We had people of all ages answering that question. I mean, I think part of it is ease of access, right? If you’re going on Instagram or or Facebook or TikTok to check in on your friends and family, um why not follow some news outlets too and get some news while you’re at it. Um, I I think, you know, everybody’s getting news on social media, whether or not you want it. Even if you don’t follow news outlets, somebody in your feed is probably sharing it. So, we have always been really social media forward from the start at Tucson Spotlight um we are just very aware that there are people that are never going to watch a TV news piece or they’re never going to go to tucsonspotlight.org or pick up a newspaper. Um, and so we want to make sure that they have access to the information that they need to know, um that is fact-based and accurate.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. So, how do you expect that the results of this survey will inform what you do going forward and how you do it?

CAITLIN  SCHMIDT: Yes, I mean, so one of the questions that we had asked people um was, you know, what what were problems that they wanted to learn more about. And so, we we definitely will um invest more resources and more staff into some of those topics. But we also got a really great list of story ideas. Um, one of the questions that we asked was, you know, who do you know that’s doing great work in the community, and we came have a great list of of groups and individual people um so that we can, you know, shape some coverage around. And, um, I I will say, people, you know, as we’ve gotten these story ideas and we’ve produced the stories and we’ve shared them back with the person or the people that give us the idea, um they’re usually very grateful. You know, it’s nice to know that when you’re talking to someone, um they’re actually listening and they maybe will do something about it.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Caitlin Schmidt, co-founder, editor, and publisher of Tucson Spotlight. Caitlin, good as always to talk to you. Thank you.

CAITLIN  SCHMIDT: You too, thanks, Mark.

LAUREN GILGER: And this is The Show..

MARK BRODIE: Warmer water in rivers and streams may have big consequences for those waterways, as well as the ecosystems around them. That’s among the findings of new research published in the journal Ecosphere. Michael Zampini is a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley and did his PhD at Northern Arizona University. This study was part of that work done in Flagstaff. He spoke with my co-host, Mark Brodie, more about it, and they started with a thumbnail version of what he was trying to figure out with this research.

MICHAEL ZAMPINI: Perfect, yeah. So, at its core, this study is about how rivers process leaves. And so, in a lot of streams and rivers, especially forested ones, leaves that fall in from trees are actually the main source of energy. So, we wanted to understand how warming changes the way that energy moves through this system, and particularly, how does that energy move up to higher trophic levels, like fish and things like that.

MARK BRODIE: And what would finding that out tell you? Like, why is that important to know?

MICHAEL ZAMPINI: Yeah, so it might not be super exciting at first, but it’s really, like, fundamentals. So leaves that are broken down by microbes are then eaten by aquatic insects, and then those insects are a major food source for fish. So, when you change how leaf litter’s processed in in rivers, you’re really changing the entire food web of that whole system. So, so that’s sort of a "why should we care" kind of a importance thing.

MARK BRODIE: It kind of moves up the food chain, as it were.

MICHAEL ZAMPINI: Right, yeah. So, thing, most of the things people care about in rivers are, you know, the fish inside them. And actually, people probably don’t think about this very often, but um aquatic insects spend some portion of their lives in the river, but then they emerge out and turn into kind of their mature stage, which is like flies and and other other flying insects that end up becoming food for for birds and spiders and kind of like the terrestrial environment, or basically the the forest that surrounds the river. So, rivers kind of like pump out a ton of important prey for for the biology surrounding them.

MARK BRODIE: Well, and you found that as the temperature of the water in these streams rises, it is having a change, right? It is causing a change in how all this works.

MICHAEL ZAMPINI: Yeah, exactly. So, warming definitely speeds things up. So, decomposition of the leaves and twigs and sticks, that all happens faster, but it also changes how efficiently the system works. So, what we found is that more of the carbon gets lost as CO2 and less of it gets turned into biomass that ends up supporting supporting that river food web.

MARK BRODIE: So, what kind of implications might that have?

MICHAEL ZAMPINI: Really, for implications, it’s like if temperatures keep rising, we might push our our insects out of their kind of thermal optimal range. So, that means that they’ll still probably be active, but they’re not really using that that energy as efficiently, and less of it makes its way up the food web. So, you might have smaller aquatic insect kind of population sizes, and that sort of diminishes the the food base of the river for for higher trophic levels, like fish.

MARK BRODIE: And as you were saying, that could also have effects sort of downstream—again, pardon the pun—in terms of things that happen on land.

MICHAEL ZAMPINI: Yeah, so I think it’s sort of especially relevant for rivers in the Southwest, where our rivers are already relatively warm, and that means that they’re kind of already close to this optimal range that we found in this study. So, even small increases in river temperatures could kind of push them beyond that threshold, and and we might start to see realized effects of how the systems might function differently.

MARK BRODIE: What kind of of temperature change are we seeing? Like, are streams and rivers actually getting noticeably warmer?

MICHAEL ZAMPINI: Yeah, so that’s a really good question. So streams stream temperature and air temperature, it’s not like they increase together, exactly. So, air temperatures are increasing faster than just like the baseline river temperatures are. But river temperatures are actually a lot more variable than air temperature. So, in a year like this year we just had where we didn’t get a lot of snow fall in the in the mountains of the West, then we’re going to have really a lot slower moving rivers as um the summer progresses this year, and it’s really that change in flow that’s going to change river temperatures probably more. So, the more variability we have in in things like precipitation, or when we have droughts, that’s when you have really big changes in river temperature, and mostly for the warmer, in that case.

MARK BRODIE: Is there something to be said also in terms of whether or not there’s a lot of precipitation, that that can impact how much foliage there is, like how many leaves and twigs fall into a river stream in the first place?

MICHAEL ZAMPINI: Yeah, absolutely. So in droughts, it can be kind of a double effect, right? Where you have warmer river temperatures because the air temperature’s warmer and we’re also not getting a lot of flow through the river, and then in those same years, you might have a decrease in sort of tree growth or productivity by the forest surrounding the river, and that’ll result in in less food going into the river. And food in this case is that that leaf litter that drives the drives the energy base of rivers.

MARK BRODIE: Do you know why this is happening, in terms of why rising water temperatures sort of speeds up some of this decomposition?

MICHAEL ZAMPINI: Well, yeah, it works sort of sort of similarly to like a gas-guzzling car. So, um you can have the system kind of moving faster, but you end up having, you know, less efficiency at that higher temperature. So, what tends to happen is organisms have this sort of like baseline need of energy that you call it their like um kind of like maintenance requirements. And the higher the temperatures go, the higher those main that maintenance cost gets, so then they’re not able to pack on as much biomass from what they’re eating. So, basically, it’s like the price of the house goes up, so they’re not able to buy the the boat in the front yard or go on a vacation or something like that.

MARK BRODIE: Huh. Well, can you foresee a time where if, for example, the the temperature of these rivers and streams gets too high, that it could have a, like, a real noticeable change in in sort of the ecosystem, in terms of what is able to live in it and live around it?

MICHAEL ZAMPINI: Well, yeah, definitely. Ecosystems operate in these kind of alternative states. So, a lot of times, they are resilient up to a point or up to a threshold, and then once that threshold is met, then they can flip to a totally different state. And there’s a ton of studies that have kind of highlighted the this interest in thresholds. And, yeah, what my study shows is that our aquatic insects are kind of right up at that threshold. So, with kind of modest increases in river temperatures beyond what we’re already seeing, we might flip that fre- that threshold.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Michael Zampini, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. Michael, thanks so much, I appreciate it.

MICHAEL ZAMPINI: Awesome, yeah, thanks, Mark.

LAUREN GILGER: School is out for summer, or will be soon, for kids across the Valley. It’s hardly a stress-free time, and we’re not just talking about the heat. Some families have been making vacation plans since January. Summer camp can be as expensive as college, with waiting lists just as long. But for many kids, summer doesn’t hold the magic of canoeing on a lake or visiting Disneyland. Tim Daly is the author of the Substack The Education Daily. I spoke with him last summer about the paradox of summer vacation for kids and its growing inequality.

TIM DALY: It’s a persistent myth that summer vacation is scheduled so kids could could work on farms. And in reality, it was it was quite the opposite. It started because East Coast cities were crowded and hot in the summer, and families that had the money to do so wanted to leave the city and take their kids to seaside destinations and so that was the origin of summer vacation. It wasn’t about farming kids at all.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. Okay, so you say progressive educators said, you know, "This isn’t fair. We need to let kids who aren’t rich basically play outside in the summer as well," and the summer break is born.

TIM DALY: That’s exactly right, and uh it was kind of the the intent was to give all kids the same experience, so to speak, that rich kids had.

LAUREN GILGER: Interesting. But you argue that that’s never been the case. That that rich kids have always had the upper hand when it comes to summer, and in lots of ways kind of been the only ones who benefit from it.

TIM DALY: That’s right. It’s it’s never worked for families that don’t have means because parents are are frequently working and uh activities cost a lot of money, vacations cost a lot of money. And so for the most part, sleepaway summer camps and other great opportunities that we often associate with summer vacation, those are largely available to upper-middle-class and wealthy families and pretty inaccessible to lower-income families.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So, I want to talk more about that in a moment, but let me back you up for just a second and talk about the trade-off in summer breaks, right? Like, is it worth it? Do we have any data on whether or not we should even have summer breaks if if kids are losing too much in progress in education in that time?

TIM DALY: Mm. It’s a really interesting question because kids do lose some ground academically. Some kids uh can afford to lose a little bit of ground because they’re in really good shape. So they lose a bit in the summer, they gain a bunch of really interesting experiences, and then they come back in the fall and pretty quickly they make up the ground that they lost. It’s a more difficult question for kids who are behind because there is really good research suggesting that when students are academically behind and they participate in high-quality summer programming, it’s a great way to catch up. Uh so I think it uh is fair to describe summer as a trade-off. And you could argue that uh getting to participate in summer jobs and cultural uh experiences like going to museums and and maybe doing sleepaway camp uh make it it worthwhile. But it’s it’s most worthwhile for kids who are academically in pretty good shape and who don’t need summer to catch up.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. You mentioned summer jobs, and I want to pause there for a moment because you point out something really interesting in your piece that surprised me about summer jobs. That you assume that kids who don’t have as much money are the ones working summer jobs, but you said that’s actually the opposite.

TIM DALY: That’s exactly right. Kids who are most likely to have employment during the summer are wealthy kids because they’re the ones who uh are able to, for example, to have transportation to where their employment takes place, and jobs also require things like recommendations and resumes and things like that. And uh teen employment has been dropping for decades. So teens today are much less likely to work during the summer or the school year than kids a few decades ago.

LAUREN GILGER: Interesting. So let’s talk then about what this looks like for those kids who aren’t from wealthy families. Like, what do they end up doing with their summers?

TIM DALY: They spend an enormous amount of time on screens. That’s a pattern that’s emerged over the last 10 or 15 years. We we talk a lot about the concern with rising screen time for children and adolescents, and um is very much tilted lower-income kids spend much more time on screens than higher-income kids. And um in the summer, the the least expensive activity is to just be inside and either on a computer or a tablet or a phone or watching TV. So I think the number one thing is lots of screen time.

LAUREN GILGER: It’s interesting, because here in Arizona, I mean, summers are incredibly hot, right? So, I mean, like, you can’t even let kids go outside and play in the way that, you know, you might not be able to let kids go outside and play in the winter on the East Coast. Right, right. And lots of cities are getting hotter. Like, it’s becoming less safe for kids to play outside all the time, whether or not they’re in the middle of the desert like we are. Do you think that could make summers less enriching for kids who aren’t rich going forward?

TIM DALY: Uh yes, absolutely could make a difference. And I think the kinds of summer activities that are positive are typically structured and they’re social. So it’s not, you know, kids inside by themselves, it’s groups of kids uh playing team sports together, taking trips together, uh those sorts of things are really rewarding, and to the degree that that extreme heat makes it harder for families to do anything but just keep their kids inside, I think that that probably is a risk factor going forward.

LAUREN GILGER: And we should mention, at the same time, the price of formulating a summer plan for your kids has just shot up, right? Like, whether it’s, you know, expensive travel, but even just day camps.

TIM DALY: That’s right, it uh is over the last couple of of decades, wealthier parents have just poured more and more money into their kids in in many different forms. They they pay lots of money for academic enrichment, they pay for their kids to play on travel sports teams, and they pay more money for for things like summer camps. So the the gap between the haves and the have-nots when it comes to summer has only gotten bigger because there is this market out there for really expensive summer activities that are out of the reach of most families.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. So then, let’s talk about solutions, potential solutions, which you you have some ideas for, whether it’s subsidizing programs that wealthy kids get to do and letting other kids go to them as well, job programs, scholarships, etc. What are some of the ideas on the table?

TIM DALY: We absolutely should have more employment opportunities for kids beginning at age 13, 14, 15 um and some cities are are investing that. The research has shown that when kids are employed during the summer, not only do they earn more money, but they seem to pick up habits that make it less likely for them to be chronically absent from school the next year and less likely to drop out. One thing to think about is how to subsidize local employers to take on more teen employees for those uh short-term summer months. Um, that can be done a lot of different ways, um but but I think one one objective certainly should be more kids in the workforce.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay. You also drop the the V-word. Uh, what are summer vouchers?

TIM DALY: So it, in the new uh federal bill that was passed this summer, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, there is a substantial federal subsidy for education scholarship, so essentially vouchers. And states have to choose to participate in that program. Some states will probably choose to do it and some states won’t. It’s a little bit different than state-level vouchers because this would be all federal money. Uh and an open question is whether states could choose to use those those vouchers specifically for summer programming. So there are certainly states uh that are unlikely to adopt traditional vouchers, generally blue states like New York or California or Illinois. Um they’re probably not going to be interested in participating in a traditional private school subsidy program. But it’s not clear right now that they couldn’t elect to accept those vouchers and restrict their use just for summer. And if they did that, they potentially could provide pretty lucrative vouchers worth several thousand dollars each to every family with school-age children. That would um almost instantly level the playing field in terms of uh affordability for summer activities.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s Tim Daly, author of the Substack the Education Daly, and this is The Show.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It is the show here on KJZZ, 91.5, I’m Lauren Gilger. Rachel Dretzin’s follow-up Netflix documentary to Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey follows a couple as they capture footage of a new self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Samuel Bateman. Bateman is serving prison time now for sex crimes against his many underaged wives. He convinced them he was the new FLDS prophet after Warren Jeffs was put behind bars.

In Trust No One: The False Prophet, cult expert Christine Marie and her filmmaker husband, Tolga Katas, gained the trust of Bateman and his wives, nine of whom were minors, and capture evidence of his crimes against them. I spoke with Dretzin more about the new documentary. And, a warning, this conversation may not be appropriate for all listeners.

RACHEL DRETZIN: The footage that’s featured in the most of the documentary was was filmed by Christine Marie and Tolga Katas, who are a married couple who are a married couple, who are among the only outsiders to move into Short Creek before I would say 2020. I mean, there were just very few people from outside of the community moving in, and not only did they move into the community full-time, but they they devoted themselves to building trust and friendship with people both in and out of the FLDS.

And so, they had a a very rare opportunity in that they were able to engage in a meaningful way with people in a in a very, very closed community that generally speaking doesn’t open itself up to outsiders. And with Sam Bateman, they managed to get even deeper, and so it was just, you know, despite the fact that the FLDS has received a lot of coverage in the media, there’s been very little footage that has the rawness and the intimacy of theirs.

LAUREN GILGER: So, let’s back up and just talk about Samuel Bateman and the the kind of world that that he created, the way that he convinced people that he was essentially the new prophet. Tell us a little bit about him, he’s in prison now.

RACHEL DRETZIN: Sam is in prison for 50 years, which is essentially life because he’s in his 50s. Um, he grew up as a member, relatively low-level member of the FLDS, no particular notoriety, but and he had a actually interestingly we don’t get into this in the series, but he had a traumatic brain injury in a car accident he was in when he was much younger, which may have some impact on his somewhat delusional sort of mental state. Um, but he when Warren Jeffs went to prison, Sam began to amass followers.

Um, initially he did not say he was a new prophet, he made people think that he had special access to Warren uh in prison, because Warren was still seen as a prophet, but then over time, um he began to tell the people that believed in him that that he was a new prophet and that Warren, they have a term called translated, which essentially means someone is, you know, able to speak through you. Um, and that’s what he said Warren was doing. And, there were about 50 people from three separate families who became acolytes and followers.

LAUREN GILGER: And, he took on many wives, many of whom were underage, and who, you know, were sexually abused essentially.

RACHEL DRETZIN: Yeah, um, so there were three men, male followers of Sam who had multiple wives and children, daughters, um, and part of their devotion involved giving their wives and daughters over to Sam. And so, he gathered about over 20 wives, and nine of those were underage, some as young as 9 or 10 years old. Right. And, yes, uh he was it’s come out in in court documents what Sam was doing, um, which is just horrific, but involved sexual abuse of all of them on a on a daily basis.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So, you have released this new docuseries, uh this footage is out there. It sounds like you have talked to some of the women involved in it since, and and have tried to sort of prepare them for this because, you know, they’re now the star of this Netflix series. What’s that been like? What are those conversations like?

RACHEL DRETZIN: Well, it really depends on on who the conversations are with. I mean, with Nomz, um who is the wife of Sam’s who participated most extensively in the documentary, we worked with her for some time to prepare her for what was to come because, you know, while we didn’t know the series was going to land as hugely as it has, um it is a it is a big event, um in someone’s life when overnight they’re, you know, suddenly on Netflix around the world and particularly for someone from the kind of background that Naomes has.

So, we really worked with her, she she had some counseling, we we talked a lot, we we talked to her about, you know, all sorts of things that, you know, would help her anticipate what the reaction would be. But, of course, you know, you can’t you can’t really anticipate it. Um, I would say it’s been a really positive experience for her. She was very isolated, still is very isolated in that community but, she’s gotten such an outpouring of love and support from people all over the world that I think it’s really buoyed her and made her feel even more strongly that she made the right decision in coming forward, which was not an easy decision.

Julia, who was the mother of of five of Sam’s wives, um is still a member of the FLDS, and so she’s much less Naomes has has left the group, the church, Julia is still very much a part of it. And so, she’s much more sheltered from the media and from the impact that the series has had. Um, I have had contact with her, really lovely contact with her but, for the most part, I think she wants to stay very private, which I respect.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So, some of the people involved in this have left the church or, you know, at least gotten out of the grips of of Sam Bateman, but some are not. You said that some of them still talk to them today, even as he’s in prison?

RACHEL DRETZIN: Yeah, actually, the majority of the adult women, and by adult I mean over 18, who were married to Sam are still, at least as of the series kind being released, were still followers of Sam’s. And, many of them living together, um still. The nine nine minors who who were married to Sam have all um because they were separated from the rest of the the women, um they all quote unquote woke up and testified against him and have for the most part been able to live successfully outside of the group. Um, but the adults are still very caught up in it.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So, I want to ask you lastly, Rachel, about Short Creek, right? Because it’s it’s an interesting moment for this place, which is very interesting in itself. I know that I’ve interviewed folks in Short Creek who are who are trying really hard to move the town beyond the FLDS Church, its crimes, its, you know, controversy.

They’re trying to rebrand as a tourist destination right now. And, and you know, most people, lots of people at least in the town are no longer members of the FLDS Church. Have you spoken to folks there? I know you spent a lot of time there, like who are worried about, you know, being dragged back into this?

RACHEL DRETZIN: Yeah, I mean, so it’s an ongoing issue and one that I really sympathize with. I mean, I think, you know, there’s been so much media scrutiny of this tiny little community, and there were many years where there were just reporters, you know, driving through with cameras, um and they they felt like animals in the zoo, you know. And, I think it’s very hard for the community to get out from under its reputation. Um, that said, I really tried in this documentary to humanize these people in prairie dresses who we tend to look at as as alien creatures, you know.

I think that not only Julia, but several of the other women who are still members of the FLDS, who participate in the documentary show just how different they are than the stereotypes that we put on them. And I hope that it contributes to a little bit more of a dimensional perspective on what it means to be a fundamentalist Mormon, you know, and a member of this community.

But, it’s just a it’s a reality that there has been one horrific story after another coming out of this place. It’s also gotten, I would say, Short Creek has gotten some really good coverage of some of the changes they’ve made. There was a terrific podcast about the town that came out a few years ago that really looked closely at some of the changes the town is making, um that are that are very real, you know. So, I I empathize, I understand that it’s it’s a frustrating position to be in.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. All right, we’ll leave it there. Rachel Dretzin, the new film is on Netflix, it’s called Trust No One: The False Prophet. Rachel, thank you very much for coming on the show, I appreciate it.

RACHEL DRETZIN: Thanks for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for listening to the show’s podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankara, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban and our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram @kjzztheshow.