The Show for May 21, 2026: Quantum computing in Phoenix, politics in the LDS church and more

Phoenix’s mayor wants to make the city a hub for quantum computing. We’ll learn what that is, and how the city can get there. Plus, how one faith tradition aims to help bring down the tone of political rhetoric.

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 in Phoenix. I’m Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, what role is AI playing in graduation ceremonies?

LAUREN GILGER: And why a completely preventable STI is killing babies in our state.

MARK BRODIE: But first, earlier this spring, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego laid down a new goal in her State of the City address.

KATE GALLEGO: Now is the time to get ready for the next frontier of advanced tech, quantum computing, communications, and sensing.

MARK BRODIE: And Gallego has tapped my next guest to lead the effort to build the quantum computing sector in Phoenix. Sethuraman Panchanathan is University Professor of Technology and Innovation at ASU and a former director of the National Science Foundation. He joins me to talk more about this. And Ponch, let’s start by defining our terms here. What exactly is quantum computing?

SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN: So quantum computing, imagine for example, you’re all familiar with digital computing. And it is about 1s and 0s. It’s very defined states of 1 and 0. In the case of quantum, it’s not just only 1s and 0s, but a continuum of states that exists, right? So it is a lot more possibilities, if you may, between 1 and 0. Which means it portends the possibilities of doing computations in parallel many, many, many times over than just this digital way of doing 1 and 0, yes and no, yes and no kind of a processing.

MARK BRODIE: Well, I’ve seen it described as potentially being able to do things in a matter of, say, minutes or maybe even an hour that the supercomputers that we have now would take years if not longer to do.

SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN: That’s a very good way of saying it, Mark. Let me, let me characterize it the following way. Let us say we have a million items that we are searching for something. One item out of a million items, right? Normally, what you would do is you would do 500,000 matches, right? You will compare one against the other. This is no, this is yes, no, and so on, right? And then finally, you will come up with the answer. So it’s 500,000 times or we say N is 1 million, N/2 times that you will do to be able to compare, right? In a quantum, it’s square root of N. It’s a thousand times. So you can see as things get bigger and bigger and bigger, the amount of computational time with quantum is far less than what it would be with a classical computer, right? So that’s the inherent advantage of quantum. But let’s be very clear. There are certain kinds of problems that lend themselves to this kind of computation.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Like what kinds of things that maybe people who are not in the field of quantum computing, like how would they see sort of on a practical day-to-day level some of the things that could come out of this?

SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN: Imagine you’re searching in a large database for something, right? So there’s a large database of, you know, what you have as data sets that you search and try to find what you need. So it’s very valuable in those situations, right? Now if you’re trying to simulate molecules and materials and so on, again, you’re dealing with large data sets. Same would be true of genomic data, right? Or if you’re looking at cryptography, right? You’re doing very complex, complex ways of, of, of searching and finding the answers or the keys. So in these kinds of situations, quantum computing naturally lends itself for those kinds of computations to be done most efficiently, effectively, and really fast.

MARK BRODIE: It sounds like one of the big areas where we could see advantages to this is in healthcare. Am I hearing that correctly?

SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN: Healthcare definitely is one of those areas, right? It is, it has got broad applications.

MARK BRODIE: Why do you think that Phoenix is a good place to try to really build up this sector?

SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN: So there are some inherent advantages here, right? Any ecosystem, if you look at it, first of all, you need good talent, good ideas, good support of the government wanting this. You know, I term this, I term this, Mark, as intentionality and intensity, okay? So once you have that, then what you do is you start to hyperpartner, right? And that’s what is happening right now. With the Mayor making this announcement, what we are trying to do is to say, okay, there is an intentionality and there is an intense approach to this. Now, let’s see how we can bring the relevant partners to the, to the core here and start to build the uniqueness of this ecosystem, okay? So what are the uniqueness of the ecosystem to address your question? So at one level, it is the large talent base that we have. That’s the first point. And a subtle point to that is, that talent can be sort of shaped and modulated to what we need to have our region excel in. Now, take that approach and now you say, if we prepare ourselves well, there are enough elements of the quantum expertise that is here. You know, between the research universities, there is excellent research expertise that is build, building out here. But now you build an intentionality of building a quantum-specific talent sort of modulation. So that’s one very important thing, ideas and talent. As I said, second thing is the intentionality, intensity of the ecosystem wanting this to happen. Third, you know, in a quantum future, quantum manufacturing is very, very important. And we have a strong semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem. There is a lot of synergy that is there.

MARK BRODIE: With TSMC and Intel and others.

SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN: With TSMC and others. So which means that we can take advantage of that.

MARK BRODIE: So what does Phoenix have to do to really make this work? I mean, it sounds like you’re saying all the potential elements are here or could be here, but what, like what has to happen to make this a reality?

SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN: Again, I go back to the intentionality and intensity, right? First, what we need to do is to make sure that we get to understand the assets. Developing any strategy, Mark, which is what the, the, the, the Mayor had requested that we get done first, right? So what that requires first is, what do we have here? Then you look at it, what are the gaps? What are the uniqueness of Arizona that makes it attractive to build out even bigger of an ecosystem here? Then you say, what might be the investments that we need to attract from the federal government? What can the state investments be pointed to? What can venture investments and others be attracted to come here and look at what is going on here? These are things that are not new to our ecosystem. These have been tried out in other areas. We are now focusing them on quantum also.

MARK BRODIE: I’m curious about the money aspect of it. I would imagine that what you want to do will cost something, right? I mean, is this an area where there is money available to do the kind of research and do the kind of recruitment that you might need to do? And also, assuming you’re successful, is this the kind of industry that could have an economic boost to this area?

SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN: The answer to the first thing is, Mark, in my so many years of doing this, right, I have never found good ideas suffer for resources. Okay, let be very clear about that, okay? And then good companies that are birthed here have always attracted venture capital.

MARK BRODIE: What kind of timeline do you think is realistic to get Phoenix to where, from where we are now, to where I imagine you see it in your head?

SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN: I see it as a five to 10 year kind of a build up, right? That doesn’t mean that we will not have early wins like next year or the year after. In any such ecosystem approach, you will always find that you start in a place, you build a strategy, you start to work towards implementing the strategy, and you have early adopters and winners and people who are already here who are already existing and, you know, now they feel empowered, they feel supported, they feel like they are able to express their ideas and talent, and their, their companies that are already here. So you do that, and then it starts to build. And typically good ecosystems, what they do is they start to build and the torpedo effect happens, right? I mean, the, the, the, it starts to build one on top of the other, one on top of the other, one on top of the other, and quickly you find within a decade, you have got this very, very vibrant ecosystem.

MARK BRODIE: What other benefits do you think, not just to Phoenix, but for anybody who’s looking to sort of build up this particular industry. Like what is it about quantum computing that might make it appealing for a region to try to build, build up?

SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN: See, the, as I said, where the puck is going to be, the future, Mark, is about large data. It’s about complex applications. It’s about trying to do things as quickly and as fast as possible. Speed is the strategy, right? And so if you, if you keep those parameters in mind and scale is very important. So if you look at speed and scale as an objective as we advance into the future, quantum is the technology that provides you both speed and scale at the same time.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Sethuraman Panchanathan, a former director of the National Science Foundation, currently a University Professor of Technology and Innovation at ASU. Ponch, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN: Thank you, Mark.

LAUREN GILGER: Congenital syphilis rates are going up here and across the country, but Arizona is one of the states seeing the highest infection rates. Today, it’s killing more than two dozen babies born in our state every year and it’s totally preventable.

Dr. Karen Martinot is a board-certified women’s health nurse practitioner as well as director of programs and clinical administration for the family planning non-profit Affirm. She told me the rates here are alarming.

KAREN MARTINOT: We are seeing congenital syphilis rates going up by 200-300% in Arizona. We have not seen this in recent lifetime. So in the 1950s, we used to see syphilis rates being high. Then we had it almost completely gone where almost no one was getting syphilis, certainly not congenital syphilis in babies in Arizona.

And that changed around the year 2000, and we’ve seen a steady increase since then. Now we’re losing about 30 babies every year, dying to this completely preventable infection.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow. OK, and we’ll talk in a moment about what might have shifted around that time that changed the narrative here, but let’s back up for a moment and just talk about what congenital syphilis is. I think most people know that the sexually transmitted infection syphilis exists, but what makes it congenital?

KAREN MARTINOT: So we call it syphilis when it affects adults. When it affects babies, we call it congenital syphilis. That means syphilis that you’re born with. So that’s an infection that’s passed from the mother to the baby during pregnancy.

It’s a bacteria. So it’s a bacterial infection. We know how to test for it. We know how to treat it. It’s treated with penicillin, a form of penicillin injection for pregnant mothers. But it’s when we miss out on knowing who has it and the mother doesn’t get the treatment that babies can be born with this infection or die because of this infection.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, so syphilis is not an infection that would kill an adult, but it does kill babies sometimes.

KAREN MARTINOT: Exactly, so if syphilis is untreated in an infant, in a baby, during a pregnancy, 40% death rate. In adults, we have a lot of time. The progression of the illness is much, much slower in an adult person, so that gives us opportunities to get tested at our routine visits. But for pregnant people, they really need timely testing and timely treatment to prevent their baby from getting this infection.

LAUREN GILGER: So you said 30 deaths a year at this point. I mean, that’s a lot of babies. Is that an underestimate though? Do we know how many really?

KAREN MARTINOT: That is possibly an underestimate because we don’t calculate miscarriages from this infection. We know that this infection can harm babies in the beginning of pregnancy, cause preterm birth or stillbirth, or cause them to pass after they’re born.

LAUREN GILGER: So let’s talk about the why then, right? Like, you talked about having this STI nearly eradicated at one point, like people were not getting syphilis. What changed?

KAREN MARTINOT: So, sometimes when things are a little too good to be true, we think we don’t need to pay attention to them anymore. So folks that became healthcare providers back in late ’90s, early 2000s, they didn’t really receive a lot of training about syphilis or congenital syphilis, and it’s been sort of off our radar as something to routinely screen folks for.

It’s now squarely back on our radar, but the public hasn’t necessarily caught up with this. I think a lot of people are surprised to hear that babies are dying of syphilis in Arizona. I think they’re surprised to hear that they could be exposed to syphilis in Arizona.

This is a community-wide problem. It takes community-wide solutions to solve it, not just pregnancy-related solutions but all of us putting this on our radar so that adults are getting screened, men, women, all ages of folks that are sexually active should be screened.

That way we decrease the transmission of syphilis in adults. When we’re not doing that, eventually that goes to women of reproductive age and then therefore to babies.

LAUREN GILGER: So this is something you want to like, stem the tide right at the beginning, but I mean, it sounds like a lot of the prevention would be helpful during prenatal care, right? Is part of the problem here a lack of prenatal care for lots of folks?

KAREN MARTINOT: Absolutely. In the cases of babies with congenital syphilis, we see that the majority of them were born to mothers that had zero prenatal visits, and that’s just unacceptable.

But we have a shortage of OB/GYN providers and clinics. We also have some real-life barriers to getting into the clinic, and that includes things like folks experiencing homelessness and not knowing how they can access healthcare or get the care they need.

It’s also sometimes related to drug use. We know that we have a problem with substance use disorder in our country as well. There’s a lot of stigma around that. There’s also a lot of stigma around talking about sex in our country. You put those two things together, people are avoiding those conversations with their healthcare providers, so we need to help people feel safe to come in and to get the care they need so that they can get established with prenatal care.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, and lots of folks just not getting it to begin with. How does Arizona compare here to the rest of the country? Are we seeing higher rates?

KAREN MARTINOT: Yeah, unfortunately we’ve been in the top five for the last several years, and that’s not a distinction we want to continue.

LAUREN GILGER: What’s behind that? I mean, there’s got to be something specific happening in Arizona in terms of maybe access to care, funding for care, funding for Medicaid?

KAREN MARTINOT: Yeah, so Arizona does have less dollars going towards comprehensive family planning than other states. I work for Affirm, the grantee that supports those federal comprehensive family planning dollars to help folks in Arizona.

But a lot of other states have state-matched programs as well. Some of them even have additional funding from large philanthropic groups or other funders. So Arizona is vulnerable to the Title X funding to support these projects.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, so you are working for the organization that gives out those Title X funds, right? But without state matching, we’re falling short?

KAREN MARTINOT: Yes. We also see other funding at the federal level being reduced, so CDC offers STI testing funding. Those programmatic funds have also been decreased across the nation and to Arizona.

We’ve got wonderful folks meeting, convening, led by the Arizona Department of Health Services. We’ve got over 100 different organizations meeting regularly in a statewide steering committee. We’ve created a statewide work plan, but it’s hard to get those projects launched when we don’t have the funder backing behind them.

LAUREN GILGER: So we’re also looking at the federal level at big cuts to Medicaid coming as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill, and those are coming in the next year or so here. Are we going to see a bigger impact here? Like could this potentially get worse as people lose coverage?

KAREN MARTINOT: Absolutely. So we know here in Arizona, we’ve got our AHCCCS, cost containment program, and they have recently responded to this positively by making sure that anyone with AHCCCS can get those testing and treatment reimbursed. That’s a great change.

But if people aren’t on the program, if people don’t know how to enroll or they get kicked off or there’s all these extra re-enrollment hurdles to get through — it’s not easy to navigate healthcare in general. When we put these additional barriers, even if people are eligible, they might not enroll because it’s being made more difficult for folks.

LAUREN GILGER: Dr. Karen Martinot, director of programs and clinical administration with Affirm, also a board-certified women’s health nurse practitioner, joining us. Dr. Martinot, thank you very much for coming in. I really appreciate you taking the time.

KAREN MARTINOT: Thank you for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, one playwright looks to the past to predict the future.

MARK BRODIE: But first, it’s not much of a stretch to say that America and Americans are polarized. Social media, cable TV news, even our day-to-day interactions with other people can be filled with disagreement, and in some cases, that disagreement can be vehement. There are though, some efforts to tone that down. Democratic Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and his colleague from Utah, Republican John Curtis, hosted a bipartisan town hall late last year to talk about political violence. The venue: Utah State University, where a Turning Point USA staffer, Charlie Kirk, had been assassinated a couple of months before. In 2024, Tempe Mayor Corey Woods and then-Mesa Mayor John Giles launched a bipartisan initiative called Disagree Better Arizona in an effort to foster civil discourse. There’s also a national version, which includes the governors of Utah, a Republican, and Colorado, a Democrat. Earlier, I sat down to talk about these efforts with Jane Andersen, Arizona director of the non-partisan group Mormon Women for Ethical Government. And she made clear to me that she wasn’t speaking for the church, but I asked how big of a tenet of her faith is it that people who don’t agree with each other, politically or otherwise, need to find a way to get along with each other.

JANE ANDERSEN: So I would say it’s pretty unique to our faith that there is a part of how we operate to which that doctrine per se is embedded. So if you know anything about our faith, we actually meet based on geography. So you don’t get to decide, “Hey, I really like a 1:00 time slot on Sundays.” You are assigned to go to church with the people that live geographically around you.

Now that means that when you attend church, you might be attending church with someone whose Facebook post the other day you truly, absolutely disagree with. But there’s something beautiful about worshipping together and serving together. And so, you know, embedded in our experience of worship is being with people, maybe for whom we have disagreements.

MARK BRODIE: The reason that we reached out to you in part is because there have been some efforts over the last couple of years to Disagree Better — I think is the name that the Governors Association has given it. And it seems as though at least one of the common denominators is that many of the participants are members of the LDS church.

You think about Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, you think about John Curtis, a Utah senator who recently did an event with Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator. You think about former Mesa Mayor John Giles. Is that a coincidence, do you think, or is that sort of by design?

JANE ANDERSEN: These instances or people absolutely living what prophetic counsel has been to our faith members in recent years. So our recently passed away head of our church, President Nelson, was very keen on focusing on peacemaking.

And peacekeeping is agreeing to disagree and not engage. Peacemaking is incredibly different. It’s leaning into difference. It’s recognizing the power of listening. It’s a recognition that we live in a pluralistic society and that conflict is going to be endemic in all relationships, but that contention is a choice.

We have conflict in the most basic relationships with people whom we love deeply, so we should expect there’s going to be conflict with people we disagree with, but how we engage with people we disagree with is absolutely something that we can stand apart in. And so we’ve been urged over and over by our leaders of our faith to stand out and be distinct in different ways in how we engage.

MARK BRODIE: So how do you think about that sort of thing? Like if you’re in church and you see somebody sitting a row in front or behind you who made a post on social media the other day that you just find abhorrent, how do you handle that? How do you talk to that person?

JANE ANDERSEN: Well, I think the first thing that’s really important is that I don’t make my political opinions the most important thing in my life. And so it’s very easy to dehumanize people based on simply categorizing them by their political party.

So a great example is I have a son that’s 19 years old who’s severely disabled, and there’s a really wonderful program in our church open to the community at large where adults can go and have an activity once a week. And I can tell you that when I take him there and he receives care and attention from these wonderful volunteers that work with him, it absolutely lifts my heart and blesses his life.

I can absolutely tell you there’s people that serve there that I disagree with politically, and I have a choice to make: What is most important? Is being in relationship with other people important, or is my, you know, who I voted for the most important thing? And I will never put a party over a relationship or party over principle. I will always seek to find ways that I agree with someone, find commonality, and that’s what I’m going to focus on.

MARK BRODIE: Do you find that other people are willing and, maybe more importantly, able to do that also with you?

JANE ANDERSEN: I think so. I think peacemaking is a hard choice today. It’s a lot easier to go to our individual media silos. It’s a lot harder to find that commonality and push back maybe some discomfort of knowing that you might not agree with someone on every point, but it’s absolutely worth it.

MARK BRODIE: How do you find that strategy work sort of beyond church activities with people who are not all of the same faith?

JANE ANDERSEN: Well, it’s interesting. For the last almost two years, I’ve been a part of a statewide coalition that’s seeking to reduce political violence in Arizona. And when we first met in that room — and were from across the spectrum politically, across cultures, really very different perspectives on social issues — there was a little hesitation for all of us, but we decided that we were going to be in relationship and that that was the most important thing.

We all knew that we didn’t want political violence in Arizona, and because we had that in common, we built trust based on that. And so I’ve found in my work with MWEG that it’s very easy but it takes a lot of work, because relationships don’t come easily and building trust doesn’t come easily.

MARK BRODIE: How much of this do you think comes down to people not chasing clicks and likes and reposts and everything? Because it seems to me there’s not a lot of glory in saying, “Look, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree, and maybe we move on and talk about something else.”

There is a lot of “online glory” in a really witty one-liner or a potentially mean thing that you say that kind of turns into the bumper sticker line. Do we sort of have to readjust what it is that our goals are here, maybe, in some ways?

JANE ANDERSEN: Yeah, we had, at our last general conference, this is where our church leaders address a worldwide audience, Elder Stevenson talked a lot about specifically online communication and spoke about, what is your goal when you are engaging online? When you say certain things, does that represent your belief in being a disciple of Jesus Christ? Is that something you would say to someone in person?

And too often in society, we make excuses for being able to behave one way in a certain space and another way in another space, and that doesn’t help us. That doesn’t help us live with integrity.

MARK BRODIE: In the goal of trying to disagree without being disagreeable, how much of the responsibility do you think falls on folks in elected office, in politics, and how much do you think falls on those of us who are not?

JANE ANDERSEN: I think there should be responsibility by all parties involved. It certainly does not help when we have elected leaders that do name-calling, that refuse to meet with people from the other party, that don’t make an effort to concede that someone who is on the other side of the aisle had a great point to make. That’s not helpful, so I absolutely call on leaders to stand forward and work on bipartisanship.

But we also can’t just sit on our couches and blame someone in Washington or, or in Phoenix for our own behavior. And if we ourselves could demand more of our elected officials and say, “You’re not representing me when you use that behavior and that language,” that would be wonderful.

And in the end, for me, my biggest motivation is my children. I want my children to know that I love other people, that I want to listen to someone, and I want to learn. And we all have to have that mindset.

MARK BRODIE: How much of an impact do you think these events — things like Sens. Curtis and Kelly or, you know, the governors of Utah and Colorado getting together — how much of an impact can that have, do you think?

JANE ANDERSEN: I think if we can grow that movement, if we can get more people participating in those types of events or what we’re doing, it does make a difference.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Jane Andersen, Arizona director for the group Mormon Women for Ethical Government. Jane, thanks for the conversation. I appreciate it.

JANE ANDERSEN: Thanks so much.

LAUREN GILGER: Hiking the Arizona Trail is no easy feat. The 800-mile route stretches from the Utah state line to the border with Mexico.

It was formally designated as a National Scenic Trail by Congress in 2009 — only one of 11 in the country. And hundreds of hikers from all over the world attempt to complete it each year.

But they don’t do it on their own. There is a legion of volunteers across the state who help out called “Trail Angels,” offering weary hikers a free meal, a place to sleep and someone to talk to on what one hiker called "maybe the most solitary long trail in the United States.”

Annette McGivney recently wrote about the trail and its angels for Arizona Highways magazine and she joined The Show to talk more.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Annette.

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: Yes, hello.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for coming on. So the Arizona Trail is is quite a thing, right? This incredibly long, challenging trek across the entire state. It sounds like a lot of people — maybe more than in the past even — are hiking it, though.

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: Right, yeah. I think about 400 people a year, the director of the Arizona Trail Association told me that about 400 people a year complete the whole thing, like from end to end, from Mexico to Utah. And, you know, many more do it in sections, so they don’t do the whole 800 miles in one go, but, you know, 400 people is quite a bit.

LAUREN GILGER: Yes, it is. It is. So let’s talk about how they do that and how these so-called Trail Angels that you wrote about help. It sounds like they kind of make this very long and and difficult and solitary journey kind of more manageable.

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: Yes, definitely. You know, because there’s — as everyone who lives in Arizona knows, there’s these big sections of beautiful public lands with nothing — no services, you know, no stores. So the hikers go through these big swaths of national forest or BLM land and pop out in what’s called a gateway community.

You know, these are from in the south, like Patagonia ... going north, Superior, Flagstaff, Fredonia. And so these people that live in these towns are, you know, the Trail Angels are, you know, ready to support these hikers when they emerge from the wilderness, and it’s it’s an amazing relationship that they have with, you know, these people that they don’t know at all. And the hikers are in need of, you know, some rest and relaxation and food and and all that.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, I mean it’s quite a thing. I mean, let’s let’s talk about one of the the Trail Angels that you profiled here, a Minnesota retiree who moved to Superior. Tell us about her and how she got involved in this.

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: Right, yeah. She goes by MJ, and she retired from the Midwest and moved to Superior. And, you know, had this nice little house and thought she would have this peaceful life, but she suddenly discovered not long after moving in that she was lonely. And she came from a family with a lot of siblings and and all of a sudden, you know, she was sitting on her front porch and this hiker, like really, you know, worn-out looking guy with a backpack and dirty clothes like came walking down the street.

And she asked him what he was doing, and he told her about the Arizona Trail. He had just come off the trail and was literally hiking, you know, from the trail into town. And when she learned about that, and she just became interested in, you know, the trail and the community around it, the community of volunteers.

And she found out about this group of, extraordinary group of people called Trail Angels, and she decided to get involved and started volunteering and you know, inviting strangers, stragglers off the trail into her home for spending the night and, you know, getting food, you know, just getting to visit with MJ about people from all over the the world come to her house.

Annette McGivney
Annette McGivney

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, it does sound like folks from all walks of life come, right? ... And they often come kind of in dire straits, like folks who have run out of water or who are injured will stop by sometimes.

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: Right, yeah. Anyone who’s done a big ambitious hike knows like you think you’ve got it all dialed in in terms of your equipment and your physical fitness and things happen, and so it is very common for people to like have a sprained ankle or, you know, their backpack strap is broken, and so she’s kind of like, you know, an urgent care center for for all this for gear and bodies.

... This one woman, young woman, that I wrote about in my story named Melina, who’s from Germany, sprained her ankle, and MJ took her to an urgent care center and encouraged Melina to stay at her house for a couple days to recover.

And, you know, these angels don’t charge. This is not an Airbnb kind of a business. ... Hikers, you know, they can’t afford to be pulling out their credit card every time they need help or, you know, a place to sleep, and and so this is all volunteer. It’s not — no one’s making money off of this.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, I mean that’s kind of what I wanted to ask you about because there’s this question I’m sure comes up for a lot of these Trail Angels, like why would anyone do this? Like it’s not just, you know, you’re not making any money on it, but I mean people are a little bit wary of strangers today. Like hitchhikers are kind of, you know, people you’re going to look at with a skeptical eye. You don’t see a lot of that today. I imagine a lot of folks would be scared to invite a sort of, you know, unkempt stranger into their homes.

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, and I was very skeptical of like ... what’s going on here? Why would you allow strangers into your home? But, you know, it really for me, in my own personal perspective about this, it changed me, and it made me a lot more optimistic. I thought, you know, just allowing someone who off the street into your home was something that happened maybe 100 years ago, but not today, and, you know, we live in such a polarized society.

Stina Sieg/KJZZ
Arizona Trail marker in Flagstaff.

But these people have had, you know, like 99.9% of the hundreds of people that stay with them every year have had a very positive experience. ... And I would press, I’d say, "Well, has anyone ever stolen from you or taken advantage?" ... This one couple I talked to, they have accommodated like 800 people in their home over the last five years. And the worst thing that happened was that someone stole a pair of socks or something.

The couples that I talked to that do this were adamant that, you know, trusting humanity is like don’t worry, you know, like people are generally good, and that people are grateful. ... The couples, the Angels said that they got way more out of it than the people staying with them. They do it, not just to be nice to the hikers, but like for them it was something that really was uplifting in their own lives.

LAUREN GILGER: It is an uplifting story as well. Longtime Arizona journalist Annette McGivney there. She wrote the story for Arizona Highways. Annette, thank you so much for coming on.

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: Oh, thank you, Lauren.

MARK BRODIE: Graduation season is almost over, which means thousands and thousands of names have been read aloud as graduates walk across stages to get their diplomas. But new technology has led to some challenges and controversies. Officials at Glendale Community College this week had to apologize after the AI system they used to read graduates’ names malfunctioned, and by way of full disclosure, KJZZ is licensed to the Maricopa Community College District, which also includes Glendale Community College. With me now to talk more about the evolving role of the graduation name reader is Peter Lafford, Associate Research Professional Emeritus at ASU. He’s also read names at ASU graduations for three decades. Peter, good morning. Thanks for being here.

PETER LAFFORD: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: So, what is like, you, you still do this?

PETER LAFFORD: Yes.

MARK BRODIE: So, what has your experience been with using AI?

PETER LAFFORD: Well, it’s, it’s been great. First of all, it isn’t, it isn’t, uh, Siri or Alexa or E.T. if any of your audience remembers, "Hi, little voice, I’m E.T." No, no, it’s not that, and, and we’re not doing deepfakes. It’s that we’ve created AI voices of my voice reading names. Uh, the company doing this for us, Tassl, and ElevenLabs with the AI voice, had us read like like an hour’s worth of names where they’ve got the actual name we’re reading and the sound we’re making and they use that to create an AI voice that I put my own words into and it comes out just fine and perfect. Uh, I don’t know, do you have do you have that um sample I was able to give to you of what it what I was doing at ASU last week?

MARK BRODIE: We do, yeah. Let’s let’s take a listen to the the AI version of Peter Lafford here.

PETER LAFFORD (AI VOICE): Abdul Qayyum Abdul Rashid Khan. Srupthi Hosahalli Manjunatha. Yuva Vignesh Balamurugan.

MARK BRODIE: So that was, Peter, that was you as AI reading the names of graduates.

PETER LAFFORD: Exactly, exactly. And and in fact, the company takes the names that they want to be announced, submitted to the AI voice, give the students a chance to go, "Thumbs up, yeah, that’s good," or "No, no, no, try again, try again." And if they still don’t like what the AI voice was doing for them, it kicks over into the reader record queue where we, the readers, actually record it in our own studio, and this is a couple of weeks, you know, before the event actually.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah.

PETER LAFFORD: And so we can record it then because they didn’t like it. So all of the students have a chance to say, "Yeah, that’s good." And um, and that’s why it it’s indistinguishable from my regular reading voice, what the AI voice is doing. It’s really quite quite impressive.

MARK BRODIE: Well, and this is of course, the main goal, right? Like is to get the students’ names right. They’ve worked hard, they’ve achieved something, you don’t want to screw up their name on what one of the biggest days of their lives.

PETER LAFFORD: Exactly, exactly. And um, I mean, it evolved from when I was just reading the names that had been scribbled on an index card, uh, and held in their sweaty little palm for a half hour, I had to unroll that, quickly see the name and read it live. Now they they get onto the webpage, they can even put annotations of what they think it is, they can even record their own pronunciation that we we get to hear and listen and we can make annotations or as we now record the names in advance, we can tweak it to see to be just what they recorded for us, and now we can let AI do it and even tweak it more if they didn’t like what AI was doing.

MARK BRODIE: Do you think that there is anything lost when you don’t have a human on a stage reading a graduate’s name?

PETER LAFFORD: I, I don’t. I mean, I think uh, it’s been fun that when I run into somebody who says, "Oh, I graduated from ASU," I said, "What school? I might have read your name at graduation." Well, now I’d be saying, "Well, oh, oh, you went to ASU. Um, what school? Oh, yeah, your name might have been read by my AI voice." But I trained that IA voice, AI voice with, you know, years of experience in languages and I taught English as a second language, so I encountered students from all around the world. I’ve helped make it work that well that I do feel good about it that they get it get it right.

MARK BRODIE: And obviously, this is a very new technology, so not a huge sort of sample size here, but it sounds like you’ve not had the experience that folks at Glendale Community College had earlier this week when the system, the system just didn’t work as planned.

PETER LAFFORD: Right, that wasn’t an AI problem, that was an AV problem. The computer glitched or their audio connection or their scanners weren’t working. Something strange was happening there, but the the names that it was playing, you heard, they were just fine and dandy. It’s just that the system wasn’t working right. They didn’t have a backup plan that worked quite right, so that’s where the the trouble came in.

MARK BRODIE: So is the key then to have a backup plan where like, yes, let’s use the AI if that’s the system we’re set up to use, but there should also be a live human there who’s prepared to to read names if need be?

PETER LAFFORD: So, there, the the way that Tassl recommends people, schools do it, is to have two computers side-by-side, you know, uh, the one they’re using with the scanner they’re using, and then a hot swap right next door ready to plug in if something were to go wrong with that. And then you still have the person at the stage who is taking the card and scanning it. And then if it doesn’t work, then they get to read it. I mean, funny thing happened back after COVID, when we were finally back in events at ASU. Um, we were all wearing masks and I had prerecorded all of the names, and but I had my mask on and I scanned the first name and the name displayed on the screen but nothing played on the audio, huh. I scanned the next card, nothing on the audio, phooey. And so I went ahead and read it, read it live, went through the rest of the ceremony reading the names live. But when I went to talk to Melissa Goitia, who is the coordinator there, I said, "Hey, what happened?" She said, "Oh, that went well." I said, "No, no, I was reading all of the names." She had no idea. The fact is, the mask, I thought, the mask was going to hide the fact that I wasn’t saying the names live. In fact, it head, hid the fact that I was, was reading the names live, so the joke was on me, you see. But now it’s the same thing, those those names whether they were done by my reading voice or my AI voice, they’re all on the system ready to go, uh, and so that that shouldn’t really be be an issue.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right, we’ll have to leave it there. The real Peter Lafford, he’s been reading names at ASU graduations for three decades. Peter, thanks for your insights.

PETER LAFFORD: Thank you so much, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger.

Elaine Romero has written 120 plays. And now, the University of Arizona professor is one of more than 200 people named 2026 Guggenheim Fellows by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship this year.

The prestigious fellowship will support the development of her latest play, "Diablos Aquí," which follows a father and daughter born on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border and the way the political reality impacts their lives.

The Show spoke with her more about her work and her reaction to winning the fellowship.

ELAINE ROMERO: I absolutely could not believe it. Even though I know how hard I’ve worked and I know all those plays exist, and I know the community that has supported me here in Arizona and beyond nationally and internationally. And I knew on some level, I think I have the profile of a Guggenheim winner. And now I have a Guggenheim.

LAUREN GILGER: There it is. There it is. And I understand this is something you’ve tried for for a long time, but you did something a little differently this year, maybe a little superstitious to try to get this.

ELAINE ROMERO: Yes, I decided to use my spiritual tradition of writing a note and putting it on my altar at home, that said, "Guggenheim winner." And so when I would walk into my office and walk by my altar, I’d see that little reminder that I intended to win that this year. And voilà, here we are.

LAUREN GILGER: I love that. So let’s back up and talk a little bit about your career and how you got here, right? Like, I read that you’ve called yourself a playwright and a prognosticator, and I wanted to start there and ask, what do you mean by that?

ELAINE ROMERO: What I mean is, I think if an artist is listening and paying attention to the world around them, and considering history, and considering everything that has happened, everything that is happening, and all the potentialities of what might happen, they might find themselves writing things in advance of them occurring, and I was beginning to discover that with my work, that that was happening a lot. And particularly with the rough, rough, rough, rough draft of "Diablos Aquí," already things that I started to write have already occurred.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s crazy. So because you think you’re kind of tapped into the, I guess, the cultural pulse of what may be going on in the world around you, you end up predicting what happens. That’s wild. Give us an example or two.

ELAINE ROMERO: Well, I think it has to do with when we look at history, we can say, "OK, historically this happened and then that happened." I think that it really is paying attention to not just current trends, but the way things have gone historically.

I would say the big one with "Diablos Aquí" was, it’s a story of a father and daughter. She is a lawyer and he is a person who has started to, I won’t say collude, but work with ICE to help them catch undocumented people.

And in my play, in my first, first, first, rough, rough, rough draft, I had him admit to being on an airplane to El Salvador, and that he, when he got there, he was shocked by what he saw, and at that time, we didn’t know anybody would any migrants would be sent to El Salvador to the prison there. We didn’t know that at the time that I wrote that. So I would say to me, that was the loud and I, there isn’t a louder example than that one.

LAUREN GILGER: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, so what was your reaction when you saw the news on this and realized once again, you know, you’ve sort of predicted reality? And in a way, I’m guessing you’re not incredibly happy about.

ELAINE ROMERO: No. It’s always I want to be wrong. I would rather have the work be insignificant and not matter. Honestly, I don’t want to be right about negative directions for our democracy, or the treatment of human beings that has sunk to such a degree that we don’t recognize ourselves anymore as a country.

LAUREN GILGER: So I know you also work with students as they create and develop new work at the University of Arizona there, right? I wonder, what does the work that they are doing make you think about, maybe the state of the country, but maybe also our collective future?

ELAINE ROMERO: It’s really interesting because I just produced their festival in March, and I asked the students to come up with a theme. The theme was "Broken." And all the plays had to do with some level of brokenness, whether it be psychological, or social, or global. They found their way to that theme, and I thought that was illuminating because it told me that they’re not having, you know, they’re not writing the pizza dorm play right now.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s not what’s happening. What kind of play is that, the pizza dorm play?

ELAINE ROMERO: It’s a very common play you get as a playwrighting professor if the students are not paying attention to the world, but these students are.

LAUREN GILGER: I mean, does that also at the same time as it might be a sign of the times that the theme they chose was broken, but also, I mean does it give you some hope?

ELAINE ROMERO: Gives me hope that they’re willing to be deep and that they understand that they can be both comic and deep, and that those two things are not mutually exclusive. We even had a student write a song in two languages, and we did auditions and people showed up and in the piece, there were people singing in two languages.

So I think that there is the students give me great hope in their ability to access themselves. I feel like that is the gift I receive from my teachers, is how do I access myself and not censor myself as I go, and I really endeavor to teach the students at the University of Arizona that same access because I really think that if you can find that direct access without funneling through your judgment of yourself, or oh, the importance of this piece that I’m creating, or any of that, then you can get to something that’s really true. And the characters will feel really true.

And even with this wonderful gift of the Guggenheim, I am now reminding myself, it’s still me and the page, it’s still the simple act of creating a play from nothing, and still approaching it with beginner’s mind, as if I’ve never done it before. I want every play to have its own structure, and to demand its own frame, and this play will have to do the same. It doesn’t get any special treatment. It has to go through the same exact process.

LAUREN GILGER: I guess that’s fair enough. So, I mean, let me ask you, I mean, 120 plays or so you’ve written, I read, which is a whole lot, quite a collection, and I wonder over the course of doing that and in still doing it today, and working with students on this, and being so embedded in the theater, what do you think the power of the theater is?

It sounds like your work and the way you think about theater is very much integrated into, you know, the state of the world. It’s not like this separate, higher art.

ELAINE ROMERO: I think it’s there to tell us we’re human, to help us understand we’re human, and to help us know it’s OK we’re human. And I think the only way out of any kind of political quagmire is the truth of humanity. And we have to come back to that.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, we’ll leave it there. Elaine Romero, a playwright, UA professor, festival director of the New Directions Festival at the University of Arizona, and a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow. Elaine, thank you so much for joining me to talk about this. Congratulations.

ELAINE ROMERO: Thank you, Lauren. Thank you for having me.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for listening to The Show’s podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban. 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.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

>> RSVP FOR AN UPCOMING LIVE EVENT FROM THE SHOW