The Show for June 1, 2026: Higher summer AC costs, new Tucson art museum director and more

Forecasters are predicting a hotter-than-typical summer for Arizona, in the form of a “Super El Niño.” That comes as Arizonans are spending more to cool their homes. And, we’ll meet the new head of Tucson’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

Transcript

MARK BRODIE: Hi, I’m Mark Brodie, 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.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, and welcome to The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix, I’m Lauren Gilger. And I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, higher temperatures and energy costs mean higher energy bills for Arizonans this summer.

LAUREN GILGER: And why the Glendale City Council ousted one of its own.

MARK BRODIE: But first, Republican legislative leaders are asking a judge to delay or block an order that requires them to make changes to the way the state funds public schools. This is the latest move in a decades-old lawsuit dealing with school funding. With me to talk more about this is Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services. And Howard, we will get to the history of this case in just a moment, but first off, what exactly are the House Speaker and Senate President asking for now?

HOWARD FISCHER: At the moment, they’re asking at the very least for a delay in Judge Fox’s order that says, you have until November to come up with a system to fix school funding.

They’re saying, A, it’s this, too quickly, and B, they'd really like the whole order overturned because they say it’s none of his darn business how the Legislature allocates funding, how the Legislature decides what schools need, and that they have to go ahead and say, look, the Legislature said this, it must be perfect.

Now, as we all know, judges don’t like to be told they have no authority over issues, particularly this is constitutional.

MARK BRODIE: Right.

HOWARD FISCHER: And that gets to the whole issue behind the case, which is that Arizona’s constitution requires what they call a general and uniform school system. Now, that doesn’t mean every school has to have exactly the same equipment, exactly the same conditions, but that all schools should be safe, they shouldn’t have roofs that leak, they should have air conditioning or cooling that somewhat works so it’s not 92 degrees in the classroom while you’re trying to teach someone, and they should all have a certain equipment.

For example, you know, should they have computers? Should they have blackboards? Should they have desks? I mean, some of that may sound obvious. But lawmakers are saying, well, we’re doing the best we can and it’s none of the judge’s business to tell us how we should do it.

Now, remember, this case goes back to 2017, and we’ll talk about actually goes back into the 1980s.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, so this case has been going on, as you reference, for decades now and I think we’d need an entire episode of The Show to go through all the twists and turns of it.

But can you sort of walk us through, sort of generally, how this case started and how it’s ended up where it is?

HOWARD FISCHER: This goes back at the very least to 1994, when the state Supreme Court in a case called Roosevelt v. Bishop said that requirement for general and uniform system requires the states to be the ones responsible for funding school construction, school repairs and school equipment.

Because prior to that, the understanding was every school district would be responsible for its own equipment, repairs, etc. Which led to a situation, for example, in Springerville where they have a power plant, you had a dome stadium. In Globe, the toilets didn’t work.

And the court said, no, that doesn’t work. Now what the justices did is they didn’t say, you will do X, they say, you have to come up with a system to properly fund education.

And the Legislature, after several fits and starts, finally came up with various programs, something called Students First, for example. They also came up with a School Facilities Board to say, OK, figure out what the needs are and we will make sure that every school has enough not just to do the immediate repairs, but to keep things in repair because it’s a lot cheaper to deal with a bad roof by patching it rather than having to replace it totally.

Everything considered went along fine for a while, but back in 2017, some of those same school districts came back to the courts and said, wait a second, the Legislature, when they were in financial difficulties, simply stopped funding school repairs, school replacement equipment. And we have to get back to where we are.

So it’s taken us literally in this case from 2017 until last August when the judge issued a 114-page opinion and said, here’s what’s wrong with the system, you know, you’ve got until November to fix it. Again, he’s not telling them how to fix it. He’s not saying you need to spend X number of dollars. He’s saying, you come up with a solution.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, and one of the arguments that the legislative leaders are making, Howie, as you report, is that, you know, the state has a finite amount of money and if, you know, they have to spend more on education or school facilities, things like that, it means less money coming from somewhere else or they have to raise taxes, which of course the Republicans do not want to do.

So like, how how does this get resolved? I mean, the judge as you say is kind of loath to say, OK, you have to spend X amount on this, but can the judge say, you need to spend more, for example?

HOWARD FISCHER: I think the judge can say you need to spend whatever is necessary to ensure what the constitution requires. This is not a legislative issue because with, in fact, he pointed out the last time we went through this, it was, the Legislature came up with a school facilities board that came up with these standards that they’re not meeting.

Now can the judge order them to raise taxes? No. But what the, the ultimate power the judge has, and then we can kind of parse this down, is if the system is unconstitutional, he can say, you can order the treasurer not to fund it, which basically would close down every school throughout the state because there’d be no state aid at all. That’s the power he has.

Now, as the issue of we don’t have enough money, I mean, as you say, we could spend the hour talking about this because, you know, we cut state income tax rates for individuals and corporations over the years, you know, the idea that it would produce more money. You’ve got related issues of how well do we fund schools as compared to other places.

So the judge said, not my problem. It is true, you have to figure out your priorities. Now, it’s also important to remember is that right now, as we’ve talked about every Monday morning for this past, since January, we have a budget crunch.

MARK BRODIE: Right.

HOWARD FISCHER: Now, there are many reasons for that, you know, in terms of recession, the judge is also saying, I’m not saying you have to fix it all at once, but you have to make some progress, you have to come up with a system to ensure a general and uniform system.

Now, if you have to take money away from something else, well, maybe that’s the case. If you have to decide that you need higher taxes, maybe that’s the case. But again, you cannot simply ignore the constitution because it’s, A, it's inconvenient, or B, we just don’t have the money to do so.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so Howie, given that, you know, budget talks are ongoing, there could be votes maybe this week or next week, is this part of the conversation among lawmakers and the governor?

HOWARD FISCHER: Well, not among the, the lawmakers. I mean, their attitude is well, we’ll just get a delay and we’ll kick the can down the road at the very least. I mean, there seems to be a belief among the Republicans that the judge exceeded his authority. And maybe he did. But again, given the precedent set by the Supreme Court back in 1994, I’m not sure that he did.

Now, maybe there’s some tiny things in there that are different from Roosevelt v. Bishop in terms of what he says are necessary, but I think the lawmakers just hoping to kick the can down the road.

Now, remember, this isn’t the only court order they’ve got. We’ve talked about the fact we’ve got a federal judge that has said she’s going to place the prison system into receivership because the fact that the healthcare being provided does not meet constitutional requirement. In that case, that’s federal Constitution.

There are obviously a lot of things going on. You know, can Arizona do it with the revenues that are coming in? Do we need a different revenue structure? You know, it’s nice that, you know, we’re in an election cycle and you’ve got people like Andy Biggs saying, well, we’ll just, you know, get rid of property taxes or sales taxes or something else, and somehow we’ll grow our way out of it.

And there is some reason to believe that you can incentivize people to move here, to bring their companies here, which bring jobs, which bring other forms of taxes. But in the meantime, you actually have to have a system that works. Now, how do you do that? That’s why you and I are talking on the radio, and we’re not the 90 people at the Capitol deciding this.

MARK BRODIE: Sure. That is Howie Fischer with Capitol Media Services. Howie, thanks as always.

HOWARD FISCHER: You’re welcome.

MARK BRODIE: As the Valley’s temperatures settle into the triple digits, a new report finds we should expect to pay more to cool our homes this summer. The National Energy Assistance Directors Association says on average, Americans will pay 8.5% more this summer than last year. That comes out to a $61 difference. The group defines summer as between June and September. In the mountain region, which includes Arizona, the increase is expected to be 8.8%. Mark Wolfe is executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which represents all state programs that help low-income households pay their heating and cooling bills. He joins me.

Mark, are the reasons for increased costs the same across the country or do they differ from region to region?

MARK WOLFE: I think the answer is both. So, overall, we’re going to have a hotter summer this year. And so, families will be using more electricity to cool their homes. So, in most parts of the country, the cost of electricity is going up. In many cases, faster than inflation. And then, on top of that, you need to use more electricity to cool your home.

So, we’re estimating that say in Arizona, for example, that the cost of summer cooling this year will go up from about $931 last year to about $1,013 this year. And we consider now the summer months, June to September. Of course, in Arizona, probably it’s May through possibly October. You know, your summer cooling period is really wide.

So, for families, you know, there’s nothing you can do about rising temperatures. And there’s nothing you can do about the price of electricity. The only thing you can do is manage your use of electricity better through efficiency, by trying to use less of it, by thinking about, you know, how high can you raise your cooling system in the summer in order to reduce consumption.

But the biggest problem is that prices have been going up relentlessly for the last four years. I think the real message here is this is that in the past, you know, not so long ago, seven, eight, 10 years ago, prices would go up, then they’d come back down again. Here we’re in a situation where prices are just going one direction, up.

MARK BRODIE: When you talk about, as you’re saying, prices are looking like they’re only going to keep going up, the same could most likely be said for temperatures, right? There’s really no evidence to suggest that we’re we’re going to be cooling in any meaningful way.

What are families thinking about right now? You mentioned thinking about efficiencies, but this seems like kind of a problem for a lot of folks if electricity is only going to continue to get more expensive and temperatures are only going to continue to go up.

MARK WOLFE: So what it is, is that you’re going to need to buy more of an expensive product. Some of this depends on your income. So people who are high income, for example, people who are in the top 10%, 20% of the income ladder, this doesn’t fall so heavily on them because right now, if you look at the averages, a high-income family spends maybe 3%, 4% of their income on home energy.

So if their cost of summer cooling goes up by 20%, maybe they’ll be spending 4%, at worst 5% of their income on home energy, and that’s affordable. They can manage that.

But if you’re low income or middle income, you’re spending 5% to 10% of your income on home energy, and you have very little discretionary income left over. So if prices go up, something else has to give. So the cost of gasoline, for example, is going up right now, and your cost of summer cooling, you have to sacrifice in order to pay these higher costs. So I think that’s part of it is that I think some of this has to do with what’s your perspective on these prices.

But having said that, there’s a lot you can do to manage your usage of electricity in the summer to help reduce those costs. And it’s everything from as simple as closing the blinds during the day. There are things like turning down the temperature, or I guess essentially raising the temperature in your house during the summer months by even 3 degrees can save you 10% on your bill, by looking around the house for leaks and caulking those. All of that can help.

And one thing that we’re finding, you know, most of the people that our state programs help are families with low incomes. Now we’re hearing from middle-income families who are saying that they’re struggling to pay their electric bill. And for us that’s new. We really haven’t seen that before. And I think that reflects both the rising price of electricity, as well as other key expenses that are going up, in this case faster than inflation, and people are feeling very stretched.

And electricity is one place you can’t substitute. Now, for example, if the price of meat goes up, you can switch to chicken or something. Price of electricity goes up, you still need to use electricity.

MARK BRODIE: What kind of impact is the situation in D.C. over the LIHEAP program having on all this? The program that helps low-income residents pay for heating and cooling. I mean, we know that traditionally what money has been there has gone more toward cold-weather states than warm-weather states. It seems like that would maybe make this situation even a little worse.

MARK WOLFE: Yeah, that’s been a discussion for a while. The formula goes back to 1980, if you can believe it. And back then, the concern was winter heating. And as time went by, Congress changed the law to give heating and cooling equal weight, but they never funded the program well enough to take advantage of that.

And so when you look at it now, on a per capita basis, the Northeast, Midwest states represent about 40% of the U.S. population, they receive about 60% of the funds. But with increasing temperatures, the need to think about cooling is growing.

And I’ve been quite frustrated about that because to be quite honest, I thought Congress would have added more money to the program. We’ve asked them to. I thought, well, how many more years do we need of extreme temperatures before we realize that summer cooling is as important as winter heating? And I think that’s where the program is now. I mean, the administration proposed to kill the program altogether, if you remember. But I don’t think Congress will allow that. Congress is very supportive. It’s a bipartisan program.

But the issue of access to affordable cooling is growing and as an organization, we’ve been very supportive of that because we see that in some ways the heating problem’s been addressed. What’s not adequately addressed is the need for support for summer cooling.

MARK BRODIE: I wanted to ask you about the overall projections that your group put out. You mentioned some of the the numbers that you’re forecasting for Arizona this summer, but even just sort of within the mountain region, which is where you put Arizona, you’re looking at an almost 9% increase in the costs of of heating, and that includes, you know, places that traditionally don’t get as hot as Arizona does.

Do you see any reason to think that this trend overall of people just year after year paying more and more to heat their homes in the summer or to cool their homes in the summer is going to change anytime soon?

MARK WOLFE: No. No, I think that all the signs right now point to the costs going up. There are billions of dollars of rate increases pending across the country. Again, that’s oriented towards upgrading the grid, the delivery system. But that’s adding to cost.

And I think that we’re also seeing, the other thing that’s important to mention, that we’re also seeing that states that normally don’t think of themselves as warm-weather states are getting more days that require air conditioning.

And I think the canary in the coal mine, of course, is elderly people, disabled people, families with young children. All of those families are at more health risk when temperatures rise.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. Mark, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.

MARK WOLFE: Sure. Well, anytime.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It is The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, the new head of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson is embracing the city’s identity and the museum’s lack of a permanent exhibit.

GABRIELA RANGEL: Well, MOCA is a Kunsthalle, you know, an institution that has no collection. It’s an institution made for temporary exhibitions of living artists. We’re free to experiment.

MARK BRODIE: We’ll hear from the museum’s executive director.

LAUREN GILGER: But first, the race for the SRP Board was unprecedented this year with record turnout for a normally sleepy election to govern one of the state’s largest utilities. But this time, Turning Point USA stepped in and a slate of clean energy candidates on the other side, too. And the showdown was intense. In the end, Turning Point protected the incumbent president and VP, but clean energy candidates took over a majority of the power utility’s board. And now, one of those candidates has been ousted from his other job as a result, his other job as a Glendale city council. It’s all over a provision in that city’s charter that bars council members from holding other paid public offices. But Councilmember Lupe Conchas says it’s also about money. We’re joined now by Jeremy Duda, who reported the story for Axios Phoenix, to tell us more. Good morning, Jeremy.

JEREMY DUDA: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So Jeremy, this seems pretty clear, right? Like, the city’s law says you cannot hold another paid public office and be on their City Council. But how much does SRP pay its board members?

JEREMY DUDA: Well, SRP pays its board members $60 per day for each meeting they attend in person. And so and that’s uh these are uh quarterly payments that are given out for that. So in theory, if you were to attend every meeting virtually, you wouldn’t get paid anything and that’s what got some of the kind of dispute at the Glendale City Council last week came down to.

It’s like not only does this qualify as compensation as opposed to reimbursement but does but uh has, you know, Lupe Conchas actually received any uh reimbursement, which my understanding, he has not, at least not so far.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, not so far. So so what did the council members who voted to oust this this city council member Conchas say? Like, what did they what did they say about why?

JEREMY DUDA: Well, they said the law is clear, you know. This is a this is a position, the SRP Board, in their views, a position that provides compensation. You know, $60, as I mentioned, $60 per meeting, that’s governed by state law that says members of uh agricultural boards, which the SRP Power District Board is, um can be paid up to $60 per meeting with the specific amount of compensation set by the board.

The state the law does, you know, that statute does specifically use the term compensation, uh so I that’s might get into kind of a semantic issue on whether that’s is that compensation, is that reimbursement, what exactly is it per diem, exactly what is it.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Yeah. What what about Lupe Conchas? Like, what does he say about why he was targeted here?

JEREMY DUDA: Lupe Conchas says he was targeted because, not because of the SRP Board but because of, ironically, agitating against some of his colleagues over another issue of, you know, pay compensation, reimbursement, whatever you want to call it.

A couple of years before he was elected to the Glendale City Council, the city implemented a uh sort of a stipend. I think they referred to it as like a $450 per month vehicle allowance and then a $900 per month kind of stipend for expenses and reimbursements and whatnot as opposed to their previous reimburse, you know, reimbursement policy. This was an administrative policy.

And the way this and the reason this gets kind of controversial is that, you know, the pay for the City Council and mayor are set by the city charter and they can only be changed by the voters. The voters, you know, in 20th in 2019, just a few years before that, overwhelmingly rejected a proposed pay increase for the mayor and council.

I think, you know, Lupe Conchas views this as kind of as kind of side stepping and circumvention that requirement for voter approval and he believes it’s a kind of a very opaque the way this is used. He’s, you know, you know, somewhat recently referred to this as a slush fund. He’s, you know, a few months into his term in 2025, he stopped taking this once he says once he realized uh there are some kind of question what he felt like was the questionable nature of it. So in his view, he says he believes this was he was targeted because of the way he’s been kind of pushing back and fighting against this stipend policy.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. Right. OK. So I mean, the the AG’s office is actually even investigating that car allowance, that stipend policy as well, we should say. And Conchas said he’s going to fight this expulsion. What’s the plan there? Like, how does that process work?

JEREMY DUDA: He has filed something in court, I believe, he filed it on late last week asking for the expulsion to be reversed. And so we’ll have to let that play out in court. And for for for the time being, he’s no longer a member of the Glendale City Council. They’ll start the replacement process for him. He is still a member of the SRP Power District Board.

LAURNE GILGER: So let me ask about that board, Jeremy, because as I said at the top, like this was this very controversial SRP election with lots of eyes on it, lots of money in it, there in the way that is not usually the case for this election. And he ran as part of this kind of slate of clean clean energy candidates. Is this potentially going to have any impact on their success and and what he might be able to do on that board?

JEREMY DUDA: Not as far as I’m aware. Now Mr. Conchas did offer at the the City Council meeting last week where he was expelled, he did offer to resign from the SRP Board if his colleagues would refrain from expelling him. Obviously, yeah, that did not happen and now it’ll be up to the court so he’s on the SRP Board and if the court says so, he’ll go back to the Glendale City Council or he’ll just be on the SRP Board. But I don’t to my knowledge, I don’t think this affects uh his service with SRP for now.

LAUREN GILGER: He’s not stepping down at this point, still going to fight it. I want to ask more about that AG investigation into this stipend car allowance policy. This has to do with the whole controversy over the gift clause, right?

JEREMY DUDA: There’s a number of issues. One is, you know, the constitution the gift clause of the Arizona Constitution. There are questions over the provision I mentioned of the city charter requiring voter approval for a pay raise for the council. There’s open meeting law issues and I think another issue as well. So there’s kind of a handful of legal issues the AG’s Office is looking at in response to a complaint from uh someone in Glendale who uh raised some issues last I believe it was last August.

It was a while ago and then a few months later came back with a couple of additional issues and then the AG’s Office did inform Glendale the the city just about a month ago that "hey, we’re we’re taking a look at this, we’re investigating it" and they need some and they want some answers and some responses from the city in regards to this.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, last minute for you here, Jeremy. The mayor also said there were several "citizens," quote, unquote, who told the city they thought that Conchas shouldn’t be able to serve anymore because of this election to the SRP Board. Is there any hint of politics here?

JEREMY DUDA: Oh, I mean, there’s always a hint of politics, you know. You know, you know, Conchas is a Democrat, he was, you know, of course elected to the SRP Board, you know, partisan politics are always going to kind of rear their head when uh whenever there’s uh something that one side feels is kind of questionable on the other side, they’re going to go after them for it.

We saw during the speaker comments at the City Council meeting, you know, several Democratic members of the Legislature stood up to support Conchas. Some known Republican former at least one former Republican lawmaker and other kind of prominent other Republicans stood up to oppose him. So of course there’s always going to be a, you know, if if partisan politics is involved in any way, shape of form way, shape or form, of course that’s going to, you know, play a factor.

LAUREN GILGER: It’ll always be there. All right, we’ll leave it there for now. Jeremy Duda reported this for Axios Phoenix, joining us. Jeremy, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

JEREMY DUDA: Thanks for having me.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: With summer approaching, lots of us are looking for a good summer read, either for the beach or other travel or just sitting on the couch in our air-conditioned homes.

With me now to talk about some of his favorites of the season is Mark Athitakis, a book critic based here in the Valley. Mark, good morning. Thanks for being here.

MARK ATHITAKIS: Good morning. Thank you so much for having me.

MARK BRODIE: So I’ve got to ask starting off, there’s so much talk in every area that we talk about about AI. What is the conversation in the publishing and the book world right now about this?

MARK ATHITAKIS: There’s a lot of anxiety. There have been books that have been pulled from publication because things have been uncovered that they’ve used AI. There’s recently a short story prize that various readers — and, you know, it’s hard to prove these things — but said that with 99% certainty that this was generated by AI, and Granta, which is a very prominent, prestigious literary magazine in England, ran it. So their reputation is under scrutiny.

Olga Tokarczuk, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature a few years ago, she made a statement that made people think that she was using AI to write her next novel. Now she walked that back and said, “I use AI the way that a lot of people use AI, I just use it as kind of a research tool.”

But all of this is kind of circling around the idea of what is appropriate and what is not appropriate when it comes to writing books or being creative and using AI?

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Any particular uh trends you’re seeing in terms of the kinds of books that that are coming out for this summer?

MARK ATHITAKIS: I don’t know about specific trends, but when I think about AI, I think about how writers being the creative people that they are are looking for workarounds. And I think about like a month ago, the Pulitzer Prizes were announced and the winner in fiction was a novel called “Angel Down” by Daniel Kraus, which I highly recommend.

Now Daniel Kraus is not the kind of person who wins a Pulitzer. His background is in horror fiction. He collaborated with George Romero, who directed “Night of the Living Dead,” on various projects. But this novel is a really intriguing mashup of a war novel. It’s set during World War I. It has all those kind of grotesque horror elements that he is very used to. It has a very spiritual edge to it. It is all one sentence.

MARK BRODIE: The whole book is one sentence?

MARK ATHITAKIS: Yes, and it is remarkably propulsive, it is very readable, it’s a fun summer read if you don’t mind a few gross-out scenes. But it is like nothing else, and I think maybe that’s the kind of conversation we might be having when it comes to what makes for good fiction.

Genre fiction is not going to go away, but I think we’re going to have a lot of writers who are looking for ways to kind of sidestep things that are maybe obvious or things that can be produced by prompts.

Amber Victoria Singer
Mark Athitakis in KJZZ’s studios on June 1, 2026.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right, so you have a list of some uh some books that you’re excited about for the summer. I want to start with one that takes place in the West. It is called “Yellow Pine,” dealing with a woman living near Joshua Tree, which is of course not that far from here.

MARK ATHITAKIS: Yes, so this is by Claire Vaye Watkins, who has written a couple of previous novels, including a well-received one called “Gold Fame Citrus,” and she is kind of in the environmental tradition of even going back to Mary Austin or Ed Abbey.

This novel is very rich in conversation about what happens when the environment is being taken over. In this case, she’s living in an area that is about to be taken over by a solar panel array. And this does all sorts of things to the environment, including displacing desert tortoises. I have learned more about desert tortoises reading this novel than I even knew that there was to know.

But she also writes in a very sensitive, intelligent sort of a way. This is a story about a domestic relationship tethered to a conversation about what is happening to the environment, especially in the desert West.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. So sticking in the West, another book that you’d recommend called “The Flayed Man.” Sounds like a slightly different plot here.

MARK ATHITAKIS: Yeah, this is a little lighter. This is a vampire story that is set around Las Vegas, and its narrator is working as an ER nurse, which comes in handy if you are a vampire. Now in this world’s imagining, you don’t necessarily have to bite into people’s necks. You can just talk to your local phlebotomist and have blood injected that way.

MARK BRODIE: That seems much more efficient.

MARK ATHITAKIS: It does, it does. But this novel is dealing with her shortage of getting access to blood and also dealing with a mother who is dealing with some medical issues as well. So there is some heft here, and there’s a romance that buds around it as well. So if you want to have something that pushes those romance buttons, pushes those buttons in terms of scary horror vampire stories, it’s a fun read.

MARK BRODIE: That sounds like maybe more of a classic beach read than the first one.

MARK ATHITAKIS: Yes, exactly. As you get closer to Halloween and reading it on the beach.

MARK BRODIE: All right, so Richard Russo, who I think a lot of uh folks uh will remember from a number of novels has one that’s coming out a little later this summer called “Under the Falls.” The setting will be familiar to a lot of people who have read his books before.

MARK ATHITAKIS: Yeah, Richard Russo is a product of upstate New York and especially the working-class industrial area of that uh part of the state. And this concerns a successful country singer who’s the local boy who made good and returns back to the town of Stone Mountain to perform for the locals.

And this brings up all sorts of issues about like, OK, you’ve gone away and are you just being condescending toward us — and also triggers some memories about some childhood friends, including one who was severely injured under his watch and perhaps because of his involvement.

So it has all of those Richard Russo stock elements. He is very good at writing about intimate relationships between, you know, friendship, he writes really well about the working class. And he’s been doing this for decades now, but I don’t get the impression that he’s off his game in this new one.

MARK BRODIE: Oh, interesting. What are you seeing in terms of new writers versus familiar faces on the scene this summer? Are you seeing new folks come along as well as some of the more established writers?

MARK ATHITAKIS: I think absolutely. I mean, I think you’ll see that more of the more established writers will come back as we get closer to Labor Day and we start getting into the fall months when a lot of those big Christmas books start coming out.

I think about one writer named Edwidge Danticat, obviously a very well-known Haitian-American author, her first novel in the better part of a decade is going to be coming out later on this summer. It’s called “Dèy,” which is Haitian Creole for mourning, and this involves a woman who is involved in a mass shooting at a shopping mall.

She is a witness to this and talking about burying the trauma of that and how it relates to her experiences with her family, not just in her native Haiti but also living nearby her in Miami.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. You mentioned in some of the notes you sent over about a chain restaurant that … has sort of been going back to its roots in some ways, is reviving something else in its roots.

MARK ATHITAKIS: I don’t know if you blame “Stranger Things” for this or kind of like Gen X trends or whatnot, but Pizza Hut has revived its reading program. And I think this is a remarkable thing as the father of a son who has a hard time reading and doesn’t see reading as necessarily as integrated into your daily life or your summer life as it was when I was growing up.

But yeah, it has this Book It! program. Read a certain number of books, go get a free personal pan pizza. So hey.

MARK BRODIE: Whatever it takes to get people uh into the library or into the bookstores, right?

MARK ATHITAKIS: Or into the Pizza Hut.

MARK BRODIE: Or into the Pizza Hut, absolutely. All right, that is Mark Athitakis, a book critic based here in the Valley. Mark, good as always to talk to you. Thank you.

MARK ATHITAKIS: Thank you so much.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Gabriela Rangel took over as the executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson last year after a long career in the arts that took her all over the world. She grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and always wanted to be in the arts. But she’s lived and worked everywhere from Cuba to New York to Houston to now Tucson. And that is where I began my conversation with her.

So did you ever picture yourself living in a place like Tucson, Arizona?

GABRIELA RANGEL: Never. Never.

LAUREN GILGER: [Laughter]

GABRIELA RANGEL: But I was enamored. When they interviewed me for the job, I found the city, this city is like San Antonio, Texas. You know, I live in Houston. I work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

And I didn’t like that much Houston for its beauty, but for its energy. Houston is a very energetic city, and it lives of energy. Yeah. But then I discovered, thanks to Houston, I discovered Texas. And I fall in love with San Antonio because San Antonio is a gem like Tucson.

It’s a city with singularity, with a character, with a personality. It’s small, and it’s very proud of itself. But it has a personality to be proud of, you know? And it’s it’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful city.

LAUREN GILGER: It is a beautiful city. So you had the similar impression of Tucson when you came there for the first time?

GABRIELA RANGEL: Yeah, and I think the hospitality of people is something that is really disarming. You know, you come with a speed, you work here and there, you think that you’re international. That’s — sorry for my French — that’s bullsh-t.

You know, you have a very comforting zone here. People receiving you with frank curiosity and hospitality. And that, in a world that is so adverse, you really appreciate it.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s interesting, the hospitality drew you. I mean, so San Antonio, I can see the connection to Tucson, I can see the similarities there.

So, what about Tucson as a place — as a region almost, because it’s such a place that is of its region, right? It is defined by the border that it sits near and the history of that and sort of being at various points in history on both sides of that border. What do you think about that and then sort of the the place in which Tucson sits?

GABRIELA RANGEL: I’m going to quote a very important Mexican cook, chef, by the way, she’s the owner of important restaurants in Mexico City and also in the U.S. Cala in San Francisco and now another one in Nevada.

And Gabriela (Cámara), there is a documentary on Netflix that I saw this week dedicated to her, in which she said something really intelligent. She said that the Americans have like a twofold, schizophrenic relationship with Mexico. They love Mexico, but they hate Mexico. They cannot live without the Mexican food, they cannot live without the idea of Mexico, but they hate immigration.

And I think Tucson has this very complicated relationship with the border. It is a border city in the way that it’s very Mexican, but it’s not, you know? When you come here, you feel like, I feel like at home because I love Mexico. Mexico City is my elected city, I love Mexico.

LAUREN GILGER: Sure.

GABRIELA RANGEL: And when I come here, I have the flair of Mexican culture, but at the same time, you have like you, you feel that there is a fear. There is something that it’s not quite OK with this.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s interesting.

GABRIELA RANGEL: And this is what is interesting of the city. That it’s so open, but at the same time, it has some aspects that ... they have not been resolved, to say the least.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s a really interesting perspective on that, I love that.

So, Tucson has a very thriving and I think diverse art scene as well. I wonder what you’ve made of the art scene since you’ve been in Tucson and how you view MOCA’s role in it?

GABRIELA RANGEL: Well, MOCA is a Kunsthalle, you know, an institution that has no collection. It’s an institution made for temporary exhibitions of living artists. We are invited to do multidisciplinary programming because we work with living artists, and living artists are looking at different directions.

If we work with the idea of contemporary, which means basically the present in a way that is not journalistic, that is much more the zeitgeist. How is the notion of time in our time, you know? How do we see the time of the present now, which is very difficult to be seen because it’s happening now, right?

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

GABRIELA RANGEL: It’s a paradox, but we work with that paradox, first. Second, we don’t have a collection. We’re free. We’re free to experiment, we’re free to do whatever we want with that zeitgeist, with the present. And Tucson has a very important literary and music scene and dance scene, and that’s what we have to explore.

LAUREN GILGER: So you see a lot of it sounds like maybe not collaboration, but cross referencing maybe in what’s going on in the Tucson art world?

GABRIELA RANGEL: Exactly.

LAUREN GILGER: You have said that you bring a bicultural lens to your work in art in general, which I think applies really well to a place like Tucson. How do you think that lens that you bring will inform and already probably is informing the work that you’re bringing there?

GABRIELA RANGEL: Well, you know, I work in a hybrid space, and that hybrid space allows you to have an openness that probably if you’re monocultural or if you speak only one language, you don’t have.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

GABRIELA RANGEL: And I, I think in several languages, not only in two. And I think it’s important to have this in your brain because the world is like this. The world is not in one language.

LAUREN GILGER: So so the hybrid space is interesting. Do you see that manifesting in the work that you choose, the work that you bring there as your role as a curator?

GABRIELA RANGEL: Yes, I do. I'm working right now with, you know, I co-curated an exhibition of artists who I’ve been working for in the last three years who are hybrid like me.

The Hilma’s Ghost is a feminist collective. One of them is from India and the other one is from New York. So we have this in our constitution, in our DNA.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. That’s very interesting.

Let me ask you about I mean, the borderlands, immigration, you know, just being in that place right now is sort of inherently political given the political landscape right now and what’s happening with immigration in this country. I wonder how political you think museums and art should be?

GABRIELA RANGEL: Everything that is public is political. Museums are public spaces.

That’s my response. As feminists show us in the ’60s, the personal is political too.

LAUREN GILGER: So everything in the work whether or not it seems on its face political, you think is going to be political anyway?

GABRIELA RANGEL: Exactly. Even if you exhibit abstract art, you’re being political.

LAUREN GILGER: [Laughter] Have you had moments in which you feel like you can really shed some light on that political conversation in a way that that makes a difference?

GABRIELA RANGEL: There is a big difference between being political and being ideological. My problem is with ideology, not with politics. Ideology divides people. Politics creates a community, an arena for diversity and for even discrepancy. I can have a different opinion, but we can sit down and talk as citizens because we share a common ground, which is the well being. We think that this is a great country, and I think this is a great country, and we can sit down and talk.

Museums shouldn’t be ideological spaces, museums should be a public arena for having this conversation and for healing the differences. For curating, being literal, curating the differences.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. We’ll leave it there. That is Gabriela Rangel, the executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, joining us. Gabriela, thank you very much for coming on, thank you for telling us a little bit about yourself.

GABRIELA RANGEL: Oh, thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Made me want to go down to Tucson more, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: [Laughter] Yeah, it’s kind of a universal statement, right? Good stuff going on.

LAUREN GILGER: And it’s a little bit cooler, which we’ll take this summer.

MARK BRODIE: Yes, yes. That is indeed true. I mean, even a couple of degrees right now uh can make a big difference.

LAUREN GILGER: It does make a big difference. You got any good summer reads you’re looking forward to?

MARK BRODIE: Well, I do now. After talking to Mark Athitakis, yeah. I’ve got a little stack at home that I’m maybe I’ll get through one of them before uh before the end of the summer. How about you?

LAUREN GILGER: [Laughter] I feel the same way, take me months to get through a book. But I’m happy to continue chipping away at it, and the fun ones are the beach reads — whether or not I’m on the beach. [Laughter]

MARK BRODIE: That’s the key. You don’t have to have sand under your feet to be able to read those.

LAUREN GILGER: You absolutely do not. All right. Well, we hope you have some good summer reads on your list as well, especially after listening to that conversation with Mark earlier. And that’ll do it for today’s edition of The Show. You can, of course, follow us on Instagram, we are @kjzztheshow. And don’t forget to sign up for The Show’s weekly newsletter. It is called Radio Heads and it is at theshow.kjzz.org.

MARK BRODIE: For Lauren Gilger, I’m Mark Brodie. Thanks again for being with us today. Have a terrific rest of your day, hope to have you right back here tomorrow.

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.

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