The Show for June 5, 2026: Friday NewsCap, bladesmith Vince Evans and more

Attorney General Kris Mayes’ case against Arizona “fake electors” is back to square one after a state Supreme Court ruling. Our Friday NewsCap panelists analyze that and the rest of the week’s top stories. Plus, an Arizona bladesmith on sharpening his skills over four decades.

Transcript

UNDERWRITER: KJZZ’s original production The Show is supported by Banner Health, Arizona’s largest nonprofit healthcare system. Last year, Banner reinvested more than $1.1 billion in community health and charity care. Banner Health: Nonprofit for Arizona. BannerHealth.com/nonprofitforaz.

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.

[INTRO MUSIC MUSIC PLAYS]

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, a teacher and student on getting into the field in Arizona’s borderlands, and an Arizona bladesmith talks about trying to recreate centuries-old swords. But first, it is time for the Friday news cap and some voices from the news this week.

MARK KELLY: They created this crooked fund to reward criminals who assaulted cops. I’m the son of two police officers. I find this a disgrace.

JEFF WENINGER: This addresses advertising to children in a lot of the same ways that alcohol and tobacco, and not allowing the actual devices to have cartoon characters or be a game or something like that.

ANTHONY KERN: She should be tired of spending taxpayer money on frivolous, lawfare-type court action.

MATT GRESS: I want to thank them for coming in and blocking this bill, even though we watered it down so much that it’s doing one key thing related to protecting perfectly good historic homes.

KRIS MAYES: Insurers would point to MultiPlan. MultiPlan would point to insurers. And in a coordinated effort, they would pressure providers — doctors, nurses, and hospitals — into accepting that low offer.

WARREN PETERSEN: It’s just that last 1% is often the hardest because it’s the areas where you haven’t been able to reach consensus yet.

MARK BRODIE: And joining me to talk about a restart in the case of the so-called “fake electors,” the feds saying they’ll appeal a ruling on getting Arizona’s voter rolls and more, are Marcus Dell’Artino of First Strategic. Marcus, good morning.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: And Matt Grodsky of Matter of State Strategies. Matt, good morning to you.

MATT GRODSKY: Morning.

MARK BRODIE: So Matt, let me start with you with Attorney General Kris Mayes says she is going to take the “fake electors” case, so-called “fake electors” case, back to the grand jury. The state Supreme Court declined to hear a review of lower court rulings, which said that the case could not move forward because the grand jury did not get a certain information.

Is there any part of you that’s surprised that she’s continuing on with this case?

MATT GRODSKY: Not at all. I mean, I think it’s important to set the right precedent here.This is about protecting the next election as much as it is about making sure that there’s justice for the past one. If we set a precedent where you can essentially just be a fake elector and there’s no consequences, that’s incredibly dangerous for this republic.

So I commend her for doing that, and I think that Arizonans by and large understand that what happened with the fake electors was wrong and that wasn’t OK to do. So, I think it’s right that she’s pursuing it, um, and we’ll see. We’ll see if there’s a different outcome with a potentially different judge and different evidence that’s presented.

MARK BRODIE: Well, I mean, Marcus, there also might be a different attorney general by the time this case gets anywhere, given that, you know, just in terms of logistics, in terms of how quickly the courts move. There is, of course, an election coming up in November —

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: What?

MARK BRODIE: You might have heard about this.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: That’s crazy.

MATT GRODSKY: That’s nuts.

MARK BRODIE: I know. We’ll get to that. Obviously if Mayes wins reelection, presumably she would continue this, but if not, the Republicans who would take over, both of them have said this is over.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Yeah, that’s no surprise, I don’t think. And to your point, there’s going to be a lot of time. The wheels of justice turn slowly, I think somebody once said. And so I don’t think there’ll be any surprises there.

There’s so much time that’s gone by between the first case and now today that I think a lot of people sort of assumed that this had gone away and it was a done deal, and so I was a little surprised to be honest with you. I think I was probably one of those that said the show was over.

MARK BRODIE: Thought maybe she would just drop it and say, "OK, I tried. Let’s move on."

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: I also think that Democrats obviously see an opportunity. I think that they are looking at Trump’s numbers and feeling a little full and decided to go for the gusto.

MARK BRODIE: Matt, do you think — obviously we don’t want to suggest anybody is thinking anything that maybe they’re not thinking — but is there a political implication to this? Like does this, especially since it will most likely still be going or starting when the election is happening, does this become an issue?

MATT GRODSKY: Yeah, I think the political thing to consider is as we get closer to this election you speak of in November, I think the administration is going to likely pull more shenanigans and try to do what they can to influence the outcome, either before or after. I mean, he’s signaled as much.

So I think the fake electors case probably becomes more of a reminder or a subject that comes up in those conversations as we get closer. So I think it’s politically advantageous from that perspective.

MARK BRODIE: So, Marcus, speaking of this election that apparently we all just found out about that’s coming up in November, the U.S. Justice Department has said that it is going to appeal a ruling from a federal judge here in Arizona that said the Justice Department is not entitled to Arizona’s voter rolls. This is something that Adrian Fontes had fought.

Fontes, Matt we should point out that you have worked and, and continue to work for him.

MATT GRODSKY: Yep.

MARK BRODIE: The judge in this case was pretty clear that she didn’t think DOJ had much of a leg to stand on.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Just to point out, Matt works for him in a campaign capacity, not in the official Secretary of State’s. He’s not a government employee. But I don’t think there should be any surprises here. I certainly wasn’t surprised. I mean, this is sort of classic DOJ, classic federal government is appeal, appeal, appeal as long as you can till you get the ruling that you want.

And so I certainly wasn’t shocked. I was a little surprised that the U.S. Postal Service is starting to make rules based on a decision that hasn’t been finalized. And so all of this just adds a lot of chaos to the vote-by-mail system. And I recognize I am in the minority on this issue, but I love vote by mail. I love it.

MARK BRODIE: I don’t think that’s in the minority.

MATT GRODSKY: Yeah, I think you’ve got a lot of fans with you on that.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: For a Republican. Just to point out, I’m the Republican.

And I will tell you it has been worked to the advantage of Republicans for ever since it was invented, largely because of the Forbes campaign, if you remember that guy who ran for president.

MARK BRODIE: Steve Forbes, yeah.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: And so it’s been a tool that Republicans have done very well with. And so I understand the push. But look, even Turning Point has said, like if you look at that latest SRP election, it was all about getting these ballots back.

So, I think even Turning Point in Arizona has realized, “Look, we have to be better on how we use the system.” I just don’t think nationally that message has set in. And I have a tendency to spend a little bit of time in some assisted living centers with some older folks, and I’m going to tell you that that is probably a 95% Republican base. And if those folks aren’t voting, I am a tad bit curious about — I think it will have a net poor effect on the Republican turnout.

MARK BRODIE: Hmm. So, Matt, with the caveat that none of the three of us are lawyers in this room, given what Judge Susan Brnovich wrote in her initial ruling against the DOJ, any reason to think that DOJ will be more successful with another judge?

MATT GRODSKY: No, and I think that’s why the secretary said this was a futile effort. Look, that is a Trump-appointed judge that, this was not a legal term, but she essentially laughed away the DOJ’s position on this, right? So sure, to Marcus’s point, they can keep appealing it. The secretary’s going to keep fighting.

And I’ll just add, look, Republicans are the ones that in the ’90s essentially invented vote by mail. It’s been to their collective benefit for years. North of 80% of Arizonans enjoy that, and we saw the ramifications of people not voting by mail in the 2022 election when Trump told a bunch of people to stay home, and that didn’t work out so well for his party. So they can take that stance, but, I don’t think it’s going to work out super well for them.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so Marcus, you mentioned the USPS rules. They submitted or released sort of initial rules in response to an executive order that the president had issued a little while back. And … one of the big provisions is that states would have to — and I’m going to paraphrase here — states would have to basically submit to the federal government a list of everybody who will be getting a mail ballot.

There are rules about the barcodes that have to be on the envelopes, both the ones that go to the voters and the ones that voters return. And perhaps understandably, or predictably, a lot of county election officials are saying, “Wait a minute, I’m not sure we can actually pull this off before the November election.”

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Yeah, I am absolutely confident they can’t. And I say that, of course, being conservative and seeing how government sort of the wheels work, and wheels do not work quickly or efficiently, I will just tell you that.

And so you’re adding another layer of bureaucracy on your vote-by-mail system, right? Look, the cleanest way to do it would have the county recorders send that information if that’s what you wanted to do. I don’t believe that that makes the system any more efficient, I will tell you that, but that would be the best course of action.

Putting the U.S. Postal Service in the middle of this, for God’s sake, who’s broke and been broke for I don’t even know how long is a terrible idea.

MARK BRODIE: I mean, Matt, does this potentially impact — especially in a place like Arizona, where the vast majority of voters vote early and a lot of them vote by mail. Some put their ballots in a drop box or bring it to an election office, but a lot of folks use the mail. What kind of impact might this have on turnout and who turns out?

MATT GRODSKY: Oh, I think it would decimate turnout, and Marcus brought up the point of elderly folks, stuff like that. I think it would be catastrophic electorally. And it’s not popular, which is why it just astounds me that they continue to push and push and push on this particular issue.

So I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I don’t think that you can actually execute something like this given the timeline we have.

And then at the end of the day, I think if we still believe in the Constitution, the Constitution is very clear that it’s up to the states to run their elections, right? It’s not up to the federal government. And I think there’s a lot of Arizonans that still appreciate that and don’t want their federal government meddling in this system.

MARK BRODIE: And, Marcus, we should mention there are some lawsuits challenging this. We’ll get the rulings on those shortly, but go ahead.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Quickly, I was just going to say this as sort of a side note, but if you go back and look at the SRP election, there was numerous complaints about one, how fast people got their ballots through the USPS system and how long it took that ballot to get back once they put it in the mailbox.

And that election is a microcosm of a statewide election. I mean, those ballots are absolutely nothing compared to what is going through the mail system when we hit October. So I’d really like a lot more work done on the front end before we throw this, uh, idea into practice.

MARK BRODIE: Marcus, do you agree with Matt that if these rules were to go into effect as released, it would really lower turnout?

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: I do. Yeah. Most people — and look, we’re election geeks and we do this all the time. We’re all set up to vote however humanly possible. We’re going to get our ballots in. Joe Arizona is not going to — who’s working his butt off to cover his gas bill and his butcher bill — this is not the first thing on his mind.

And I probably spend, I don’t know, 90% of my time once we get into October taking phone calls from what I affectionately call my civilian friends, walking them through how to vote, whether it’s finding a polling place for them, whether it’s finding out if they were actually registered to vote — which is always my favorite — or how to get their mail-in ballot. So I think we overestimate the details that most citizens understand about the voting process.

MATT GRODSKY: Agreed.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right. Take a quick break. Matt Grodsky, Marcus Dell’Artino. I’m Mark Brodie in Phoenix. The Friday Newscap continues in just a moment.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s the Friday Newscap on KJZZ’s 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. My guests this week are Matt Grodsky of Matter of State Strategies and Marcus Dell’Artino of First Strategic.

Marcus, some more drama between the Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and the Board of Supervisors. The recorder is asking a judge to hold the supervisors in contempt and fine them $100,000 per day. He says they are not complying with a recent court ruling.

We’ll mention that you have represented the Board of Supervisors, so you have some affiliation there. Again, we’re not lawyers, but what is actually going on here?

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Well, a lot of personality, a lot of drama, a lot of fighting. And it’s all going to end up in a courtroom, unfortunately. And that means the taxpayers are picking up the bill.

And at the same time, Recorder Heap, in addition to fighting with the Board, is also fighting, I think, with the Attorney General’s Office. Matt might know more about that.

But the sad part about this is it all results in taxpayer funding being used to settle lawsuits, and I just never think that that’s the best way to go about spending taxpayer dollars.

MARK BRODIE: Well so, Matt, this is, as I mentioned, based on Recorder Heap’s assertion that the supervisors are not doing what a court said they had to do in terms of giving him some of the election duties back and some IT staff, things like that. I mean, it seems like Marcus is probably right that this is just more time for the lawyers in the court.

MATT GRODSKY: Oh, he’s absolutely right. And look, the board, my understanding is they’re appealing that previous ruling. I think it feels very much like a stunt to try to hold them in contempt at taxpayer expense.

Look, I’ve said this over and over again: Elections have consequences, right? It was very clear the type of recorder that Heap was going to be in 2024. He won. I think he’s operated the way we expected, which is relatively incompetent from my perspective.

So I’m assuming we’ll continue to see fights like this running up the bill, and it’s just unfortunate because this is not how it should operate. And I think most people understand that the board is trying to keep an erratic actor in check. So we’ll see what happens.

MARK BRODIE: Go ahead, Marcus.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: I’d just clarify, like here’s what’s going on is that the duties of elections is sort of bifurcated right now between the Board and the recorder on Election Day and vote by mail — voting—

MARK BRODIE: Or early voting, yeah.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: And early voting. And so what Recorder Heap would like to do is sort of concentrate all the elections duties into his office. And what the Board of Supervisors would like to do is be able to retain the responsibilities that they’ve had the last couple cycles at least in how they operate. And so that is at the heart of the argument.

MARK BRODIE: I mean, we have a primary coming up in a little more than a month, and some of these issues are still not adjudicated yet. Like what does that do?

MATT GRODSKY: Oh, I mean, everyone’s going to have to follow the law, right? But I think going back to the previous point, it’s ultimately a checks and balances issue, right? And I think most Arizonans and people in Maricopa County respect the notion of checks and balances.

So, we’ll see what happens in the primary.Hopefully everybody gets along, but unfortunately the tab’s going to keep running.

MARK BRODIE: Is there going to be a big scramble in the weeks leading up to ballots going out and election day for the primary, given that we still don’t necessarily know who’s doing what?

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Ordinarily I’d say I don’t think so, but I would say I hope not. I hope that we run a smooth and efficient and fair system like we always have. And if there is chaos, Katie, bar the door.

I mean, the electorate, we are underestimating how much anxiety is out there in the electorate. I heard this phrase not all that long ago: There’s a match that’s close to the timber —

MARK BRODIE: Tinderbox.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Tinderbox. And I think that’s a little bit of where we are right now.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right, Marcus, let me stick with you. One of the things that the Legislature has to do — the one thing that they are constitutionally obligated to do — is approve a budget, and the fiscal year will be ending at the end of this month. We going to have one?

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: We’re getting there. Rumor has it as of — well, I don’t think I’ll get in trouble for saying this — but I think we’re going next week. So Tuesday, I think you’ll see an appropriations agenda come out. Here’s your true-tale sign if you really want to know, is Mr. Livingston coming back from—

MARK BRODIE: (Rep.) David Livingston (R-Peoria), the appropriations chair.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: He goes away for the summertime and has said, I’ll come back for the budget.” My understanding is he’s coming back, which would be a pretty good sign we’re ready to go.

Now does that mean there’s a deal, a 100% deal? I don’t know that. I know last, at last check, we were 95% of there. What’s happened is we’ve obviously got a revenue gap that we had about, let’s just say $400 million we had to go find.

There were a hundred sort of ideas that were floated. At the end of the day, what’s happened is the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, who’s sort of the budget guys for the Legislature, has said, “Hey, her revenue projections look a little bit rosier than we thought.”

MARK BRODIE: Hmm.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: And so that’s going to be used to sort of close this gap.

MARK BRODIE: Matt, we heard from Senate President Warren Petersen at the top of the NewsCap saying the last 1% is often the hardest because you work through all the stuff that you can work through and then you leave the stickiest stuff till the end. Do you get the sense that we’re close to resolving some of that last 1 or 2%?

MATT GRODSKY: Yeah, I think if you cut through the noise, I think we’re close. He said 95, I heard 97 — we’re in the 90s, right? And I think you’re right that those last few percentage points are always the toughest, but I think folks are working at it. They want to be done. They want to get back to their collective campaigns and don’t want to be sitting here in June, so I think that there’s the effort, in that regard, to move forward.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Just a reminder: We moved up the primaries to July, so you might want to get out of session sooner rather than later. And also, if history’s any barometer here, we’ll start the budget, we’ll get the process going, we’re going to have a little blowup in the middle of it, and then that’ll get resolved and we’ll be done.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so I was going to ask: If obviously, you know, leadership is negotiating with the governor and the governor’s staff, do you feel like this is going to be the kind of year where the rank and file are like, “No”?

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: I don’t think they’re ready for no, but I think they’re ready for, “I’m not really happy.” I think neither side will get exactly what they wanted. But keep in mind, look, revenue numbers were — I know I just told you they were up, but they’re not significantly up. They were—

MARK BRODIE: They were pretty far down in April.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Right, exactly. So, it was enough to bridge this little hole that they’ve got. But look, we’re not building new roads in Snowflake with this rosy budget. So a lot of these people, they’re not going to get exactly what they want, but that’s usually the sign of a decent budget.

MATT GRODSKY: That’s how it’s supposed to work. Neither side is supposed to be 100% happy at the end of the day. That’s the art of compromise and working together, so if that’s where we net out, I think that’s a positive.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so what do you think, Matt, what do you think Democrats will have to give up to reach this compromise?

MATT GRODSKY: Oh, it’s hard for me to speculate on what they’ll have to give up. I mean, that’s why I think it’s so important and why they’re focused on flipping the Legislature this November so that they don’t have to worry so much about what they have to give up going forward.

But I think they’re going to take their cues from the governor’s office. I think they’re driving the bus on this one, and I don’t think anyone wants to throw a wrench in that effort from the Democrats’ perspective.

MARK BRODIE: Marcus, any prediction on what the Republicans will have to give up?

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: I would say, just to throw this in, I think the Democrats probably give up any hope of any ESA reform is my guess. That’s a flat-out guess. But the Democrats do get significant reform on data center tax incentives.

MARK BRODIE: OK. How about Prop. 123?

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Ooh.

MATT GRODSKY: I don’t think the Republicans are going to give them anything that looks like a win on 123.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Yeah, I think … well, the governor’s office has certainly seen that as that would be a nice add-on but not a primary focus right now. We got to get this budget done.

MARK BRODIE: And once the budget’s done, obviously, they can stay in session for however long they want — they have to get the budget done by the end of the fiscal year. In previous years, we have seen traditionally they pass the budget and it’s maybe another week or so until the session adjourns. There’s still a decent amount of business that they have to do, including figuring what ballot referrals they’re going to send to the the voters this fall.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: That’s probably the biggest part. As far the mechanics of it, most of the bills that are going to go have been put in a place at the final read section. And they’re ready — the next part of business would be going to the governor’s office. I think you could take care of that in about — if you really worked — a day.

MARK BRODIE: OK.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Maybe two. But the tough part is the ballot referrals, and I will tell you that the question right there is how long does your ballot want to be? I mean, if you want it to, you could make your ballot five pages long.

MARK BRODIE: Right.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: But I don’t think anybody really wants to go through that exercise. So I think you have room for maybe three or four more to go on there, but not much past that.

MARK BRODIE: In addition to the ones that they sent last year.

MATT GRODSKY: Yeah, and I would say it comes back to the convenience argument that we talked about before, right? You know, people doing extra work if you get rid of vote by mail, people having to do extra work and research if your ballot’s really long, so I think that’s something they’re weighing as they consider what to refer.

MARK BRODIE: All right. We’ll see what happens. Matt Grodsky, Marcus Dell’Artino, thank you both. Appreciate it.

MATT GRODSKY: Thank you, sir.

MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Appreciate it.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5, I’m Mark Brodie. There’s a difference between learning about something in the classroom and experiencing it firsthand, and that’s what ASU Barrett Honors College professor Abby Wheatley tries to do every year when she brings her class on transnational migration to the Arizona borderlands. Wheatley has been taking students on this transformational trip for more than a decade, but this time, she followed it up with a conference afterward where students presented their original research. This year, Professor Wheatley took her students on a desert walk near Ajo, Arizona, and to the border wall in Nogales. My co-host Lauren Gilger spoke with her, as well as ASU sophomore Maria Blandon, more about it.

ABBY WHEATLEY: So students experience the topography, they experience the heat, they experience what walking in the desert means. Um, so some students carry water. Um, and then when we go to the border wall, you know, we ask them to kind of really just look around and observe, um, and see for themselves what the border wall looks like, what it feels like, who’s there, what are they doing. Um, and—and it takes a long time to get out there, right? Because we were based in Tucson. Um, so the other thing I always tell students is like the driving component is not like separate from this experience, like thinking about how far out in the desert we’re going and how far out in the desert people are walking when they’re crossing.

LAUREN GILGER: Had you ever been there, Maria?

MARIA BLANDON: No, that was my first time being there.

LAUREN GILGER: It certainly is different, that border wall, when you see it up close, right?

MARIA BLANDON: For sure. Yeah, definitely different from what I was used to seeing in the news.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, you see that picture sometimes from an overhead shot, right? But it’s very different being under it. What were your reactions?

MARIA BLANDON: It was definitely an eye-opening experience, definitely a very lively city, um, interconnected. You can definitely tell that those two cities, um, in both sides of the border are interconnected, something that I wouldn’t have thought.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, there’s a Nogales, Sonora, and then there’s a Nogales, Arizona. Right, yeah.

MARIA BLANDON: Yeah, yeah, and for a lot of people there, it’s just Nogales. It’s not Arizona or—or Mexico, it’s just Nogales. And that was very beautiful to see, just that connection. People like crossing, um, it was—the traffic was very heavy, and I—that was also surprising. Very nice people, too. So, that was—that was something that really touched my heart, like uh—hearing the testimonies of people who were living for so long in the other side and then were just separated by this wall all of a sudden and, um, now found themselves in the other side...

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

MARIA BLANDON: ...was definitely impactful.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I wonder as well, when you were in Ajo, that’s like one of these places where like lots of people are going and kind of walking through the desert. What were your impressions of that, and like what those trails are like, what the desert’s like there?

MARIA BLANDON: It was definitely moving, um, to experience something very deep and very that goes back to generations. Um, I have, you know, family and friends that, uh, their immigration journey, um, included aspects of what we experienced in the desert. And that was very moving, definitely. I had all of them in mind whenever I was, uh, walking through that path, and no only them, but also just other experiences of people who didn’t make it, and that was also, um, very impactful as well. Um, I did get emotional during a talk that our professors who were guiding us, uh, commenting of like other people’s, um, path and journeys through—through that same, um, through that same path that we were walking on at that same time.

LAUREN GILGER: How have you seen it change students, Abby, this—this—I mean, it’s a day, right? Like one trip, one day. What—what does it do?

ABBY WHEATLEY: There’s really like a very palpable, tangible shift in the—the class of students once we get out of the classroom and go to the border. Like the minute they’re engaging with community folks and they’re kind of in the field, it becomes, um, more important, more pressing, more personal. I also think students become really empowered. So one of the things I hear from my students a lot is, "This is overwhelming. It’s sad. It’s a huge problem. Like how could we possibly address any of this?" And when they go to the border or they go into the field and they connect with people already working on these issues, I think they see where they can get, um, involved, and they see themselves as people who can make those changes. And I think that’s the other goal, is that, you know, many of our students are from the borderlands, they have the—the key skills to be involved in these issues, they have the knowledge, they have the experience, many of them are bilingual. Connecting them in this way, I think, really empowers them to commit to addressing these issues, right? And so it’s sort of like a—a practice of I think connecting students to places where they’re already capable and competent to act.

LAUREN GILGER: Did you feel that way, Maria, that all of a sudden you felt, "This is not such an overwhelming problem, I can actually affect change here"?

MARIA BLANDON: Oh, for sure, especially in the conference aspect. It was very empowering to see that it was not only me who was frustrated about this problem, but also a lot of other students.

LAUREN GILGER: Tell us about the research that you conducted, the—I mean, you presented it at this conference in the end, but—but this was a big part of it, it sounds like, going down to the border and talking to folks.

MARIA BLANDON: Oh, for sure. Being an immigrant myself, I had my own, um, immigration journey, but it was very different from what I experienced in this trip. So the research project that I’m working on is titled Measuring Know Your Rights Literacy Among Latino Immigrants, and it felt as the next phase of this immigration journey after crossing the wall, after going through the desert. Now, it’s the constant process of survival, in the search of education, in the search of information, resources to fight these, um, many illegal deportations that we’re seeing, uh, nowadays.

LAUREN GILGER: You mentioned you’re an immigrant yourself, but your journey looked very different from these folks you met on the border. What—what did your immigration journey look like?

MARIA BLANDON: Yeah, I am originally from Nicaragua. I grew up there till I was 16. However, I was born in Miami because my grandma was working there at the time.

LAUREN GILGER: Oh, OK.

MARIA BLANDON: But I was just born there, so I grew up my whole life in Nicaragua. And then, um, political persecution emerged in the country. It was very unstable, so my family had the obligation to flee out of the country, and, um, we came here to Arizona, the great state of Arizona. Um, so it wasn’t through the border, it wasn’t through the desert, so that aspect was missing from my, um, experience from my perspective. So it was definitely complementary, this trip, to—to everything that I’ve lived and to everything that I’ve researched myself.

ABBY WHEATLEY: You know, reason we take students out to the desert to walk is not to mimic the journey of a migrant. We would never do that, because people lose their lives doing that, right? Um, but to have a small amount of awareness what it means to walk in a vast desert, right, by yourself, without water, without knowing where you’re going, you know, with your family or your children, right, alongside you. So just to have small—a small amount of awareness, but I think also the embodied component of like physically engaging in this, um, complements the intellectual part, right? And maybe that’s the other really important part of the experiential learning, is, you know, we—we connect it to like rigorous research and scholarship and literature, and everything, um, has to be evidence-based, right? We—we spend a lot of time learning and researching and reading articles and collating all that information, but we also can’t forget about the communities and the people who are impacted by the policies, right?

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Maria, what do you want to do when you grow up?

MARIA BLANDON: [LAUGHS]

LAUREN GILGER: When you graduate?

MARIA BLANDON: When I graduate, I want to go to law school. I want to specialize in education and special education, um, law. That’s my goal for now.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s a big goal, yeah. I mean, so I wonder, experiences like this, um, being able to sort of learn how to bring research into your real life, into the real world, right? And—and connect it with real people. Do you think that’ll affect the way you go about your career in the future?

MARIA BLANDON: Oh, for sure. Um, I think the most important thing that this trip taught me is not to, um, kept only the first impression that I have or only secondhand impressions that I have about any subject, not only immigration, not only the border, but about any subject, and as Professor Wheatley was mentioning, experiencing for myself and having others—I can serve as a tool for them if they can experience a specific topic through me as well.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, all right. That is Maria Blandon and Abby Wheatley joining us to talk about this experience. Thank you both so much for being here, I really appreciate it.

ABBY WHEATLEY: Thank you.

MARIA BLANDON: Thank you.

[JAUNTY ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC PLAYS]

MARK BRODIE: More than 900 exhibitors will be gathering in Atlanta starting today for the Atlanta Blade Show. It calls itself the world’s largest knife show. And my next guest will be among them. Vince Evans is an Arizona-based bladesmith specializing in historical recreations. He’s been doing this for more than four decades. I spoke with Evans earlier and asked how he first got interested in swords.

VINCE EVANS: Um, well, I grew up in an artist home. My father was a blacksmith, my mother was a portrait artist, and so I kind of grew up in the arts and early on, I just took an interest in, you know, medieval knights, Lord of the Rings, that sort of thing and kind of just fell into it.

MARK BRODIE: So you just—you just kind of fell into it, but like what you’re doing now is more than just falling into—having fallen into it, right?

VINCE EVANS: Right, yeah, yeah, but I’ve—this is like a 45-year journey. So, um, falling into it meant I did some antique restoration early on. Um, people would come to my father and he didn’t really want to do it. It was time-consuming and not really his line, so he’d pawn it off on me. And through that, I learned the techniques of how old pieces were built, you know, by taking them apart and repairing them, putting them back together, replacing missing parts, you learn quite a bit about history.

MARK BRODIE: Well, it’s interesting because you hear a lot of times people talking about like taking an old radio apart or an old camera apart or something like that and sort of reverse-engineering how it works. It sounds like that’s basically what you did, just with swords.

VINCE EVANS: Basically, right. It’s—it’s kind of like a 100-year-old pocket watch. You take it apart and you understand the mechanics of what a craftsman did back when he made the parts, you know, one piece at a time.

MARK BRODIE: What appeals to you about recreating historical swords?

VINCE EVANS: For me, what it comes down to is part of it is the challenge. If I find a piece that I think was extraordinary in the way the craftsman did it. In other words, I believe one of the pictures that I had sent is a dagger that I actually own the original of. I bought it last year from an antique dealer because the complexity of how the craftsman made the blade in 1600, roughly, was so complex and the amount of metal that he removed and the way he removed it to create a very lightweight but very stiff blade. And then he pierced it with a whole bunch of little holes.

MARK BRODIE: [LAUGHS]

VINCE EVANS: And to me, when I saw it, I was like, "That’s a challenge. I’ve got to do it because it’s a challenge."

MARK BRODIE: Is it really the challenge of trying to figure out how and maybe to an extent why craftsmen people made them the way they did that—that you like so much?

VINCE EVANS: I think so. For me, I’ve always been interested in detail. You know, as a kid, you build models and things like that, and it’s the detail that always intrigued me. And so, I would say a medieval knight sword to me is quite boring because there’s nothing to it. The more complex it is, the more of a challenge it is to me. And the fact that they did it, you know, three, four, 500 years ago is even more of a challenge. Like how did they do it back then?

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, so do you try to do it the way they did it, or do you use modern equipment to make them?

VINCE EVANS: It’s—it’s a little of both. This dagger that I just did, most of it had to be done by hand. In other words, I made my own tools for scraping the metal away because there are those who would say, "Oh, well, you could just, you know, take a small milling machine." And but not really. When you look at the subtlety of the depth of the groove that he scraped, you know, it’s like you—you would be hard-pressed to do it with a milling machine and not mess it up. By hand, it—it’s a slower removal process.

MARK BRODIE: That must take an unbelievable amount of focus and patience.

VINCE EVANS: Um, probably more, yeah. It—I guess it does, focus and patience and time.

MARK BRODIE: Do you have, and I know this is kind of like asking a parent to pick their favorite child, but like do you have a—a favorite sword that—that you have made or—or recreated?

VINCE EVANS: There’ve been several of them. As far as complexity goes, probably the Ottoman Turkish kilij would be the one that was the most complex to do. Um, as far as favorites, memorable favorites, one of them would have been the blade I did for the Sutton Hoo sword. Sutton Hoo is a burial, a ship burial in England, which discovered in 1939. They did a movie called The Dig about the finding of the ship, and basically, extremely fancy sword, gold fittings, complex pattern-welded sword blade, but encased in rust so you couldn’t see it. And a friend of mine in England was having everything in the grave except the ship recreated, and he asked me to do the blade for this project.

MARK BRODIE: Huh.

VINCE EVANS: And—and so we actually flew to London, met with him, met with the original person that did the X-ray on the sword and analyzed it. And basically, it was really an honor to be able to be asked to make the replica for his ensemble, I guess you would call it.

MARK BRODIE: Where do you find the swords that you see and—and want to recreate?

VINCE EVANS: Museums mostly.

MARK BRODIE: That sounds like a challenge to like go to the, you know, the British Museum or some other museum somewhere and take—I assume you take a bunch of photos and maybe try to eyeball how big things are. But like if something’s under glass, you can only get so close.

VINCE EVANS: True. Um, in many cases, you can actually make arrangements with the British Museum or with the Museum of Scotland, which we’ve done both. And they will actually pull an item off display if you ask far enough ahead of time.

MARK BRODIE: Oh wow.

VINCE EVANS: Mhm. I’ve had several swords pulled off display.

MARK BRODIE: What is it like to hold a sword that’s hundreds of years old?

VINCE EVANS: It’s—it’s definitely gives you reason to think back, you know, who held this? I think the oldest sword I’ve actually held, oh, probably from about 900 AD, several Anglo-Saxon swords.

MARK BRODIE: Oh my god.

VINCE EVANS: Yeah, several they pulled three Anglo-Saxon swords once for me, one off display and two just out of storage which are similar. And those were in the 900 AD era, roughly. I believe that’s—I believe that’s the oldest that I’ve held. It just gives you appreciation for what they were, even if they’re rusty now, but, you know, just that thought that, "Well, who carried this?" You know, there’s always a story behind everything. "Who carried this?" you know, "There’s always a story behind everything."

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. What is the market for swords? Like, what do you do with them once you’ve made them?

VINCE EVANS: [LAUGHS] It’s a really odd market. Um...

MARK BRODIE: [LAUGHS]

VINCE EVANS: You wouldn’t think there’s a market for very high-end—I’m referring to swords that probably start at $5,000 and go up from there. Um, I know of people who have sold $50,000 swords. I never have, but there is a market. It kind of spreads out, and you’ve got more and more people getting into the market thinking that they’re going to get rich doing it, which you won’t. But it does push people. I’ve been in this so long that I’m one of the ones, I guess, that is kind of more an old-timer now. And so, a lot of people look to what I do and then use me as their standard to work toward. And I’m saying, "Don’t look at me, look at the antiques, because I’m trying to still match what they did, you know, so many centuries ago. And I’m still learning. I’ve been doing this so long and I’m still learning."

MARK BRODIE: How long do you think you want to keep doing this?

VINCE EVANS: Till I fall over my anvil and die, I guess, I mean...

MARK BRODIE: [LAUGHS]

VINCE EVANS: ...my dad always said he just wanted to slow down. And really, what would I do if I retire? You know, most people start making knives when they retire, so what do I do since I’ve been doing this so long? Go—go get a real job, you know? No, I just, you know, slow—slowing down. I’m—I’m trying to slow down. I’ve got so many people wanting pieces that it gets overwhelming. That’s part of the problem, is they don’t want a simple piece, which I don’t want to do anyway, but they want complex pieces, which is fine, but if I do one or two shows a year, my time is taken up by getting ready for those shows.

MARK BRODIE: All right, we’ll have to leave it there. That is Vince Evans, an Arizona-based bladesmith specializing in historical recreations. Vince, it was really nice to talk to you. Thank you.

VINCE EVANS: Yeah, you too. You’re welcome.

[UPBEAT TRANSITION MUSIC PLAYS]

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s THE SHOW on KJZZ 91.5, I’m Mark Brodie. Anyone who’s spent any time outside in Phoenix during the summer knows what it means to sweat. It can be difficult, though, to replicate that during scientific research. That’s where ANDI comes in. ANDI is a human-shaped thermal mannequin which mimics the human body’s thermal regulation. That means ANDI sweats and shivers, for example. And ANDI can go outside, which allows researchers to get a better sense of how we react to heat and cooling efforts in the real world. Konrad Rykaczewski is an associate professor of mechanical engineering and a senior global future scientist at ASU. I spoke with him last summer about working with ANDI, and we started with how ANDI allows him to measure the effects of being in direct sunlight compared to being in the shade.

KONRAD RYKACZEWSKI: Yeah, absolutely. So when you look at Arizona in the summer, actually the radiation, and this is both solar and also the infrared emitted by the surfaces that can be very hot, is actually one of the main ways that our bodies get heated.

So we spend a lot of time trying to understand this radiative pathway of heat exchange between the ANDI body and the surroundings.

MARK BRODIE: Do you notice any kind of difference between different types of shade in terms of how ANDI responds, as far as like natural shade versus man made shade, partial, full, anything like that?

KONRAD RYKACZEWSKI: Yes, there is a lot to it. We have one of my colleagues, Ariane Middel, spends a lot of time with ANDI’s best friend, MaRTy.

MARK BRODIE: Yes. 

KONRAD RYKACZEWSKI: Who is this biometeorological cart looking at, let's say, you know, how should you plan the native tree that has small leaves? Or should you have a tree that might have, you know, it's not native, but has large leaves? What, what's a better shape?

And there's, there's some nuances to it, but the main message is, any shade is better than no shade. And we found that with ANDI’s responses, too.

MARK BRODIE: So any shade is better than no shade. But I would imagine that in the world of shade is some better than others?

KONRAD RYKACZEWSKI: It really depends, all depends on the context. Naturally, you know, and going off the tree, a non-native tree will give you better shade, but it also will require more water. So there, I would say there's no single answer for that. It really depends on the context. You know, how much money can you invest and what is the shade for?

MARK BRODIE: How big of a difference can shade make like on a day where it's, maybe 105, 110 or more degrees. How much can it help our bodies to be able to find shade, as opposed to being in direct sunlight?

KONRAD RYKACZEWSKI: It's, as you may know from personal experience, it's a lot. The way we like to characterize, right, as engineers, we might talk about watts per meter square heat fluxes, which are kind of hard to relate to.

So instead, we define a metric called the mean radiant temperature, which translates that radiation that you absorb from these different sources – might be direct, reflected, diffuse, solar, infrared. And it's a temperature.

When you're in the sun here in the summer, it is not uncommon to have the mean radiant temperature be about 75 degrees Celsius. And what that means, it sort of feels equivalent to being inside of an oven whose walls are at 75 degrees Celsius, which for reference, right, at 100 Celsius, water boils.

And if you go into the shade, the radiation then the mean radiant temperature reduces very close to air temperature, so close to 40 degrees Celsius. That gives you a number to kind of quantify that experience of shade versus the sun.

MARK BRODIE: That seems like a pretty significant difference.

KONRAD RYKACZEWSKI: It's enormous. But what's important to understand is that in this calculation, we assume a sort of average number for the absorptivity of your clothing and skin, both for the solar and the infrared radiation.

And this is where you can make a difference by adjusting what you wear.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, I want to ask you about that, because there are obviously a lot of companies that market moisture wicking clothing, or, you know, cool clothing as you reference. Do those things actually work?

And I know we're sort of generalizing about a very large component of the clothing industry, and I'm sure there's a lot of variation between what different manufacturers with different brands and companies do, but by and large, do those things work?

KONRAD RYKACZEWSKI: It depends, right? So this is a question that I am very interested in answering well, because, as you mentioned, there's advertising and it's advertising, they can say whatever you want they want, right? But there is very little cross comparison and comparison in realistic conditions.

So you know, if you have these different pigments you might use or approaches to reduce the solar absorptivity, they might be tested indoors. And with ANDI, what we develop is this protocol to rapidly test multiple shirts in the same conditions, right. When you're outside, it’s, you have to do things fast, because, let's say the sun changes its elevation angle.

MARK BRODIE: What are you hoping to learn this year, this summer with ANDI?

KONRAD RYKACZEWSKI: We have several different studies planned out for an entire summer. One is collecting this data in different contexts for different reasons people are outside here in the summer, and trying to understand what the changes in their core temperature and skin temperature look like in different conditions. So we're going to do ANDI construction work, landscaper or policeman or ANDI in transit.

We're looking at different ways people get heated, exposed to the heat in the summer here, and trying to understand how hot they might get, right? Is it, does it just become uncomfortable, or can it become dangerous, and when, and sort of what changes can we make to their schedule to make them safer?

So that's one part of the study, and then the other part, which we sort of talked about, is really starting to look at what kind of clothing is best to wear here in the summer.

MARK BRODIE: Konrad Rykaczewski is an associate professor of mechanical engineering and a senior global future scientist at ASU.

[JAUNTY ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC PLAYS]

MARK BRODIE: Basketball fans and sneakerheads in Arizona are loving the latest release from one of the Valley’s most prominent athletes.

DEVIN BOOKER: Is it inside? All right. Of course. And your food’s on the way.

MARK BRODIE: That is Phoenix Suns star Devin Booker working the drive-thru at the McDonald’s in Sedona. But Booker wasn’t just serving Big Macs and fries.

Last week, he handed out pairs of his latest Nike Book 1 sneaker inspired by the iconic turquoise arches. The clip went viral with Booker arriving at the burger joint in a turquoise Chevy Blazer.

The special edition Friends and Family colorway served up in Sedona wraps Booker’s second signature sneaker totally in turquoise with the McDonald’s logo on the heel. Another pair released widely earlier this week sports a dusty sandstone base with a turquoise Nike swoosh and McDonald’s logo.

But don’t expect to find a pair of Booker’s latest sneaker in your next Happy Meal, they sold out faster than McDonald’s hotcakes.

[UPBEAT OUTRO MUSIC PLAYS]

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. Thank you. See you.