The Show for June 9, 2026: Vitamin K shots for infants, music streaming co-op and more

Amid of wave of vaccine skepticism, more parents are refusing a once-routine shot for their newborns. One local provider says he's seen infants die because of it. Plus, how new platforms are helping musicians connect with listeners — and get paid.

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.

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BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, why an increasing number of parents are skipping a once routine shot for their newborns. And the World Cup training happening in the Valley this week. But first, the U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation into ASU. The feds say they’re looking into Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—or DEI—practices at the university. The investigation comes after secretly recorded videos went public. ASU has denied it’s doing anything illegal. With me now to talk more about this is Jasper Smith, staff reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Jasper, good morning.

JASPER SMITH: Good morning. Thanks so much for having me.

BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So, let’s talk first off about these videos. What is the group that made them and what did they show?

SMITH: So, the group that made them is Accuracy in Media, and they’re a conservative group, and they go around colleges and universities and they have someone pose as a prospective student, and they ask staff and administrators about their DEI offerings. And so, in many of these videos, they often go viral, and they’re successful in getting these employees to discuss about the ways that they might still be doing diversity-focused work, often in states where such efforts are banned or have been heavily restricted. And so, in this video or in these series of videos that we see at ASU, we have these administrators or employees talking about the ways that diversity or inclusion might still show up in curriculum. Like, for example, in one of the videos we see a woman who is said to be the associate director of the School of Criminology and Social Justice. She’s talking about how there’s still some focus on marginalized communities and discrimination or gender in their criminal justice course offerings. And so, this is then clicked and put into these videos, and it’s kind of a gotcha moment for these ASU employees. And so, that’s what we see in these viral videos.

BRODIE: Well, and ASU has said that, among the other things they’ve said, first they’ve said this is we’re not doing what we’re being accused of doing, but also that the people in the videos are not authorized to speak on behalf of the university, right?

SMITH: Yeah, that’s correct.

BRODIE: So, what is the Justice Department saying that ASU is doing that it shouldn’t be doing based on what these folks in these videos had to say?

SMITH: So, the Justice Department is saying that these videos indicate that ASU is discriminating against students based on race, color, national origin, while trying to hide its practices from the government. And so, I think what’s important for people to know is just kind of like where the Justice Department is coming from over the past year when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives. And so, July of last year, we saw the Justice Department put out this long list of campus activities that they feel are now discriminatory. So, things like race-conscious centers, diversity centers, hiring practices that suggest certain identity practices, or any program with the explicit goal of increasing diversity. And so, now you have a viral video of university employees talking about the ways that, at one point, one woman says that we are DEI. So, it kind of comes at odds of what the Justice Department is deeming as discriminatory. But more importantly, that they are accusing the university of hiding these efforts from the government. And so, that’s what’s getting ASU in hot water right now with the Justice Department, specifically the Civil Rights Division.

BRODIE: Do we have any sense of what this investigation might look like, or how long it might take, or what might come out of it in terms of if, for example, the Justice Department finds that ASU is still incorporating DEI, what the penalty might be?

SMITH: Yeah, so the Justice Department has not reached any conclusions about the investigation yet. But what we do know is that if the Justice Department finds that the university is engaged in discriminatory or illegal practices, it can seek to pull federal funding. And so, what we can kind of we can look to see how the Justice Department has investigated other universities, specifically with the way that they have offered diversity initiatives or even spoke about diversity initiatives. Over the last year, I’ve done a lot of coverage at George Mason University in Virginia that also was subject of several federal investigations from both the Justice Department and the Department of Education over their diversity initiatives. And so, that’s been a back-and-forth for months between the university president and the government. And so, we don’t know what the timeline will be for ASU. But we do know that if they are found in violation of federal law, we can see some back-and-forth, some negotiations and possibly the rescission of federal funding. That isn’t always likely. More likely than not, it’s probably going to come to some sort of resolution agreement, which is essentially like the university promising to get rid of these initiatives and prove that they will no longer discriminate against students.

BRODIE: I was going to ask, Jasper, if there are other schools that either are or have gone through this. It sounds like at least one, George Mason, has gone through something similar. Are there other schools that have been subject to DOJ investigations specifically related to DEI also?

SMITH: Well, the main one that comes to mind is definitely George Mason University when it comes specifically to diversity initiatives. And, you know, we’ve seen the Justice Department go after some schools of California as well. But when we look at the diversity offerings in particular, George Mason definitely comes to mind, just because of the intensity of the investigations and also what the Justice Department was asking the university to do. You know, they had accused the president of openly advocating for race- and sex-based hiring of faculty. And they wanted him to apologize. And, you know, that apology could open him up to legal issues, and so he refused to do that. And so, they’re still negotiating what that resolution agreement could look like and, you know, what I guess the end of that investigation could look like. And so, I think, looking to George Mason could give us some clues about how this might go. But I think it’s also important to note that this isn’t the first time ASU has kind of come under fire from the government because of diversity offerings. If you remember, last year, the PhD Project, their participation with the PhD Project, which is an organization focused on getting students of color through business doctoral programs, they had to remove their ties with that organization after an investigation was launched. And so, yeah, those are definitely the things that come to mind with how the government has been going after colleges and universities for the ways that they are looking to implement DEI on their campuses.

BRODIE: Sure. Well, certainly lots more to come on this investigation with ASU. That is Jasper Smith, staff reporter with The Chronicle of Higher Education. Jasper, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

SMITH: Thank you.

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BRODIE: As a wave of anti-vaccine sentiments sweeps the nation, more parents are choosing to forgo a shot that most babies get just after birth: a shot of vitamin K. It helps a baby’s blood clot, and without it, babies across the country are dying. They start bleeding and can’t stop. That includes here in Arizona, where our next guest this morning says he’s seen it happen. Dr. Jon McGreevy is the division chief of pediatric emergency medicine at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, as well as a board member of the Arizona chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. My co-host, Lauren Gilger, spoke with him more about it.

LAUREN GILGER: What are you seeing here? Parents denying the vitamin K shot, the results of it. You know, are you seeing evidence of this? Is this something that’s apparent in your work?

DR. JON MCGREEVY: Yes. You know, I think we have seen a rise in parents that refuse the vitamin K shot at birth. It’s not a part of my practice because I’m not typically there at delivery or at birth. But when we see our patients in the emergency department, we ask them about their routine care that they typically received at birth, and that could be things from eye ointment in the eyes to the vitamin K shot to the hepatitis B vaccine, and even standard sort of newborn care or prenatal care that we ask them about. And I think over the last several years, we’ve seen declines in all of those categories.

GILGER: Right. And this does come, this vitamin K shot, along with a couple of these things that you’re sort of offered at birth you can opt out of, if you’re having a baby, right? There’s, as you mentioned, that antibiotic eye ointment, a hepatitis B vaccine, and then this vitamin K shot. Do you think that they’re kind of getting lumped together and people are assuming, I’ll be extra safe and not do any of these right now?

MCGREEVY: I think so. I think that there’s definitely, and the studies which show this, that it tends to be an all or none. But most people aren’t selecting menu items, but selecting either all of it or none of it. Seems to be, if there is one thing that they do, most feel like the eye ointment is the least invasive, and so that seems to be the one thing they do if they don’t do everything. But I think it makes sense that vitamin K is a shot, and so it’s associated with a vaccine, which is also a shot. And I think that there’s a lot of confusion probably around those points.

GILGER: Right, because I’m sure part of your job is to try to educate people, even if it maybe is after the fact since you’re in the emergency department. But I mean, these are very different things, right? Like a vitamin K shot that they get at birth is not a vaccine, even if someone is skeptical of vaccines, as we’re seeing so many more people are today. They’re not the same.

MCGREEVY: Correct, they’re not the same. But they do have the same ultimate goal, which is, you know, preventing something else from happening later in life.

GILGER: Right. So, tell us, what does this vitamin K shot do? It’s about clotting the blood, essentially.

MCGREEVY: Yeah, vitamin K is important in the body’s cascade of events that leads to forming a blood clot. And you don’t get enough vitamin K through the placenta, so during pregnancy. And then after birth, it isn’t transferred through maternal breast milk as well as some of the other vitamins. And so, we need to supplement that to avoid some of these other complications later in life.

GILGER: Right. So, what might happen to a baby, an infant often, if they do not get this shot? They don’t have that vitamin K right away. What are the results? I mean, we’re seeing reports of deaths.

MCGREEVY: Correct. There’s early onset disease, which is really in the first 24 hours of life that they can have bleeding. More classically, it’s in the first like two days to one week, and this can be anything from bleeding around the umbilical cord, but also things that include bleeding into the stomach or the intestines. It can include bleeding that occurs around the brain, or it could just be bruising on the body.

GILGER: So, a baby might start bleeding and not be able to stop, essentially?

MCGREEVY: Exactly.

GILGER: Have you heard about deaths of infants because of this?

MCGREEVY: Yes. Yes. We have in my practice for the last 15 years, I have seen this happen, even when vitamin K shots were more prevalent in our communities. But we have definitely seen more incidents of this over the last several years as we’ve seen it decline.

GILGER: Right. So, I mean, how rare is this? Is this something like you’d have to have pretty bad luck to have happen, or if you’ve opted out of this shot at birth, it could very likely happen?

MCGREEVY: The hard part in this is it is a pretty rare outcome, right? So, typically we think about those early cases of bleeding, that happens in about 1 in 60 to 250 births. So, probably less than 1%. When we talk about the late onset, these are the ones that happen really anywhere between one week and six months of age, and that could be somewhere between 1 in 10,000, 1 in 25,000. So, it’s pretty rare.

GILGER: Okay. But if this has happened, right? Like you’ve seen this happen, and you know that it could have been prevented. I wonder how frustrating that is for a physician like yourself to watch happen?

MCGREEVY: Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately we’re here to take care of children and want a long, healthy life for children, just like the parents do. And I think it is certainly heartbreaking to see something that could have been prevented. And I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be a parent to have one of these devastating outcomes with something that they could have prevented.

GILGER: I wonder, I mean, this obviously is happening at a time in which we’re seeing increased vaccine skepticism, we’re seeing even from the federal level with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. like the federal systems changing in terms of recommendations about vaccines, and many more people feeling like this isn’t a good thing or just general skepticism of the medical establishment. What do you think folks need to know? Like is this on the hospital, the provider, the doctor who’s there at birth to sort of make sure that parents understand the implications of their decisions?

MCGREEVY: Yes. I mean, yes, in some ways that is an important case, but it’s hard to have that conversation with a family the minute after their baby’s been delivered. These are conversations that have to start well in advance. I think in the moment, I’ve not given birth, but I’ve been there for the birth of both of my daughters, and I can tell you I was probably not in the state of mind to be able to make some of those decisions.

GILGER: So, I mean, what would you like to see change here? What do you think you can do or, you know, the medical establishment, for lack of a better phrase, can do to make sure that parents understand this is something that matters and can have very grave consequences if they reject it at birth?

MCGREEVY: I think there are lots of different strategies that we can think about using. But I think that one of the most important things is understanding the patient or the parent perspective. If we understand what their concerns are, then we’re better able to address how we might mitigate those concerns or those risks or the questions that they have.

GILGER: Do you think that that’s a conversation that hasn’t happened enough maybe in the past that’s sort of contributed to this misinformation, this mistrust of the medical system?

MCGREEVY: You know, I think we’re transitioning from a phase where there was blind acceptance for what your healthcare provider recommended to a place where that’s not always the case. And I think it’s, you know, I think as physicians and healthcare providers, we’re scientists at heart. We question things. That’s what we do. So, you know, I’m not concerned that patients and families have questions or also questioning. That’s the same behavior that we have. We just have to work together.

GILGER: Okay. Dr. Jon McGreevy, division chief of pediatric emergency medicine at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, as well as a board member of the Arizona chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, joining us. Dr. McGreevy, thank you for taking the time to come on the show. I appreciate it.

MCGREEVY: Thank you.

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BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, we’ll take a look at the changing landscape of music streaming. But first, Arizona law specifies who is considered a mandatory reporter, a person who is required to notify the Department of Child Safety or law enforcement if they suspect child abuse or neglect. Those mandatory reporters include teachers, doctors, and others who are responsible for the care or treatment of a child. But my next guest argues that we should also be talking about mandated supporters, in addition to reporters. Claire Louge is executive director of the statewide nonprofit Prevent Child Abuse Arizona. She joins me to talk more about this. And Claire, when we’re talking about the concept of mandated supporting, what are we referring to?

CLAIRE LOUGE: Mandated supporting is this idea that people who work with children and families are not just mandated reporters, they’re also mandated supporters, or rather can consider themselves to be mandated supporters. It’s really that people who have relationships with children and families are in the best position to be able to connect them to what they need to actually prevent child abuse and neglect and other kinds of adversity.

MARK BRODIE: So, is this sort of a preventive kind of thing as you see it?

CLAIRE LOUGE: Yes, absolutely. And it really is based on this national movement towards this idea that the system that we have in place to protect children from child abuse and neglect is not the be-all end-all of how we facilitate or ensure child well-being. In fact, it is the last stop, and a lot needs to happen before that to prevent the need for the child protection system.

MARK BRODIE: So, we’re talking about people like teachers, doctors, people like that, healthcare providers who are mandatory reporters. What kinds of things should they or maybe can they be doing on the front end to try to make it so there’s nothing that they have to report later on?

CLAIRE LOUGE: Yes. So, first of all, I need to say that we are not discouraging people from reporting suspected child abuse or neglect. But let me give you some numbers here, because in Arizona, the Department of Child Safety, which is our CPS system, our child protection system, receives around 80,000 calls a year alleging child abuse or neglect. About half of those calls are screened out, meaning that they don’t meet the definition of child abuse or neglect that is in the purview of DCS to take care of or investigate. So, already half these calls are getting screened out.

MARK BRODIE: Whether or not there’s anything there that like the kids need help with.

CLAIRE LOUGE: Well, and it’s important to kind of bust a few myths around DCS, because sometimes people will misunderstand the function of DCS. The main function of DCS is to protect children from their parents. In fact, if there’s abuse perpetrated by someone else, whether it’s a coach or a neighbor, that’s actually not in the purview of DCS to investigate, that is the police.

And there’s often this misunderstanding that DCS is the place to call if you are concerned about a family. It is not the place to call for any family concern. It is the place to call if you suspect abuse or neglect. And already half the calls that go in there don’t meet the criteria for investigation. In our state, those calls don’t go anywhere.

So, the mandated reporter who’s calling that hotline is not given information on how to connect that family to other support. There is no other line that people have access to to find what families need. We don’t have anything else. So, we’re essentially waiting for families to get worse. It’s either we report or nothing.

MARK BRODIE: Obviously, this is a very broad question with a lot of answers, but what are some of the things that tend to be going on that maybe don’t meet the criteria for DCS to look into it — that a mandatory reporter might be trying to call in?

CLAIRE LOUGE: Gosh, well, I am not particularly equipped to answer that question because I don’t have all the data in front of me and I don’t work with DCS. But we partner with them a lot, so they are one of our strongest partners because they have an interest in making sure that families are never in contact with them.

But I think people misunderstand what the meaning of prevention is. The root cause of child abuse and neglect is not bad parents. The root cause of child abuse and neglect is overwhelmed families. And it’s also worth saying that 70% of the calls that go into the hotline are about neglect and not about abuse.

Neglect is certainly preventable. And we can prevent neglect particularly by connecting families to who or what they need to relieve that stress, to relieve that need, to meet that need. So, the job of prevention is getting families what they need when they need it in their own communities before crisis happens.

MARK BRODIE: Do those services exist?

CLAIRE LOUGE: So, the services do exist, but unfortunately, we don’t have this interconnected system of family support where families can get what they need. And one of the things that Prevent Child Abuse Arizona is doing is we are working to create that interconnected system of family support. And we are focusing on these hubs of support and connection that already exist in Arizona. They’re called Family Resource Centers. And they are for any person raising a child, so your family, my family, any family.

And that’s important that they are for everyone because all families need support sometimes. And they are there for families both in times of need and in times of crisis. So, they are the front door of support. Families need the front door of support, not just to be reported.

MARK BRODIE: So, I guess how big of a shift in thinking for, I guess, the entire community, it’s not just educators, physicians, other, you know, mandatory reporters, it sounds like it’s a pretty significant shift in thinking for all of us to make this happen?

CLAIRE LOUGE: Yes, it is absolutely about mindset shift, because I think one of the consequences of mandated reporting, what it has done, is that it gives this impression that there is an authority that knows how to deal with problems for families that are in your community.

But because you are in that community and you know that family or that child, you’re actually the better messenger of trusted support for that family. And what we’re doing is by referring more and more families to a system that is actually not designed to help them in their case, we are creating a system that focuses on surveillance, and we are making it dangerous for families to ask for help.

So, this is really about ensuring that the families that need support get support, and that families that truly need an investigation get an investigation. It’s very challenging. This is a wicked problem. But if we focus on investigation and do not focus on prevention, we are guaranteed to need to have more investigation.

MARK BRODIE: What kind of resources do you think you and others who are doing the kind of work you’re doing need to get really get this up and running in Arizona and have it as robust as it needs to be?

CLAIRE LOUGE: Wow. So, the mandated supporter concept is really a mindset shift concept that helps people understand their role in connecting families to support as a powerful role for preventing child abuse and neglect. So, the training itself needs to be in front of more people.

In fact, one of our goals is to pair the standard mandated reporting training that all mandated reporters receive and to provide an optional add-on of the mandated supporting training to help them understand their role in connecting families to support. But further than that, we actually need to create this system.

MARK BRODIE: You need the support?

CLAIRE LOUGE: We need the support, exactly, because at the end of this training, we say, "OK, good luck. Here is a about a dozen resources that you can start with. Good luck finding resources for families. And if it’s hard for you, it’s definitely hard for them," right?

So, what we are doing at Prevent Child Abuse Arizona with our partners is we are focusing on these hubs of support and connection called Family Resource Centers. And these are front doors of support for any person raising a child. We want to seed them all over Arizona and to make sure that people know about them, because what these hubs do is they provide parenting support and education, maybe it’s a positive discipline class or whatever kind of parenting support parents might need.

They connect families to one another, so there’s opportunities for families to form their own social connections, which is the most protective thing that we can do for families. Social isolation is actually the number one predictor of child abuse and neglect. Third, they also connect families to other resources in their area. If we have these all over Arizona and they know about every other thing that’s out there to support families, then we create an interconnected system of family support that is a trusted way for families to get access to who or what they need to raise their children.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Claire Louge, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Arizona. Claire, thanks so much.

CLAIRE LOUGE: It’s such a pleasure. Thank you, Mark.

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BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. And let’s go back a bit in time for this next story, to 2006, when Phoenix writer Julie Hampton was a grad student and wanted to buy an $80,000 house in a small Italian town about an hour and a half outside of Florence. But she didn’t have $80,000, so she came up with a scheme that was pretty novel at the time: She asked family, friends, and even complete strangers to invest. Give her a little money toward purchasing her dream home, and she’d give you a future stay in it. If that sounds a lot like crowdfunding today, that’s because it is, before crowdfunding was a thing, of course. Fast-forward to today, and Hampton is at it again, this time with the launch of MyBorgo.co, a crowdfunding platform where you can do the same thing and help revive nearly empty villages in rural Italy. It’s set to launch later this year, and my co-host, Lauren Gilger, spoke with Hampton more about it.

JULIE HAMPTON: I think it goes back to me living in Wisconsin. We had Amish community in Wisconsin, and so I knew about barn raising. And there was something really amazing about all these people coming together in the community to help build their neighbor’s barn in a day.

GILGER: Right.

HAMPTON: And so, I think that kind of translated to this idea of crowdfunding. Like, how can I provide a great experience for somebody and then have them give me money ahead of time?

GILGER: Ahead of time. Because you needed the money to buy the place. Yes.

HAMPTON: I did! I did! It was essentially a prepayment of of a vacation rental, essentially.

GILGER: Right. So, you were guaranteeing these folks, like, if you give me $1,000 or more, or whatever you want to for this, I’ll make sure that you can stay in this beautiful Italian house however many times a year.

HAMPTON: Exactly.

GILGER: Right. And that’s essentially the same idea you’re bringing to this new business, which we’ll get to in a moment. But talk about trying to make this happen when this wasn’t really something that people ever had heard of. How did it work? How’d it go?

HAMPTON: Well, I kind of knew in my gut that this was something that could work. And, you know, I sought out different advice from different places and got some kind of bad advice and sort of discouragement, which only fueled me to prove them wrong. But then I found a great lawyer who helped me set up my LLC and then create the contract that I was going to give to the people who gave me money, so that they knew I was legit. Because I did put an ad in The New York Times. And so half the people I knew and half the people I didn’t know. So, I had conversations with the people from the ad just so that they knew I was reliable and the money wasn’t so much that they were risking a ton. And, you know, at the time, there wasn’t access to these places, these villages, these small villages. Now, of course, we have Airbnb. But at the time, that didn’t exist, and so this really created an opportunity for people to sort of experience authentic Italy and these small villages. There’s like 150 people that live in this village.

GILGER: Huh.

HAMPTON: So, it just takes you to kind of another world.

GILGER: Right. And something they would not have had access to otherwise. I’m guessing there’s no hotel in town, right?

HAMPTON: No, there’s not even a restaurant.

GILGER: Right. So, so tell us about the village where you have a house now in Italy. You’ve been going there for how long?

HAMPTON: 25 years. This summer, July 17th is the 25th anniversary of me—the purchase. I’m going to go back, and my neighbor offered to host a little party to celebrate, so we’re going to do that. It’s a little town called Vitiana. It’s in Tuscany. It’s kind of just north of Lucca and east of the coast. It’s about a 15-minute switchback drive up the road from the valley and just gives you incredible views.

GILGER: Amazing.

HAMPTON: So, after the pandemic, I really started to meet all the other expats in the village, and there’s quite a few from we have people from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Australia, England. It’s really—it’s really quite a amazing space of kind of international flavor.

GILGER: So, you’re not the only expat who has found this place. That’s amazing. And it’s because there’s a lot of real estate available in towns like this. It turns out.

HAMPTON: That’s what that’s what we’re finding. So, when I I just finished my MBA, and we were paired up for different projects, and I happened to pair up with a woman named Giorgia Lugarini. And you can imagine with a name like that, she’s Italian.

GILGER: Right.

HAMPTON: And we started talking, and we’re like, "Oh, Italy." So, we started saying, "Oh, I have a holiday home there." And she’s like, "I do, too." She asked me where it was, and I was like, "Oh, you’re probably not going to know." Well, it turns out our houses are within 30 minutes of each other in Italy.

GILGER: No way. Which we thought was super—super serendipitous.

GILGER: Right.

HAMPTON: So, we met over spring break when we were both in Italy, and we had an Aperol Spritz at halfway between at this bar, and I told her the story of how I bought—bought my house, and she’s like, "We need to make this our project. This needs to be our capstone project." Which is what we—

GILGER: And now it’s a business, yeah.

HAMPTON: And now it’s a business. Yeah, so we had some help on the capstone project to help us kind of formalize it. But, I mean, part of it is really solving the problem of depopulation in Italy. You know, tourism is up in these big cities like Venice, Rome, and Milan, and Florence. But when you look at these smaller towns, they’re actually losing people because of aging, lack of job prospects. And so, a lot of these homes are sitting empty. And they’re affordable homes, that’s what I think a lot of people don’t realize. When you hear of Tuscany, you think, "Oh, I’m totally priced out."

GILGER: Yeah.

HAMPTON: But you can find houses for €60,000 in these places that are move-in ready. I mean, 2025, the National Association of Realtors reported that first-time home buyers is down to 21%. That’s huge.

GILGER: Right. Right, it can be very hard now to buy a house in the U.S. But in Italy, you’re saying the barrier to entry is lower and lower.

HAMPTON: Sure. I mean, there’s certain hurdles you have to, you know, you have to overcome in terms of like there’s a little bit of bureaucracy everywhere. But that’s what we hope to do is to guide people through the process, because we’ve been through it. We can kind of take people through those steps and connect them to the realtors who are vetting these properties to make sure that they’re move-in ready, there’s no big renovations that need to be done. Most Italian homes are sold with their furniture, so you really can move in immediately.

GILGER: Wow. Okay, so explain a little bit about how this will work. It’s not launched yet. It’s called MyBorgo.co. And the idea is essentially what you did to buy your place in Italy, but now much more formalized. You’ll walk people through this, right?

HAMPTON: Yeah, it’s taking kind of the old-school process I did 25 years ago of, you know, sort of checks and like doing everything through the mail, and a little bit through email, is really building a crowdfunding platform. I call it a kind of a cross between Zillow, Kickstarter, and Airbnb. Imagine those three had a Imagine those three had a baby, and MyBorgo is their offspring. So, there’s a section where where aspiring owners can browse properties that have been pre-vetted as move-in ready. Then, once they secure a proposta d’acquisto, which is the reservation offer essentially, then they can host a campaign on our site and invite people, backers we call them, to sort of reserve time at the home, and that’s really what will generate the capital needed to purchase the home.

GILGER: So, there’s no debt involved here, not as much red tape, right? Because you’ll do a lot of that for them, it sounds like.

HAMPTON: Exactly.

GILGER: So, I have to ask you, since since you’ve been going to this same village for 25 years, you obviously you’re not the only expat there. I mean, like, what do the locals, you know, these very few people who left in these villages, what do they think about you, about other people from all over the world coming and sort of using their little towns as as like a vacation spot? Do they like it or are they frustrated by it?

HAMPTON: I think one of the things, too, is we consider the villages are a partner. So, we we are going to villages where there are available homes, and making sure that these the village elders or the local residents welcome this kind of investment in their town. For the most part, we find that many of them do. They want to see their villages come alive. They want the economic stimulus that these visitors will bring. Like, in Vitiana, it comes alive in the summer. They put on dinners in the piazza for 200 people and have a band. I mean, we pay we all pay like €20 to do that, but it’s just an incredible moment of community coming together.

GILGER: That sounds beautiful. All right. Good luck with it. That is Julie Hampton, a Phoenix writer, now the co-founder of MyBorgo.co, which will launch later this year. Julie, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

HAMPTON: Oh, thanks for having me, Lauren.

[MUSIC]

BRODIE: The 2026 World Cup gets underway on Thursday. The first game will be in Mexico City, as one of the co-hosts, Mexico, takes on South Africa. Team USA has its first game on Friday against Paraguay. Last night, the Turkish national team held an open practice in Mesa, where it’s been training in advance of the tournament. Turkey is in Group D with the U.S., Paraguay, and Australia. The Show’s Nick Sanchez went to check out last night’s festivities. He’s here with me in studio now to talk about it. Good morning, Nick.

NICK SANCHEZ: Good morning, Mark.

BRODIE: So, what did look like, and maybe more interestingly, what did it sound like last night?

SANCHEZ: Well, I saw a lot of fans. I believe the official ticketed number was about 3,000, and you could feel that presence. There were easily 3,000, maybe a little bit more, that managed to get in people there. So many fans wearing Turkish national team jerseys, wrapped in the Turkish flag, wearing jerseys of club teams in Turkey, of the Turkish league. I heard a DJ there playing Turkish music, there was a vendor doing like on-site screen printing of like Turkey national team t-shirts. Yeah, it was a the vibes were very high.

BRODIE: And as I would imagine the case if you go to a soccer match, like the fans weren’t just sitting there like talking amongst themselves, right?

SANCHEZ: No, this isn’t this isn’t equivalent to, I would say, American baseball culture. It’s quite the opposite. So, when we got into the actual practice, by the time that actual practice started, that’s where you could really hear the presence of the of the Turkish national team fans. And actually, what we’re going to hear right now is a few of the chants that were happening during the practice.

[CHEERING AND CHANTING]

SANCHEZ: And what you hear there is the chanting obviously, but also like banging on and jumping on the metal bleachers that the fans were sitting in, yeah, it was a it was pretty raucous. And there was one chan there was another chant actually for one player in particular, Arda Güler. He is a young attacking midfielder for the Turkish national team. He also plays for Real Madrid in Spain. Okay. Very like exciting young player who I think a lot of fans are excited to see at this tournament. They were chanting his name, shouting his name, and at one point during the practice, he actually acknowledged the crowd, and they erupted. Oh, wow. Just like with a little wave. That’s that’s kind of the the power of of this tournament.

BRODIE: That’s so cool. Okay, so you said 3,000, maybe a few more than that fans who are there. Who who’d you talk to? Who who are these folks?

SANCHEZ: Yeah, I talked to a lot of Turkey fans, Turkish-American fans in particular, a lot of them from here, and one fan told me that the feeling of having, you know, in all the towns in all the world, your favorite team, your Turkish national team, is training in your backyard she described to me the feelings that brings her.

TURKISH FAN 1: It’s it’s a feeling you can’t explain unless you feel it. The simple fact that they’re going to be playing against the USA, you know, our the country where I was born against my dad’s country, 6 hours away, it’s it’s it’s amazing.

SANCHEZ: And another fan from San Tan Valley told me that he’s feeling a little more conflicted about the U.S. and Turkey playing against each other in the group stage, but overall, he’s very optimistic.

TURKISH FAN 2: I’m a Turkish-American, so I’m kind of sad because USA and Turkey are going to play. I and I’m hoping they will both qualify for the next, you know, level. At least they will get out of the group stages. I think they will go all the way up to last 16. Maybe quarterfinals, but at least they will come up to last 16, and then we will see that.

BRODIE: Now, Nick, it has been a little while since Turkey has been in the World Cup, but I would imagine their fans of the of the team pretty optimistic?

SANCHEZ: They are, yeah. This Turkey’s first Men’s World Cup since 2002, and I spoke to one fan who remembers that.

TURKISH FAN 3: Yes, I was in Turkey during that time. It was such a good times. We missed the number one by hair, and it was like we get the number two, but it was the best games we were playing. Yes, this time we are going to get it.

BRODIE: All right, we’ll see if Turkey is in fact going to get it. By that, I assume he means the the trophy, right? The World Cup Championship?

SANCHEZ: The World Cup trophy, that’s right.

BRODIE: All right, we’ll see how it plays out. KJZZ’s Nick Sanchez, thank you.

SANCHEZ: Thanks, Mark.

[MUSIC]

BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. Hundreds of millions of people around the world stream music on two of the biggest platforms: Spotify and Apple Music. Data show in the U.S., more than 50 million people pay for Spotify, while more than 40 million pay for Apple Music. That’s led to a lot of conversations about how we as listeners find new music and how streaming platforms compensate musicians. And some new models are popping up as well. One of them is called subvert.fm, which calls itself a music co-op. With me to talk more about all this is Jason P. Woodbury, a Valley-based writer, musician, and podcaster. And Jason, at the risk of asking an overly broad question, how would you describe the current state of music streaming and how we as consumers listen to music?

JASON P. WOODBURY: Well, broadly put, you know, most people use streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music or, you know, those are the sort of industry standards. Obviously, people listen to things on YouTube, all these different stuff. But generally speaking, most of these platforms offer incredible access to music and variety and ease of, you know, use. But sort of where they lack is is compensating most artists, you know? Even old radio was much more a beneficial financial arrangement than what happens with streaming services. So, I think right now, that’s the way people are consuming the music, but you’re getting a lot of musicians who find that the the scale of that streaming model isn’t working for them. So, you’re seeing some interesting things start to come into the to the field in terms of new potential ways to stream or reimagine the scale of streaming.

BRODIE: Well, so are you seeing those things coming from the musicians themselves in terms of maybe looking for different and creative ways to earn money, or are you seeing them come from other places?

WOODBURY: Well, yeah, it’s definitely like, obviously, if to be a musician right now, you know, you’re you have to also sell, you know, merch and play shows, these are like all part and parcel, right? But as far as general streaming goes, I think you are seeing artists start to push back and say, "Well, what are some different ways we can do it?" I mean, Bandcamp has been around forever. Bandcamp is sort of the industry leader in terms of DIY musicians doing direct digital music access. But you’re seeing all sorts of stuff. You know, Sam Means, who does Hello Merch—which full disclosure I work for—he’s got a a service that he’s created called Wavelake. You’ve got stuff like subvert.fm, which is a sort of worker-owned streaming service. And I just signed up for that to see how, you know, it would go. And I uploaded my most recent project to it and I thought, "That’s cool." You have to be accepted as like a co-op member in order to be on that site, and it’s like, okay, these we’re starting to see people reimagine ways that this could work.

BRODIE: Do you think that these new models can really be effective in terms of making sure that artists are are compensated for the the music they’re creating, but also providing broad enough access so that enough people can hear them?

WOODBURY: Well, I mean, there’s a lot of different ways. It’s tough. Unfortunately, the average consumer, I mean, I get for a lot of listeners why something like Spotify is is like really awesome, right? But a lot of the times with streaming services, you’re also getting all this algorithmic sort of manipulation. And so, I think that the big challenge right now for things like this is just people realizing that you we might have to compensate musicians differently in order to have that kind of access to their work, and to be willing to do that. And it’s hard to be willing to do that when you’ve got like five things you want to listen to and each one of them is asking for the equivalent of a month’s subscription, you know? So, I kind of get why I get why that’s such a a convenient thing. And at the same time, when you break off from that though, all of a sudden now you don’t need that many listeners in order to potentially substantially benefit, right? You don’t need every single person who’s on Spotify who’s not hearing your music because it’s not being algorithmically pushed towards them, you know, versus like a thousand people who are going to support you through one of these like more scaled-down things.

BRODIE: Well, I wonder, like when you look at sort of the state of things now and the landscape out there for musicians and, you know, getting your work out and making sure that, you know, you’re compensated for it, do you see another time or can you think back to another time where the the change was as dramatic as it seems to be right now?

WOODBURY: Well, it’s hard to say, like, musicians have always been presented with challenges, right? Like, radio represented something a shift away from like, you know, getting paid to appear someplace, right? You know, so, that was an advance, and I’m sure people were afraid of the radio, too. But the radio worked for getting music to people. And soon enough, people started getting compensated for it. And the music industry has always undercompensated artists, I believe, um but that old model was more in line with, you know, adequately compensating those musicians. And so, I think you have to look you look back and you see all these inflection points where the technology represented a challenge, but people figured out a way to sort of make it work.

BRODIE: It’s interesting because I think back even, you know, a couple of decades ago when iPods first came out and, you know, people were looking and saying, "Oh my gosh, like I can have music with me, like a digital version of whatever I want in my pocket, and I can just listen to it whenever I want, wherever I am," like that seemed at the time so revolutionary. And you look at it now and, you know, as you referenced earlier, you know, if you subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music, you can have almost any song that’s ever been recorded in your pocket, in your headphones, at any given time.

WOODBURY: Well, yeah. I mean, I’m struck by two things: One, the primary difference, and interest in like iPods on eBay and like secondhand markets is off the charts, by the way.

BRODIE: Really?

WOODBURY: Yeah, I bought an MP3 player or my wife got me one for my birthday last year, just like a standalone MP3 player.

BRODIE: Huh.

WOODBURY: And I think part of the reason why people feel so particularly nostalgic towards that is because that was the early days of the internet. But you were still largely managing your library of songs, you know what I mean? That was your job. I know there are lots of people who use Spotify the same way that I largely use streaming services—I mostly use like Apple Music and I use Qobuz, which is a like a French um company that pays artists more. But if you’re using those to look stuff up and have a real active relationship with them, then it’s really hard to beat that. But a lot of times, I think people are just more and more, you know, you get sort of inundated with algorithmic response, stuff that they want you to listen to.

BRODIE: Like you’re not even paying attention to what you’re listening to, you’re just you’re letting you’re letting the service pick what’s next.

WOODBURY: You are, and I don’t think that that’s always wrong or anything, you know what I mean? But I do think like it creates a frictionless relationship with the art form. And I think like oddly enough, what we’re seeing people itching for is like a little bit more friction. You know, you want like It needs to be real. But it’s like people are looking at it, and it’s like in the early days of the iPod, the internet coupled with that technology made us feel like, wow, we could listen to potentially any song, but you still had to go find it for yourself, you know? And that still exists. We can go off-road from these sort of streaming services and explore around corners where people might be loading. I mean, it is tempting to think of them as having everything, but they really don’t have a lot of things. I do think that we could look at it right now and just say, well, it doesn’t have to just work the one way. There should be lots of different ways that people can distribute music online and have it reach people. And I don’t think the problem is that, you know, there are too many of them. I think there’s not enough. People should just keep doing it, you know what I mean? There should be all these different decentralized ways, I think, right now, for artists to, like I said, just sort of go off-road of the streaming thing, or you can do like, personally, I have all my stuff on all of them, you know? It’s like it’s there wherever. I want I love the idea of making it accessible to everybody. It’s kind of an exciting thing because if one of them starts to really work for people the way Bandcamp has, that’s awesome.

BRODIE: All right, we’ll have to leave it there. That is musician and podcaster, among many other things, Jason P. Woodbury. Jason, good as always to talk to you. Thank you so much.

WOODBURY: Oh, thank you so much, Mark. I always appreciate it.

[MUSIC]

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. Thanks for listening.