The Show for June 18, 2026: Court rulings and Arizona's water future, the 'Frediversary' and more

The state water department has lost two lawsuits this year dealing with homebuilding. We’ll hear what those rulings could mean for the state’s water and housing future. Plus, fans are gathering in northern Arizona to celebrate 150 years of the Fred Harvey Company.

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.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning and welcome to the show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, we’ll hear about the potential unintended consequences of a legislative referral to November’s ballot.

LAUREN GILGER: And we meet one of the Arizona athletes heading to the Special Olympics.

MARK BRODIE: But first, the four Republicans running for their party’s nomination for governor met last night in a debate sponsored by the Citizens Clean Elections Commission. The winner of the July primary will face the incumbent, Democrat Katie Hobbs, in November’s general election. Hobbs does not have a primary challenger. The candidates talked about tax policy, school vouchers, and electability, among other issues, during the hour-long debate. KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez from the politics desk was there last night. She’s here with us now to talk about what the candidates had to say. Good morning, Camryn.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: So let’s start off with, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, who are these people?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Who the heck are these people? Yeah, we’ve got four candidates, and I think there’s two with much more prominent name recognition. So those are our congressmen. We’ve got Andy Biggs, and we’ve got David Schweikert. They’ve both been in Congress for quite a while now.

And we’ve got two sort of political outsiders, somewhat, Scott Neely and Ken Miceli. And they sort of pitched themselves as more like your average guy, or "We’re not politicians, we’re the people." And especially Neely. He was like, “I’m a boots-on-the-ground guy, I’m one of the people.” And they’re running for this nomination to go up against Katie Hobbs. I think, Biggs and Schweikert are generally seen as the front-runners, and Andy Biggs is running with the Trump endorsement.

MARK BRODIE: Well, and a lot of the polls have shown, for whatever they’re worth, have shown that Andy Biggs has a lead in this race. But David Schweikert really talked quite a bit, it seems, about whether or not Biggs could win in November.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, the electability issue is Schweikert’s main thing, right? Because Schweikert has been representing this district in the north Valley for a long time, that’s Scottsdale area, north Phoenix — which is a very split district. It’s purple-ish, lots of independents, roughly half as many Democrats as Republicans, although slightly more Republicans.

And he’s been able to hold on to that year after year, challenge after challenge. And that was his main pitch. He was like, "Listen, I’ve been able to win competitive races, and if you guys select Biggs in the primary election, that’s going to bode ill for us in the general because we’re going to have a Kari Lake situation. People are going to feel that they have to go to Hobbs" — because essentially, he’s calling him too extreme.

MARK BRODIE: Well, and Biggs responded by basically saying he’s not Kari Lake, and also, it sounded like he was trying to put some distance between himself and Turning Point USA?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Well, there was an allegation that he is basically a puppet of Turning Point USA. And he said, we’re not, he said, "bedfellows." But he knows that he has their support, and he mentioned that too. He said he’s happy to have Turning Point’s support, and that’s very evident. He’s spoken at lots of their events. They had a Turning Point watch party for this debate that was specifically about him. It’s very clear to everyone that Turning Point is very much behind him, Turning Point Action.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so one of the other big issues that came up, Camryn, was ESAs, these school vouchers. A big issue at the state Legislature in the waning days, as you know well. What did the candidates have to say about ESAs last night?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: There’s a bit of a curveball there. So we have a universal school choice program here in Arizona for K-12, right? But Feely said —

MARK BRODIE: Neely.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Sorry. That’s right, Neely.

MARK BRODIE: Not — Jay Feely’s running in Schweikert’s old district.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Correct. Neely said he wants to expand the program even further, and he elaborated on that by saying he wants it to apply to trade schools. And he talked about defunding some other Arizona universities to help pay for that.

Biggs on the stage said he also wants to expand ESAs, but was less clear on the details of that when we asked him. He said he has a concept, he’s got a plan, but he wouldn’t expand on what the plan actually is. So it’s not clear what he means when he says he wants to expand the universal program.

MARK BRODIE: And expanding it to trade schools would be a pretty significant change in how the program is operated from how it’s been, right?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, I mean, if we’re making it eligible to adults, if we’re making it eligible to more people, that would presumably increase the cost. Neely ... was talking about how we could use businesses and maybe incentivize them to help get engaged in this kind of program and how this would help our workforce issues as well because we would be putting more people into trades directly, and those would be jobs that would be protected from AI, stuff like that. He had more concrete details of the expansion idea.

MARK BRODIE: All right, so there’s also some discussion about tax policy and whether there are some particular taxes that we should keep or not keep, especially between the two front-runners, between Biggs and Schweikert, right?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, some differences there. Biggs has advocated for slowly, incrementally getting rid of income tax. And Schweikert was talking about how the math on that might not be what it seems, because if you cut tax in one area, then presumably you would have to raise it in another area or you would have to cut services.

And Biggs is saying, "No, we can get rid of income tax and not get rid of services." And his explanation was kind of, "Well, we would be getting rid of the waste, fraud and abuse in other programs" ... This is a term we hear often. And he talked about Medicaid. He was like, if we eliminate Medicaid fraud, that would help us balance getting rid of the income tax.

I think there’s some outstanding questions about how that would play out exactly, how does the money translate from one thing to another and is that feasible? Schweikert really likes to think of himself as a numbers guy or a fiscal hawk, and if you’ve ever heard him speak, he loves charts and numbers. So he was doing his thing, being himself. He used a lot of these tax and financial issue questions.

MARK BRODIE: Well, did Schweikert say anything about making changes to the tax code in Arizona?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, and his explanation for paying for tax cuts was he wants to use state trust land and develop more of it. So using it for residential and also talked about that in terms of housing policy and expanding our housing options, really taking advantage of state trust land.

And that’s something that we’ve heard before from some Republicans. But he was very passionate about it, so I think that’s going to be a hallmark of his administration if he ever makes it.

MARK BRODIE: All right, we’ll see how that turns out. KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez, thanks.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Jim.

JIM SMALL: Good morning ...

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so what would this ballot measure do to begin with? It’s said to be aimed at the teachers’ union. Is that explicit here?

JIM SMALL: Yeah, I mean, it is absolutely aimed — ... it was drafted as retaliation against the Arizona Education Association, which is the state’s largest teachers’ union and has affiliates across the state in districts. And essentially, the teachers’ union came out and said that they were going to spearhead this ballot initiative to put some pretty strict reforms onto the universal school voucher program.

Republicans were very upset about that, so they drafted this proposal in response, which essentially would amend the Arizona Constitution to more or less really curtail what teachers can do, how they can unionize, how they can organize, how they can recruit new members. And most — I think the thing that is most concerning for the Arizona Education Association, is it would single out teachers and school district employees as people who could not have union dues deducted from their paycheck.

Completely voluntary thing that members of unions across government, across private sector do is have these deductions taken out, but they have to request it. And this would say that specifically school districts and school district employees, teachers or folks that drive buses or clean the campuses or maintenance people or cafeteria workers or librarians, none of them could have that money taken out of their paychecks.

LAUREN GILGER: Jim, does this have to do with teachers being allowed to strike as well, as they did very effectively a few years ago during Red for Ed?

JIM SMALL: It at one point the bill, the measure did include language that would go after teachers for striking and would punish them for it. That was taken out on the final day, but that is that is also something that Republicans were looking to, I think, in some ways kind of get some payback on because of something like Red for Ed, which was incredibly effective when teachers walked out in mass from classrooms.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. OK, so you’re reporting, Jim, that the language here in this measure could mean that there are impacts here for other public sector unions as well, right? Police and fire, tell us what you found.

JIM SMALL: Yeah, so and it’s something of an open question, and it essentially buried in the very kind of like last provision of this proposal to amend the Constitution. It has a sentence in there that it says no subdivision of the state, which essentially means the state government, cities, counties, fire districts, school districts, any kind of governmental body, they would all be barred from negotiating with a labor union for terms of employment ... for workers.

And it uses language that is seen across state law and and even across the the Arizona Constitution in multiple places, and it’s kind of boilerplate language that when lawmakers want to enact a statewide ban on something, they kind of grab this language and they dropped it into this bill into this proposal that is everything else is focused on teachers — or on school district employees and on school districts and what those two categories can do. And then all of a sudden at the very end, there’s this incredibly broad language that is just dropped in there that says, "Hey, guess what? This applies to everybody. No one across the state, no government across the state can do this."

And it’s an open question as to whether, because it’s in the context of this other proposal that deals with school districts and school district employees, whether it would be limited to that or whether, the court would look at that and say, "Well, words have meaning, right? Like if we’re going to limit everything else to school districts and school district employees and then suddenly there’s not a limit that’s placed on things, what was the Legislature really intending to do?"

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So up for debate, as you’re saying here, this is an open question. But you spoke with the head of the Arizona Police Association, right, who seems concerned?

JIM SMALL: Absolutely. Spoke with Joe Clure, who is the executive director for the Arizona Police Association, and he told me that this is something that is on their radar. They are concerned about this, they’re watching this. They’re having his his union and other public safety unions and and other unions that represent government workers in in other different sectors are looking at this trying to make sense of it, trying to figure out what exactly it means.

And there is a real palpable fear there that because it’s written so broadly, and because it employs language that is widely understood by lawmakers, by courts and by other governments to limit what they’re allowed to do, that it could have some impact and and that it could lead to someone trying to say, "Hey, guess what? If voters pass this, this actually undoes everything that happens for police and for fire and for, you know, maybe transportation workers and things like that."

LAUREN GILGER: Interesting. You did speak with another union leader who said, no, this is OK, it seems clear this is only going to apply to schools though, right? Like it’s it’s not everyone who’s up in arms here.

JIM SMALL: Yeah, it’s not. I think that there is even division within land and and, you know, I got the sense from talking to ... John Laredo, who is the executive director of the Arizona Labor Unity Table, which kind of is a coalition of different different labor groups. And his view of it was like, "Look, I think that this thing is probably, ... was his words, "is probably limited to just school district employees."

But he even he acknowledged that it it’s written in a way that is confusing and is vague, and that other labor activists and labor leaders are looking at and really trying to make sense of it and trying to, I think get their arms around what this could potentially mean.

You know, at the end of the day, all of these labor unions are going to be opposing this. They were already they were fighting it at the Legislature, they’re going to fight against it at the ballot. But I think that this just gives them maybe a little bit of extra motivation to get behind this and and to make sure, you know, that they do put their resources out there in a way that that really works to to try to defeat this thing at the ballot box.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, OK. Jim, last 20 seconds here or so, you think — does it seem as if this could end up in court?

JIM SMALL: I think it’s entirely possible. You know, I spoke with one attorney who works for labor unions, who had to be a little circumspect when he talked about it because his clients were weighing potential legal options against this measure. Whether it’s against this provision or against other ones, unclear.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. Jim Small, editor in chief of the Arizona Mirror, joining us. Jim, thanks so much.

JIM SMALL: My pleasure.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, an Indigenous coming-of-age story performed by one person and a cast of puppets.

TY DEFOE: Being an Indigequeer person growing up in my community as the only person, sometimes I feel like I’m building and creating worlds that I would have wanted when I was a young person.

LAUREN GILGER: We’ll hear from one of the writers of Skeleton Canoe.

MARK BRODIE: But first, the State Department of Water Resources has lost two legal cases this year. Both dealt with home building. In the first, a judge found the agency did not follow the proper procedures for determining areas that had that had unmet demand for 100-year assured water supply. That supply is a requirement for new development in active management areas, which include the Phoenix and Tucson areas. The lawsuit arose out of a 2023 decision by the Hobbs administration to pause new home construction in certain parts of the Valley, like Buckeye and Queen Creek. In the second ruling from earlier this month, the judge said ADWR could not use an alternative program to allow home builders to build if their water providers had enough water for 100 years and then another 33% on top of it. Those rulings also come in the context of potential litigation over the future of the Colorado River. The new state budget includes another $6 million to pay for possible legal fees if there are lawsuits. With me to talk about all of this is Rhett Larson, the Richard Morrison Professor of Water Law at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. He’s also a senior research fellow with the Kyle Center for Water Policy at ASU’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. And Rhett, how significant do you think this latest ruling is in terms of the alternative path to assured water supply?

RHETT LARSON: It’s pretty significant. There have been now we’ve had two water providers that have relied on this process to to receive a designation. And this process was implemented as sort of a response to challenges that homebuilders were facing with restrictions on development based on groundwater.

And this has increased the amount of uncertainty as far as ability of homebuilders to rely on this program. It’s also increasing the amount of uncertainty as to how much development can now occur that’s solely based on groundwater.

I think there will be an appeal by the Department of Water Resources in this case, so I don’t know that we should count on this being the final word, but it definitely increases the uncertainty and it highlights the sort of tense relationship between effectively managing our water resources while addressing what is a very serious housing challenge.

MARK BRODIE: If the appeals are not successful and this ruling is the final word, does that also increase uncertainty for homebuilders?

RHETT LARSON: Yeah, I think that there’s a chance that this ends up being a bit of a pyrrhic victory for homebuilders if they end up winning at the end of this thing. And the reasons that I think it can be a pyrrhic victory for them is I think homebuilders might look at this now and see well there are all of these restrictions that are getting in our way from being able to build homes.

And I think a lot of that frustration is justified and understandable. But if they win at the end of this thing, Number 1, I think it there’s a risk that it will erode confidence in the assured water supply program, which is a consumer protection program. People who buy homes in Arizona have the assurance that, hey, there’s going to be 100 years of water here, and if we slowly erode with these court decisions, then I think that’s a risk.

The other risk is, is that for homebuilders, this was a participatory process to create this alternative designation, and I think they may see people less willing to sort of engage in a negotiation to develop policies that respond to the homebuilders’ concerns if at the end of the day, the homebuilders just sue on the very policies people were implementing to help them out.

MARK BRODIE: So this was, of course, the second court case that the Department of Water Resources lost this year.

There was another one dealing with sort of the unmet demand that back a few years ago when ADWR said that there are certain parts of the Valley, more sort of the the outskirts of the Valley, that there wasn’t enough water to meet the 100-year assured water supply, so builders couldn’t build there. And in that case, a court ruled that the Department of Water Resources couldn’t make that determination in that case.

When you take these two together, what do you see as that meaning both for homebuilding and for water in the state?

RHETT LARSON: Well, this sort of raises another issue why I think the homebuilders may regret winning this case, which is both of these decisions taken together, there’s a lot of substantive water in these decisions, but there’s also a lot of administrative procedure in these decisions.

How should the Department of Water Resources make a rule? And both of these decisions seem to be creating a precedent that says that if the Department of Water Resources needs wants to make a new rule, they need to go through a lot of process and they need to be very specifically authorized by the state Legislature to do so.

And I think that the day may come for homebuilders when they want a very nimble and responsive Department of Water Resources where they want a rule that can happen quickly and efficiently and that doesn’t have to go through the state Legislature, and if that day comes, then these very cases that they won are going to get in the way of water policies that they might want because these cases are going to make it much harder for the Department of Water Resources to respond quickly to changing circumstances.

And it will put a lot more responsibility on our state Legislature to make specific water policy. And our state Legislature struggles to make very specific water policy. They tend to create sort of general power granting legislation and then count on the experts in the Department of Water Resources to fill in the technical details.

So I think one of, it is, I worry that it’s creating a sort of ossified agency that isn’t going to be as adaptive to what is a situation that needs a lot of adaptation, our changing water supply. I also think that it’s just highlighting that Arizona has a complex trade-off now that we can build, we can continue to build houses, but to continue to build houses, we are going to have to do it a number of things.

One of those things is we’re going to have to phase out more agriculture. Arizona, at least, Arizona uses a lot less water now than we did in the 1950s. But the reason is is that we’ve grown at the expense of agriculture. If we continue to grow at the expense of agriculture, we can actually save water while building homes. But our grocery prices will go up because the farms will go out. So that’s a hard trade-off.

Or we can augment our water supply, you know, we can build desalination plants and but if we do that, your water rates are going to go up a lot. So I think that Arizonans are right to be concerned about the price of housing. I think homebuilders are right to be concerned about regulatory obstacles to respond to that challenge, but the trade-offs are inevitable.

MARK BRODIE: So Rhett, while you're here, I wanted to ask to get your opinion on something that the Legislature did do toward the end of its session. It allocated another $6 million to the defense fund for the Colorado River. And I'm wondering if, in your mind, does that signal anything, like does that say that litigation is more likely in any way now that, you know, we're sort of getting into a time when new rules really have to be agreed to?

RHETT LARSON: At this stage, I don't see how litigation is avoidable, frankly. I think we are careening in that direction and short of something really remarkable, it seems like this is heading to court. And it's likely heading to court both in the federal court by at least some of the states suing the federal government, and it's likely headed to the United States Supreme Court, meaning the states will sue each other. But I will say is, I think it's great that Arizona is gearing up for that possibility, we're preparing ourselves for what is going to be a tough legal fight. But what I want to say is two things. Number 1, $6 million isn't enough money. Georgia v. Florida, when Georgia and Florida sued each other over the Appalachia Chattachoochee River, Florida spent over $60 million in legal fees in 10 years. And they lost. So it will cost a lot more than $6 million.

And Number 2, litigation could be a positive. Litigation is a positive if it starts imposing costs on people who are holding out and not negotiating in good faith.

MARK BRODIE: It could spur negotiation.

RHETT LARSON: Yes, it could spur negotiations. So if it does that, then litigation is the right move for us to make. But if we get bogged down in a decade-long Supreme Court battle, where our water supplies decision are being made by nine judges who live in Washington, D.C., only one of them whom has ever lived in west of the Mississippi, that is not a situation that we want. Better to have a negotiated settlement with our sister states. But right now that doesn't look possible.

MARK BRODIE: Well, and it seems like one of the other considerations may be comments from Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who basically said any state that sues over this will forego federal conservation money. Like is that a consideration here also?

RHETT LARSON: I mean, I would like to think that kind of legislation’s not going to move forward. If it did move forward, I think that that’s a terrible move because it’s basically saying that the federal government can take money that the federal government needs in order to support critical industries like TSMC, Honeywell, Boeing, Raytheon, I mean these are critical industries for our national defense, these are critical industries for our technology sector, it’s critical for our food supply.

So if we’re basically saying we are going to prevent Arizona from protecting its legal rights in court by hurting national defense and national food security, that seems like a terrible decision.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Rhett Larson, Richard Morrison Professor of Water Law at ASU’s O’Connor College of Law, also associated with the Kyl Center for Water Policy there. Rhett, thanks as always for your time, I appreciate it.

RHETT LARSON: My pleasure, anytime.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger.

Fans are gathering to celebrate its 150th anniversary with events at the Heard Museum here in Phoenix, the South Rim, and the famous La Posada Hotel in Winslow.

The so-called Frediversary celebrates the date in 1876 when the Fred Harvey Company made a fateful partnership with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway — the railroad that first brought travelers from the East Coast to the Southwest, the Harvey Company became their hospitality company, running their hotels, restaurants, and dining cars.

And it all, of course, coincides with the centennial this year of Route 66, which has a good stretch that runs along the Santa Fe Railroad.

Stephen Fried is author of a book all about the intersection of Fred Harvey, fine dining, and the Wild West called Appetite for America. And he is a self-proclaimed Fredhead. I spoke with him more about this anniversary and Fred Harvey’s influence on the West.

STEPHEN FRIED: Fred Harvey came to America in the 1850s, he learned the restaurant business in New York City, and he ended up in St. Louis. He lost his restaurant in St. Louis during the Civil War, and he reinvented himself in Kansas in the 1870s. And this is when railroads only went to Kansas. And as the railroads expanded beyond Kansas all the way to California, they didn’t have dining cars in the West because they were too heavy to carry. So there had to be trackside restaurants everywhere, and in most places because they figured they would only see you once and never see you again, they were all horrible. And so Fred Harvey decided that whatever railroad decided to have good food along their railway, people would take that train because back then, trains were like planes, you could take a variety of railroads to different locations. So the Harvey Company started out in Eastern Kansas, and then continued its way west, but it really its main expansion and when it became a real national phenomenon was honestly in New Mexico and in Arizona. And Santa Fe and the Grand Canyon especially were really the centers of and Albuquerque were really the centers of the Fred Harvey Company and the company was the largest hospitality chain in America for decades.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow. So you wrote a book about Fred Harvey and the food, and I should say, you hired me when I was a student to help do some of the research here in Arizona. I remember going to NAU’s library and copying old Fred Harvey menus for you for this book. I mean, but they were fascinating to look at, the food that was served. Tell us about that and sort of the spread of this this type of cuisine.

STEPHEN FRIED: Well, I mean, keep in mind, these places they had originally a restaurant every 100 miles. Then trains got faster and they and there were fewer of them, but they they ran up to 80 restaurants between Chicago and Los Angeles and between Chicago and the Gulf of Mexico. So they had to really be on top of what the menus would be and they organized everything and they also would get fresh food, like if if there was a ton of cantaloupes being farmed somewhere, they would buy them all and send them out on the train. So it was a it was an empire that I mean, we now have companies like this, but this this all happened before telephones. You know, this was being done mostly by the telegraph, but it was amazingly organized, it was amazingly diverse, and most people in the West say that the Fred Harvey Company taught them how to eat well. Of course, it’s also the 100th anniversary of Route 66. The restaurants that originally opened onto the train tracks and people came to them off the trains, they opened second entrances to them for the for people coming off Route 66. The Americana aspects of Route 66 perfectly dovetail with Fred Harvey and for many years the best restaurants on Route 66 were these Fred Harvey restaurants which had been around for a long time. But what this all becomes is just a great celebration of travel in the West. And, you know, Western travel is about trains, it’s about cars, it’s about getting out and seeing America in that big way that you can’t see when you fly over it.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. I mean, so there is a link obviously between the histories here between Fred Harvey and Route 66, and eventually, right, like one leads to the other in a way, like you see railway travel in America give way to automobile travel and Route 66 and that car culture, right?

STEPHEN FRIED: Yeah, although what’s interesting is of course the trains thought that they would always be in control. So when they had the opportunity to invest in cars, they were like, oh no, we just do trains. So that’s how the car companies built up themselves and the plane companies as well. The Harvey Company was one of the few companies that invested in both. The Harvey Company also was involved in the early days of the airlines. So, but it’s, look, the history of travel in the West is a huge, important thing because it is the main economy for many parts of this and of course, you know, Santa Fe and the Grand Canyon and all places in between, these are amazing places that grew up a lot after the First World War. You know, because during the First World War, nobody could go to Europe anymore. So all of a sudden people had to experience the West, and it just so happened that the first Western world’s fairs were in 1915. So all of a sudden people from all over the world were coming to the American West, to the world’s fair in San Francisco, to the world’s fair in San Diego, and then they traveled through the Southwest. That was the beginning of what we now know as tourist Southwest, and I think that so much of it is still wonderfully preserved and you get in your car and go and it’s still just as great.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. I mean, so there is a link obviously between the histories here between Fred Harvey and Route 66. And one of the things I have to ask about Fred Harvey before we finish this is about the Harvey girls, right? Like I mentioned Judy Garland and the sort of the famous outfits they would wear and just bringing women out to this side of the country, right? This was a legacy he believed.

STEPHEN FRIED: Well, interestingly, of course, the food and of course the hospitality and the restaurants, but I think what’s equally important is that the Fred Harvey Company at the turn of the last century really discovered Native American art and wanted to make sure that people understood that this was a true American culture. Much of the Native American art in museums now was originally purchased by the Fred Harvey Company, and they also went into business with Native American artists. Part of what we’re going to be doing for the anniversary celebration in Arizona is doing an event at the Heard Museum. The Heard Museum both has the Fred Harvey Fine Arts Collection, but what was interesting for the Harvey Company was not only to make sure that you got good food and you stayed in a beautiful hotel. It was that you appreciated American history. You appreciated the Southwest in all its cultures. The kind of multiculturalism that people just started talking about in the last two decades, the Harvey Company was preaching to tourists in the 1910s, in the 1920s. So I think their legacy besides the restaurants, besides the hotels, is also just a way of talking about American history in a way that is authentic, accurate, and appreciates the amazing art forms of the country.

LAUREN GILGER: Quite a legacy. All right, that is Stephen Fried, journalist, professor at Columbia and U Penn, author of Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West. Stephen, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate you taking the time.

STEPHEN FRIED: Thanks so much, Lauren.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. The Special Olympics USA Games kick off this weekend in Minneapolis. It’s the world’s largest sports competition for people with intellectual disabilities. And this year, it will feature 3,000 athletes, 1,500 coaches, and 10,000 volunteers from all across the country. Arizona is sending a delegation of 133 athletes competing in 11 different sports, from basketball and powerlifting to cheer and golf. And that last category is where our next guest this morning will try to make his mark.

COREY PASKVAN: My uncle Bill taught me how to golf a long time ago, and it got me into golf.

LAUREN GILGER: Corey Paskvan has autism and has been playing golf since he was 18. But he’s a jack-of-all-trades athlete, really. When he came into our studios to talk more about it, he was wearing an array of medals around his neck from past competitions. What other competitions have you done in the past? You’re wearing a lot of medals around your neck right now.

COREY PASKVAN: I’m wearing a, I’ve done swimming, track and field, bocce ball.

LAUREN GILGER: Leading up to the Special Olympics, he’s been practicing a lot. Have you gotten a lot better over the years?

COREY PASKVAN: Yeah. I got a lot better over the years.

LAUREN GILGER: How? How are you getting better? What are you working on?

COREY PASKVAN: Driving and chipping, putting, with my coach Chris, and he’s teaching me how to get better at all all that.

LAUREN GILGER: In Special Olympics golf, players with disabilities like Corey compete with what’s called a unified partner. The idea here is to underline the Special Olympics principle of meaningful involvement. Unified partners are of similar age and ability levels as the athletes competing, and make sure they truly contribute to their team’s performance. Paskvan’s unified partner is named Eric.

COREY PASKVAN: To see how good I get the ball close to the hole for Eric to make the putt, because that’s what me and coach Chris have been working on.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so you drive it and then your partner makes the putt?

COREY PASKVAN: Yeah, I have to get it close for him.

LAUREN GILGER: And there are some perks to making it to the USA Games this year. It sounds like you get to do some kind of extra fun things this time around. I understand a private jet is involved in this round of the Special Olympics for you?

COREY PASKVAN: Yeah, I’m going on the Cardinals’ private jet to get to Minnesota.

LAUREN GILGER: What’s that going to be like? Are you excited?

COREY PASKVAN: Yeah, I’ve never flown on a private jet before.

LAUREN GILGER: And he got to hit the green with some big names in Arizona sports, including Suns’ superstar Devin Booker.

COREY PASKVAN: I was golfing with Chris Paul and Michael Phelps.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow, I mean, what was that like?

COREY PASKVAN: It was a lot of fun to golf with the pros.

LAUREN GILGER: While Paskvan said he’ll be OK if he doesn’t win this weekend, he was clear about one thing.

COREY PASKVAN: I like winning and bringing home the gold medal.

LAUREN GILGER: But he also told me the Special Olympics pledge, which can remind us all what these games are really all about.

COREY PASKVAN: Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s Arizona Special Olympics athlete Corey Paskvan. He is heading to Minnesota this weekend to compete in golf, and we hope he brings home that gold medal.

MARK BRODIE: An interdisciplinary artist with ties to ASU will be performing this weekend at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut. Ty Defoe is part of All My Relations Collective out of New York City and is a professor of practice in ASU’s Medieval and Renaissance Studies program. He’s also a citizen of the Oneida Nation and Anishinaabe tribe. His show is called "Skeleton Canoe," and it involves himself as well as puppets. I spoke with Defoe earlier and asked how he describes "Skeleton Canoe."

TY DEFOE: Yeah, so “Skeleton Canoe,” it is an Indigenous, forward-leaning puppet show that is created out of birch bark materials and other sustainable materials. The story follows a young individual named Nabin that is a mask in the rights of passage in seasons of their life. They meet a canoe, or a jiimaan in the Anishinaabe language, that shares with them ancestral knowledge. And so together, going down a big giant river, they make unexpected friends and weather storms, and really think about what it is to underscore and highlight language and traditional ways of being.

And really for youngsters out there, to find your own voice, to find courage and love and to never give up. So this show will look like in its form is puppetry mixed with multimedia design, and it’s a really transformative experience. You feel like you’re entering a portal.

MARK BRODIE: Where did the idea for the story come from?

TY DEFOE: The story came from — I was in central Michigan doing some research at Central Michigan University, and I went to the cultural center there. It’s on the Anishinaabe homelands, and while I was doing research there, I was invited to a canoe building.

It was something where folks came back to the homelands to engage in cultural activities, and while I was there, I got to actually participate in building an actual canoe by hand. And that summer, I got to ... reinvestigate my connection to language, I got to also, right, get birch bark from the woods, I got to get in battles with mosquitoes, like tons of them, and get eaten alive. ... And really engage in community connection, right, in this really beautiful, euphoric way of coming home to community. And so that was a huge inspiration for me to write this story.

MARK BRODIE: Have you had experience before where you’ve had sort of that much first-person experience — like literal sounds like blood, sweat and tears — getting this show together?

TY DEFOE: It absolutely is. You know, “All My Relations Collective,” these are collaborators that are my ride-or-dies, they’re my soul people, and I really want to as an artist be making work with individuals that are enthusiastic about language and culture and about Indigenous individuals — and also centering queer and trans joy.

So for me, it is really, I would say, a healing process, being an Indigequeer person growing up in my community as the only person, sometimes I feel like I’m building and creating worlds that I would have wanted when I was a young person, even as an adult.

MARK BRODIE: What appeals to you about working with puppets?

TY DEFOE: I love puppets, because I feel like through the art of puppetry, not only their movement, but as an artist, as a performer, I’m anthropomorphizing something and animating ways for the brain to understand information that you might not be able to hear just upon voice or, you know, in a conversation. But it is emphasizing a awe-inspiring world by giving the breath of life to objects.

MARK BRODIE: And am I right that on stage, it’s just you, like there are no other humans on stage?

TY DEFOE: Believe it or not, it’s just me with puppets.

MARK BRODIE: Well, I ask because I wonder if you mention a mask, you have the puppets. ... Like is that helpful to maybe keep the story moving and and be able to maybe help the audience relate to each individual characters if they’re not just looking at you for all of them?

TY DEFOE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, listen, I get tired of my own voice sometimes talking. [LAUGHS] What’s really wonderful actually is to animate these beautiful characters that I feel like are our relatives in ways, right?

Like I get to imagine, for example, a powwow emcee announcer and place that in our puppet like the kingfisher that’s wearing a mini headroach. I also get to express some feelings that are complex and hard to understand often times, such as anger or rage through a mask, right? And allow the mask to take on that emotion where it might be a little bit challenging to do that through a body or an actual face. It might be too close. So it’s really interesting to find my way in this wheel of the complex human emotions that exists and place some of those in the puppets, in the songs and in the mask work that’s being done.

MARK BRODIE: Well, and I would think that’s especially important given the nature of the story that you’re telling here. As you say, it’s a very maybe not personal specifically to you, but sounds like a very personal, intimate story you’re telling.

TY DEFOE: Yeah, it is a pretty personal, intimate story. I think, you know, there is something at the heart of "Skeleton Canoe" that there is medicine there for audiences. That this just isn’t a story, but we are actually animating and creating vessels of memory and vessels of a way forward through care and love. And quite potentially, for Anishinaabe people, for Two-Spirit people, for, you know, all people watching that, that these materials are a larger remembrance about how we can live in kinship with each other. That these traditional teachings are for everybody, and in fact, two-legged, four-legged, winged, rooted and finned are all connected beings that we need to in ways carry each other on this earth.

MARK BRODIE: Is it safe to say that it’s your hope and maybe even your expectation that message would get across to both Native American and non-Native American audience members?

TY DEFOE: Oh, absolutely. I think this is ... Anishinaabe native Indigenous-inspired, but a piece like this is for everybody. I feel like ancient teachings of culture, there’s a lot to be learned, and I think love is for everybody. I think care is for everybody, respect is for everybody. And I think pieces like this when brought into the community really teach everybody about hope, love and understanding.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Ty Defoe, an interdisciplinary artist, one of the writers of the show called "Skeleton Canoe." It’ll be performing this weekend at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut, also a professor of practice at ASU. Ty, thanks so much for the conversation. Good luck with the shows.

TY DEFOE: Oh, thank you so much, and baamaapii, miigwech, everybody.

LAUREN GILGER: 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, and our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram @kjzztheshow.