The Show for June 22, 2026: Plug-in solar panels, biblical eating and more

Residents in more than half the country — but not Arizona — can buy plug-in solar panels to use on their balcony or patio. We’ll hear how it works and whether Arizona will eventually join in. Plus, the trend of biblical eating and holiness versus healthiness.

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: 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, a number of states allow residents to buy plug-in solar kits. Could Arizona join them?

LAUREN GILGER: And why influencers are eating biblically, and what one local dietitian thinks about it.

MARK BRODIE: But first, residents of Pinal County will not be getting rebate checks for a tax that was deemed illegal by the State Supreme Court—at least not yet. A proposal to send the money directly to residents died as the Legislature ended its session this month, but a provision in the new state budget holds open the possibility of it happening at some point down the road. With me now to talk about that, and some more vetoes by Governor Hobbs late last week, is Howie Fischer of Capital Media Services. Good morning, Howie.

HOWARD FISCHER: Good morning. They finally went home. Yay! Yay!

MARK BRODIE: You’re not excited, are you? So, let’s talk about this provision in the state budget. It goes back to a tax that Pinal County voters had enacted that the state Supreme Court eventually said was not done legally.

HOWARD FISCHER: Yes. What the — obviously, for example, Maricopa County has a transport tax, Pima County has transportation tax. What Pinal did is they set up a two-tiered system so that certain businesses over a certain amount would not pay the tax, and certain businesses under it would pay it. And that went to court, and the Supreme Court said, duh, you can’t do that. You can’t decide who’s exempt from the tax and who’s not.

That’s fine, except for the fact that they had already collected, at by that point, I think somewhere in excess of $80 million. Now, some of it was refunded to the businesses because we’re not a sales tax state, we’re transaction privilege tax state, and technically, it’s the businesses that own it.

But that left between $45 [million] and $50 million that, for whatever reason, businesses didn’t apply for, or that got out of business, or they decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. Question is, what do you do with that? The judge said, unless you come up with a plan, it just goes to the general fund. And a lot of lawmakers said, “Well, wait a second here. Why does the general fund get Pinal County money?”

So Rep. (Teresa) Martinez from Casa Grande said, “Tell you what, I’ve got some road projects here. Why don’t we just put in the budget for some specific road projects?” She couldn’t get any traction on that. What did get traction is a proposal by Rep. Justin Olson (R-Mesa) to say, “Tell you what, anybody who is a taxpayer during that period, who’s still a taxpayer now, would get a $300 check.”

It didn’t necessarily match up the people who paid the taxes with the people who are owed it, but it was at least some way of getting it back. That also stalled. So given that nothing got accomplished, and so they decided, “Yell you what, we’re just going to leave it in, essentially, the bank, and we will decide perhaps next year how to deal with the money because, again, you’ve got $45 [million] to $50 million sitting there. Somebody should get it, and, you know, why should it be the state general fund?”

MARK BRODIE: OK. So Howie, late last week, the governor vetoed 88 bills. Now, of course, we don’t have time to talk about all of them, but what to you are some of the highlights? What are some of the ones that might be the more noteworthy ones here?

HOWARD FISCHER: Well, one of them that has gotten a lot of attention has to do with things like religious and Sharia law. And there were two bills on that — one that specifically bans Sharia law and then specifically bans certain practices, for example, honor killings and everything else. And what the governor said is we don’t have Sharia law here, and all of the things that were listed — like honor killings like going ahead and marrying multiple wives and such — aren’t legal here.

Obviously, a lot of lawmakers say, but it’s coming, we have to worry about it. You know, we had one lawmaker from Benson who said, “I had this bad experience at a halal restaurant, which showed me how bad Sharia law is.” Now, what that had to do with Sharia law, I have no idea. But that was one of the reasons that the bill passed. The governor said no.

The governor also said, we’re not going to do any other bills that say you can’t take religious laws into account. Curiously enough, the sponsor of that, Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff), said, well, but you can take a religious marriage into account if it’s between one man and one woman. So everybody has their idea of exceptions.

Other big, high-profile issue — excuse my tongue this morning — is the issue of gender transition. Back in 2022, the Legislature said you cannot do gender-reassignment surgery on minors. That’s the law. Lawmakers, however, decided to pass two other bills that dealt with it — one making the doctors liable, and one making the doctors have to pay for gender re-transitioning if, in fact, that is what the person wants after they turn to adults.

Governor said, we don’t need it because the process is illegal. Now, she did veto a third measure that would have also prohibited giving hormones to minors — something which had to be done with the parental consent. She just simply said, well, we have a ban on gender transition surgery, so it doesn’t matter. So I don’t know that she actually read the bill, but clearly she was never going to sign anything on that.

A lot of other funny little things. Photo radar — perennial issue here. There is a measure going to the ballot, we talked about, that will allow individual communities to decide. This David Gowan (R-Sierra Vista) bill said, if you’re caught speeding, I’ll tell you what, the maximum fine will be $75. These tickets can run like $200, $250. And we won’t report it to your insurance company, and we won’t let it count the points so you can’t lose your license. The only exceptions are things like red-light running and school zones. The governor said, why would we do that? That doesn’t make roads any safer.

You have small modular reactors. This wouldn’t have banned small modular reactors. The bill ... would have taken away from the board of supervisors the ability to say where they should go.

MARK BRODIE: Right.

HOWARD FISCHER: She vetoed that. We have issues like whether 15-year-olds should be able to get learners’ permits. Governor said that’s too young. Um, whole bunch of other things. As you say, you know, we’ve got six minutes here, 88 bills. That’s about, uh, what, 12 seconds per bill?

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, talk fast.

HOWARD FISCHER: Let’s just say it was a veto-fest last week.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so what is still left? I mean, obviously, the Legislature passed a lot of bills in their last few days. The governor has to deal with them in the coming days. Do we have a sense of how many are left and what’s still left?

HOWARD FISCHER: We think there are about 40, and I’m trying to get a firm handle on that. I’m not even sure the governor’s office knows. I think they’re digging through the paperwork because there was a bunch of stuff sent to them at the last minute. And as you know, under the constitution, anything that was on her desk when they adjourned sine die, she gets 10 days to sign it. So she’s still got a little bit of time.

One of the more interesting ones is kind of a rerun. You probably remember the whole dust-up over Sunshine Residential, which got a larger contract from the state for housing foster children. The question was, did any of that have to do with the fact that they contributed money to her inaugural fund? They contributed money to the Democratic Party, had made other contributions. And so T.J. Shope had a bill to say, tell you what, anybody who has a contract or wants a contract has to disclose any money they gave in the past five years.

And the governor vetoed that a year ago, saying, well, wait, but it doesn’t deal with lobbyist travel. That’s true. So fine, we’re here this year. Nobody from the governor’s office pushed a lobbyist bill, other than through press releases. No Democrat introduced it.

So T.J. Shope came back with his original bill, which is sitting on the governor’s desk, to say, look, your bill, while it would have provided some disclosure, actually had a bunch of loopholes. For example, it might have provided the name of the company, but it wouldn’t necessarily say that you could find out what they gave to a legal defense fund or an inaugural fund, both of which the governor had.

So, I’m assuming there’ll be another veto, another bunch of chest-beating on both sides, and we will we will once again be in a position where it’s much harder to find out who’s giving money to the governor, who’s giving money to the Democratic Party — or the Republican Party, if in fact, the governor happens to be Republican — and what contracts they wind up with.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right. That is Howie Fischer with Capital Media Services. Howie, thank you as always.

HOWARD FISCHER: But I have so many more bills to talk about!

LAUREN GILGER: Well, the state budget is in, and now we are hearing the fallout. We—who got the funding they wanted, say they needed? Who got left out? For our next guest this morning, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. State troopers have long been underfunded in Arizona, and they’ve been sounding the alarm about it for years—from outdated communication systems to dilapidated rural facilities to a shortage of deputies, to a—general lack of morale. Last year on The Show, State Troopers Association President Jeff Hawkins told me on The Show that the situation was dire.

JEFF HAWKINS: Here’s the other one I think citizens probably don’t want to hear. That if you’re outside of Phoenix and Tucson, uh, we don’t work the freeways from midnight until 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. And to think that if you need our services, like you see a wrong-way driver or an impaired driver, or you see a road rage that’s happening on I-40, or you’re making your way to Vegas, there are no troopers to respond. So, you know, if I’m a cartel, all I have to know is I want to get my dope on the freeways from midnight to 5:00 in the morning. And if I make it through Tucson and Phoenix and get it to I-40, I can get it to the rest of the part of the country. I mean, I think that that part for me alone, as a citizen and someone that pays taxes — what do you mean I don’t have troopers working at night?

JEFF HAWKINS: I think my membership will be somewhat happy with it, but not completely.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. And we’re going to talk about that. Let’s talk about a few of the wins. One of those I’m imagining is $9 million more this year for one-time vehicle replacements for DPS officers. And this obviously, you know, makes a lot of sense when it comes to people doing your job. Highway Patrol crashes a lot of cars, right? You have to put those into evidence, replace them?

JEFF HAWKINS: Well, you know, I think this may be a shocking statistic, but we were notified and or responded to, just in the first six months of this year, 733 wrong-way driver reports. And we lost several of our patrol cars to collisions with those folks.

But yes, we have car issues, maintenance issues. A lot of our guys don’t work in metropolitan areas, so they work out in rural Arizona where there aren’t car dealerships. So we need to make sure they have, good, low-mileage, reliable vehicles.

So it was somewhat of a win. We just need to work on getting a few more dollars for cars because the misconception is that all that money is going to Highway Patrol and it’s not. It’s going to our criminal investigations, academy replacement vehicles, vehicles for folks that repair our radios. They just get a small portion of the money.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. I understand there is employee assistance money in here for folks dealing with mental health problems. What’s that look like?

JEFF HAWKINS: Well, that was a win. It’s one of the things that we advocated in what our initial budget ask for, and it’s to support our employee assistance program. And it does provide mental health care, provides staff to help our employees, not just troopers, but also our professional staff, because they deal with a lot also. So, a real big win, and we’re appreciative of the department taking this first step, and then the Legislature funding it, and with support from the governor also.

LAUREN GILGER: What about these 100 positions for border enforcement? These are 50 detectives and 50 for the major incident program to do with border-related investigations, incidents, things like that. Does that assist the shortage of officers you’ve been seeing?

JEFF HAWKINS: Well, we didn’t get any new positions. They just reworded current positions. So the 50 positions statutorily needed to be provided as a ramp-up for our major incident division, which investigates the officer-involved shootings and any major incident that agencies would like to be investigated. The other 50, they just renamed things.

I would say boots on the ground, we didn’t get an additional body this year. It’s just — we call it MID. The MID got what was supposed to be coming their direction and the agency as a whole didn’t receive an additional body.

LAUREN GILGER: So what does that do to the kind of really big shortage of officers that we spoke about last year when you were on The Show? I mean, how many open positions do you still have today?

JEFF HAWKINS: We have over 400 vacant positions, which is catastrophic. I mean, the numbers are just astounding. And with our current budget, I’m hoping, before they made some adjustments, we were only going to be able to hire for attrition. I believe now we’ll be able to hire additional bodies this year. That’s how bad our budget was. And we dealt with the governor, and she was, her staff was trying to accommodate that, and they did give us a few more dollars so that we could hire for not just attrition, folks that retired or quit.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. What about when it comes to providing backup, overtime pay, things like that? Is there some wiggle room in this budget now to try to assist in that, especially as you’re facing a shortage of officers still?

JEFF HAWKINS: You know, I would say it’s not as big as we’d like to see, but there was some money put towards it. We have a program called Arrive Alive Arizona. It’s very important to us. We’ve invested money into it with what we’re currently seeing over a 7% reduction in fatal collisions and over 20% increase in arrests.

We’re going to try to see if we can get more money mid-year to try to keep that program going. It’s become very effective, and it’s also a force multiplier for us, meaning we’re working and bringing guys to areas where there’s already really low staff, and we’re bringing extra folks in on overtime. We do need more money, though. We got the bare bones, but we’re hoping we can make it stretch. What we have to assess, of course, hopefully nothing big happens.

LAUREN GILGER: Any raises this year for officers?

JEFF HAWKINS: No.

LAUREN GILGER: I want to ask you about a big issue here, which is funding for helicopter repairs. I know two members of the DPS Aviation Bureau were killed earlier this year in a helicopter crash in a very old helicopter, right?

JEFF HAWKINS: That’s correct. It’s 23 years old. A little disappointed. That was one of our asks and it didn’t get funded, was to replace the remaining 23-year-old helicopter, so that we didn’t potentially have some of the same issues with mechanical, potential mechanical issues. So, disappointed with that portion of it. That helicopter should have been replaced this year.

LAUREN GILGER: Are officers worried about going up in it? Are they still flying that other 22-, 23-year-old helicopter?

JEFF HAWKINS: I would say I have not spoken to my members specifically about it, but it’s definitely an issue, and it needs to be addressed. And it needs to be replaced. We need to be giving our employees the utmost confidence and going up in older helicopters. You know, I don’t want them to have that anxiety.

So, I think that’ll be one of our top asks next year is to try to get the remaining, to one to replace the plane that crashed, but then to also replace the additional 23-year-old helicopter. Actually, it’ll be 24 years old, by the time we have the ability to address it.

LAUREN GILGER: Final question for you, Jeff. I know that when we spoke in the past, you highlighted this kind of alarming statistic that 13 of our 15 counties in the state basically have no DPS trooper coverage between like midnight and 5 a.m. because you just don’t have enough people to be out on all of those highways all over the state all the time. Does this budget and these kind of increases that you’re talking about, these wins that we outlined, make a dent in that?

JEFF HAWKINS: I would say no specific money has been given that I’m aware of to address that issue. Now, I have to give the colonel of Highway Patrol some credit, and our leadership here at DPS. They’re trying to use what fiscal dollars they have to try to make sure we’ve try to get some 24-hour coverage out there in high-crash areas and in our dope corridors.

But I think the Legislature and the governor’s office needs to make a statement on making sure we have 24-hour coverage, and that we’re not robbing Peter to pay Paul to get it done. That we set a goal to get this done in the next three to six years, that we have 24-hour coverage.

LAUREN GILGER: But we are not there yet, you’re saying.

JEFF HAWKINS: No. There are some areas where there are people working at night, but not the entire state. And not what I would consider to be fully covered. I-40 is not covered 24 hours a day. I mean, that’s an — that’s a huge interstate going through our entire state. So, it’s a priority, and really, it’s just a priority to try to keep our citizens safe, and to be able to answer the calls when they may need us most.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. Jeff Hawkins, president of the Arizona State Troopers Association, joining us to talk about what happened in this year’s budget. Jeff, thank you for coming on. Appreciate you following up here.

JEFF HAWKINS: Thank you, Lauren. Have a good morning.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, many states in the country allow people to have small-scale solar panels on their roofs or balconies, but not Arizona.

RAY WARD: I mean, this is such a simple idea. It’s not a weird, bizarre idea. It makes sense that people everywhere would want to be able to—to have this available to them if they wanted.

LAUREN GILGER: A Utah lawmaker explains what makes plug-in solar such a complicated issue.

MARK BRODIE: But first, a Northern Arizona nonprofit is trying to buy an historic property and turn it into affordable housing. The El Pueblo Moterin dates back to 1936. The Route 66 site was the main recruitment hub for Navajo code talkers during World War II. But it’s empty now and for sale. So, Habitat for Humanity of Northern Arizona is looking to raise the money to buy it and turn it into 19 total affordable units, including some new ones behind the original three existing buildings. The project would also include turning one of those buildings into a museum. Eric Wolverton is the CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Northern Arizona. He joins me to talk more about this.

And Eric, why does this particular site seem like a good spot for affordable housing?

ERIC WOLVERTON: Really, to be honest, it’s because the parcel’s quite large for Flagstaff. it’s just under 2 acres of land, and now because of the housing emergency declared, by the housing — or I’m sorry, by the city of Flagstaff mayor and council, we know that we’ll be able to utilize this land in terms of density to be able to put many units on here and that would be permanent affordable housing in perpetuity, ensuring that not only will the homes on the property be affordable forever, but also that we can secure that museum forever as well, too.

MARK BRODIE: What are some of the challenges of turning an old motel into homes?

ERIC WOLVERTON: Oh, well, there could be a lot of challenges. You know, the good thing with adaptive reuse is that there are historical codes that we can work with, so that way we don’t always have to function through current housing code and that does simplify some of the processes.

But I’m not going to lie. You know, this is an investment not only in workforce affordable housing, but again, for the history of this property and the heritage that it really serves for Flagstaff.

MARK BRODIE: Well, I wonder about some of those issues because, obviously, like until you get in there, I would imagine you have no idea, like, what the electrical looks like, or the pipes look like, or really what anything looks like.

And it seems like when you talk to developers, they say that building affordable housing as it is — like, it’s kind of hard to make that pencil out when you’re sort of starting from scratch, much less when you have some unknown number of issues from a, you know, 80-, 90-year-old building.

ERIC WOLVERTON: Yeah, and you’re absolutely correct on that. You know, what’s nice is that we just have to have an innovative mindset to , and the willingness to think outside the box to be able to upgrade these units to really bring in those basic utilities that you mentioned.

So, you know, the way that we look at it is with historic preservation, it’s really about the, keeping the outside of the building intact the way that it was, but also the street-facing part of those buildings. And so behind the existing units right now, we do have the opportunity to add small additions to those units, so that way we can put in those amenities like the kitchen and the bathroom because you’re absolutely right. The shells right now are really just that. It is just the exterior walls with the skeleton framing inside, and that’s it.

MARK BRODIE: So, how does this work? My understanding is it’s a pretty interesting program that you have for folks getting into these homes, and you’ve done this sort of thing elsewhere in and around Flagstaff, right?

ERIC WOLVERTON: Yeah, that’s correct. So our Starter Home Program, which is a very innovative housing program here — created right here in Flagstaff, where we basically took the 50 years of Habitat for Humanity’s housing program and augmented it so that way we can turn homeownership into an investment opportunity through equity savings for families to actually be able to cash out equity by selling their home back to Habitat where we will refurbish and resell that unit to another low-income family, but walk out with, quite frankly, a large sum of self-wealth.

MARK BRODIE: So people who go into these homes, they live there for however long they’re going to live there and when they are ready to move on, they sell the home back to you. You’re able to then let another family that needs that home into it, and the soon-to-be former homeowners end up with the equity from their — the house that you had gotten them into?

ERIC WOLVERTON: Yeah, that’s it exactly. And we keep the math very simple because we know that entry into homeownership is a complicated and anxiety-ridden process, especially for those families that feel that they don’t have the opportunity to ever reach homeownership.

And so the basic math that we put together for our Starter Home Program is with a $1,000 down payment, you’re a homeowner in Flagstaff, where median home values are over $700,000 currently.

The best part after that is that total mortgage payments don’t exceed $1,100 with all impounds included in that because the only gift that Habitat provides our homeowners is a 0% interest loan.

So, what’s great is, with that mortgage payment, $833 of those dollars go directly into equity savings that turns into a $10,000 savings annually for our homeowners. And they have to live there for a minimum of three years because now we’re talking about shelter, investment and workforce, but with a maximum time frame of this homeownership of 10 years.

As mentioned, it is deed-restricted. Only Habitat can buy back these homes when the homeowner wants to sell. And if they sell at three years, Habitat is going to cut them a check for $30,000, five years $50,000, 10 years $100,000, penny-for-penny of what they paid in to their principal. And for us, it’s a great mechanism so that way we can move our impoverished families from poverty and closer to the middle class with that cash-out.

MARK BRODIE: I wonder though, you know, assuming somebody stays there for a decade and gets that $100,000, you mentioned the, you know, the median home price in Flagstaff is seven times that. Will somebody who’s leaving even after a decade be able to afford something else?

ERIC WOLVERTON: So, that’s always been the common question. And the thing that I look at is, that’s not a barrier. It’s an opportunity because in all other affordable housing mechanisms, families unfortunately are saving nothing.

And so, this is a huge opportunity not only to be able to save that $100,000 over those 10 years, but also keep in mind what they would have been spending if they were paying rent. And right now, with Flagstaff, the annual — or I’m sorry, the average rental for just one bedroom is $1,800 a month.

MARK BRODIE: And I know that the — you mentioned that the property is for sale right now. How optimistic are you that you’ll be able to come up with the money to buy it? It’s what, $2.75 million?

ERIC WOLVERTON: Yeah, so, obviously, we are very optimistic. We know that not only is this land valuable not just to Flagstaff, but obviously for other historian buffs out there.

But again, the big thing for us, too, is, how can we do kind of a two-prong approach? Rescue this property and give it the value that it deserves for the general public to enjoy and then learn from? And at the same time, how can we bring in more workforce housing so that way we can ensure that we can keep Flagstaff and its community viable and thriving?

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Eric Wolverton, CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Northern Arizona. Eric, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

ERIC WOLVERTON: Thank you.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. There’s a new diet trend on social media that has some folks scratching their heads: biblical eating.

INFLUENCER: Okay, you guys, so this is what it looks like practically to eat biblically. This took me four minutes. It’s just chopped tomatoes, cucumber, pickled red onion, feta, and then olive oil, apple cider vinegar, sea salt, and pepper. So good. Literally so much better than just a protein bar when you’re hungry and you need something, and it takes literally three to four minutes. So, cheers. Thank you, Lord, for this food.

LAUREN GILGER: The actual rules around this seem up for interpretation—anything from eating only what’s directly mentioned in the Bible, to eating whole foods, to cutting out ultra-processed foods. It’s a trend that’s been popular in the past, but there seems to be a resurgence of it today as the "Make America Healthy Again" movement pushes for more regulation around ultra-processed foods and awareness about what we’re putting in our bodies. But while our next guest often takes a Christian point of view in her work as a dietitian, she’s not entirely sold on the biblical eating trend. Kristen Bunger is a Valley-based dietitian with Body & Soul Nutrition Counseling, and I spoke with her more about it.

KRISTEN BUNGER: I feel like I get frustrated because there is a lot of judgment that can be brought into the conversation — like right off the bat, basically. Like, if you’re not eating this way, then you’re not eating right.

And, you know, there’s nothing new under the sun, and there have been lots of different diets and diet trends that have pointed back to biblical truth. And the fact of the matter is, is we can eat biblically without having to be so incredibly precise in eating like just the list of foods that are listed in the Bible.

Because I don’t know about you, but I have children and they’re not going to eat fresh fish every single day, or like a lot of people can’t afford to buy the things that are listed in the Bible. And so, are we — am I going to look at someone as a dietitian and go, "You’re not eating righteously, you’re not eating well, you’re not eating what you should be eating because you can’t afford these things, or because your, your children won’t eat them, and so you’re not cooking them for dinner as much as maybe you should?"

So, there’s a lot of judgment that can be cast and a lot of legalism that can be brought into the conversation of biblical eating, and that is the opposite of anything that you should be labeling biblical.

LAUREN GILGER: And we wanted to talk to you about this in particular because you work with clients on, you know, creating healthy diets for them, but if appropriate for that client, right, like you do incorporate Christian principles into this, you know, dietitian realm, which is not an obvious connection, I don’t think, for a lot of folks. Like, I think a lot of people think, you know, religion lives in this part of my world, but not like the what I eat every day part of my world.

How do you think about incorporating Christianity and your faith or someone’s faith into the diet they have?

KRISTEN BUNGER: Well, as a Christian, I can obviously relate to Christians the most, and so when someone comes to me and says, "I’m a Christian, I want you — I want to speak that language with you. I’m all about that," and we have a great time doing that.

But even outside of those sessions, we are physical beings, but we’re also spiritual beings. And we live in a physical world, but there’s also a lot of spiritual things that go on. And so even when someone doesn’t have a Christian faith, or a faith at all, there’s still, there’s still a spiritual nature about taking care of our bodies and taking care of ourselves in a way that is honoring to the way that we were created.

And again, even if they don’t believe that we were created by a creator, which is what I believe, I don’t have to speak that language in order to encourage them, encourage anyone to spiritually take care of themselves. And that is really by honoring the cues, the hunger and fullness cues, the cues to be, the cues that we get when we’re tired. We have all of these signals that are being sent to us by our bodies.

And when we don’t resist that, and when we don’t just have kind of this superpower of acceptance — like, "This is what I need, this is what I like to eat, this is what I can afford, this is what season I am in, in my life" — when we have those kind of spiritual awakenings where we kind of align ourselves with what we feel like we, we can do, what’s needed, what’s necessary to take care of ourselves, it’s an awakening, whether you claim Christ or not. It’s a spiritual thing.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So you work with patients of all faiths, sounds like.

KRISTEN BUNGER: I do, I do.

LAUREN GILGER: But when you can, you think this is a useful way for them to, I guess, understand the why behind what you’re trying to do.

KRISTEN BUNGER: Exactly. When I can speak to a, another human being that really believes that there’s a creator and he created us, there’s something deeper and, and incredibly meaningful that comes along with all of the things that, that I just talked about as far as aligning ourselves with what our bodies are telling us and what our bodies need.

LAUREN GILGER: I want to ask you about your background, as well, because I know you used to work at an inpatient eating disorder treatment facility, right, like here in Arizona, working with everybody — kids, adolescents, adults, it sounds like — to really try to fix disordered eating.

I wonder, like, when you look at it from that point of view, does this idea of, you know, the trend, the social media trend of biblical eating look a little different?

KRISTEN BUNGER: Yes, so I will — I have to be honest. When your producer reached out to me for this interview, I rolled my eyes when I read the email because I was like, "biblical eating." So, this is where the — my two worlds overlap. So, I’m a Christian, and I’m a dietitian who specializes in eating disorders. I have met with many Christians who will use the Bible to support their disordered eating.

And that is where the eye-roll comes from because that is where the legalism comes in. I get really frustrated when I have clients who will reach out to me and who want me, as a Christian, to say, "Yes, this is the only way to eat. This is the only way to, to do it," because that is when you’re kind of getting into the realm of what we label as orthorexia, or basically like the way you eat becoming your faith and becoming the way that you — that attain righteousness.

And that is like a whole new gospel, and anything outside of the gospel of Christ is offensive. It’s not true. And there’s just a whole lot of grace in the scriptures. There’s a — in the story of the Old Testament and the New Testament coming together, there is this epic story of grace, not only for us to be saved as Christians, if that’s what we believe, but also in every area of our life, food included.

And so, it’s just this — it’s kind of this dichotomous relationship, Lauren, that I have with food as a Christian dietitian because I very much believe that when I eat or when I promote eating that is mostly well-balanced, it’s mostly whole foods. That that is what, what biblical eating is.

But I also do not look at the Bible and go, "You know, it only mentions these 35 foods or 45 foods, whatever it is. So, I can only eat these. Right? I — And, and if I eat anything outside of that, I must be sinning. That’s where it gets really wonky.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Well, what do you make of the monetization of all of this? Like, in the midst of this world of GLP-1s and, you know, social media trends and the effect of, you know, all of those kind of Make America Healthy Again efforts on social media, and so many people profiting from them, what do you think about that?

KRISTEN BUNGER: You know, I’ve got mixed emotions about all of this, and that included. But I honestly don’t have a big issue with people trying to monetize their framework. I just think we have to have discernment to go, "That’s good for them, but that — I don’t want to do that," or "That’s not going to work for me," or, "You know, can I take a few things from that and adopt that?"

Like, if someone is preaching like the biblical eating thing and they’re always eating breakfast — like, I am a breakfast evangelist. Every one of my clients will tell you that. I love breakfast. You have to eat breakfast. And so, if I look at any of the influencers’ frameworks, I can, as a dietitian, go, "You know, there are definitely some good things about this."

But I, I hope that not everyone in the world looks at, at this person and says, "Like, I have to do that in order to be healthy," because it’s just not true.

LAUREN GILGER: That was my conversation with dietitian Kristen Bunger with Body and Soul Nutrition Counseling here in the Valley, about the rising trend of biblical eating.

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

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie.

More than half the states in the country allow what’s being called plug-in solar. Basically, they’re small-scale solar panels you can put on your balcony or patio and plug them in to generate a small amount of energy. The kits cost a few hundred dollars and, by all accounts, are pretty easy to set up and use.

Arizona is not one of those states that allows this. A bill to change that didn’t make it out of committee this year. The trend started in Utah last year with a bill sponsored by my next guest that won bipartisan support.

Ray Ward is a state representative in the Utah Legislature. He’s served there for more than a decade, and when I spoke with him earlier, I asked what got him interested in this idea.

RAY WARD: Yeah, it’s funny when you’re in the Legislature, I guess every bill comes from somewhere, right? This bill just came from reading a newspaper article in the New York Times that said you could get these widely in Germany. And I was like, why can I not get that here?

And it took five or six months to figure out why you couldn’t get it here. I assumed at first that it was some sort of federal law, but ultimately came to understand that it wasn’t a federal law issue, but it was a combination of our different bureaucracies — not, not all of them government bureaucracies — that just made it so that we couldn’t have them here yet. And then wanted to try and see, that just that’s just dumb that if it works there and it’s been safe there, then there’s got to be a way that we can have it here.

And then where you try and figure out where are the obstacles that stop us from having it here. And one of the obstacles turned out to be in Utah state law, so I ran a bill to take away that obstacle.

MARK BRODIE: It seems like there was also an obstacle in terms of getting the utilities on board. Like, how big of a challenge was that?

RAY WARD: Well, in retrospect, you come to understand that you got lucky about something. ... I knew the utilities would care about it. Of course they would care about it. And so their lobbyists put me in touch with a couple of their engineers, and talked it through with them, and they had some very discrete things that they or focused things that they wanted to have in the bill. And they said, “Look, if you put this and this and this in the bill, then we don’t care about it. But we do feel those need to be in the bill or else we would oppose it.”

And those are all ones that made sense. These are smaller panels. There are different safety issues if you fill your whole roof up with without having the electrical wiring checked. So the bill says it has to be 1.2 kilowatt hours or less. The bill says that you are not asking the utility for any remuneration, and you agree that the utility has no responsibility, which they should, because you just are buying this thing and plugging it in in your own house.

And it says that it needs to have safety standard of some sort that it meets. I my bill, it said that it (would) need to be approved through a UL standard and not be opposed to anything in the National Electrical Code. And then when the bill had those clarifications in it, they didn’t oppose it.

They didn’t even come testify about it. They just weren’t opposed to it. In many of the other states subsequently that have run the bill, the utilities have come in and tried to shoot the bill down.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, are you surprised at how many other states have tried or successfully implemented something similar to what you did in Utah?

RAY WARD: Not anymore. In the three or four months, a lot’s happened. I mean, this is clear back in 2025 that it happened, right? But — but really, no. I mean, this is such a simple idea. It’s not a weird, bizarre idea. It makes sense that people everywhere would want to be able to, to have this available to them if they wanted.

It is not right that our government and other bureaucracies that are not government but still govern what we have available have refused to take action in a way that makes them not available here when they are safely available other places.

And so, yeah, legislators — who also, other places have interest in making there be broader availability of renewable energy, especially without all the increase costs that come from having for a larger installation to hire a contractor, to have permission from your city, to maybe have to go through a union, to have a contract with your utility. Every one of those things adds additional costs to the costs of just the panel.

So to have a pathway, even though the panels are smaller, that does not have all those costs, that’s an important step.

MARK BRODIE: One of the concerns about a bill to do this in Arizona — the bill went to a committee, they discussed it but didn’t ultimately vote on it — some folks brought up the idea of like, basically, “I don’t want to have to look at these. Like, I don’t want my neighbor across the courtyard in the apartment complex to have one of these things that’s staring at me.” I wonder if the aesthetic perspective was something that came up during discussion or debate in your legislature.

RAY WARD: Well, I’m sorry to hear that argument carried the day in Arizona. That is the worst of any argument I have ever heard.

MARK BRODIE: I don’t know that necessarily carried the day, but it was one that — I know some utilities had some concerns as well, but this was also an issue that some folks had brought up.

RAY WARD: That’s absurd. I mean to say, “Well, you know what? I just really can’t tolerate if my neighbor painted their house a certain color, and I need to make sure that they do not have that ability.” This is like the equivalent of a different color of their house.

I mean, would you come in and say, “You know that model of air conditioner that you have? I think it looks just terrible. I don’t think you should be allowed to buy that model of air conditioner because I don’t like how it looks from across the street”?

MARK BRODIE: Do you have a sense of how prevalent these units have become since this law passed in Utah?

RAY WARD: This is still at the very beginning. So the barrier that the law removed here in Utah was only one of a couple of significant barriers. In Utah law, prior to the bill, said that if you have any solar panel that you plug into the grid, you must have a contract with your utility or else you can’t do that. And that was in state law, so that’s what the bill took away.

But that’s not the biggest barrier to widespread ability to purchase. The biggest barrier is that our main safety standards body here in the United States — not our only one, but by far our main one — is Underwriters Laboratories (UL), and they have been very slow about taking action to get a safety standard. I hope that the passage of the bill in Utah, and I hope that the passage of the bill in other places convinces them that they do need to take action because they haven’t made a final safety standard yet.

So, there are people who have purchased them here in Utah. I have a small one on my balcony, but you can’t go buy one at Walmart or Ikea, and you won’t be able to buy one at at a large big-box store until there’s a clear-cut safety standard that UL puts in place and that companies can come in and test to, then you’ll see them pop up all over the place.

MARK BRODIE: How has it worked for you?

RAY WARD: Fine. I plugged it in, and then I haven’t really paid any attention to it since then. If I go and look how much energy it’s producing, it’s producing, oh, one-tenth of my energy. And some people really really do like checking how much it’s making and, did they make more this day or that day or how much of their own power are they making?

For me, I’m busy doing other things. There are two panels. They hang on my balcony in my backyard. I plugged them in, and I have looked at it exactly once since then.

MARK BRODIE: Have you noticed a reduction in your utility bill at all?

RAY WARD: No, because power in Utah is cheap. In my mind, everybody should be able to buy these. This should — we need a safety standard so they’re safe, but then whoever wants one should be able to go get one.

If you think about it from the amount of money that a person could save on their bill, that will be much more visible to people who live in states where energy costs are very high because then they’re not having to pay that high amount of money. In Utah, our energy rates are very, very cheap compared to most any other place in the nation. There’s other places that are similar to Utah, but we’re at the very cheapest.

My interest is broadly, it was not just personal, “Oh my gosh, if only I could get $7 off my utility bill every month.” But these really should be widely available, both places badly need it where energy is more expensive. All of us should be afraid of our energy costs going up with the things that are changing about our grid, and you just won’t find a cheaper way.

I mean, solar has things that it’s not good at, but making energy cheaply and making energy where it’s close by where you need it, so you don’t have to pay for transmission lines that go across three mountain ranges and 40 different property owners and that takes 20 years to get the permissions — can’t beat it on those marks.

I mean, yeah. I guess one way to think of it is, these panels probably make one-tenth as much power as a roof full of panels does over across your whole house. But they do it at one-twentieth of the cost.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Utah state Rep. Ray Ward. Rep. Ward, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

RAY WARD: You’re so welcome.

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.