The Show for July 6, 2026: San Andreas Fault stress, Space force in Arizona and more

A potential major earthquake along the San Andreas Fault is not just a Hollywood plotline. An Arizona researcher says the so-called “earthquake gate” holding it back is under major stress. Plus, what the U.S. Space Force will be doing at Fort Huachuca.

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 into 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, what the U.S. Space Force will be doing at southern Arizona’s Fort Huachuca.

LAUREN GILGER: And a judge says election officials can no longer use a controversial tool that was supposed to flag non-citizen voters.

MARK BRODIE: But first, supporters of a ballot measure to put new rules on Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or ESAs — basically school vouchers — turned in more than 420,000 signatures late last week. And shortly thereafter, the American Federation for Children, which opposes the referendum, announced it would challenge those signatures, trying to stop the measure from going before voters in November. On Wednesday, a legislative panel will meet to draft language to describe all the measures that’ll be on this fall’s ballot. But if the past few election cycles are any indication, that process will not be without controversy. With me now to explain is Howie Fischer of Capital Media Services. Good morning, Howie.

HOWARD FISCHER: Good morning. Are you suggesting that the requirement to prove and come up with neutral language would be anything but simple?

MARK BRODIE: Well, I guess that kind of goes to the question of what exactly constitutes neutral, right?

HOWARD FISCHER: Well, what I think constitutes neutral is the truth. I don’t care what you think.

MARK BRODIE: So what is this panel? Who comprises it, and what are they actually tasked with doing?

HOWARD FISCHER: This is a legislative committee, it’s called the Legislative Council. Essentially, these are some key lawmakers from the House and Senate, both parties, obviously controlled by Republicans. And they have various duties having to do with oversight and such, but their main duty here is to say, “We have to come up with a neutral explanation of each of the measures on the ballot.”

Now, I’d love to tell you this has been a smooth procedure in the past. There are probably some things that can be done fairly on a bipartisan fashion. For example, the issue of putting on the ballot the question of whether local communities should have to vote on photo radar. I think that’s fairly straight up and down.

Now, when we get to things like vouchers and anti-voucher things, just as was discussed on the newscast, that’s where we go down the rabbit hole.

MARK BRODIE: And Howie, am I right that these are the descriptions that actually show up on the ballot that voters get?

HOWARD FISCHER: Well, no. These actually show up on the brochure that comes to everyone’s house. There are some really short descriptions that go on the ballot, and they could get fought over.

For example, the question, as again discussed in the newscast, you have a measure that is being billed as protecting against future ballot initiatives dealing with vouchers. Now, this is billed as a “Military Family Scholarship Account,” which is true. It would protect the scholarships of military families from being wiped out.

But then they have, as we’ve talked about before, this poison pill in there to say that if people approve this protection for the group of military families, it puts into the Constitution something that wipes out any other initiative passed statutorily that does anything at all to vouchers, that trims it at all in terms of putting in the income caps, in terms of putting in the requirements for people to be checked out and have some sort of background checks and such.

And that’s where you get into trouble because one of the important points — what makes it neutral? I might call that provision a poison pill because it seems to be hidden in the bill. But other people say, “Well, it’s just a matter of protecting vouchers.”

MARK BRODIE: So is this the kind of thing that could lead to litigation? Like, if, for example, critics of that referendum or that initiative don’t like the way that that provision is described, can they sue to get it changed?

HOWARD FISCHER: Oh, you bet, and they do. I mean, that’s the fact. Anyone can hire a lawyer.

So not only do we have lawsuits out there over several of the referrals of the Legislature on whether in fact they are legal, whether they meet the single-subject rule, but we will have the same, sending same cases come back on the issue of the description with the Legislative Council.

Again, you end up with a judge trying to decide, “Is this sufficiently neutral?” And that becomes the issue. There is no such thing as perfect neutrality.

It’s not like, light is red, light is green, we can describe what they say. What happens when the light is yellow? I mean, I believe the old line from an old movie that yellow means go very, very fast.

MARK BRODIE: Not recommended to follow Howie on the roads. Quickly, Howie, before I let you go, it’s interesting we saw late last week that when you talk about the referendum, the initiative rather, that the Legislature put up dealing with military families, one of its biggest supporters is a former Arizona governor.

HOWARD FISCHER: Exactly, and we haven’t heard much from Doug Ducey. I mean, he has been involved in helping organize and putting some of his former supporters into think tanks and such, many of which the policies that they put out, I think tend to be looking at something to attack the current Democratic governor.

Now, they will deny it. They will say numbers are numbers. Well, yeah, but it’s how you present them and what you compare them to.

All of a sudden, we get this press release from Doug Ducey — hasn’t returned any calls — saying, “I will be chairing this committee to go ahead and fight for this ‘Military Family Scholarship Account,’ and we need to protect our military families.”

I think what the real purpose is, he was the person who was the governor when we went to universal vouchers in 2022, and he believes in them, and he wants to do what he can to protect them and saying that he believes that this is what voters want.

Is this what voters want in terms of universal scholarships? Do they want issues in terms of how the money has to be spent? Should there be an income cap? This is going to be a very bitter and very expensive fight.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah and Howie, I guess it’s, given what you just said, it’s maybe not such a surprise that former Gov. Ducey is getting involved in this, given that this was one of his big achievements as governor.

HOWARD FISCHER: Oh, I definitely think so. I think he’s protecting his legacy. Now, is there something down the road for Doug Ducey? I mean, he’s not an old man. Heck, we got a president who’s 80, so I mean, Dougie is younger than I am.

I know I shouldn’t call him Dougie. I’m sorry. I’m showing my age here because I’m 76. You’re all just children to me.

But leaving that aside, I think that he may be feeling that certain Potomac fever that kicks in every so often, like, “They need me, they want me.” Is he vice presidential material to somebody? Maybe very possibly.

MARK BRODIE: All right, we’ll have to see. That is Howie Fischer with Capitol Media Services. Howie, thank you as always.

HOWARD FISCHER: Have a great day.

LAUREN GILGER: The SAVE Tool has been touted by the Trump administration as a way to root out non-citizens illegally registered to vote. But now a judge has blocked it from being used, calling it a violation of voter data and privacy laws. Our next guest this morning found the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE Tool, is prone to mistakes and falsely flagged hundreds of voters as potential non-citizens. And it’s been used here in Arizona. Jen Fifield broke the story for ProPublica, and she joins us now to tell us more. Good morning, Jen.

JEN FIFIELD: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: So tell us how this SAVE Tool works. What data did it use?

JEN FIFIELD: So, to be clear, the SAVE Tool has been in use in Arizona by state election officials for years now. They’ve checked the citizenship status one at a time for voters that have come through their system. This is a revamp of the system the Trump administration took on, and they connected it to everyone’s Social Security data. And that’s the problem here. That’s the problem that the court had. They said, “You took all of our Social Security data and put us in this tool so that we could do these mass checks of entire voter rolls, all at once.” And by doing that, you trampled on our privacy rights and also, you’re threatening our right to vote because the tool is not connecting to the most up-to-date citizenship information anymore.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So you found that this tool is not always accurate at all, particularly when it comes to assessing the status of people who are born outside the U.S.

JEN FIFIELD: Sometimes it can’t — it couldn’t find passport information at first. Sometimes when someone doesn’t have a naturalization certificate, say that their parents were born here — or, sorry, their parents became citizens and they automatically became citizens and that’s not recorded — it’s just struggling with these unique situations. But that’s hundreds of people that we found.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. You looked in particular, I think, at Texas in your reporting and found hundreds of these people who were falsely flagged. What happened? Like, did they continue to be able to vote?

JEN FIFIELD: So Texas took a really stringent approach and started to just immediately remove people that didn’t respond after 30 days saying they were a citizen. And that’s where the court stepped in and said, “This is potentially disenfranchising these people.”

LAUREN GILGER: This also has been used in Arizona, as you said, and it’s been used more recently by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who has, you know, been locked in this battle with the County Board of Supervisors that’s, you know, about who gets to control what parts of elections and sort of is at its root all about these concerns about election integrity, right?

JEN FIFIELD: Right. So he took, you know, he took the voters that hadn’t provided proof of citizenship caught up in our motor vehicle error, where they had never provided proof of citizenship, and put them in the tool all at once using this mass tool and found about 200 voters and referred those to our local county prosecutor’s office. We don’t know what happened to those. Hopefully, they’re doing diligent investigations to see whether these are actually non-citizens.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay. So tell us more about this ruling, Jen. What exactly did the judge say here? What was the legal kind of reasoning behind blocking this revamped tool?

JEN FIFIELD: Well, it had a lot to do with the privacy concerns, actually. Some people think it was more due to the errors. That definitely played a part, but they had to find that they were violating federal laws. And so she said — the judge said, you know, “You’re violating the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, the Administrative Procedure Act,” because you didn’t properly notify formally the public that you were putting this data in there, and you didn’t give them a chance to provide public comment on it. And the reason why they won the lawsuit is they had — they found that they had standing, these voting rights groups that came had standing, because of the inaccuracies, because their voters were being threatened.

LAUREN GILGER: Um, that makes sense. So how many states have used this tool more recently in this revamped version? Like, do we know how extensive these, you know, mistakes that you were able to find pretty easily could be?

JEN FIFIELD: Yeah, we know about half the states signed on to use it, not clear if all of them have, but USCIS, which is the division of Department of Homeland Security that runs this tool, announced about 24,000 potential non-citizens — notice the word potential there — that have been flagged across the country. You know, even if all of those turn out to be non-citizens, we have a president who has made this his goal because he says that millions of non-citizens are registered. And that claim is not panning out, even with the inaccuracies.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Do we know if the Trump administration will appeal this decision? What’s the response been like from them?

JEN FIFIELD: So the Trump administration did not immediately respond to me when I asked them, but they did post on social media saying that this is preventing them from finding, quote, "alien voters" on the voter rolls. And I have read since then in other media reports that they will appeal.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay. This is also, Jen, kind of tied up in President Trump’s sort of pet project, right, the SAVE Act, which would pretty much overhaul elections in many ways in America, including requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. It would also require states to use this SAVE Tool, should that pass?

JEN FIFIELD: It would. Now, I, you know, obviously it has not passed. It has been, you know, half a year of them trying to get this rammed through the Senate and Congress. It isn’t happening yet. But you do wonder about this line that says, you know, “All states must use the SAVE Tool.” If the court has now shut down the tool entirely, I found that they completely have blocked states from using it moving forward. So we’ll see if that survives.

LAUREN GILGER: Jen, last minute or so here. Tell us what you think kind of debates like this, rulings like this, tools like this, this whole conversation could do or is doing already to, I guess, a chilling effect when it comes to who thinks they are eligible to or who’s willing to register and actually vote in the country.

JEN FIFIELD: That’s a great question. I hear from voters who were flagged by the tool that just receiving the letter inaccurately that they, you know, they are a non-citizen has spooked them because of the immigration enforcement we’ve seen across the country. And also, you know, I hear from election officials saying that, you know, people that have immigrated to this country or still have family who are non-citizens are less likely to participate in elections from what they’ve been told, or even volunteer at the polls anymore.

LAUREN GILGER: Mm. So, yes, you’re definitely seeing the ripple effects there. Okay, Jen Fifield with ProPublica joining us. Jen, thank you so much for coming on the show as always. Appreciate it.

JEN FIFIELD: Yeah. Thank you.

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, the day-to-day realities of being a repo man.

MARK BRODIE: But first, a new mission is coming to Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, and it’ll involve the U.S. Space Force. The Defense Department announced the site this spring. Colonel Brandon Alford is commander of United States Space Forces Southern, based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. He came by the studio recently to talk about the new mission, and we started with what they’ll be doing at Fort Huachuca.

COL. BRANDON ALFORD: The best way to describe that mission is it’s called Space Domain Awareness, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. When you think about military or civil space applications, everything from GPS to communications to early warning, everything that depends on space-based assets, we have to start with the foundation of understanding the environment.

And so, most importantly, is knowing where satellites are, what those satellites are, what they’re doing, and where they’re supposed to be at a certain time. And so, all that information is informed by sensors typically on the ground, sometimes in space, sometimes by communicating with the satellites themselves. But it all contributes to a mission where we understand the space domain and understand where the satellites are, what they’re doing. So, that’s what the mission area is that Fort Huachuca is going to be taking on soon.

MARK BRODIE: It sounds like a lot of tracking stuff.

BRANDON ALFORD: Exactly. That is the fundamental basis of how we keep track, is sensors, right? Whether it’s telescopes or radars or other types of, other types of sensors. But it’s all about tracking.

MARK BRODIE: So, does that mean that you’ll be like planting trackers in the ground in Sierra Vista? Like, how will Fort Huachuca play into what it is that you have to do? What will be happening there that will allow you to be able to track all this stuff?

BRANDON ALFORD: The unit there is going to — I don’t know if they’ll actually have sensors there at Fort Huachuca, but a typical Space Domain Awareness or Space Defense unit, that’s the team that’s taking all that information and building the picture.

And so, you know, based on the information that the sensors are taking, feed it back to a processing center, for lack of a better term. And then the team there will sort of make sense of it, and that will be part of what goes into the overall database.

MARK BRODIE: And do you have a sense of what is up there that you are looking for? Are you figuring out what’s up there and then tracking it?

BRANDON ALFORD: Yes, that’s a great question. It’s all based on orbital mechanics. And so, it’s a great thing whenever I go to classrooms to talk about STEM and the importance of science and technology and math, is that everything in space that’s orbiting the Earth is accounted for. And that’s all based on where we believe it’s supposed to be, and then where we observe it to be.

And so, that’s how we build the catalog. That’s how we build our understanding. Everything is given a number, and everything is tracked through its orbit so we understand where it’s supposed to be at certain times, and then we go look for it.

MARK BRODIE: Does this include things like comets or meteors or space junk, anything like that? Or is it mostly stuff that you kind of know what’s there and have a general sense of where it is?

BRANDON ALFORD: In the case of comets and meteors, not as much, but still very important because what we’re tracking is typically stuff that’s orbiting the Earth. And you mentioned space junk, which is a very important thing to think about because we talk about the space domain now, we talk about it in terms of being congested as well as contested.

And so, the — I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie “WALL-E,” but there’s a funny little scene where WALL-E’s leaving the Earth on a rocket, and before he gets into space, he bumps into all this huge cloud of satellites and junk. So, that’s obviously not to scale and not quite what would happen, but that is the idea.

We have to keep track of everything that goes into space, and a lot of that is not active payloads. A lot of that is just pieces of satellites or

MARK BRODIE: Decommissioned satellites, things like that.

BRANDON ALFORD: Exactly.

MARK BRODIE: So, why Fort Huachuca? Why is that the right place to be doing what you’ll be doing?

BRANDON ALFORD: The area, all the areas here in Arizona are almost perfect for us to be able to do our mission. Some of it was actually just blind luck. Our unit is located at Davis-Monthan because we were standing up the space component to SOUTHCOM, and that happened to be where Air Forces Southern, the air component, is located. And so, that’s how we got our start.

I was an airman for 16 years before I transitioned into the Space Force. And before there was a Space Force, the space career field was under the Air Force. And so, that was very natural as we start to build these components.

And with the local economy and a lot of the local innovations and technology, very, very big and important in the topic of space exploration, astronomy, optics, all here in our backyard. And so, Fort Huachuca, being as close as it is to Tucson and the space enterprise up there, just a very natural selection.

MARK BRODIE: It sounds like kind of a combination of lots of parts of Arizona sort of having dark skies, which leads to a space industry, and also having a space industry here. It sounds like that was kind of what led to, or at least a component of, why Fort Huachuca got this mission.

BRANDON ALFORD: Yes, sir. That’s absolutely a part of it. I mean, when you are looking at placing sensors, obviously an important part is, can we see what we want to see? And the physical environment here, being a dry climate and being dark skies, is very good for that sort of thing.

MARK BRODIE: Is there a chance that the mission that happens at Fort Huachuca could be expanded to include other things?

BRANDON ALFORD: I think the answer to that has to be yes. Anytime you start with a certain mission and you see how things play out, and I think really the — I don’t want to say the sky’s the limit, that’s a silly, that’s a weird pun — but, yeah, I think that’ll be a good partnership and really nowhere to go but forward there.

MARK BRODIE: What appeals to you about this kind of work?

BRANDON ALFORD: This type of work, if we’re talking Space Domain Awareness specifically, it is fundamental to everything that the Space Force, and I would argue that the military, now does. When we talk about our mission, we frame it up in terms of its important to civilian life as well as military operations.

One lesson that we always like to try and drive home is that — your listeners can’t see it, but I’m holding up a smartphone — virtually all the technology that has to do with that smartphone, whether it’s helping us to communicate or navigate, that’s all enabled by on-orbit capabilities. And so, anything from how your ATMs work to how the gas pumps work, and then when we get into military operations, how we’re given early warning in the case of a threat, that’s all enabled by space operations.

And so, none of that is possible if we don’t have an understanding of the space domain. And so, when we talk about Space Domain Awareness, we really are talking about the foundation of all other military operations.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Col. Brandon Alford, commander of U.S. Space Forces Southern. He’s based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. Col. Alford, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

BRANDON ALFORD: Thank you, sir.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. The San Andreas Fault has long been a sort of boogeyman in Southern California life. Worries that eventually the big one will hit are always around, but not always top of mind. Well, our next guest this morning says we should probably make it top of mind. Bridget Smith-Konter is an NAU researcher who studies the San Andreas Fault, and her newest research is stark. Her research suggests the notorious fault is currently experiencing its highest levels of accumulated tectonic stress in more than a thousand years. I spoke with her more about it.

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: These tectonic plates, they keep moving regardless of whether faults are slipping on them, and the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate push against each other at a rate of about 45 millimeters per year. So that’s about two inches a year. And all this motion has to go somewhere.

Now, the fault itself, though, is a place where stickiness happens. The faults are locked in place, and friction builds along these sections and accumulates this thing called tectonic stress in the surrounding rock. And that stress builds over time and eventually gets high enough to where the conditions are set for the fault to not be able to hold on to it anymore, and it breaks in an earthquake.

And so, in Southern California, we’re looking at really a place for two different faults that kind of come together that make up the San Andreas. The San Andreas has like a little sister called the San Jacinto. And this is a little branch in Southern California that we’re sort of concerned about its interaction with the San Andreas and the fact that these two haven’t produced an earthquake in Southern California near Los Angeles in almost 170 years.

And that’s a pretty long quiet period for earthquakes.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So it’s sort of like a building up. Like you’re watching, and your research is focused on finding out when and if we might be due for one.

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: That’s right.

LAUREN GILGER: And bad news, right? It seems as if that pressure is building. Is that what you’re finding here?

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: Yeah, so this is all based on what we call a physics-based computer model. So we designed this model almost 20 years ago to study the San Andreas. But in this case, we’re looking at a thousand years back in time of fault motion due to earthquake history.

So we have all this computer code, and we need data to put into it. So we fed data from past earthquakes into this model based on reconstructed geologic evidence — stuff like radiocarbon dating of displaced sediments in the crust, tree ring anomalies caused by past earthquakes.

And we used all this to track how tectonic stresses build up and are released on the fault over time. And what we found is that the stress levels in this area of the San Jacinto and San Andreas junction, they’re really at a thousand-year high, where current stresses are really exceeding any level that we’ve seen throughout our simulation.

And our simulation covers the entire San Andreas plate boundary from Southern California to Northern California.

LAUREN GILGER: So things are building up. Tell us about this specific place in your research that you’re looking at — which is the Cajon Pass — and its potential importance. This you describe as a conditional earthquake gate?

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: Yeah, so it’s kind of a new word in earthquake science. It’s basically thought of as like a barrier to earthquake rupture. So at this point, we were asking the question, does this thing act as a gate where it can either stop a large earthquake rupture that’s already happening in its tracks, or does this region allow earthquake ruptures to continue moving forward and cross the fault and onto another one, creating a much larger, more destructive event?

And so, this model really suggests that whether the gate opens or closes, whether this Cajon Pass acts as a green light or a red light to ruptures, that really depends on how similarly stressed these two fault junctions are at the time of rupture. So it’s really the critical factor is not just how much stress has been built up on any one fault, but really how closely aligned these stress levels on these two nearby faults are to each other.

Unfortunately, we’re in the current situation where it looks like both faults are highly stressed, and that kind of historically points to a joint rupture, which could be a bigger type of earthquake.

LAUREN GILGER: So that’s the kicker, right? Like this is the gate, it’s the red light or the green light, and it looks like it could be a green light.

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: It’s a green light, yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: What would that mean? I mean, I don’t want to paint like an action film picture here, but is that what we’re looking at?

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: So, big breath here.

LAUREN GILGER: Right.

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: OK, so what we can tell from this model is that the system is critically loaded. It is at the highest point that we can tell from the earthquake record it’s been in a thousand years in Southern California.

This doesn’t mean that an earthquake will happen tomorrow, but what it does mean is that the system is loaded enough that it is significant to pay attention to and really ask yourself the question of not really if, but when. And we’re not at the point where we can really predict exactly when and where an earthquake will occur. Unfortunately, that’s just not part of our earthquake science portfolio that we’re able to really give numbers on.

But we can estimate probabilities of significant earthquakes in Southern California, and we can plan and prepare ahead for what that looks like for the people of Southern California.

So I can just throw a statistic out there: The probability of a significant earthquake in this region in the coming decades is relatively high. The U.S. Geological Survey puts the chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger on the Southern San Andreas at roughly 59% over the next 30 years.

So if you’re going to Disneyland, Arizonans, in the next 30 years, just keep that in mind as you’re picking your hotel and figuring out where you’re making your pit stops. But it’s nothing new. We’ve known that the San Andreas is a potential very big seismic risk all along.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, so I mean this study, this research of yours that just came out is getting a lot of attention, particularly in Southern California, which makes a lot of sense. I wonder if you can just speak to the importance of doing this kind of research. I mean, there’s nothing you can do to prevent this from happening necessarily, but I’m certain there’s a lot you can do in terms of preparation.

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: I hate to use the term “the big one,” but we’ve all grown up hearing it.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. Yes.

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: And these results really reinforce what earthquake scientists have long been saying, that Southern Californians face a significant and growing seismic risk. And so now is the time to prepare.

And so for city managers and emergency responders, really the implication of this work is that for planning scenarios, they should really be thinking about including cases where we have these joint ruptures because that impacts more people.

And they should consider this not just as a remote worst-case scenario, but as a realistic possibility given these current tectonic stress conditions.

For people like you and I, for the public, this means knowing how to prepare for and respond during an earthquake. Have an updated earthquake kit. You should have a family and friends communication plan, and you should really familiarize yourself with evacuation routes. And we were all taught as kids to stop, drop and roll during a fire.

LAUREN GILGER: Right.

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: But the earthquake community has gotten together and tried to message a different phrase for earthquake response, and that is “drop, cover and hold on.”

So drop to the ground, make yourself as small and compact as possible, cover your head and neck, and hold on to something strong and sturdy or try to get under a table or hold on to a chair or something, and look out for falling debris. So don’t run out of a building, stay put and make yourself as small as possible so that you can minimize the impacts of shaking.

LAUREN GILGER: So if we’re looking at, “the big one,”— right, Bridget? Would this be something that impacts us here in Arizona?

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: We could easily feel shaking here in Arizona. Certainly our friends in Yuma will feel the impacts. But it’s really those 20 million people in Southern California right around Los Angeles and San Diego that would feel the largest brunt of this hypothetical but certainly reasonable large earthquake that could occur.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, OK. We’ll leave it there. Bridget Smith-Konter, professor at NAU School of Earth and Sustainability, part of their Radian Center for Remote Sensing there at NAU. Bridget, thank you for coming on, thank you for all of the details here. This is, you know, scary but important stuff.

BRIDGET SMITH-KONTER: Thank you, Lauren. It’s been a pleasure.

MARK BRODIE: The number of wildfires burning across the country has increased over the past few years, and now researchers are trying to figure out if those fires and the smoke they produce could impact human fertility. Susan Shain is a freelance journalist based in Washington state and has written about this. She joins us, and Susan, how robust is the area of study in terms of the potential impacts of wildfire smoke specifically on fertility?

MARK BRODIE: Susan, how robust is the area of study, in terms of the potential impacts of wildfires on fertility?

SUSAN SHAIN: It’s still pretty new, so most of the studies I found came about in the past couple of years. And it seems like it’s an area that’s starting to be researched more, especially when you compare it to the effects of wildfire smoke on pregnancy. It seems like the area of fertility and reproductive health is still pretty new, and a lot of the research, the researchers have said ... “Proceed with caution. We’re not sure exactly what this means yet, but it does underscore the need for more.”

MARK BRODIE: So given that, as you say, there isn’t a whole lot of research, like are there any conclusions that can be drawn based on what we know so far about the impact of wildfire on fertility?

SUSAN SHAIN: I don’t think there are any definitive conclusions that can be drawn so far. You know, the researchers I spoke with just said to, you know, proceed with caution and that they weren’t sure if people who are trying to conceive should be considered, you know, one of the sensitive groups.

So, I’m sure as you’ve seen, when there’s different AQI alerts, sensitive groups — which includes people who are pregnant, elderly, people with lung or heart issues, children, they should have a different set of precautions than the rest of the population. And what researchers are trying to determine right now is whether people who are trying to conceive should be a part of that sensitive group or not.

MARK BRODIE: Are there any hypotheses floating around about what might happen to either men or women when they inhale too much smoke or are exposed to wildfires and are trying to conceive?

SUSAN SHAIN: Yeah, so the studies that I looked at for this story looked at both sperm and embryo creation. And so some of the studies that looked at exposure to wildfire smoke for men showed that in most men, after episodes of wildfire smoke, sperm quality and quantity declined. And so whether that actually leads to an impact on fertility is still yet to be determined, but there were significant impacts to sperm quality and quantity.

In another study that I looked at for the story was of patients who were undergoing IVF treatment in Portland, and it looked at how their embryo — the process of creating their embryos, was impacted during a smoke event. And so the people whose embryos were being created during the significant smoke event of 10 days in Portland, when the air was like almost off-the-charts bad, they did end up getting, on average, fewer embryos. And so they’re not sure, you know, what impacts that will ultimately have, but they did get fewer embryos. But the researcher cautioned that it was a small sample size and also that there were a few surprising results, like patients who had been exposed to poor air before their eggs were retrieved and so before their embryos were created in a lab did not see significant harm to their embryos’ development. So she found that really surprising.

MARK BRODIE: So would that suggest then that any amount of wildfire smoke in the air could be a problem — not just like if you are a firefighter, for example, and sort of in the thick of it?

SUSAN SHAIN: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s something they’re still looking at. You know, there was another study that was related to wildland firefighters and looked at their sperm and how their sperm quality has changed, and the results of that study will be published later this year.

But, yeah, it seems like exposure to wildfire smoke doesn’t seem like it’s great for anybody. Whether it’s particularly bad for people who are trying to conceive is still a question that’s up in the air. But the researchers I spoke to, you know, urge people to just check the AQI, stay indoors if the air quality is bad, and try to shut windows and try to use an air filter, you know, regardless of what your fertility goals are.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, I mean, is this something that folks know about generally? Like this doesn’t seem like something that, as you reference earlier, you know, for folks with particular ... sensitivities to poor air quality, you don’t often think of people who are trying to conceive as in that group. I wonder if this is something that, you know, people who are trying to have kids would even think about.

SUSAN SHAIN: I don’t think it’s something I’ve ever thought about, and I’m in that process. I’m actually pregnant right now, which is part of what made me interested in this. And I have an almost a 5-year-old as well, and so it was something that I had never really thought about. And then, you know, as the air has gotten worse over the years, I started wondering, you know, how is this impacting our fertility?

And I think people are very aware of when you’re pregnant, you need to be more cautious. But I don’t think people think about what happens before you get pregnant, and I think that’s especially true when it comes to men. One of the researchers I spoke with, she specializes in men’s fertility, and she said that she hopes that research like hers is going to draw attention to the fact that, you know, sperm is 50% of the equation. And it really matters what men are doing with their health and their exposures in the months and years ... leading up to when they try to conceive as well.

MARK BRODIE: What did the scientists tell you that they are hoping to study next or really sort of figure out in the, you know, maybe the months and years to come?

SUSAN SHAIN: I think one big thing is whether fertility bounces back after a smoke event. So all of the studies that I looked at for this story were retrospective, which meant that they, you know, looked at data after it had already occurred. So they looked at men’s sperm, you know, before these smoke events and then after these smoke events, but they weren’t able to go back and come back to these men and check their sperm again, you know, months, years later and see if it had bounced back. And so I think that’s something that they’re really eager to study is to see if their sperm quantity and quality declined after a severe smoke event, like how long does it take to recover, if it does recover?

MARK BRODIE: Oh, that’s really interesting. So the idea is that maybe the men are affected for a period of time, but not permanently.

SUSAN SHAIN: Yeah ... they’re not sure because they weren’t able to look at that with these studies. So I think that’s something that they’re really interested in in learning. Part of the the research is being done by wildland firefighters. Wildland firefighters are submitting these these semen samples over the over a year, and that that that study is going to get published like later this year or next year.

MARK BRODIE: Well, I guess that kind of goes to the idea of: Is this something that people are thinking about? It seems like maybe at least to some degree, you know, the folks who are finding these fires, it’s something that either they are thinking about or somebody is suggesting to them that they should be thinking about.

SUSAN SHAIN: Yeah. Well, that was the interesting thing is I spoke to one firefighter who was actually a wildland firefighter and then who was also a student researcher at Colorado State University, and he said that fertility wasn’t a topic that really ever came up while he was on the line. But then when he started talking about his work in the off-season, like how he was working as a student researcher assessing the impact of wildfire smoke on semen, his colleagues were like, “Wait, what?”

And they were also really interested in getting involved. Like, he posted about the study in a Facebook group and received more than 150 messages from firefighters who wanted to participate. And he was kind of blown away by that, that there were so many people who were interested in this topic.

And he said, “You know, there’s kind of a stigma among wildland firefighters. It’s a very like macho, male-dominated world,” and he said it was wasn’t kind of it was kind of a stigma to talking about fertility. But once you kind of got over that, they were really interested in hearing about it, and they were concerned with their ability to conceive.

And so this young man, you know, he helped recruit over 100 wildland firefighters to submit semen samples pre-, mid- and post-fire season over the past year. And so that study is going to look at those semen samples and, you know, their quantity and quality, and that study is going to be published like later this year or the next year. So I’m really looking forward to reading that.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Susan Shain, a freelance journalist based in Washington state. Susan, thank you so much.

SUSAN SHAIN: Thank you so much for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: When you think of a repo man, you might picture a guy just like our next guest. Matthew Pitman is known as Repo Nut on YouTube. He made a name for himself online showing what it’s really like to be a vehicle repossession agent.

MATTHEW PITMAN: Keys in it. That should be pretty easy. Just got to get the truck out here.

LAUREN GILGER: His original mission in broadcasting his work was to show the mundane side of the job. But of course, the more wild interactions got all the views. And pretty soon, Pitman was racking up millions of them. Then in 2016, his wife died of cancer. And as he told me, he didn’t handle it well. He spiraled into addiction and filmed much of it on his YouTube page before kind of disappearing from the public eye. But now he’s back, featured in The New Yorker and working on his own podcast about his recovery called No Good, spelled K-N-O-W. I caught up with him in his truck early one morning recently before he hit the road for the day to talk about his life in the public eye and coming back from the edge. And we began with growing up right here in Phoenix.

MATTHEW PITMAN: It was totally different. We were literally on the edge of the city, and just it was all west. We had Luke Air Force Base out there, always watching the F-16s go overhead and stuff, and just a lot of farm community growing up in the area I was in.

LAUREN GILGER: So tell me about the first time you ever kind of went on a repo job. This was with some, some friends of friends, it sounded like?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Yeah, buddy of mine, his older brother owned a company down there called Southwest Vehicle Recovery for many years. And we would just hang out down there at the lot and stuff. And I just remember seeing the trucks coming and going. I was more down there because I was installing stereos and stuff.

But I just was always fascinated, you know, these guys coming in 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning with different vehicles on the back, or they coming in on a like a Harley-Davidson or something. I loved the hours because it was all hours of the night. And so the kid in it just thought it was totally fascinating.

It was like all these guys that are up, and a lot of them are like, you know, look like bodybuilders and stuff. And I was like, “Who are these young guys? And what are they doing?” And you just see them all coming all hours of the night, and I just thought, wow, what a you know, what’s going on here?

LAUREN GILGER: But it sounds like they did the repo work in a way that you probably would not support anymore, right? Like they were kind of pretending like they were stealing or breaking into the cars?

MATTHEW PITMAN: It was just a very different time frame, and this is, you know, late ’70s, early ’80s and stuff, and it just when we’d go out there, you know, us kids, you know, we would ride in the back of the trucks. They’d have us carry, you know, things of soapy water, and they would drag the vehicles out of like an apartment complex. They’d have us pour the water in front of the tire so they wouldn’t make loud screeching sounds and stuff. And that was like one of my first early memories was, they’d be like, “Grab these milk jugs full of soapy water and just pour them.” That’s all they tell us to do.

And we, and I realized what we’re doing is we’re making it so that it’s silent as they drag these vehicles out and stuff. And it was a lot of stuff like that. And you’d see them do things like take bolt cutters and cut locks off of a fence. And you they’d drive by and they’d throw the chain back into the, you know, the front yard. Just it was just a totally different, very Wild West kind of a feeling.

LAUREN GILGER: Was there like an adrenaline rush kind of thing?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Very much so. I mean, the very first repo I went out on, after it happened, I puked. I was so excited. I was, I was, and they were all laughing because I was they’re like, “Oh, he threw up,” you know. I was just so excited. I was like, that was amazing.

LAUREN GILGER: So this is how you kind of got hooked, it sounds like. You you thought it was too much fun to not do?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, sneaking up to a boat at 1:00 in the morning and they had you watching, you know, “If anybody comes running out of that house, you let us know,” you know, and you’re just and you’re staring the other way while you hear them hooking chains up and and all these guys just, “Get this, get that,” and you’re, and you’re kind of like watching over your shoulder to see what they’re doing, but you realize you’re the person watching the house. They’re like, “Any lights turn on, you yell immediately and tell us if anyone’s coming.” And you’re just waiting for something to happen.

Then when something did happen, someone comes running out of the backyard with a shovel in their hand screaming and hollering, you know, and nothing but a pair of boxers. You’re like, “Oh, here he comes, here he comes!” Totally different than, you know, what we do today and stuff. But I remember as a very young kid being like, this is insane what these guys are doing.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. But I mean, we should say like it’s not illegal. You’re working for the bank essentially, right? That’s what repo companies do.

MATTHEW PITMAN: Yeah, you know, everything is done absolutely aboveboard. It’s what’s called self-help repossession. And we are basically going out, and it’s one civil party working with another civil party to secure collateral that’s been secured against their financial lenders.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. You owe money, your car might get repossessed, your boat might get repossessed, that kind of thing, right?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Anything that can have a title on it, absolutely.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And I mean, it’s an interesting industry to be involved in, not because it also was sort of the Wild West back in the day, but also because it’s like such an economic bellwether, right?

Like what was this like during the Great Recession? What’s it like now as we’re seeing, you know, so many people have trouble making ends meet?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Well, unfortunately, it is a recession-proof industry. As things start to topple and get worse, we get busier. And, you know, going through a number of recessions and watching that happen, and seeing the increase year over year, we always pick up more and more collateral, and the collateral always is evolving and changing.

LAUREN GILGER: So when you first started your YouTube channel, right, which has become so popular, and, you know, spun off in in many directions. You kind of did it to prove that repo could be very mundane, right? That it wasn’t sensationalized, that it could be civil, right?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Absolutely. I mean, day after day, we aren’t having a bunch of crazy stuff happen, and the stuff they show on TV shows and stuff might happen every once in a while. But they sensationalized it to make it seem like every time you go out, there’s a fight or something’s happening crazy.

And it’s not like that. It’s it’s a lot of talking and communicating with people and dealing with people that, for the most part, are understanding. I mean, you’re going to have situations that are going to happen. But it’s really more communication than anything, and most people are, you know, levelheaded and, a lot of again a lot of cases very deflated.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. How did you kind of change your approach though? Because when you began doing this, like you said, like it was kind of the Wild West. You kind of loved those adrenaline rush moments, it sounded like. How did you realize, you know, it didn’t need to be that way?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Well, you know, I grew up. I became an adult. I, and, and dealing with people, you start to realize that that’s, you know, a very childish way of thinking and, and that this is a business, and it needs to be more professional. And that’s what a lot of us veterans are working on doing is changing the industry and changing that perception of this industry and what we’re doing, and make people realize that it doesn’t need to be that way because all that other stuff is just garbage.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So we talked about how you began your YouTube channel kind of showing the mundane and kind of civil way that this should be done. But I mean, of course, crazier stuff, you know, those those wild interactions get more views. And you and you kind of played into that, it sounds like as well.

MATTHEW PITMAN: It happens. I mean, I, you know, I wouldn’t say played into it, but it you get to where you notice that one video gets millions of views, and that video is an absolute crap show. And I always would be like, it’s unfortunate that people want to see the fails. They want to see the the hype and all that stuff.

And I did everything I could to turn that around and make people understand. And I would rather get the lower views and get the education out there than get the hype and the and the millions of views. But it shows you where the the pulse is on humanity in that that’s what people like to see.

LAUREN GILGER: It certainly is what what gets the views, yeah.

So I want to ask you about a few years ago when your wife passed away and you kind of fell into addiction, some of this was broadcast on your channel, and it and it really seems to have spiraled. This was a a really rough time for you, and I know you’re kind of coming out the other side of it. Can you talk a little depth about what that was like to, you know, be in the public eye while your life felt like it was kind of imploding?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Yeah, I mean, I kept the camera rolling and I didn’t deal well with the grief, and I, you know, got into the heavy drugs and stuff. And I mean, I went completely full homeless, lost everything, lost my business, lost my home.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

MATTHEW PITMAN: Kids, all of it. And when you come through that and come out the other side, I mean, not many people survive that. It’s given me a shift in perspective of what I want to do with my life and take my platform and convert it into something that’s not even about repossession.

You know, and it’s interesting because we call our industry the recovery industry, and now the word recovery has a dual meaning for me.

LAUREN GILGER: Absolutely.

All right. Well, congratulations on finding the other side of it. Matthew Pitman, creator of the YouTube channel RepoNut joining us. Matthew, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for telling us your story. I really appreciate it.

MATTHEW PITMAN: Yeah, appreciate your time.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, that’ll do it for this edition of The Show. We will, of course, be back with you again tomorrow morning with much more. Don’t forget to sign up for The Show’s weekly newsletter. It’s called Radio Heads, and you can sign up at theshow.kjzz.org. For Mark Brodie, I’m Lauren Gilger. Thanks for joining us.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for listening to The Show’s podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by John 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