The Show for July 9, 2026: Pavement health risks, author Jenn McKinlay and more

There is a lot of pavement across the Valley, covering all kinds of surfaces. We’ll hear how all of that pavement may be impacting our health. Plus, a local romance author gets to see her novel turned into new Hallmark Channel series.

Transcript

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

LAUREN GILGER: Hi, I’m Lauren Gilger, 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.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, the Arizona Supreme Court weighs in on the ongoing battle between the Maricopa County Recorder and the Board of Supervisors.

MARK BRODIE: And why do we seem so interested in standing in lines, and what do those lines say about us?

LAUREN GILGER: But first, a decade ago, Arizona leaders set a goal designed to boost our state’s future by boosting our state’s students post-high school graduation. By 2030, 70% of the state’s graduates would continue their education in college or in trade school or at a community college. Well, it’s been 10 years, and our next guest found not only did we not reach that 70% goal, post-secondary attainment in Arizona has actually gone down since 2016. This despite millions of dollars of investment. Molly Bohannon has the story for the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, and she came into our studios recently to talk more about it, beginning with just how extensive these efforts have been.

MOLLY BOHANNON: It’s definitely been an effort from a lot of different agencies. In 2016 when it was launched, it was launched kind of as this collaboration between private schools, public schools, K through 12, community colleges, and universities to get more students to continue their education after after high school.

And since then, a bunch of money has been spent, about $166 million is what we were able to track going back through the budgets, that was earmarked for different interventions to help students do this. So things like dual enrollment, things like efforts to increase FAFSA completion and get more students to get that federal student aid, and the Arizona Promise Program is where most of that money went, which was a scholarship created in 2022 to help students attend the three public universities.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. You said $166 million over the last decade here. And despite all of that, it looks like not only has Arizona’s post-secondary enrollment not hit 70%, but it’s actually gone the other direction.

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, it’s it’s gone down about 3 points, 3 percentage points, from 53% in 2016 to 50% in 2024, which is the last year that the nonprofits who track this had data available. It peaked in 2017 at about 55%, and since then has been going down, slight upticks in the last couple years post-COVID, but again, still 3 points lower than where we started.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. What are those rates like in comparison to the rest of the country? Is this about average?

MOLLY BOHANNON: We’re below the national average. So nationally, about 62% of students enroll in the couple months after high school graduation in a community college or in a university. And Arizona’s figure tracks community colleges, universities and trade schools, so it’s actually tracks more things and we’re still below where the rest of the country is.

LAUREN GILGER: And this is across demographics for the most part, too, it sounds like. Most counties and and most demos.

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, almost all counties, some counties have seen some improvement, and across most demographics. I think Asian students are consistently higher, but other than that, it’s been a pretty widespread decline.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. Researchers told you part of the problem here is basically leadership, or a lack of leadership, and and centralized leadership in terms of where this effort has been throughout the last decade in the state level.

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, local and kind of national researchers and experts on post-secondary enrollment talked to me about how there’s no one right way. There’s no, you know, "Here’s how states should do this to fix the problem." All approach it really differently, but kind of a trademark of success is coordination across all these agencies. It is something that K through 12 schools need to play a role in, and universities need to play a role in, and trade schools and community colleges need to play a role in. And a lot of those efforts are happening here, but they’re not coordinated, like you said.

There’s a lack of of leadership and of centralization that these experts were saying even if all these good things are happening, maybe in small corners of the states or in some districts or schools, it’s hard to scale things without that centralization and that coordination. So the lack of that has been hurting the state, along with centralized funding, sustained funding. $166 million sounds like a lot of money, but in the grander scheme of things, we we underfund education and and this is a result of that.

LAUREN GILGER: It’s like a drop in the bucket really in the big picture. Are there programs like this that are successful in other states?

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, so Arizona has implemented a lot of interventions that are, you know, proven to be successful. Investing in dual enrollment is a big one. The Promise Program has shown a lot of success in other states. Some states have seen enrollment increases as high as 14% in the years after implementation.

Arizona’s at about 2.4% in the couple years after, so obviously a a much slower pace, but more students have enrolled every year. But, you know, when I talked to the the head of the Arizona Board of Regents, which runs that scholarship program, they said, you know, "It’s it’s a good practice and it’s doing good things, it’s just underfunded right now."

LAUREN GILGER: There’s another kind of aspect of all of this, right, which is just that like lots of folks today, young folks in particular, it sounds like, really don’t value a post-secondary degree of any kind in the same way that they might have before. Like lots of folks just wondering like, is college worth the cost, and the cost has gone up, right?

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, Arizona’s cost has has, I believe, stayed around flat, but the the cost associated with college have gone up, the cost of living has gone up. You know, if you’re in a small rural community here, the cost of traveling to a Tempe or to a Tucson to attend these universities is expensive. You know, you’re far away from your family, apartment rent is high. It adds up.

And so yeah, a lot of these students that I talked to were just saying, "I’m not sure it’s worth the time and and the money that it takes to get a four-year degree or even a two-year degree." Credentials can be quicker, but they can be also still be pricey. So students were questioning trade school as well and choosing to enter the workforce directly. A lot of them already work, have part-time jobs in high school, and could just take on more hours, get more pay. A lot of those are relatively high-paying jobs, too. And so there’s there’s definitely that question of is this worth it and why would I delay making money?

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And it’s sort of representative of a larger cultural shift, I think, right? Like you have this really striking stat in here, a Gallup survey from September found that just 35% of people thought college education was quote very important. That’s down from 75% in 2010. That’s wild.

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, it’s a big decrease. And it is, you know, the the data all still shows that a degree is worth it, a credential is worth it. You know, a a someone with a bachelor’s degree is expected to make about 86% more than someone without or someone with a high school diploma.

And so I think a lot of what these experts I talked to were saying is that it is a messaging issue and they need to meet these students where they’re at and say, you know, "Here’s the value." They’re getting all this information from other places. They’re scared of taking out loans, and they’re not really understanding the differences between loans and scholarships and grants. And it’s a lot of information.

LAUREN GILGER: Seems like an information gap. You talked to school counselors, right, and and they had some some ideas about why this might be happening? What they’re hearing from students?

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, a lot of school counselors I talked to were saying, you know, students are just scared of the cost and more scared of the cost than they’ve seen in past years and in past generations. And, you know, the districts that have done it well, the two school districts in Santa Cruz County, which has seen the highest increase, up almost 11% over the last 10 years in post-secondary enrollment. The counselors I spoke to down there were saying, "We’ve made a really concerted effort to talk to these kids early in their high school careers about student financial aid and what they do to get that and what applying looks like so that they’re not, you know, entering senior year and having all this information thrown at them." And they’ve found success with that.

They’ve had things like peer counselors to answer questions about the FAFSA process and the application process, and that’s just a little less scary than going to a counselor or going to an adult when you’re 17.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. I mean, so that, I’m glad you brought up Santa Cruz County because that’s one of a couple of of kind of bright spots here that you highlight as well because it’s not like a blanket thing. Like there have been some places in the state that have really made strides in terms of getting people enrolled in post-secondary ed of some kind. What did they do differently? It sounds like school counselors had a different strategy in Santa Cruz County. What else did you hear?

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, I mean, it really seems like it takes a community effort. It’s not just telling the students, you know, "You need to apply earlier or apply to more scholarships or do all of this."

It’s getting the parents involved, getting the families involved, having businesses in the area kind of emphasize that they need a skilled workforce. They need students to have credentials and to continue that education so that when the time comes, they’re qualified to have these jobs that that we’re going to have a lot of in the next couple years.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, OK. Molly Bohannon, investigative reporter for the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, joining us. Molly, thank you for coming in. Appreciate it very much.

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, thank you for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: The Arizona Supreme Court sided with Republican County Recorder Justin Heap this week, dealing a blow to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which now must give Heap the resources he says his office needs to conduct upcoming elections. This is the latest move in the long and heated battle between the county’s leaders over who gets to control what parts of elections operations in one of the largest counties in the country. And it comes as early voting is already underway in our state’s primary elections, which are just around the corner. Stephanie Murray is covering the story for the Arizona Republic, and she’s in studio now to tell us more. Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning.

STEPHANIE MURRAY: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for coming in. OK. So tell us first, what was in this ruling? The Supreme Court is is reinstating a lower court’s ruling, right?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: That’s right. This is the latest twist in this long battle between the county recorder and the Board of Supervisors over election administration in Maricopa County. So this week, the state Supreme Court decided that it would side with this lower court and, basically agree with Recorder Justin Heap that the Board of Supervisors overstepped, usurped his power when it comes to election administration. And what’s really interesting about this ruling is that it makes some changes, to the upcoming primary election, even though we’re right in the middle of it. Ballots have already gone out, people are already voting, but the court decided to to make those changes anyways.

LAUREN GILGER: Let’s talk about what those changes are, what this means for the election that is already underway, essentially. The Board of Supervisors had something to say about that.

STEPHANIE MURRAY: So the Board of Supervisors said they were disappointed, because the election is ongoing. Basically, what is going to happen now is if you’re a voter, you probably won’t notice any changes. What happens now is that the staff, you know, that does these duties, does these functions, they’ll do what they were going to do, but in some cases, they’ll be reporting to, somebody else. If they have been reporting to the Board of Supervisors, now they’ll be reporting to the recorder. And this has come as the recorder and the supervisors have been trying to negotiate, who does what in Maricopa County elections.

LAUREN GILGER: And they’ve been in mediation, right? They were in mediation when this decision came down.

STEPHANIE MURRAY: That’s right. And according to the Board of Supervisors, kind of the irony here is that they had reached a consensus on what those shared duties would be right before the court decided to issue this ruling and roll back a stay by a court of appeals and side with the the superior court and Recorder Heap.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so let’s back up for a moment and just talk about what this how this began, right? This all goes back to kind of a power-sharing agreement that the board had made with the former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer before he left office, before Heap came in. And it’s kind of at its root about concerns about election denialism, election integrity, right?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: You know, that is right. Justin Heap had campaigned on, you know, this election skepticism, election denial, and right before, after he had won his primary but before he took office, the board and the recorder, the past recorder, negotiated this new shared services agreement which took some power away from the Recorder’s Office. Once Justin Heap got in, he said, "You know, that’s not going to work for me, you’re you’re stepping on my power," and he sued.

LAUREN GILGER: And this fight has gotten really nasty. I mean, Heap at one point threatened to seek criminal charges against the board. And then there was this odd thing that happened recently, and I wonder what’s going on there because there some of Heap’s employees were sort of caught on camera ... removing a ballot scanner from the offices during one of these small local elections that happened in March. It sounds like there could be charges there?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: That’s right, one of Heap’s staff could face a criminal charge, in this kind of taking of a pre-tabulation scanner. Heap has argued that that equipment belongs to his office, so we’ll have to wait and see on that. But I think, yeah, you know, all of this kind of goes to the worries that I hear in Maricopa County that, you know, these elections may not go so smoothly. I should also note that Heap has been relying on kind of legal advice from America First Legal, which is a firm with ties to Stephen Miller, who was a top Trump adviser.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. And County Attorney Rachel Mitchell has gotten involved because of that, arguing basically that Heap’s using or relying on this attorney more than she thinks he should be. What did the Supreme Court have to say about that?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: The Supreme Court denied Heap’s request to put sanctions on Rachel Mitchell, so kind of a siding with her in that whole back and forth.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And and this goes to a broader question about who’s controlling elections here in Maricopa County.

STEPHANIE MURRAY: That’s right. And I think something that has really struck me as I’ve been talking to my sources over the past couple of days trying to make sense of this ruling and what is going to happen next. There was the shared services agreement, you know, they negotiated the new one. Justin Heap fought to get his power back, and he actually ended up getting more power than he would have had if there had been no renegotiation.

And I say that because now the recorder will be responsible for the tabulation of all of the early ballots in Maricopa County. And here where people tend to vote by mail, that’s like 80% of the votes. He’ll be responsible, you know, at the end of the day for tabulating. It’s the same staff, the same machines, but now the buck will stop with him.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And so just this morning, Heap submitted a settlement proposal to the court. We understand the board is in executive session right now. Any details on what that contains?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: I haven’t seen it yet, and the board is in executive session now, like you mentioned. You know, they’re meeting behind closed doors talking about what they’re going to do next. They indicated in their statement earlier this week that they plan to follow the judge’s ruling, and said they, I think the the quote was something like, "They’re looking forward to seeing what the recorder will do with his newfound election administration power."

For his part, Justin Heap had called it, you know, "a momentous victory" for him. So we’ll see if this is the end of the kind of back and forth in court, or if, you know, another legal challenge is on the way.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So, last question for you then, Stephanie. Could all of this I guess affect the way that voters think about the elections, right? And as you said, you’ve been talking to voters in Maricopa County, and there have been concerns for years about election integrity in the county from both sides probably. ... Do you think this kind of ongoing back and forth will make voters less confident in a fair election?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: You know, Maricopa County has been at the center of election denialism for the better half of a decade now, thinking back to President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the election in 2020, everything that happened in 2022, and since.

And so we’ll have to see, you know, if there are any issues. That always kind of raises voter skepticism and concern. But what I’m going to be watching for as we get to that primary on July 21 is whether there are any hiccups and whether voters do feel any difference from this. The plan and what the court said they felt will happen is that voters won’t notice it.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. Stephanie Murray covers this for the Arizona Republic. Thanks for coming in, Stephanie, appreciate it.

STEPHANIE MURRAY: Thanks for having me.

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, a local author’s contemporary romance novel is being adapted into a new limited series for the Hallmark Channel.

MARK BRODIE: But first, there is a lot of pavement around the Valley covering all kinds of surfaces, from roads and highways to basketball courts and sidewalks, to name just a few. And my next guest says we need to be paying more attention to what that pavement is made of and what it might be doing to our health. Ellie Fini with ASU’s School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment has been looking into pavement’s off-gassing and what it means, both for us and for the pavement itself. She joins me to talk more about it, and, Ellie, you’ve been doing research on the potential health dangers of the pavement we travel on. What are some of the health risks you’ve identified?

ELLIE FINI: When you think about urban surfaces, and not just pavement, think about how many surface area you have around you. So we are in our group we are looking at materials that are covering our surfaces, and how they evolve and change in heat and as environmental conditions changes.

So specifically on the roads, and we have 4 million miles of roads in America, we have different materials covering our road. That’s what it gives us such a smooth ride, which we love it when we drive our cars. But one thing that we have to pay attention is how these surfaces can or cannot change as environment is changing.

MARK BRODIE: And it seems as though one of the, if not the biggest, problem that you’re finding is chemicals and other materials sort of coming up from those surfaces and influencing our health, yeah?

ELLIE FINI: That’s a very good way of putting it, when and you can think of it as when you heat your food in microwave. When you get it out, you can smell it more than when it was in the fridge. So as you heat up material, there are molecules and scent, or you can call it aroma, that is coming out.

If you think about it, what are those aroma? How can you get to sense the smell? Those are molecules that are released or emitted from the material, the substance, whether is your food, or whether is your road and parking lot. So you can think of molecules and chemistry as material release, or we call it material off-gassing.

MARK BRODIE: So what are these molecules that are coming out from road and other ground coverings, and what might they be doing to us?

ELLIE FINI: So every material has a very unique molecule that make because it has specific characteristics, so there are different molecules that make your car dashboard, that, it made your road and parking lot. So each of them have different molecules. So as such, molecules that are coming out of it when it’s hot is different.

So some of the roads that we have, for instance, in Phoenix, as the city gets hotter, they are releasing certain scent, aromas. So some of this chemistry could be as familiar as benzene molecules to other molecules that are more complex like benzothiophene, benzopyrene.

But how do they work, and and why they are there to begin with? They have very special roles in materials that we have in urban surfaces. That’s why we put them there. So their loss is actually a loss for the material itself. If we are losing the ingredients that are essential for roads, are we going to get shorter life, sooner crack appears, degradation?

That’s the question actually got me and my group today research, where we started to see how we can make our road last longer, and some of this could be material loss, just like our dehydration. So don’t let our roads dehydrate.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, well, but ... as you say, it it seems like it’s kind of a balance here, right? Because you you want to have roads that are functional, right, that don’t have cracks and potholes and need to be replaced very frequently. But at the same time, in order to do that, you need to have some of these chemicals and other materials that could be dangerous for our health.

So it seems like you have to either balance OK, how much of those materials do we want in the road coverings, or is there something else that we could replace those chemicals with that would be safer for humans and also have the same benefits to the to the roads and freeways, right?

ELLIE FINI: You, you put it very perfectly right. So there are chemicals that we need them there. That’s why we we make it with, just like your paint on the wall. You need those ingredients. But what we don’t need is a loss of those ingredients. So the ingredient as complicated as they are, if they are needed, so be it. But we don’t them want them to lose during the heat and during the life of it.

So to answer to your question, some of those molecules or emerging solutions that are coming out could be the future of low emitting surfaces. Another way or another pathway could be looking at what are they really being lost specifically, not as a total lump sum. If you say my, my material loses 1 microgram, that’s one thing. Or you say, "My material is losing this specific molecule," and then we can look at consequences.

Right now, we are still at that stage that should we count them, how should we count them, and how should we measure it and so forth. So research are emerging and there are solutions that I’m hoping it will get into our street as low-emission solutions. Arizona State University, many university across the country are coming up with solutions that can get there, I guess it needs public demand and ask for it.

MARK BRODIE: Well, it seems like based on your research, one of the more promising solutions could be algae. Like, you could make road surfaces with with algae in it, is that right?

ELLIE FINI: So that could be one solution and by no means is limiting or saying this is the best or the only solution. But yes, so we actually, this is a more of a 16 years research that got us to a point that we can actually come up with a material that is low emitting and using some of this on our roads it could reduce the emission impact.

And by impact, I mean, we’re not maybe reducing the total mass loss by huge amount, but we’re reducing those species that are more impactful on human side.

MARK BRODIE: How big of an issue is this now and maybe could it be down the road? Like, how I guess maybe how urgent is the work you’re doing to try to figure out a way to have roads that are functional that don’t off-gas and emit things that are that are this dangerous for our bodies?

ELLIE FINI: Well, in terms of how much is needed, I believe we should start looking at surfaces that are not releasing, or they are not releasing a lot of molecules. And in my mind, because the the climate change, because the weather is getting hotter and especially in cities like Phoenix where we have significant portion of our cities covered, it is urgent.

And another aspects of it is if we don’t know what is getting released, how can we have a good air quality model? How can we predict what’s in our air? So counting and overlooking what is coming out is one problem. Second one is how can we mitigate those coming out?

MARK BRODIE: All right, Ellie Fini is with ASU’s School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment.

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

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Maricopa County Supervisor Tom Galvin last year announced his plans to try to bring hockey back to the Valley after the Coyotes left town for Salt Lake City in 2024. Last fall, he named Andrea Doan the chair of an advisory committee to get pro hockey to come back to town. She, of course, is the wife of longtime Coyote Shane Doan. My next guest chatted with Shane Doan recently, both about his future in hockey and the possibility of having another NHL team in the Valley. Craig Morgan is longtime Coyotes beat writer and an ASU journalism professor. He also writes a Substack about hockey and is with me now. Good morning, Craig.

CRAIG MORGAN: Good morning, Mark, how are you?

MARK BRODIE: I’m doing all right, thanks. So Shane Doan had been working with the Toronto Maple Leafs, and he is no longer doing that. So, like what is his plans now?

CRAIG MORGAN: Well, he has wanted to remain involved in hockey in some capacity, and I know he was having conversations with multiple NHL clubs about various roles. I don’t think he’s going to be doing anything immediately, but he’s leaving that open. In the meantime, of course, he has never stopped trying to help bring the NHL back to Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, so he he, it sounds like he is working with his wife and with this advisory committee. Did he have any kind of update on where that might stand?

CRAIG MORGAN: With with his own role or with where the efforts are to bring the team back?

MARK BRODIE: Mostly with where the efforts are to bring a team back to the Valley.

CRAIG MORGAN: Yeah. I think everyone is in agreement at this place, at this point, that there’s been progress made. I’ve spoken to Tom Galvin as well. Tom, in the most recent conversation I had with him, and I wrote about this, suggested that there was a lot more political support than there was previously. We know that has been an issue here in the past, and part of that was probably tied to the problematic ownership groups of the Coyotes.

So he feels that there’s a lot more political will to bring the team back. He also as a land-use attorney and as a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, has a lot of expertise in identifying sites — and he does think that there are viable sites. So they feel that they’ve made progress.

The issue, of course, Mark, is finding the backers. NHL expansion seems to get more expensive by the day. The most recently quoted figure from (NHL Commissioner) Gary Bettman for the expansion fee alone was $2 billion. I’ve heard from some people that it’s even risen a little bit beyond that. And then you have to add in the cost of building an arena. So this is a major undertaking.

MARK BRODIE: Does it seem as though the NHL has interest in potentially coming back to the Valley? I mean you mentioned Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner. He was very bullish on Phoenix, kept the team here longer than a lot of people thought that the Coyotes would stay here, given some of their ownership and arena struggles.

Are they still interested in coming back here? And will they have to have a stable ownership group and an arena for that to happen?

CRAIG MORGAN: They are absolutely interested, they have stated that repeatedly. I’ve spoken to both Gary Bettman and Bill Daly, the deputy commissioner. They believe this is a good market if the situation is right, and that has to do, of course, with the two things that you mentioned: stable ownership and the arena in the right part of town. Not in Glendale namely — they will not go back to Glendale.

So yes, when you ask the question, do they need those two pieces before the NHL is to return? Absolutely. Gary Bettman told me that in no uncertain terms. They have to have the ownership group locked down, and they can’t just have an arena plan. They really have to have this well down the road before the NHL explores it.

But they are interested, and and as we know now, they’re absolutely looking to expand after the the statement they released regarding Houston and Austin potentially becoming the next expansion market in the NHL.

MARK BRODIE: Yes, so so that raises the other question. So those are are potential expansion markets. Would Phoenix like is that sort of seen as like the next round of expansion?

CRAIG MORGAN: I guess so. You know, they’re being very cagey about that. Both the deputy commissioner and the commissioner said recently that they don’t care if there are an odd number of teams right now — they’re sitting at 32. They don’t care if they’re at 33. I don’t believe it. I think that they do want geographic split.

And what they’ve done with Houston and Austin is they’ve given them six months to basically solidify this plan. So we’ll know at the end of the calendar year whether that thing is moving forward. But usually when the NHL goes public with these sorts of things, they have a pretty good idea already. So if we’re looking at Houston entering the league in say ’29-’30, you can probably guess that the next expansion franchise won’t come along for two more years. So if they are in fact number one in line, that means a longer wait for the next market, which could potentially be Phoenix.

MARK BRODIE: Right. Now, in the meantime, you’ve also written about the USHL minor league hockey team, which has put two teams in Arizona: one in in the Valley, one in Prescott Valley. Does that have any bearing on whether or not the NHL comes back here?

CRAIG MORGAN: I wouldn’t say it has any direct bearing. I think it just shows that there are multiple people out there at various levels of hockey that believe that this is a good market. It’s a viable market.

Usually the USHL, other than Chicago, avoids markets that have the NHL in it. So in the short term, that may work for them. Prescott Valley could work long term because it’s far enough away. I’m having a hard time understanding how Phoenix works, and honestly, as I just wrote, they they don’t have a place to play yet. They haven’t locked down an arena, so that’s a major issue.

What this really impacts more than anything is the college level. The USHL is the main feeder for Division I college hockey. More than 50% of the players in college hockey have gone through the USHL. So it’s good for ASU for visibility. There’ll be even more scouts than usual, and Coach Greg Powers won’t have to get on a plane every time he wants to go scout a player.

MARK BRODIE: I would imagine that’ll save some time and some money for ASU and and for the for the school, right?

CRAIG MORGAN: Absolutely.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right. That is Craig Morgan, longtime Coyotes beat writer, writes a Substack about hockey, also an ASU journalism professor. Craig, great as always to talk to you. Thank you so much.

CRAIG MORGAN: You as well, Mark. Take care.

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

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Whether it’s at the grocery store or the airport or outside a movie theater or electronic store, most, if not all of us, have waited in a line. Sometimes it’s out of necessity. Sometimes it’s to be the first to see or get our hands on something. And sometimes we maybe don’t even know why we’re in a particular line.

[Audio Clip from "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life"]

MARK BRODIE: That scene is from the show Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. So why do some people seek out lines while others do everything they possibly can to avoid them? And what can lines tell us about ourselves? With me today to discuss is our resident pop culture expert, Amanda Kehrberg, a Ph.D. student at ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Amanda, good morning. Thank you for waiting in a line of sorts to to be on the show before the while the other segments played. Appreciate it.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Good morning. Good morning. I’m happy to be here. I was also in a Starbucks line this morning, so I’ve been in a couple.

MARK BRODIE: Oh, so two lines and it’s not even 10 o’clock. You’re doing great. Um, so like how do you make distinctions between the kinds of lines that people stand in? Like I mentioned, like if you’re going on an airplane, you have to stand in line at TSA, or even if you have like PreCheck, there might be a line there or to get on the plane. Some lines we choose to be in.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Absolutely. Yeah, some lines are just expressions of value, things that we really really want or desire, whether we’re waiting in line for the coolest new food trend or the Nike Book 2s or for Phoenix Fan Fusion. They can be about things that we’re really, really passionate because we tend to hate lines. So if we’re waiting in them, we either absolutely have to be there. It’s the TSA line, it’s the DMV line, it’s, you know, whatever.

MARK BRODIE: Checkout at the grocery store or something.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Exactly, it’s needs and wants. Oh my gosh, yeah, the the Mother’s Day weekend lines at Trader Joe’s were crazy. I remember finding someone with like a board standing back uh by the the dairy section. And he was like, “I’m the end of the line.” And I was like, “OK, what’s up?”

MARK BRODIE: And you probably have to even wait in line to find a parking spot, too, right?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Absolutely. Yeah, never mind the lines we’re in in the drive-thru. So it’s like all of these different kinds of experiences. Because lines are sort of, especially in in our highly individualistic digital society, lines are one of our last third places where we are around each other.

So that really changes the types of people that we’re around, whether we’re just thrown in with the crowds at the DMV or at the airport, just doing our best in the face of adversity — or we are in line for something we really want, in which case we end up in these kind of homogeneous queues with people we might actually want to hang with. People who value the the 5:00 a.m. pastry as much as we do.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So let’s talk a little about sort of the social dynamics, because there’s obviously an a certain etiquette in line, right? Like don’t cut. Do not cut the line, right?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Absolutely. Yeah, and don’t hold spaces. That one’s a little more malleable. OK. Yeah, yeah, it depends. It’s it’s such an interesting cultural thing because around the world different cultures — again depending on how collectivist, individualist they are, how much trust in institutions they have — have different ethical parameters around how they stand in line.

In America, it it really depends. We’re we’re a little messier, but we also still take it very, very seriously. Psychological studies have shown that we prefer fairness to actually speed. So we’d rather that the line had clear social justice than that we got there faster.

And we’re also terrible at telling how long we stand in line. It could actually be five minutes and we’re sure it’s 10. We’re just convinced, which is, obviously lots of stores and uh and customer service research has to be done on this because they’re managing expectations. If we go to the grocery store and the lines are too long, we are not going to be happy.

MARK BRODIE: Right. OK, so what about conversing with your fellow line standers? Like is that OK? Because in some cases like if I’m standing in the grocery store at the line at checkout, like I may be just want to zone out and not talk to somebody. But I wonder like if you’re with your fellow sneakerheads waiting for the latest Air Jordan to drop, maybe it’s it’s better?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: I think so, honestly. I’ve had I’ve had wonderful conversations standing in lines. Even just like recently, I was standing in line for a Mercury giveaway and talking to all the other people in line because they’re probably cool people that I could talk to, we have something in common. It’s like that kind of serendipity that we don’t really have I think in public as much anymore.

That’s very different to the drive-thru line where you’re just in your vehicle entirely enclosed. The only time someone talks to you is if you have to think through the fact that someone’s just paid for your order and now you’re supposed to pay it forward, which it’s its own again ethical quandary.

But yeah, I think then when you get into those “have to be there” lines, a lot of us don’t want to talk to each other. And if we do, maybe it’s to exchange a look of like, “Oh my God.”

MARK BRODIE: This is taking forever.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Look at this. Look at this situation we’re in. Will Ferrell does the best jokes about that. He loves like his favorite character is just the angry American who’s just like, “Come on, I got business to do!”

MARK BRODIE: So, OK, you mentioned how like most of us really don’t like lines, and yet the stereotype of Americans is that we will stand on line for pretty much anything, right?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Did you just say on line? So you got the New York-New Jersey. Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: I am from the East Coast. Do some people say they stand in line?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Yeah, yeah, in line versus on line. Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: And what about people who queue?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Oh yeah, yeah, the British. Very, very serious about it. Very stiff upper lift about doing it. Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: So why like why are we willing to do this if we despise it so much?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: I think that’s really the FOMO. Like Americans, we have this this sense of like we want to be there first, we want to get the newest thing, the latest craze. It’s so much a part of our identity and wanting to experience that whatever, again, whatever the most exciting new thing is.

So that’s like why people are getting up at 4:00 in the morning to go stand in line for pastries in Gilbert or for bagels in Tempe. It’s like you want to be there to experience it, and then especially I think there’s a feedback loop with social media of like, “Hey look at this, I’m in the line. I’m here, I’m here at this really special moment.” The line itself becomes an event.

MARK BRODIE: Well and what about like I have seen instances where like I’ve driven by somewhere and there has been a line, and I’ve seen people kind of walking by and like looking at it and then like rush to the end of it. Like they might not even know what they’re waiting in line for, but they assume there’s a line, there must be something great at the end of it.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Exactly, that’s the line communicates so much of popularity and value externally, too. So if I see a line, I think, “OK, there’s probably something really important at the end of that.” And and again, that like, uh, fear of not getting there at the right time. It’s like if I if I delay even a second, imagine how many more people might be in front of me.

MARK BRODIE: I’ll miss the free whatever they’re giving out or like they’ll run out of the pastry or the bagel or whatever it is that or the slice of pizza, whatever it is people are waiting for.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Whatever it is, whatever it is. Or in Finland, the free bucket.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, yeah. What like what’s the deal with the buckets?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: OK, so in 1974 in Finland, there was a publicity stunt where an opening store gave away free buckets. Hundreds of people showed up.

MARK BRODIE: Just like like buckets you take to the beach, like a plastic sand bucket?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Yeah, just a bucket, yeah, or like, you know, or a mop bucket. Whatever, you can do a lot of things with a bucket. And and so hundreds of Finnish people showed up in line, and since then it’s become a regular thing that places will give away free buckets, and now it’s actually considered kind of a cultural tradition.

They call it the ämpärijono and it’s standing in line talking to people — which again if you know about Finnish culture, they don’t like to do that a lot in public. It’s very much keep to yourself. But for a bucket, heck yeah.

MARK BRODIE: All right, have bucket will stand on line.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: That is Amanda Kehrberg, our resident pop culture expert. Amanda, great as always to talk to you, thank you.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Oh, thank you so much, Mark.

LAUREN GILGER: Jenn McKinlay writes a lot of books. She has published 60 of them, in fact. And now, for the first time, one of them is being adapted for the screen. “Paris Is Always a Good Idea” will be released as a limited series for the Hallmark Channel later this month, starring Lacey Chabert, the queen of Hallmark.

[Audio Clip from Movie Promo]

LAUREN GILGER: For McKinlay, it’s the kind of payoff she never really hoped for in her long career as a writer. She even got to visit the set in Spain where the show was being made, and she came into our studios recently to tell me more about it.

JENN MCKINLAY: I have heard statistics that 1% of all books published get optioned for film.

LAUREN GILGER: OK.

JENN MCKINLAY: Which is basically a studio putting a bookmark, you know, thumbprint on it. And 1% of all options get made into film.

LAUREN GILGER: 1% of 1%.

JENN MCKINLAY: Yeah, it’s like you might as well buy a lottery ticket, you know. It’s lightning in a bottle, you’re lucky. So it for me as a writer, it’s not a it was never an end goal. It was always kind of like, oh if that happens that’s nice, but if it doesn’t, you know, I like that’s, I’m a writer for a reason. I love my books.

LAUREN GILGER: But it did get made into a not just a movie but a series here this time with, you know, the queen of Hallmark and on the Hallmark Channel. And what’s the process like? How much are you a part of the process of your book becoming a movie?

JENN MCKINLAY: I’m sure some authors keep a handle on it. I did not. It happened so fast. The option came up in October-ish, I signed that contract in December. In my mind, I was like, oh, nothing’s going to happen, they’ll option it maybe for another year. Yay me, free money.

And then all of a sudden we got the notice that it was greenlit in December. But then I didn’t hear anything, and I was like, they’re not really doing it, they’re pranking me, they’re going to want the money back.

JENN MCKINLAY: Whole panic. And then the producer and the screenwriter reached out and they said, "Hey, we want to have a meeting, we want to talk to you about, you know, what’s going on." And I was just like, OK, it is happening.

And then we did this wonderful Zoom, and the screenwriters were so great because they took me through every change they made and why. So I can honestly say they stayed true to the banter, the heartfelt speeches, the heart of the book, the themes, all of that are totally there. And every logistical change that they made, I totally understood. So it’s been so easy to get behind the project. And, you know, when they cast it and it was Lacey Chabert, I was just like, wow. Amazing.

LAUREN GILGER: Amazing. Yeah, yeah. OK, so you have called this the book of your heart, right? Talk about why that is, because you’ve written a lot of books.

JENN MCKINLAY: I have, I’ve written a lot. "Paris Is Always a Good Idea" came out of a very strange place in that I have never had a book appear fully formed, ever. And it was, you know, I was taking my son to high school. And I wrote this in 2019.

LAURNE GILGER: Right.

At the time, I had just come back from a funeral in Denver, I was really grief-stricken, I was trying to get my kid, who’s chronically late, trying to get him to high school on time, and he was just like, "Mom, I need an energy drink." I’m like, "Of course you do." So we had to pull over to a Circle K, he ran in, and I’m sitting there. And it was fall, I remember that.

And I’d been asked by my publisher to come up with bigger ideas, like bigger concept, bigger storyline. And I wasn’t having any luck. I think I’d been like, you know, running around in my own brain for like six months with nothing. And then all of a sudden as if it floated in through the window, it was: This is Chelsea Martin and she’s grieving for her mom who died seven years ago from cancer. She’s devoted her life to raising money for cancer research, so she’s a corporate fundraiser. She had a gap year the year before her mother died, she fell in love with three men. She’s lost her way to be happy, her dad’s getting remarried.

And it’s, it was just like bubbling up like, yeah, now she’s crashing out because dad’s remarrying and her parents’ love was the greatest love for her. And her sister challenges her to go back to that gap year, the last time she can remember being happy, and finding those men that she had dated to see if she can find herself again and the Chelsea that used to be.

And then I thought, oh she’s got to have that one coworker, that one annoying coworker, and they’ll go to Europe together on a big ask for the cancer foundation, and he’ll just be a thorn in her side, but also have a front-row seat to all these shenanigans. And a lot of opinions. And a lot of opinions.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, we’re not going to give away the end, because you got to watch it or read it.

JENN MCKINLAY: Totally, or both.

LAUREN GILGER: But I mean, you got to go to the set where they were filming this movie. They filmed in Paris and Spain, right? And I just can’t even imagine what that would feel like to see something that you invented in your head come to life in this real way. What was it like?

JENN MCKINLAY: Oh, it was Well, what surprised me is that I had to kind of battle imposter syndrome. And I kept, you know, the producer was lovely. She kept working out the times because they were filming at 4 in the afternoon until like 3 in the morning.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow, yeah.

JENN MCKINLAY: Yeah, it was brutal. And it was and they’re battling weather. It was like 20 degrees colder than it was supposed to be, it was raining. I mean it was just insane.

So we my sons and I went, and we were kind of doing a research tour because my jam is kind of romantic comedy traveling. So it’s I’m always like, where are we going next? So when they said come to Spain, I was like, "Excellent, I haven’t set anything there." So I was really enjoying, you know, driving through Spain. So we flew into Madrid, drove up to Bilbao, they were filming in a castle, you know, right near that.

And I just, I was just, I kept saying to the producer, "I don’t want to get in the way, I don’t want to be a bother." She finally wrote back to me in all caps: YOU ARE NOT A BOTHER. And then we got to the set and she met us at the gate, we got in, and she had everybody stop what they were doing on set and she announces to everybody, she’s like, "Everyone," and she’s British, but I won’t imitate her because that would be rude. But picture British or hear British.

So she said, "Everyone, this blonde lady wrote the book 'Paris Is Always a Good Idea.' This is Jenn McKinlay. Everybody applaud." And they did. And it was so funny. And I was standing there and I was like, "OK, all right, this is cool."

LAUREN GILGER: "This is cool" is an understatement.

JENN MCKINLAY: And then I didn’t feel like an imposter so much. And then the best part was uh not only meeting the actors and watching them, and watching how hard they work. We got to see Annabelle, who plays the sister, in particular do one scene 10 times, you know, back to one, again, again, again, you know, moving the extras around her, her expression, this camera, that camera. And we were just so enthralled.

And then the director took a minute to come up to me, which this meant so much to me as a creative, and he just said, "This book, this story, the heart, the, you know, choosing joy and getting through grief," and he’s like, "It’s just got something for everybody, we love it." And it was just like, wow, I feel so validated right now. It’s like six years in the making since the book came out, and I finally feel like you get me.

LAUREN GILGER: Well, and this book came out kind of in the midst of the pandemic, right? Like it didn’t get a lot of fanfare, right?

JENN MCKINLAY: It didn’t. It came out in July of 2020. So, you know, my agent and I were talking about it at the time, and I was like, “You know, the sales are great,” because I have written a lot of books before, I said. “But I really kind of thought this one was going to, you know, break out a little bit more.”

And she said, “Well, everyone’s buying self-help books, how to make sourdough and school stuff for their kids.” She’s like, “Fiction’s kind of on the back burner,” and I was like, “OK.”

LAUREN GILGER: Fair enough, fair enough. So this gives it new life in a new way, I’m sure.

JENN MCKINLAY: And I’m thrilled. I’m just thrilled.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so I mean, one of the things that’s so fascinating about you is that you’ve not only just written so many novels is that you’re like a workhorse in the writing world, right? Like, and this is kind of how, and I don’t think people realize this, this is how you kind of make it as a writer, as a working writer, right? Like you write a lot of books.

JENN MCKINLAY: All the time. You’re always working on something. You’re either writing a draft, revising a draft, going over the page proofs, approving the art, promoting something. And I had a I have a friend, a writer, also a Valley writer, Beth Kendrick, and she had told me way back when I kind of pivoted from mystery to contemporary romance where she already was. And she said, “You know, in the writing life, it’s just the harder you work, the luckier you get,” and that’s it.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, you make your own luck in that way.

JENN MCKINLAY: Absolutely.

LAUREN GILGER: So, 60 novels finally getting one to the big screen. This is well deserved, it sounds like.

JENN MCKINLAY: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Congratulations.

Jenn McKinlay is a local author, she writes romance comedies, mysteries as well. The new book, which is now on the Hallmark Channel, is “Paris Is Always a Good Idea.” Jenn, thank you so much.

JENN MCKINLAY: Thank you, Lauren.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for listening to The Show’s podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban. Our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram at @kjzztheshow. We’ll see you back here tomorrow.

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