The Show for July 13, 2026: Transgender sports lawsuit, Scottsdale's water future and more

The lone teenager challenging Arizona’s transgender sports ban is stepping back from the case. This comes as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to protect similar bans around the country. Plus, Scottsdale defends its water future.

Transcript

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning and welcome to The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I'm Lauren Gilger. Coming up, how the city of Scottsdale is planning for major Colorado River cuts. And a modern take on wedding etiquette. But first, it's rare that Democrats and Republicans in Washington agree on much of anything these days. But the so-called 21st Century Road to Housing Act has been celebrated by both parties as the most significant housing legislation in decades. At the same time, President Trump called it a "big yawn" and said he wouldn't sign it unless Congress passed his signature voter ID bill, the SAVE America Act. Well, that has not happened and the president didn't sign the housing law.

But now it has become law without his signature or veto, after passing the 10-day waiting period with no action from the president. The new law is aimed at housing affordability, mainly by encouraging more home building. And our next guest is here to tell us if it could be as significant as lawmakers think. Tina Tamboer is senior housing analyst for the Cromford Report, and she joins me now in studio to tell us more. Good morning, Tina. Thanks for coming in.

TINA TAMBOER: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so there is a lot in this law. It's like 40 provisions. But I want to just start with a lay of the land question about how unaffordable housing has become. I think for a long time we've thought of the Valley, the Phoenix metro area, as an affordable place to live. Is it?

TINA TAMBOER: Well ... it's getting slowly better. And so we did hit a very uncomfortable place right around 2021, '22, when prices went very high along with mortgage rates that caused many people, even married couple families, which are generally the highest income families, to start wincing at the cost of a payment. And so since then, though, we have definitely seen our incomes rise. We rose about 32% to 35% in our median household income for almost all of our segments from 2020 to 2024. If we assume that that has continued on, then we can assume that our affordability is gradually getting better, but it's certainly not perfect.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, OK. So broadly, what's your take on this bill? Do you think it will be impactful?

TINA TAMBOER: I think it will be impactful in the future. So when we look at — let's just take the one piece that was pretty, I guess, controversial, which was the investor ownership side of things. Limiting institutional investors to no more than 350 homes across the nation will definitely keep them from making the party in housing too ruckus, too loud.

So that's kind of what happened in 2021 when Wall Street gets starry-eyed over the potential of housing. When they see shortages, they see profits. And when they go in, they tend to overshadow anybody who's actually just trying to buy a home. They have a lot of cash, and they really drove up prices quite a bit in '21 and '22.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so it's been a couple years since then. Has the party with investors, Wall Street buying up houses, died down?

TINA TAMBOER: Yes, well the party was definitely shut down when mortgage rates went up to 8%. That really shut that party down. We did see a correction in 2022. And since then, really, the prices have been flat. We have seen very little appreciation. If we go into the lower price ranges, we've seen definitely a decline. We've been in a buyer's market for two years.

So prices are already drifting down in many of our most affordable price ranges, specifically under [$300,000], and in some cases under [$400,000], especially if you have a condo. Single-family have held their values a little bit more. But the reality is that we also have to be careful, because if they're going to incentivize new supply, we are currently not in the resale market in an ... under-supply situation. So if you add too many homes too fast, then you cause depreciation and you will hurt more homeowners than you help, because they won't be able to sell their home and afford all of the expenses associated with that.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So the housing market is always about supply and demand, about kind of keeping a balance.

TINA TAMBOER: Yes.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. OK. So let's talk about some of the ways in which this housing legislation could in the future maybe affect that balance, because it's trying to kind of spur developers, cut some red tape, things like allowing developers to skip environmental reviews in certain cases. How big of a dent could those kind of things make?

TINA TAMBOER: I think it could definitely help builders catch up. So if say, for instance, we see even a half-point drop in mortgage rates and improving that affordability to getting closer and closer to normal, you'll see demand pick up. And when demand picks up, then builders are under more pressure to build those homes faster or accommodate. So removing some of that red tape really does give them more flexibility to adjust to changes in the marketplace like that in terms of demand.

LAUREN GILGER: But you don't want to overbuild, basically.

TINA TAMBOER: We've already experienced the overbuilding consequences. If you look at 2004 and 2005, you can see what the after-effects of 2008 can happen, especially if you're overbuilding because there's too much demand because Wall Street at that time was investing in mortgages.

So like I said, anytime Wall Street gets involved and they want to make your party a little louder, a little more debauchery going on, there's usually going to be some form of correction in terms of a shutdown. And years later, you will get some form of legislation. And so we've seen this now cycle twice. And the last time this happened during the 2008 crash, we got the Dodd-Frank Act, if you remember, which was a very harsh crackdown on lending. And so this time around, the party was brought on by Wall Street investing in the houses themselves, and now we have a piece of legislation years later cracking down on investors.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, last minute here for you, Tina. How much can federal legislation like this make an impact? Does local zoning generally have more impact on housing than something federally?

TINA TAMBOER: I think the federal government only has but so many tools in their tool shed. And so when it comes down to really affecting how the federal incentives are implemented, it's going to be on your local side of things. And so that's where our professionals here in the Valley really have the ear of the Legislature to ensure that these incentives and these rules go where they belong and actually help the people that truly need it.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, we'll leave it there. Tina Tamboer, senior housing analyst for the Cromford Report, joining us. Tina, thank you for coming in, appreciate it.

TINA TAMBOER: My pleasure.

LAUREN GILGER: The challenge to Arizona's transgender school sports ban is all but over, as the sole teenager who was challenging it decided to step back from the case. Without "Jane Doe," as she's called, the case cannot move forward.

The move comes in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing states to ban transgender students from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Arizona's challenge goes back to 2022 when then-Gov. Doug Ducey signed the Save Women's Sports Act amid a wave of anti-trans legislation nationwide. The following year, Jane Doe and another student filed lawsuits against Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne. The second student left the case when she graduated high school.

Once she was elected, Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes wouldn't defend the law in court. But there have been years of legal back-and-forth and petitions for the Supreme Court to weigh in, and all of it was exhausting for the young plaintiff, according to our next guest this morning. Rachel Berg is senior staff attorney for the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, and she represented Jane Doe in the case, and I spoke with her more about it.

RACHEL BERG: The litigation has been going on for over three years since our client started middle school. And it's a very grueling and difficult process, particularly for young people. And our client has decided that she does not want to continue with the litigation for personal reasons.

LAUREN GILGER: When you say grueling, just give folks a sense of what goes into this for someone who is a plaintiff in a case like this.

RACHEL BERG: It's a lot of time and energy, and she was deposed during the litigation. It's a lot for a young child to go through and put themselves out there.

LAUREN GILGER: So, stepping back from this case, as she has decided to do, what's your reaction to this? This is also three years of work that you've put into this case, and it comes on the heels of this decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on this issue.

RACHEL BERG: I understand her feelings not wanting to continue because she is just such a young child, and it's just so hard that these young kids have to go through something like this just to be able to play sports with their friends. So, I very much respect her decision. The Supreme Court decision was very disappointing. I also, though, want to point out that it is narrow and leaves the door open to different arguments and still allows states who permit transgender girls to play to continue to do so. So it is narrow.

LAUREN GILGER: It sounded like almost a threading the needle kind of decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.

RACHEL BERG: While we are very disappointed with the decision, the decision itself is narrow because it does still permit states that are allowing transgender girls to play to continue to allow them to do so. It also allows for inclusive policies in general, and the ruling doesn't reach beyond the sports context. So it still doesn't address different issues that come up under Title IX in relation to transgender students, like harassment in schools and locker rooms or bathrooms, for example.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So, looking at this pretty narrow, as you're describing, decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on this issue nationally, where does it leave transgender students who might want to play sports in Arizona?

RACHEL BERG: So the decision itself leaves them no worse off in the sense that the Arizona Legislature's ban that it passed has been in effect since the beginning. Our ruling only related to the two individual clients that we represented. So unfortunately, the ban is still in effect and the ruling doesn't change that that is still in effect, unfortunately.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. There are, as you mentioned, though, some unanswered questions here in terms of where the SCOTUS decision leaves us, right? In terms of kids in grammar school, what about recreational leagues as opposed to just school sports, things like that? It sounds like there are some unanswered, open questions that you'll probably be dealing with in future cases.

RACHEL BERG: Yes, the ruling does not say anything about the states that are allowing transgender girls to play. It leaves the door open for inclusive policies. It's only limited to the sports context. It doesn't resolve the underlying science around whether somebody who takes puberty-blocking medication and hormone therapy has any competitive advantage, which they do not. And it leaves open the level of constitutional protections for transgender people.

LAUREN GILGER: I wonder if you were surprised by some of the wording in this decision. Like, Justice Kavanaugh wrote in the decision that transgender girls and women who want to play sports deserve respect, should not be ostracized or vilified. Was that heartening to you?

RACHEL BERG: No. While it was nice of him to say that, his ruling does allow for discrimination against them. So it wasn't much comfort to hear that.

LAUREN GILGER: So it sounds like you understand the position that your particular client is coming from in this Arizona case. She was the last one in the case. And I wonder, we saw the same thing happen with the transgender girl in the Idaho case that made it to the Supreme Court, right? Who sort of decided not to play sports in the end after all. Do you see a chilling effect here?

RACHEL BERG: Well, I think what's important to realize is just how young these kids are and that these laws are — young kids have to endure a litigation process to play sports. And that is just cruel. And it just takes a toll on these young people.

LAUREN GILGER: What are you watching for next, Rachel, in cases that you're considering or litigation you're watching here or around the country on this front? As we mentioned, many unanswered questions. Are you already involved in litigation that's attempting to answer those? Are there other cases on the horizon?

RACHEL BERG: Right now, I'm focusing on the Arizona ballot initiative relating to this topic and looking to see where that goes and whether we're able to challenge that. Also looking at other issues involving harassment of students in schools in Arizona.

LAUREN GILGER: Rachel Berg, senior staff attorney for the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, joining us. Rachel, thank you for coming on the show, I appreciate it.

RACHEL BERG: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It is The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Lauren Gilger. Coming up, a collection of wedding planning stories captures the good, the bad, and the downright funny.

But first, the city of Scottsdale and its water future has been in the headlines a lot lately, from its on-again, off-again plans to get highly treated wastewater directly to your tap to its reliance on Colorado River water amid what are likely to be pretty big cuts coming to that supply.

Now, Scottsdale Mayor Lisa Borowski says they're taking a major step towards securing their long-term water outlook by directing their city manager and city attorney to potentially create a large water use ordinance for the city.

Camryn Sanchez from KJZZ’s Politics Desk joined The Show to talk more about it.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Camryn.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so what exactly does this most recent announcement from the mayor say about the city's water future?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: You know, what's weird is that it didn't really say anything. So basically, we got this press release saying that the City Council is directing their staff to have a meeting to talk about creating an ordinance, and the ordinance is going to have something to do with water, and that something is going to help secure the water future.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. OK. So let's talk about that. They have to kind of diversify their water sources in Scottsdale. And because Scottsdale is in a somewhat unique position, especially in comparison to other cities in the Valley, they get more of their water from the Colorado River than most places, 70% is the number. And that water is likely facing big cuts.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, and in some parts of Scottsdale, it's even more than 70%, depending on where you are in the city. Your water is a hodgepodge of different sources. But they have to be prepared for these cuts, and nobody knows exactly how much those cuts are going to be. Therefore, you don't know how strong the impact is going to be.

So the city of Scottsdale, the politicians, local officials, are trying to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. They recently also approved in Scottsdale an $8 million purchase of water credits from Harquahala Valley, which is another kind of aquifer in the area, in an effort to diversify its water portfolio. Could that make a dent?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I think it could. I think it's practical. And I don't think it's probably the first or the last thing that we're going to see in this vein from municipalities who want to not have all of their eggs in one basket, so to speak. If you're having water coming in from different sources, then one of those sources being impacted doesn't hurt you as badly.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so I had Scottsdale's interim water director, Thyra Ryden-Diaz, in, and she kind of disputed some of this broad characterization of Scottsdale's water situation. We'll hear from her in a moment, we'll hear that interview.

But first, let me ask you, Camryn, about the history here, because Scottsdale has been sort of a trailblazer in what's called advanced water treatment, AWT. And this is one of the first places in the country that reused treated wastewater in certain areas. Tell us how it's used there.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yes, so basically, in Scottsdale, your wastewater goes into this giant plant and it gets purified there, and then it goes into this aquifer and it recharges it. And then it does eventually go back into the faucets and water systems of homes and businesses in Scottsdale.

So, fun fact, this has actually been in use right for years now, many years in Scottdale.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, wastewater, treated wastewater, is already in the taps in Scottsdale, it just goes through this very long process.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Which I think might be news to some people.

But yes, it's not actually a new program. And some of that wastewater that's been treated goes into things like the golf courses, and there's a system for that. So again, this is not a new concept. This isn't even the only municipality in the country or the world that's doing this.

But there is a plan to change the way that it works, in the terms of instead of having it be purified and then go and sit in an aquifer for a long time, a period of maybe 10 or so years, having it be treated and then go straight back into the taps.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. This is advanced water purification, AWP, a little bit different than advanced water treatment. And like you're saying, like a more advanced version here that would kind of skip that aquifer process. Tell us about what plans have looked like in Scottsdale on that.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: They were looking at funding that program, and that more direct program, it would, it would bypass the charging system, it would bypass the long waiting period. But the water itself wouldn't really be any different. So it would just make things faster and more streamlined.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. This pure water, as the city is calling it, is kind of being dragged right now into the political fray. It's being derided, this phrase "toilet to tap" that we've all heard. Tell us about the kind of political side of this.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: So basically, we got some folks running for Scottsdale City Council, and this is one of the points they've been crusading on from the get-go. So we've got this former lawmaker, Michelle Ugenti-Rita, we've got a guy named Bob Littlefield. They are running sort of together on a slate, and they're accusing the current Scottsdale City Council and Solange Whitehead of basically trying to force these democratic or Green New Deal or scary toilet-to-tap policies without being honest about that water and claiming that the city of Scottsdale, under the management it has now, is trying to force residents to unknowingly drink basically sewage, which, you know, is not really the case.

But it is an effective scare tactic. And we've seen Ugenti-Rita, she appeared with Rob Schneider, who's an actor/MAGA person, sort of posing with a glass of dark brown liquid and saying, "This is, what you're going to be drinking in Scottsdale if you don't elect Michelle and the other people that she's running with."

Now, whether or not that's going to work on the residents of Scottsdale who are voting in the upcoming election, can't be sure. But I think that maybe the City Council saw the writing on the wall and didn't want to push this purification system hard ahead of this election.

LAUREN GILGER: And we'll hear from the Scottsdale interim water director in a moment about what she says is happening in terms of the funding of that advanced water purification. But one last question for you before I let you go, Camryn, because I think the irony here is that advanced water treatment has been really successful, and it's seen as sort of a model in the water world, right?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: It's been successful. It's been used for I think a few decades now. It's not new. We're not the only place that does it. And also, anywhere you're getting water, it has been treated. And it's possible that weird things have been in it, like contaminants, but they've been filtered out.

So if you're buying a bottle of Aquafina, if you're turning on your tap and using a Brita filter, that's treated water. And I know that the idea of toilet to tap definitely puts the fear of God in people's hearts, but it is not a new system.

LAUREN GILGER: KJZZ's Camryn Sanchez joining us. Camryn, thank you.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: And we'll hear more on this from Scottsdale's interim water director after the break.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It is The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Lauren Gilger. And now let's continue with our look at the water situation in the city of Scottsdale, which has been getting a lot of attention of late because of the amount of water it receives from the shrinking Colorado River, which is likely to face major cuts.

And there were a lot of headlines recently about the most recent Scottsdale City Council approved budget, and that in it, leaders voted to freeze funding for its plan to send treated wastewater directly to consumers, or advanced water purification.

But Thyra Ryden-Diaz, interim senior director of Scottsdale Water, told me it is not as simple as saying this funding was frozen.

THYRA RYDEN-DIAZ: We have the same amount of funding for water projects, $331 million roughly, as we did in the previous fiscal year.

LAUREN GILGER: But $100 million included in that budget won't be available until fiscal year 2028. And it's for, quote, "new water sources." That could be for treating wastewater, but Ryden-Diaz told me it depends on the results of studies they're currently carrying out, and revised rules being issued by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, or ADEQ.

OK, so you're saying that advanced water purification funding could be there in the future. You want to study it first?

THYRA RYDEN-DIAZ: So we're studying it right now. We're studying the capital and the operational cost that we would have under the current ADEQ rule, and we're waiting for the final rule to come out, that may be a whole another year.

So we're, we're three-quarters of the way there. We just need to study what that, that other 25% is and if it's the best use for our, our capital and our operational funds moving forward.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so that's the city's take on headlines saying the city is backing away from advanced water purification. But Ryden-Diaz also wanted to defend Scottsdale's long-term water situation. Here is more of our conversation.

This has been sort of dragged into politics of late. I wondered what you think about this, because you've got lots of sort of debate about this. We heard a lot of that at the City Council meeting recently, and maligning the science of this. What do you say to folks who are skeptical about having that water in their tap?

THYRA RYDEN-DIAZ: I give them the example of the water bottle. When people are concerned about drinking that water, I said, "If you buy your Costco water or your Fry's water and you leave your plastic water bottle in your car and it gets a little warm, that water is way dirtier than the water that comes out of the pure water for sure. I mean, and it's tested, and you're not testing that, that, that water bottle. We test all the time.

LAUREN GILGER: So let's talk about what the makeup of water in Scottsdale might look like moving forward, right? Because the city uses a lot of Colorado River water, 70% is the number that keeps coming up. And, looking at massive cuts to the Colorado River water coming to the state, to the region, those negotiations are ongoing, but it seems very clear Arizona is not going to fare very well there.

What's your response to that? Is that the case? Do you think Scottsdale is in a really tough spot looking at the future of the Colorado River?

THYRA RYDEN-DIAZ: So I get disappointed by some of the coverage because Scottsdale has worked on, and I've worked on capital projects in the, in the water department for more than 20 years. And so Scottsdale has planned, we definitely have planned our capital expenses, we've planned for this for a long time, we knew.

So our water portfolio is pretty large, and we've participated in lots of studies like the Roosevelt Dam and bringing that dam elevation up, and then we have some of that water. We have water, we're participating in the Bartlett Dam study, so if that we raise that dam, we might participate in that capital expense to get that water there, and that comes from the Verde Valley River watershed. And then we have water east of Phoenix in a different AMA, in the Harquahala Valley. So we have that coming in, we're ahead on that. We have some long-term storage credits that we're going to consider at the next council meeting, buying some of those, and we have and we've been banking.

So we only use about, about a quarter of the Colorado River water that we get. We have been pumping for a long time, so we have been saving for a really long time.

LAUREN GILGER: So that 70% number is not wrong, you're just saying, “we don't use it all.”

THYRA RYDEN-DIAZ: We do not use it all. And then, and we pump not only in the Phoenix AMA, we also store in Tucson, we've stored with the Superstitions, so we've spread out to make sure that if there was a problem with the Phoenix AMA that we would be covered. So we have really planned really well, and we have the infrastructure to supply our needs for our citizenry for a very long time, and we have a diverse portfolio that we can switch up if we need to.

LAUREN GILGER: So, and when you're talking about AMAs, you're talking about these active management areas, it's essentially like you're saying, we store in various groundwater reservoirs?

THYRA RYDEN-DIAZ: Yes, so bank accounts. So that's the Phoenix bank account for water, that's right.

LAUREN GILGER: So, I mean, when you look at the future of water, not just in Scottsdale, but in the region, do you think it's going to have to be sort of a patchwork like this, like you're describing these diverse water sources? It's going to have to rely on a lot of different areas because there will be less water for everyone?

THYRA RYDEN-DIAZ: So yes, and, and it's a whole state problem. It's also about getting the water where it is. So there's no more cheap water left. So we got to let go of that.

But we also have to all work because being able to water exchange and Phoenix is, is working on a swap program, we'll participate with them on that when we get some more details. And we're going to be part of the solution. We're not approaching this, there's no silver bullet for any community. So we're looking at it as a buckshot solution, that's what I told council. So there's going to be a lot of pieces that we, we get together, and we're going to have to be real flexible with the solutions.

LAUREN GILGER: How big of a piece do you anticipate advanced water purification being of that pie in the future?

THYRA RYDEN-DIAZ: You know, every city's going to be different, and so, and it really depends on how much wastewater you have right now. Like we're going to push out conservation because every drop we save is one that we don't have, and that's just being good stewards of our resource.

That's not to scare anyone, that's not to give these water restrictions that don't make sense, and there's, there's lots of things we're going to do. We're going to talk about, we've been working on, smart meters and we have little listening devices that listen for leaks and we're, we're, there's a lot of things that we're doing. But we've been planning for decades, we're ready for this.

LAUREN GILGER: You're ready for this?

THYRA RYDEN-DIAZ: We've always known that we weren't going to be able to rely on that, that Colorado River water forever. And so we, we have the infrastructure and certainly the, the technical know-how to figure out how to further diversify our, our portfolio moving forward.

LAUREN GILGER: But 70% of your water coming from the Colorado River, if that's gone, how do you ...

THYRA RYDEN-DIAZ: But that's 70% of what we're using right now, and we're only using three-quarters of that. So we just don't save as much.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. Thyra Ryden-Diaz joining us, interim senior director for Scottsdale Water, joining us. Thyra, thank you very much for coming in studio, appreciate it.

THYRA RYDEN-DIAZ: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: More than 2 million couples in the U.S. got married last year, according to research from The Knot Worldwide. That same study found the wedding industry is worth more than $100 billion in this country.

In addition to being fun, happy events, weddings and wedding planning can also be stressful. And a new podcast from our next guest explores some of those stories. Lizzie Post is co-president of the Emily Post Institute, and in addition to the Awesome Etiquette podcast she hosts, she's also added Emily Post Wedding Stories.

She says the idea came from interviews she did with couples for a new version of a wedding etiquette book she's writing. After talking to them as research, Post realized other people would want to hear their stories, so she asked them if they'd be—if they'd mind sharing their experiences publicly.

Lizzie Post spoke with my co-host, Mark Brodie, about what she's heard from couples who have recently planned weddings, and they started with the fact that weddings can be kind of fraught events in some ways. So, based on her conversations, what were some of the biggest issues people came across while planning theirs?

LIZZIE POST: You know, I was expecting that a lot of these stories would have BuzzFeed-like tales of woe and, “Oh, this person behaved terribly,” or “This person brought a whole entourage with them” — those kinds of things. By and large, people dealt with a lot of really good behavior during these weddings. But funny things did happen.

I just re-interviewed a couple who we had some technical glitches on their interview, and they reminded me that the dad forgot his pants. Now, he did not show up pants-less to the wedding. They found him pants. But after all the reminders, he forgot the pants to his black suit that he was supposed to be wearing, and so that was kind of like a last-minute — and he had traveled two states away in order to be at the wedding, and so there was no like, “Oh, let me just run home and grab my pants” kind of a thing. And everyone else from the town had already left, so there wasn’t like “Send them with Aunt Sue” or something like that.

But that one really cracked me up. I had a a bride who was very, very proud of the fancy porta-potties that they had gotten that really functioned like real bathroom, and she she talked — I wouldn’t say in great detail, but with with a bit of glee — about how she had one guest who was like, “I don’t use porta-potties, I am not using the porta-potties.” She’s like, “You’re going to want to use these. Like they’re good, they’re good.” And it’s just the things you don’t think about that become a part of your wedding planning.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because you hear so many stories of somebody saying something or doing something — or not saying something, or not doing something — that causes all sorts of tension, especially around weddings. It sounds like those were not the experiences that you heard about.

LIZZIE POST: I heard, I mean there were tense moments for people. The first couple that we interviewed, Alicia and Kim, they planned a destination wedding in the Caribbean, in Dominica, and they didn’t realize that there’s a cruise ship that docks at a certain place every Saturday or Thursday, whatever day of the week it was they got married on.

And the cruise ship was there all week long, it was raining all week long. And sure enough, the day of their wedding, the cruise ship was gone and the sun came out, there were rainbows. It was like everything worked out.

Or someone they didn’t realize a cousin had a wife and a child, and so two extra people showed up, but it was absolutely fine. They were excited to welcome those people in. So it wasn’t it wasn’t really catastrophe things. I got a lot of stories of things that people were worried weren’t going to work out and then worked out really, really well. So that was really nice.

I don’t know if it was that people just didn’t want to air the dirty laundry or what, but I felt like for the most part, I was hearing all this all these positive things of people really coming together and making things work. Or even if they struggled with certain things like a parent wanting something a certain way, they were able to move through it and around it. And for me, that just gives me such a sign of hope that it’s not all a comedy of errors and it’s not all the bad stories that I think are are so prevalent in the media.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Well, so you mentioned how a lot of the people you talked to had things that they were worried about. And I wonder if if the fact that this is obviously a big event for the people who are getting involved — and in some ways for the people who are attending, you know, the parents of the people getting married or children of the people getting married, if that is the case.

I wonder if the fact that it is such a big event and the fact that people get concerned about it going perfectly, does that lead, do you think, to some of the tensions that can come up in these kinds of events?

LIZZIE POST: Absolutely. I think when you put that pressure on yourself, that can really arise. One of the things a lot of couples talked about was the fact that this was more decision-making than they had ever done in their life before. That even if they had a wedding planner or a venue who had a an event manager that was working with them, they were on task for choosing the salt and pepper shakers that would be on the table, the flower arrangements, the the napkins, and then the cocktail napkins, and then the glassware, and the this — and it was just it was mind-boggling how many decisions they had to make, which led to some good advice making it into the book about taking a break, decision fatigue, things like that.

But that was one of the places where people just felt a little more overwhelmed. I think things like weather can definitely get people nervous because that’s something you can’t control. I had very few tales, though, of “How am I going to control someone’s behavior?” And I think that was a good thing, you know what I mean? Because I think that that can stress people out.

But for me, one of the tough ones is always generational divides on traditions and things like that. I can remember for my sister’s wedding, my mom was like, “There has to be a bride’s cake,” and it’s a little piece of fruitcake that everyone gets to take home. And traditions are silly, but the bridesmaids are supposed to put them under their pillows, and they’ll dream of the man they’re going to marry.

You know, silly like really dated things like that. And my sister was such a genius. She goes, “Mom, I think you should be in charge of figuring that out.” And she then my mom didn’t go find the right kind of fruitcake that she wanted for it and everything, and there wasn’t a bride’s cake to send little slices home with people. …

It’s kind of funny sometimes the things that people will get a little bit hung up on.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Well, so you mentioned traditions, and I would think that that can be a very difficult thing to navigate — be they religious traditions or family traditions or any other kind of traditions. What did you hear from the folks with whom you spoke about one half of the couple wanted something and the other wanted something else? Or one side of the family, the extended family wanted something, and the other side either wanted something else or wasn’t OK with that?

LIZZIE POST: Yeah, so not in these stories, but on our other podcast, Awesome Etiquette, we got a question about a wedding where one side of the family — I think it was like the groom’s family — did not drink alcohol. Alcohol consumption and dancing were not OK. And the bride’s family, alcohol consumption and dancing are exactly how you celebrate: You drink and you dance, and this is what we do.

And they came together in a way where the dancing and the bar opening happened after the ceremony, the like non-alcoholic cocktail hour and the dinner. And then after that, they opened it up to guests who would like to stay to dance and imbibe could. And I thought that was a really smart way to handle that.

I will tell you what shocked me was — and I shouldn’t say shocked, but surprised me — was how many couples did not want to do either a first dance or a cutting of the cake. And from an etiquette perspective, the cutting of the cake was always the signal that like, OK, all the traditions have been finished, you can leave the party if you want to.

And so I was like, “Well, what did you do? Like, what was that like? You didn’t do a cake. Did you do pie? Did you do cookies? Did you do donuts? Like what’d you do?” And it was really kind of fun hearing all the different ways. But I would say a good third to 45% of the people did not do a cutting of the cake, which surprised me.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Lizzie Post, co-president of the Emily Post Institute, where she hosts two podcasts, Awesome Etiquette and Emily Post Wedding Stories. Lizzie, great to talk to you again. Thank you so much.

LIZZIE POST: Thanks so much, and I really hope folks will go check out Emily Post Wedding Stories. It’s a lot of fun.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It's the show on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Lauren Gilger. And now let's continue with our look at the water situation in the city of Scottsdale, which has been getting a lot of attention of late because of the amount of water it receives from the shrinking Colorado River, which is likely to face major cuts. And there were a lot of headlines recently about the most recent Scottsdale City Council approved budget, and that in it, leaders voted to freeze funding for its plan to send treated wastewater directly to consumers, or advanced water purification. But Chris Baisan is a research specialist at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona and has worked on this research. My co-host, Mark Brodie, spoke with Baisan earlier this year, and they began with how surprising he found this chain reaction to be.

CHRIS BAISAN: Well, it's I think it's pretty unusual to you know, it wasn't what we were looking for. We were this this was not a research question when the initial investigation started. It was just a an attempt to verify the dating on some wood that we had in in our archive, as it might have been related to something that work that Jonathan Palmer was doing down in New Zealand.

MARK BRODIE: So you were just trying to figure out like how old this wood was and it kind of led you to this other discovery?

CHRIS BAISAN: Yes, so Jonathan and some people down under there were investigating this magnetic pole reversal that occurred around 42, 43,000 years ago with tree rings and radiocarbon work. And the wood that this driftwood we had from Stanton's Cave had been previously dated to around 43,000 years, so we wanted to verify if it really was 43,000 years ago and that and that therefore might bear on the research that Jonathan and his colleagues were already doing. When we got the date back, it turned out to be over 50,000 years old. So, it didn't have anything to do with that period of time that we had initially been interested in. And Jonathan had previous to a visit to Tucson had stopped at the Meteor Crater and was aware of the proposed date for the impact there. And so when we got the date for the wood, he just kind of in an off-the-cuff way, the way that you might if you're having a conversation at a bar or something, "Oh, isn't that interesting, that the meteor struck about the same time as the date, the radiocarbon date we got for the wood." And the group of people that were involved with that radiocarbon dating and myself, we just kind of kicked it around a little bit and said, "Well, that is kind of interesting. Maybe maybe there's something there, maybe we should look into it."

MARK BRODIE: Well, so how did you go about trying to connect one to the other?

CHRIS BAISAN: So, the first was to investigate what the researchers who had looked at the driftwood in Stanton's Cave back in the 1970s and early '80s see what they had said and what their reasoning was for why there was driftwood in this cave that's really high above the river. And their hypothesis was that downstream from the cave, a section of the canyon wall had collapsed and dammed the river and made a lake, and that this had raised the water level near the cave high enough to allow in flood times for driftwood to be deposited in in on the cave floor. So, the fact that there was this rockfall, which is unusual—I mean, there are not many events like that that have occurred in the canyon that people are aware of, this rockfall is an unusual event, the meteor impact is an unusual event and we began to speculate that they might be connected.

MARK BRODIE: What is the significance of the fact that this one event triggered more impacts? I guess maybe impacts is not the right word, but more incidents on Earth?

CHRIS BAISAN: Well, meteor strikes of course are a common occurrence in our solar system, but on Earth, there are not that many large ones that are recent. So Meteor Crater is an example of one that's in geologic terms relatively recent. The crater's well preserved, and it's possible to actually study it a little bit. So, it's a nice opportunity to to maybe try to see if we can demonstrate that these things are actually connected and that the rockfall might might well have been a consequence of the impact.

MARK BRODIE: Is it possible that there are more consequences, like more events happened as a result of the sort of the chain reaction here?

CHRIS BAISAN: Well, I mean, there's been some work done estimating what the the impact did in the local area. Of course, it spread debris all over the place, kind of a rain of fiery debris, and probably caused wildfires. There's a sediment core in a lake that's not too distant from the crater where there's a charcoal layer that might be associated with some fires that were caused by the impact, and certainly the wildlife and things that were around the crater were highly impacted by the impact. But this is at some distance. So over 100 miles away, so that's kind of interesting and it and it serves as just a a reminder of, you know, you have an event you can see the crater, but then trying to understand what would happen, if we were to observe such a thing today. That's that's an important line of investigation, I think.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so I'm glad you brought up the distance because, as you say, the Grand Canyon is not right next door to Meteor Crater here. It's, as you reference, about 100 miles away. Is there a significance to the fact that the impact at Meteor Crater could have an impact that far away? Like, does that tell us anything maybe about the size of the impact or about the the dynamics of the impact in some way that it it could it could affect events so far away from where it actually happened?

CHRIS BAISAN: We're hoping that some follow-on work will try to model the seismic effect of the of the impact and look at the at the structural geology of the terrain between the crater and the canyon to see how effective that those rock layers might be to transmit the impact and maybe provide a little more evidence that would support the hypothesis that we put forward.

MARK BRODIE: So does that mean that it would be dependent on sort of what's below the surface to determine would help help you figure out like why something that happened at Meteor Crater affected the Grand Canyon?

CHRIS BAISAN: Sure. So, the impact caused an earthquake. Quite, what we would refer to as an earthquake, but as opposed to the typical seismic activity that we have when we think of, the San Andreas Fault or something, those occur well below the surface, sometimes many kilometers below the surface. And this is a this is an a seismic shock that that was delivered to the surface layers. So, the upper the upper layers would be the ones that would transmit this laterally over to the canyon, and that's the Colorado Plateau. There's sedimentary layers that that stretch all across there, so it would be helpful to have a a model that was specific to that region and then a simulation of what we think the explosive force was and how that might be transmitted.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Chris Baisan, a tree-ring scientist at the University of Arizona. Chris, thank you so much, I really appreciate it.

CHRIS BAISAN: Okay, thanks, Mark.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for listening to The Show's podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by John Hoban and our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram at @kjzztheshow.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created for audience accessibility. Transcripts are created on deadline with the assistance of AI tools and then edited, and may not be in their final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio segment.