The Show for July 16, 2026: A 2nd nuclear plant in Arizona, the new Latino divide and more

With summers getting hotter, more people moving here and more data centers being built, Arizona needs more sources of power. Now Arizona leaders want to build a new nuclear power plant. Plus, the Latino divide is no longer just political.

Transcript

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

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.

Good morning and welcome to The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Lauren Gilger.

Coming up, utilities want to build a second major nuclear power plant in Arizona, but a lack of water could be a problem. And how our physical environment impacts our psychological one.

But first, in 2024, Latino voters stunned the political world when nearly half of them backed President Donald Trump. It was the largest share of the Latino vote any GOP candidate has gotten in modern times. That's according to our next guest.

Russell Contreras covers justice and race for Axios, and he's on the line now to tell us more about a new Pew Research Center report that shows Latino voters aren't just divided over their support for the president, they're divided over what it means to be Latino and whether they even call themselves Latino.

Good morning, Russell. Thanks for coming back on The Show.

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Good to be with you, Lauren.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so it looks like this divide among Latino voters that we saw play out in the last election cycle goes a lot deeper than politics.

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: That's right. It's not just about ideology, it's about how they define themselves in the United States and what labels they use to describe themselves. According to Pew, the majority of Latinos who backed Trump, about 57%, say ... what happens to be Latino in the United States, how that affects their lives, not much or not at all.

That's very contradictory to the 75% of Latinos who voted for Kamala Harris, who say what happens to be Latino affects their lives a great deal. So even where they stand and how they are in their positionality of the United States, that reflects on how they vote.

So it's not just where they stand on, say, taxes or abortion. It's how they see themselves when they look in the mirror ... and when people ask them on the streets, "What are you? What's your ethnicity?" Very different views, and in those views, they come to different political conclusions.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, I think this really hit home for me reading this research when it talked about how Latinos identify themselves — like, what they even call themselves. Trump voters were much more likely to just refer to themselves as simply American, right?

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: That's right. A vast majority of Trump voters say when they ask them, "What do you say?" they'll say, "Well, I consider myself American," just flat out American.

That's very different from, say, Harris voters, where they'll use a variety of terms. They'll say Latino, they'll say Hispanic, they'll say Mexican American, they'll say Central American. They are very fluid in their identity because the Democrats in general are a coalition party, and the Republicans are more homogeneous across the board.

So it's not surprising that when you ask Latino Trump voters how they see themselves, what terms they use, they'll come and say, "I'm an American." Because they see themselves as that. And as a community of Trump voters, that's what they embrace.

LAUREN GILGER: One thing everyone, it seems, to agree on, almost no one calls themselves Latinx, Latine, things like that?

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Exactly. Only 1% according to this survey used the term Latinx. Only 1% used the new term Latine — that's the little "e" at the sign, that's what's getting popular in Latin America. So only 1%. And you will start to see those in nonprofits and progressive-leaning groups.

But if 1% are only using, it's started this conversation: Should we continue to use it? Because think about it, if I'm going — and I do this sometimes — if I'm going to northern New Mexico and I'm talking to Hispanic ranchers. These are guys in northern New Mexico, they're salt of the earth guys, they're driving trucks, they're tending horses, they're shooting elk. I'm not going to go up to them and say, "Hey brother, what do Latinx people think here?" They'll probably shoot me. [LAUGHS] They may be progressive on certain issues, but if I start with the term Latinx, right off the gate, they know that I'm not connected to them. I'm disconnected, I'm out of touch with their issues, and they'll say, "City boy, go back to where you came from."

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So, I mean, are the parties, Russell, catching on to this? Like, are Democrats, for example, losing people with messaging right away by saying the wrong thing, using the wrong term?

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: That's a good question. I know Ruben Gallego, when he was a congressman, before he became senator there in Arizona, banned his office from using Latinx, because he started looking at the polls and said, "This is no longer — this is not, we're not penetrating our constituents, and they're not learning, they're not even engaging with us."

So if I wanted to talk about environmental issues and say, "How are, say, smoke pollution from wildfires affecting your communities?" I'm not going to go and say, "How is the wildfires affecting you Latinx people?" Because they're going to turn you off right there. So you're not even engaging in where you wanted to go on poverty, on environmental.

So the terms that you use really define how you define the issues. So that's one way, but not all Democrats are doing that. The progressives seem to be very stubborn on this issue, especially on the East Coast, and that's creating a lot of tensions.

LAUREN GILGER: It's really interesting. One thing we should talk about here is the generational divide, like as in immigrant generation, right? Like you saw this very clearly in the Pew research, how recently someone has come to this country really impacts the way they view themselves.

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: That's right. And you see a lot of that with the World Cup. You see a lot of folks rallying around Mexico. It depends on how generationally removed you are from the motherland, so to speak.

So for someone who's fourth or fifth generation, maybe not so much. It may be a sense of cultural pride. But for those who are first generation, second generation, you still refer to yourselves as, say, Mexican American, or say, Guatemalan American, or even use the term Guatemalan. Because they're not necessarily embracing the Americanness yet, and it takes time.

But once you're third-plus, fourth-plus, fifth-plus, that's where the identity kind of moves away because you're so far removed from there. In fact, you don't even — in some cases, like myself, can't even pronounce my last name correctly, according to some people.

So and that's going to affect how you see yourself, right? We kind of make fun of reporters who do this, especially Latino reporters, where you'll say your name a certain way when you're among friends, but when you get behind the camera, I'm like, "This is Russell Contreras from Axios." And you get clowned by your own family like, "You've never talked like that."

LAUREN GILGER: [LAUGHS\That's really interesting. So let me ask you before we let you go, Russell, about how the parties might use or maybe learn something from this research. Because, I mean, we really saw the GOP be successful with appealing to Latino voters last time around. And was it because they talked to them, you know, just about the same issues that everyone else talked about, like the economy, more than anything?

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Yeah, that's a good question. In our polling and in our reporting, we found two things: that when you ask Latino voters about Republicans, when you say, "What's the one thing that you find problematic?" They'll say, "Look, in my perspective, Republicans are racist."

And if you ask the question about Democrats, "What's the problem?" they say with them, they say, "They're condescending." So there's a big wash, right?

So that continued in the 2024 election where they felt both out of touch. So if you say, "OK, you're both out of touch, then what do you have for me? What can you provide me since both of you — I see both of you as problematic, or clowns," as one person told me. And so what Trump was able to do is, "I'm giving you an economic plan." And so they're going to vote with their wallets.

The same thing they could do with identity. If they're not investing enough ... sometimes they have discussions like, "My candidate is coming to Arizona. Should I play Selena or Bad Bunny to the intro music?" That's really sophomoric and kind of glances over the real problems. ... What you need to know is how does the community see themselves that you're engaging with, how do they refer to themselves and be authentic.

So if I'm going to, say, New Mexico, I know a lot of people there think they're Spanish, even though historically inaccurate, that's false. You may use the term Hispano and Hispanics. Same thing in South Texas.

But if I go to Arizona and California, they may say Latino, they may say Mexican American, you have to engage in them. Because if you don't do that, they're not going to listen to you for your other message, whether you want to talk about prescription drugs, or fighting the opioid crisis, or poverty. You can't get into the step — you can't even get into the step door if you don't even know how to ring the doorbell.

LAUREN GILGER: Super interesting stuff. All right, Russell Contreras joining us from Axios. He covers justice and race there. Russell, thank you so much for coming back on The Show, appreciate it.

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Good to be with you.

REAGAN PRIEST: Very gung-ho. This was the third workshop they’ve had on nuclear energy, and this one focused a lot on kind of the practical applications, the things you need to get done to actually bring a nuclear plant to the state. So lots of what would water resources look like, what does the supply chain look like, what does the workforce look like, those sorts of things.

LAUREN GILGER: And all of those things are pretty big, I’m sure, right? Building another—we should say we already have a very large nuclear power plant in the state in Palo Verde. This would be a second one, and it’s a massive undertaking, right? What, just surface-wise, would this entail?

REAGAN PRIEST: Well, the costs would be in the billions, billions. It also would require significant infrastructure, and the supply chains are maybe not necessarily ready for those big infrastructure pieces that need to come in to build not just a reactor but all of the infrastructure that supports it, like cooling tanks, transmission lines to get you the power from the plant, things like that.

LAUREN GILGER: I’ve been out to Palo Verde years ago and did the kind of tour there. It’s massive and wild. What about locations? Like where you put a nuclear power plant is a big part of the debate whenever there is talk of a new nuclear power plant anywhere. Who wants this?

REAGAN PRIEST: Yeah, actually there are a couple of communities that are interested, specifically Navajo County. Navajo County had Cholla Power Plant, and they also had the Navajo Generating Station, and those were both coal-fired plants that were decommissioned. And Cholla will now be a natural gas plant; at least two units over there will be a natural gas plant.

But the utilities are looking at using those old coal-fired plant sites as a nuclear site because the closure of those plants did economically harm those communities. And so those communities are interested in bringing a new power plant in that can help spur job creation and growth for those communities.

So I know the Navajo County supervisors sent down Supervisor Jason Whiting, and he, at this most recent workshop, was telling the commissioners that that county really wants this. They would be thrilled to have a nuclear power plant up there.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So, let’s just back up for a moment, Reagan, and talk about why the corporation commissioners would like a new nuclear power plant in the state. We are a growing place, and energy demand — in particular in the summer here as it’s very, very hot — is going way up. Is this just we need more places to bring us more power?

REAGAN PRIEST: Yeah, Arizona definitely needs more power for a couple of reasons, you know. It’s hotter every summer, data centers really are looking at the desert, and so you need a lot of power to power those large load customers. And then I think it’s also driven by the fact that we are seeing the coal-fired plants being decommissioned.

There’s a couple that, like Springerville and Coronado, are being transitioned into natural gas plants. But we still need that baseload power, and a lot of commissioners and other stakeholders see nuclear as a cleaner way to get that baseload power that you don’t see when you decommission coal plants.

LAUREN GILGER: So how does a new nuclear plant kind of fit into that picture? Like, where do we get most of our energy right now?

REAGAN PRIEST: Most of the state’s energy comes from a mix, and the biggest source is generally natural gas. It used to be coal, but coal is coming out of favor. So right now it’s natural gas. And natural gas is not the cleanest source of energy, but it provides that stable source of power.

And nuclear could also provide a stable source of power without some of the carbon emissions that you see from natural gas. Is nuclear entirely environmentally friendly? Certainly not. But nuclear does have less emissions, and so it could provide — it could be part of that energy mix.

And I think a lot of people view nuclear as the clean energy of the future where maybe one day we get to a point where we transition completely away from natural gas with a focus on nuclear and renewable energy sources like solar and wind.

LAUREN GILGER: So Reagan, this comes as Arizona, though, is facing serious challenges in terms of our water future. Like, we’re watching these Colorado River negotiations. It looks like we are facing pretty major cuts in Arizona to our Colorado River water supply. They need a lot of water at a nuclear power plant. Is that going to be a problem?

REAGAN PRIEST: It’s certainly going to be a problem. Commissioners heard from multiple different water stakeholders at the workshop in June who said, “The state doesn’t have a lot of water to go around. The state cannot play with its water resources right now.” And any nuclear technology will need cooling technology, whether that’s water or air.

There are other ways to cool a nuclear power plant, but right now, most plants rely on water. Palo Verde relies on reclaimed water from five different cities in the Valley. So Palo Verde’s not taking away drinking water from people, but even that reclaimed water, there’s still not enough of that to go around.

LAUREN GILGER: There were some legislative efforts at the Capitol last session, Reagan, to kind of streamline environmental laws, environmental review processes, which are, I’m sure, onerous in terms of building a new nuclear power plant. But they were less than successful, we should say?

REAGAN PRIEST: Yeah. So there were, I think, we were tracking at least six bills related to a new kind of nuclear technology called small modular reactors. And lawmakers are really interested in speeding up zoning procedures and, yeah, getting around those environmental procedures to get them to the state quicker.

The governor vetoed one bill which would have allowed utility companies to basically bypass some of the commission’s environmental review processes in order to bring a nuclear power plant to a decommissioned coal plant.

And so that would have helped in the project that we’re theorizing about right now. But the governor’s office basically said “We’re putting the cart before the horse here.” And they’re supportive of nuclear energy technologies, but they don’t think going around the environmental review process is the right way to signal what Arizona wants from nuclear power.

LAUREN GILGER: Interesting. And, yeah, this is a bipartisan effort for the most part. Everybody seems to agree we need more nuclear power?

REAGAN PRIEST: Oh, absolutely. It’s bipartisan, it’s across governments. I mean, we’ve seen the offices of Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego have told the commission that they’re gung-ho on this. The governor’s office also very gung-ho, and Republican lawmakers are super excited about it. It’s a level of collaboration and interest that you don’t necessarily see in most issues.

LAUREN GILGER: Pretty rare, yeah. What about environmentalists, the environmental lobby here? Are they upset about this, or are they OK with it?

REAGAN PRIEST: They are not thrilled, specifically because of the water usage and also because nuclear waste is still an issue that we don’t have a lot of solutions to. We don’t have a great way of dealing with nuclear waste that is guaranteed to not impact the environment.

LAUREN GILGER: Timeline here, Reagan?

REAGAN PRIEST: So the utilities are currently undergoing site selection. Very early stages of that, they’re just examining sites. They expect to have stakeholder meetings in communities where these potential sites could be at the end of this year. And then after that, they’re going to kind of take a step back and examine all sorts of different factors — financial, technical, environmental — and decide from there whether this is a good step forward for Arizona.

So I wouldn’t say it’s a guarantee that we’re getting any new nuclear anytime soon, but the process is underway, and we could see some movement at the end of this year.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, that’s Reagan Priest, Executive Branch Reporter for the Arizona Capitol Times, joining us. Reagan, thanks so much for coming in, appreciate it.

REAGAN PRIEST: Thank you for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: But first, let's hear more of our live roundtable conversation on walkability in the Valley of the Sun. It's part of our first inaugural live event series called The Show and Tell, which we held before a packed house at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix.

Phoenix is an inherently car-centric city. But now we have an expanding light rail system, a thriving city center, and a host of cool restaurants and bars that make it feel a lot more like a real big city. But is it walkable, and what's it like to live here without a car?

To find out, we brought in a few experts from varying points of view: Arden Holloway, a transit specialist for Valley Metro, who navigates life in Phoenix without a car, as well as multidisciplinary artist and mapmaker Jen Urso and David Crummey, a community advocate and transit expert.

We talked about public transportation, light rail, and buses, and what it even means to have a walkable city. And then I asked them about a dark spot in this conversation: pedestrian safety. Phoenix is consistently among the deadliest cities for pedestrians, which really doesn't bode well for walkability. You'll hear Arden first here.

ARDEN HOLLOWAY: I can speak to this a little bit as a planner. So I think there are two main things that we can, two main categories, that we can put street improvements or improvements for pedestrian safety under, and one is street design. So thinking about how curbs are designed and what kinds of infrastructure we put in for pedestrians, so do we have a signalized crosswalk? Are we creating really wide lanes so that people are driving faster? Or are we narrowing those lanes so that people will more naturally drive slowly? This is not something that I do in my work, but it's something that I feel like planners, you know, study and talk about a lot.

So thinking about street design and also enforcing those rules once the built environment is in place to make sure that pedestrians are staying protected by that infrastructure. And light rail actually is a way to improve roadways. It's not just a way to put in a new transit line, it's also adding new pedestrian crosswalks, adding new signals, and improving even the sidewalks along the corridor. So there are a lot of different ways that we can improve pedestrian safety, and it's definitely difficult because we are sprawling, and that's how, you know, the Phoenix metro area developed. But I think that there are ways that we're improving the system that we have, and all of the cities in the Valley are working to improve this, so.

JEN URSO: I mean, I would love to see like an education campaign, too, that, you know, we've thrown up a lot of these like striped crosswalks with even with the lights, and that there's a sign above the light that tells you exactly what to do. Um, you know, "Hey, it's flashing, you're supposed to stop and then proceed," but no one pays attention to it. I feel like it would take such a small bit of effort from, you know, whoever it is, the city transit, whatever, of just being like, "Hey guys, here's how a striped crosswalk works, because we know that you don't have much experience with it."

LAUREN GILGER: It's like having putting in roundabouts, people are like, "What?" Go ahead, David.

JEN URSO: Yeah, they just drive over them, yeah.

DAVID CRUMMEY: I'll add that in Arizona, anytime there's an intersection of a road is a crosswalk, whether or not it's painted or not. And you are required to stop for pedestrians if they're there. How many people do that? I mean, I think about that blinking red light, and I think back to when I learned to drive my car, and I'm like blinking red light, that means you have to stop, treat it as a stop sign. And how many people do that?

Even like when we have our monsoons and there's a blinking red light when the power's out, people just blow through it. And I'm like, "This is how you die."

LAUREN GILGER: But I wonder if it's like a tipping point question, right? Because if we're trying to, you know, create a more walkable city and in which more people actually walk, you know, at some point, will people who are driving get better at that and, you know, not hit people?

DAVID CRUMMEY: So the carnage on our roads is a policy choice. Again, it's all, all a policy choice, right? This is what we decided to invest our dollars in. We want people to get somewhere faster. Faster a car goes, the more likely you are to die, whether you're in the car or out of the car.

But then the other thing is that our cars have gotten heavier, and we all remember our physics class in high school — you know, speed and mass equals bad times. And all of that is a, is just a policy choice. And, and the other thing that, you know, like talking about pedestrian deaths, one of the main reasons that we have wider roads that we choose to do in our at our local decisions, faster roads we choose to do that.

The other thing is that you notice that the, the front bumper height of cars has gotten higher and higher. And that means when you get hit by a car, if you, hopefully none of us do, instead of it hitting your legs and you tumbling up onto the car, it hits your chest and you go under the car.

LAUREN GILGER: So, I think the last major topic I want to hit on is about the heat, which I think we cannot avoid if we want to talk about walkability in this city, especially because it's getting hotter. As anyone who has lived here for a significant amount of time knows, climate change is making the city hotter, the urban heat island effect is making the city hotter, and, you know, sometimes it would be a lot easier to just sit in your air-conditioned car and go where you want to go, especially with kids.

And I think, you know, if we want to talk about master shade plans, I think that's all well and good, but I think this is such a big, big problem. I just wonder what you all make of this.

JEN URSO: I mean, I could tell you like my preparations for dealing with the heat when it's I have to go pick up my son and walk. I mean, I carry like an ice pack in my bag, I have like a mister fan, I wet my shirt down sometimes, I get my hair wet so that I'm cool enough. I mean, it's all pretty insane. But I also navigate by where I can find — where I know where the shade is. So if everybody would just please plant a freaking tree, like on the south side of the road.

You know, the city of Phoenix has been like giving them away for free and planting them for you, which has been great, and I've been working with them. I even created an augmented reality experience where you can see how a tree looks in your yard. So if you want to use that, you can like envision a tree.

You know, reducing the width of the, the street lanes, because riding your bike, walking, everything, you've got that radiant heat coming up off the roads. Um, you know, anything that will just be acknowledging the source of the sun in the summertime, coming from the south, I think in any kind of new building construction needs to seriously consider it. And, you know, I think — I feel like we've got these developers that come in from out of state and they're like, "Wow, sunshine, isn't it great?" And then they put a building that with like all glass and no awnings, and it faces the south. And I was like, "Who's going to work or live in this building?"

DAVID CRUMMEY: In Phoenix, the Sonoran Desert, the natural place of the Sonoran Desert in the summer is hot days and cooler nights. But what we've done is we've taken that hot days, and we've put a large piece of mass to absorb all of that heat that's radiated from our glorious sun during the day, and emit all night long back into it.

LAUREN GILGER: Arden, I will say the light rail cars are notoriously cool. What's your take on this question of the heat?

ARDEN HOLLOWAY: Uh, yeah, I think that we've — we've all talked about natural shade and, uh, planting trees, and there are master shade plans by many of the cities to address this issue and make sure that we're, um, designing cities that are resilient to the extreme heat. And, uh, in addition to natural shade structures, there's also, you know, built shade structures that are being put out on certain intersections and, um, at transit stops and also at park-and-rides as well.

But it is — it is an issue for sure. And there's a lot of work to be done. In terms of our vehicles, um, the light rail vehicles are, uh, unique in I think in our country and also the world in that they have, we have twice the units, or twice the number of AC units, of a typical light rail vehicle. So that's why they're able to stay cool. But, yeah, the answer is, you know, thinking about policy changes and implementing plans for shade that include both natural, you know, tree shade and also built canopies.

JEN URSO: And underground tunnels.

LAUREN GILGER: That was artist Jen Urso, Valley Metro’s Arden Holloway, and community advocate David Crummey, talking about walkability in Phoenix and the challenges to it at our first live The Show and Tell event at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix.

Our next edition of The Show and Tell will be next month on August 30th at Changing Hands in Tempe. It'll be hosted by my wonderful co-host, Mark Brodie, and they'll talk all about designing Phoenix. What makes a Valley building iconic?

Good morning, it's The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I am Lauren Gilger and we're back with the final part of our live community roundtable on walkability in Phoenix featuring transit expert David Crummey, multidisciplinary artist Jen Urso, and Valley Metro transit specialist Arden Holloway.

I want to end with a couple of bigger questions because I know you all have bigger thoughts about this issue. Like, what are we after in a walkable city? Like, is this at its core about wanting to live in a real community and actually interact with the people in it? Or do we not want that? What do you think?

DAVID CRUMMEY: I don't know if we want that. I mean, I want it and I know a lot of us, probably this room wants that. But but I think about like our so many of the issues that we complain about — affordable housing, homelessness, unsheltered homelessness especially — and you think about like, "Oh, the light rail, that's where it is." We have banned we have made so much of the Valley private property. You think about we have segregated ourselves in communities by race, by by economic class, by by politics. I think we're we're more racially segregated today than we were 70 years ago, which is bonkers.

But it's so much of that is the idea that, "Oh, don't go to wherever, Central and Thomas, because there's too many homeless people there." I've been out, I interviewed — we had some volunteers from Starbucks and we had someone for like 127th Avenue and Beardsley or something, that store — and and the same thing that the person downtown Phoenix talked about was how many people were coming into the stores to use the restroom, and things like, that's not a specific thing to any one spot.

You know, like I think about Civic, what was what's the the Civic Space Park? Civic Space Civic Space Park and the development that was right there that's now the hotel and Rozz Development Fund used to be there, used to have the skating rink. That used to be Patriot Park and that used to be where the homeless was, and it was scary. I don't know, I walked by it when I was 13, 14, and it was normal, but I don't know, I just was always walking by and that was normal.

But we got rid of that space, and we keep getting rid of spaces where homelessness is visible and keep concentrating it more and more, or pushing people. And and I think we almost like don't want the friction of knowing that our friends and neighbors are in trouble. And if we don't think about it, I think that there is this tendency to avoid all friction. But what is life but friction? Of interacting with someone else, about being challenged, and and to me, that's that's part of it is like how do you have a good time if you always know what you're gonna get?

LAUREN GILGER: I like that. Go ahead, Jen.

JEN URSO: We're so afraid. Like, you know, I don't know if it's COVID — I mean, I think this happened before COVID too — but that we're so afraid that something's going to happen, like, "Oh, I don't want to go there because it's going to be unsafe," or like, "What if like a homeless person talks to me?" Oh my god, you know they're people, they're actually human beings.

Um, and like like that, I don't know what image we're projecting of what is the most catastrophic thing that could possibly happen if you have to interact with somebody you don't really like or somebody who's kind of icky. But like that fear is like a privilege.

You know, like we we can have those fears because we're not actually in danger of anything except for maybe getting in a car accident. So, I mean, for me, a lot of this issue — and we talked about this when we were prepping for this — was like, what is our what do we want in life? Like, this isn't an issue about how we build our city or how we build our roads or whether we like walking in the heat.

It's like, how do you want to like actually experience life and human beings and and and what kind of society do you want to live in? It's like hard deep questions that touch like all of these aspects, you know, that that feed into our reason why we vote for, you know, a bigger, wider, faster freeway, or, you know, it's not necessarily we feel like we need to get somewhere fast but we're maybe being told like, "It's important to get somewhere fast," we're like, "Yes, yes, it's important to get somewhere fast." I don't know why, I don't know why what I'm going to do with that extra time, go home and binge-watch TV shows. Is that the quality of life that you want?

And I'm not saying that I don't watch binge-watch shows, but how am I actually experiencing life? How am I interacting with the world? Like, what kind of quality of experience am I having? And then, how can I like kind of build my life around that?

LAUREN GILGER: Does that make your your art richer, you think?

JEN URSO: I think so. And and to be honest, I feel like this comes from I can think back to walking to the grocery store with my mom or walking to the laundromat with my mom and her pointing out things to me like, "Oh look at the tiger lilies. Let's stop and watch the train go by. Let's count how many train cars there are." So, she like nurtured that sense of paying attention to the world around me and picking up on the most mundane, dirty, gross things that were never labeled that way to me, and just was beauty and life and, you know, experience.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, Arden, last word to you here. How do you think about these issues on that scale?

ARDEN HOLLOWAY: I guess what I'm picking up on is that like technology is partly, and the the way that we live our lives is leading to this avoiding friction with others, and not wanting to interact with other people as much. And I would add to that, that if you have a space or built environment that's encouraging you to use that space and to gather with others, that that will allow us to interact with each other more and um maybe come up against more friction um and lead with that philosophy that Jen’s mom taught her, you know, of paying attention and interacting with people who you might not with otherwise.

LAUREN GILGER: That was Valley Metro’s Arden Holloway alongside artist Jen Urso and community advocate David Crummey talking about walkability in Phoenix and the challenges to it at our first live The Show and Tell event at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix.

Our next edition of The Show and Tell will be next month on August 30th at Changing Hands in Tempe. It'll be hosted by my wonderful co-host, Mark Brodie, and they'll talk all about designing Phoenix: What makes a Valley building iconic?

LAUREN GILGER: How do the spaces in which we spend our time impact our mindset? Our next guest explores that question and others in his book, "In a Good Place: How the Spaces Where We Live, Work, and Play Can Help Us Thrive."

Leidy Klotz is a professor at the University of Virginia, where he studies the intersection of architecture, engineering, and behavioral science. He spoke with my co-host, Mark Brodie, and they started with where Klotz starts his book: one of the things he points out is that this is not crowded space he's occupying, we tend not to think about these different areas as being connected. So Lauren asked why Klotz thinks that is.

LEIDY KLOTZ: Yeah, I mean, so the different areas being just kind of our physical world and our mental world, right? And I think if you bring that up, most people would say, "Yeah, that, of course, there's overlap there." But just the way we kind of organize knowledge spreads them apart. I think that would be the main reason, right?

So, one of the stories you're mentioning earlier in the book is me walking around the bookstore, right? And going to psychology in one section and then like, you know, the design stuff in another section. And so, and the same on the campus where I work, where it's like the engineering school is over here, and then psychology is, you know, 200 yards away, and then architecture's all the way across campus.

And so, I think the way that we split up knowledge to try to understand things in more detail is probably the biggest reason. But then we miss out on opportunities where clearly like kind of the physical and the mental world overlap.

MARK BRODIE: Well, yeah, what do we lose out on when we don't sort of think of those, you know, on the same Venn diagram?

LEIDY KLOTZ: Yeah, so I mean, if you're thinking about on the mental side, we always are trying to work on ways to make ourselves better, right? To make our inner lives better. And if the physical surroundings that you're putting yourself in play a big role in that, and you're not considering it, then you're like losing one of the best opportunities to make your inner life better.

And it goes the other way, too, right? If all you're thinking about with the outer world, you know, is like the furniture and the fixtures and the paint colors, you're really not thinking about all the ways that that world can make you your mental life better.

MARK BRODIE: How subjective is all of this?

LEIDY KLOTZ: I try — I mean, it's subjective, but it's not as, I think, this — I'm glad you asked that question because it's not as subjective as it needs to be. ... I think, so like, the science is teaching us more and more, and I think that's another big reason why these two haven't kind of come together more, is because like the science on on the mental side is rapidly advancing.

But I think the items that I talk about in the book, so agency, competence and connection, are these like basic psychological needs that we all have ... it's not subjective. So we have those basic psychological needs, and our physical environment either feeds or starves them.

And so I think if we can focus on that before getting into some of some of the things that are more subjective, like, you know, paint colors and things like that, that's a really good start towards addressing this relationship between our inner and our outer worlds.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so a lot of us, for example, don't have much choice when it comes to the place where we work, right? Like we work for — especially if we work for a company or an employer of some sort. I'm wondering how those kinds of of entities, you know, employers, companies, businesses, are trying to think about the workspaces in which their employees are working, and maybe the extent to which their employees are in, you know, an employee-owned place, as opposed to, you know, working at home or working at a coffee shop or library or something like that?

LEIDY KLOTZ: Well, first, I mean, if we don't have a choice, I think that's a really good signal to look for places where we do have a choice, right? So, regardless of what your employer does, if you recognize that your agency and your choice in the space is being stifled, and if that's the thing that's frustrating you, then you can look for places where you actually do have a say in those surroundings, right?

So, you might have been told you have to return to office, but can you choose your commute time and can you choose where to work when you're working on a project? You can go into a conference room or can you work in the company cafe or whatever? But I think that's just good general advice is when we feel like a space is constraining us, look for places where it's not, and then use your agency there, and that will make you feel better about the whole situation.

But then on the other side, right, I think most companies are not trying to make their employees feel like they're not valued, right? Or that they don't have a say in the organization. And looking at the space as an opportunity to advertise that message. So every mission statement says, "Oh, we want our employees to be stakeholders ... and to lead the way." And so how do you have the space also be sending that message, right?

And it's clear when it's not, you know, like "Office Space" where — who is it, Milton? Who keeps getting sent to worse and worse places ... and eventually he's like in the basement with his red stapler and he can't ...

But what about opportunities to show that people have agency through it, right? So can you leave parts of the space unfinished, for example? I mean, not completely unfinished, but you could also just say, "OK, the conference room is available for the special project that you're going to be working on for the next month, let us know how you want to set it up."

MARK BRODIE: Do you think that we notice our physical environments and sort of take stock of them as much as we did before we all had, you know, little computers in our pockets?

LEIDY KLOTZ: Well, no, but also we weren't very good at it when even before. So like habituation, right, we're just like we've evolved to tune out things that aren't an opportunity or a threat, right? If you if you had to notice every little thing about the world as you were moving through it, you wouldn't be able to get anything done.

And as you point out, the screens are not making it better. And I think the real, you know, tragedy there is that screens do amazing things, and, um, you know, they're part of what how we're connecting right now. Yeah. But they're two-dimensional, they're only working with our sight and our sound at most, right? They're not touching all of our senses.

And our physical world, this is, you know, that can do all those things for us. And so we're getting drawn out of this world that can meet our basic psychological needs and putting ourselves into one where just fundamentally cannot happen.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so what do we do about that, right? Because I don't think people most people are going to give up their their phones or their tablets or whatever, but as you say, and as you write, we need to be paying attention to the spaces in which we are living and working and playing. So, like what do we do?

LEIDY KLOTZ: I think we can use our phone as a cue, right? If you if you find yourself looking at your screen, say, "Well, have I actually taken in the space around me?" I've got a friend who I was talking to her about the book for, and she said now she thinks about me in the morning when she wakes up, because she immediately goes to look at her phone and is like, "Oh, I should have noticed my bedroom," right?

And even it's the same bedroom that you've been in all the time, but it's grounding to kind of notice the physical space and things will have changed from the last time you noticed it, whether it's the way the light's shining through or whatever. But instead of so basically using the phone as a as a cue to notice your surroundings, I think can be really helpful.

I did it — it helped me the other day. I was in the — just the waiting room for an appointment, and I realized I looked down at my phone and then I was like, "Oh, have I taken in the space?" And then you realize that, oh, what you used to do in a waiting room was like look around and then pick up a magazine and now you're just kind of like in the same world that you're in no matter where you are. So, I think that that tip can be helpful.

MARK BRODIE: All right, we'll have to leave it there. That is Leidy Klotz, a professor at the University of Virginia and author of the book, "In a Good Place: How the Places Where We Live, Work, and Play Can Help Us Thrive." Leidy, thanks so much for the conversation, I really appreciate it.

LEIDY KLOTZ: Thank you, Mark. It was a delight being here.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It's The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I am Lauren Gilger.

In 2025, the State Health Department reported 66 cases of West Nile virus. There were 32 in 2024, and 82 in 2023. And research from ASU finds there are more mosquitoes here now than in the past, although climate change may impact their—have an impact on their population.

Kelsey Lyberger is an assistant professor in ASU's College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, where she studies the ecology of mosquitoes. My co-host, Mark Brodie, spoke with her last fall when she came by the studio to talk about her work. She said when she started at ASU, she was surprised by how much of a threat West Nile is in the desert.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Thinking about the distribution of some of these vectors, um, and mosquitoes in general, they like it warm and they like it wet. But Phoenix is so hot in the summer. Uh, I was surprised they could persist through that heat.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so how are they doing it? Because as you say, Phoenix is pretty darn hot, especially in the summer.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah, and the interesting part about how they're doing that is that, uh, I think it depends on what species you're talking about. We have multiple species here in the area, and, um, for some of them, they are finding these little microhabitats, often that we are creating, where it's a little bit cooler, and it's wetter, whether that's from irrigation, or as we just got, some rainfall.

MARK BRODIE: So could this be the kind of thing where, like in somebody's backyard, you have, you know, maybe a flower pot that's empty that has some water in it, and it's maybe in the shade so it's out of direct sun. Is that the kind of microhabitat you're talking about?

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah, so that would be a perfect habitat for, example, a species called Aedes aegypti. They love those human-made containers. But we also have species like Culex, which are the main vectors of West Nile virus, and they're breeding in slightly more organically rich water. And so they're finding storm drains that maybe have backed up a little bit, or, for example, in this study that I've been working on over the summer, we went to a bunch of nurseries where they're overwatering—or they're successfully watering some trees.

And, uh, another big one here, uh, that I'm not sure I would have thought of beforehand, is, uh, empty swimming pools. So people, um, maybe take off for the hot summers and leave their pools, maybe drain them, but then they fill again if we get rainfall, and, and they love breeding in there. And you can imagine a swimming pool full of mosquitoes certainly breeds a lot.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, that's a lot of space. I mean, that could probably lead to a lot of mosquitoes and potentially a lot of illness.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah, and the swimming pool mosquitoes are one of those vectors for West Nile virus. And so the vector control, like county vector control guys around here are doing their best, and they have a huge investment in setting traps, monitoring the situation, both in terms of mosquito abundance, but also that they test them, the mosquitoes themselves, to see if they're carrying the virus. Um, and if kind of any thresholds are hit, they're going to go out and do something about it.

MARK BRODIE: How big of a temperature difference do you find that the mosquitoes need? From sort of, you know, maybe the the high temperature at Sky Harbor to where it is a better place for them to breed. Like are we talking just a couple of degrees, or does it have to be more than that to make it ideal conditions for them?

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah, so a place like Sky Harbor can record temperatures of, well, 120. Whereas, kind of the limits for these mosquitoes, uh, they can't survive beyond something like 110. And so we're finding these mosquitoes are in places easily 10 to 15 degrees cooler than a weather station might report.

MARK BRODIE: But even 110 degrees, I mean, during, let's say July or August, a good part of the Valley, if not all of it, is routinely above 110, and yet, as you're finding, these mosquitoes are still breeding.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah, so that really touches on a couple of things that I want to do with my research, which is that right now, a lot of the kind of science of the the temperature limits of mosquitoes is considered in terms of a single number, like what is their thermal maximum, what's that one hot temperature. But really, survival at those temperatures is a function of time.

So, we might hit 110 for a few hours, but then at night you're going to have reprieve from that. It's going to drop down, and so, really you touch on what I'm hoping to do in the lab next, which is test for how long can they withstand these really hot temperatures?

MARK BRODIE: I mean, do you think it's possible, and not that anybody is hoping for Phoenix to get hotter, but if it does, could we kind of heat our way out of a disease like West Nile virus?

KELSEY LYBERGER: That would be awesome if it happened, but I'm guessing not. I'm guessing, for the most part, it's here to stay because these mosquitoes are great at finding, uh, the habitats that we create for them to mitigate that heat, and, uh, it doesn't take much for them to successfully breed, um, emerge as these adults, um, and females, uh, looking for a blood meal.

And to add on to that, which is that West Nile virus itself has to replicate inside the mosquito, and that that process is temperature-sensitive. So as you heat the outside air, the virus can replicate more quickly inside the mosquito, and that means transmission could happen even faster.

MARK BRODIE: I wonder if that also means transmission could potentially happen later in the season here than it would maybe somewhere on the East Coast, when it starts to cool off a little bit and yet, you know, we're still getting a little bit of rain, you know, there might be some sort of latent moisture around.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah, definitely, I could see warming leading to a longer West Nile virus season. And in fact, even on the East Coast, a recent study came out saying that's exactly what they're seeing, is a longer season with warmer temperatures.

MARK BRODIE: How ideally would you like this research to be used, either by vector control folks or anybody else?

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah, I, you know, part of the goal of this is to better understand the thermal limits of these mosquitoes to answer questions about are there going to be changes in seasonality in the abundance of the mosquitoes, or year-to-year variation?

And so, how vector control can use that and make different decisions about how they operate, I leave that to them, and I try to provide them the scientific basis on which they can make those decisions. Um, same thing for public health agencies, they might be interested in knowing whether that potential season for West Nile virus is going to increase.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Kelsey Lyberger, an assistant professor in ASU's College of Integrative Sciences and Arts. Kelsey, thanks so much, I appreciate it.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for listening to The Show's podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban, and our executive producer is Amy Silverman.

You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram @kjzztheshow.

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.