The Show for July 23, 2026: Navajo Nation's presidential race, data center economics and more

The Navajo Nation will elect a new president this fall, as incumbent Buu Nygren failed to get out of the primary. We’ll hear about the dynamics behind the change. Plus, our series on data centers in Arizona wraps up with a look at the economics behind them.

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.

MARK BRODIE: Hi, I’m Mark Brodie, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday, we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at TheShow.KJZZ.org. Here’s today’s episode.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, how transportation officials are trying to make highways safer for wildlife. And we wrap up our series on data centers in Arizona with a look at the economics of the facilities. But first, Navajo Nation voters will elect a new president this fall after the incumbent Buu Nygren failed to make it out of this week’s primary. Nygren has faced a series of scandals during his time in office, and now two other candidates will move on to November’s general election. KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio has been following this and joins me now to talk more about it. Gabe, good morning.

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Good morning, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: So, let’s start with reminding everybody what’s been going on with Buu Nygren. This has not been a smooth term for him.

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: It hasn’t been smooth, to say the least. He was the youngest elected president of the Navajo Nation. And pretty much from the outset, there were some challenges, particularly surrounding ZenniHome, which was a Mesa-based modular home manufacturing company that has since gone bankrupt. There was a purchase order that was completed with the nation using ARPA money, federal money from COVID relief, and essentially, the contract was not fulfilled.

MARK BRODIE: The houses never got built.

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: The houses were partially — some of them were partially built but never delivered. And there was an outstanding $24 million that is still under review as to what happened, where is that going. There may be federal people involved, investigators, it’s not public. But there is a lot of people looking into this.

Navajo Nation Council has also had its series of hearings, investigatory hearings, subpoenaing members — not just Nygren, but his administration — to try to unpack what has happened there.

In addition to that, there were also allegations of misuse of public funds and his official capacity as the president. This is through a special ethics complaint that was filed by a special prosecutor who was hired by the Navajo Nation Council and has alleged not just Nygren but other members of his cabinet had essentially done things improperly with their rights and role as public office, essentially.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so he was running, despite all that, for reelection for another term. There were a lot of candidates, like 15 or 16 candidates running, and it’s an open primary there, there are a lot of candidates. He came in third out of all of those. The top two make it to the general. Who are the top two?

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: So, the top vote-getter was Justin Jones. He’s a Farmington attorney. He used to work for BHP, the coal company that owned a mine out in New Mexico. He was their government relations manager. And he had earned over 15,000 votes this cycle. Last cycle, he actually came in third place. Pretty much nearly doubled the amount of votes that he had gained from four years ago. Here’s a little bit of what Jones had to say after the victory.

JUSTIN JONES: It’s about you. It’s about the Navajo Nation. … I come second. …

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: And so, Jones basically has really come out as one of the most vocal opponents to Nygren and the scandals and accusations that have surrounded his administration.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so he came in first. The second candidate will also move on to the general election. She is more of a political insider, it sounds like, on the Navajo Nation. Is that fair?

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: That’s correct, yeah. She is currently the sitting Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley. She came in second place, she had gathered 8,500 votes, and she’s on track, if she’s elected, she’d be the first Diné female president in the Nation’s history. And this is what she had to say.

CRYSTALYNE CURLEY: This campaign is not to separate the people. This campaign is to unify our people. Because we are the largest nation in Indian Country and in the world. We need to be united.

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: And part of her message has been leaning into the importance of the matriarchy, because the Diné society is centered around matrilineal relationships and the clans and the kinships. And so is reverence for women, for the matriarchs, for the mothers. She’s focused a lot on MMIP, which is Missing and Murdered Indigenous People and particularly an issue affecting women as well.

MARK BRODIE: So, what kinds of issues are folks expecting to hear about between now and the November general election? What do Curley and Jones seem to be discussing? How do they contrast each other?

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Yeah, I think everyday living, basic things like roads, infrastructure, water — all these things that make life on the reservation better. How do we improve job opportunities? How do we bring our people back home? These are a lot of the things that they find commonality in. I don’t think there’s necessarily too much difference per se, in their campaign —

MARK BRODIE: In terms of policy.

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: In the policies in a way. It’s a lot of the same things they’re talking about. And something they both kind of see eye-to-eye on also is kind of figuring out what happened with the Nygren administration, kind of bringing attention to the scandals and allegations and leading to the ouster essentially of Nygren.

Curley was also really vocal, she was the one who sought to remove him from office through the council, and has led lawsuits against Nygren personally through the nation’s courts in that respect.

MARK BRODIE: Gabe, does it seem as though depending on — you mentioned that both Jones and Curley have similar views on a lot of the policy issues — do they kind of line up on policy with Nygren? Is there going to be a big shift in policy, regardless of which one wins now, from where the Nation has been for the last three and a half years?

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: I think Curley has more of a perspective on trying to protect the environment, it seems. She focuses a lot on the pressing issues like Chaco and Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante and protecting sacred sites and things of that nature. And I think that slightly deviates from Jones, who worked for the BHP coal company as their senior government relations manager.

But I think on the whole, this is an election about personality — and personalities in this case — of who is best suited to lead in the absence of Nygren, who is the incumbent that has been effectively primaried out of this race.

MARK BRODIE: And very briefly, has Nygren said if he plans to endorse one of the other candidates before November?

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: We haven’t heard anything like that. He came out and part of his concession talked about congratulating both the candidates, and he said that basically the Navajo people, their voice has been heard through their vote, and that they were entrusted with these two potentially leading in his absence.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio. Gabe, thanks so much, as always.

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: The State Transportation Department is continuing its work on the I-17 Willard Springs wildlife overpass project south of Flagstaff. It’ll result in a bridge above the freeway, allowing animals to safely cross. The money to build it comes from a federal pilot program to build wildlife crossings across the country. Part of the goal is to reduce the number of animals who are hit and injured or killed by vehicles.

My next guest has long been interested in this issue and wrote a piece about it for a recent edition of Arizona Highways Magazine. Nicole Walker teaches creative writing at Northern Arizona University and serves as writer-in-residence for the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society there. I spoke with her earlier about this, and we started with what first got her thinking about it.

NICOLE WALKER: I feel like I’ve always been counting the number of animals, sadly, hit by cars on the side of the road. It’s omnipresent, and I’ve lived in a number of states, particularly in the West — in Oregon and Utah and Arizona. And it becomes just part of the scenery sometimes, unfortunately. I feel like when I do take notice, I’m at least serving the animal to some degree to say, "Hey, I’m sorry that this happened to you, and I’m sorry that you’ve passed this way." I’ve wondered what can be done to mitigate this pretty prevalent problem.

MARK BRODIE: One of the things that a lot of states, including Arizona, seem to be doing is trying to create ways for animals to cross roadways, specifically highways, I think, in many cases, overpasses or other trails in ways that animals can cross freeways or roads to get to where they need to go without getting hit by cars. What you found was pretty interesting about how that’s happening here.

NICOLE WALKER: Absolutely. So, I did a lot of research, and this project has been ongoing for many years. You know, the highway that goes from Kingman to Las Vegas was one of the early ones, and this one helps bighorn sheep cross. That seems tremendously, you know, these creatures are pretty rare, and to find a way to help them survive is incredible.

This process didn’t start in Arizona, although Arizona was an early adopter. But I’m originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, and I drive from Flagstaff to Salt Lake a lot. One of the first wildlife crossings was across I-15. But driving up and down these many years, I didn’t even know it. And so once I learned that this wildlife overpass was being constructed over I-17, I became more and more fascinated and went deep into research about how these bridges work, how many there are in the state and across the country and even internationally. And then I learned, too, there’s culverts that go under the roads, which are really great for bears and ocelots and beavers and all kinds of smaller creatures.

MARK BRODIE: How successful are these in terms of trying to cut down on the number of animals killed? I mean, obviously, we can never tell how many animals are not killed, right? But have states and state officials seen a reduction since some of these overpasses and culverts have gone into effect?

NICOLE WALKER: Yeah, many researchers have found that some of these wildlife crossings have brought the number of automobile interactions from about 400 a year in some spots to zero. As I write in the article, over 2 billion animals are killed each year — 335 million in the United States alone — every year with automobile collisions. And so what they found is that it takes a minute, for example, elk to learn how to use the wildlife overpasses, but the number of interactions with vehicles reduces about 40% every year until it gets to a relatively low amount for that area.

MARK BRODIE: So how does it work? I mean, if you build one of these crossings, obviously, animals are not going to be able to read the signs that you post. So how do they learn that this crossing is the way to get where they need to be?

NICOLE WALKER: That was one of the most fascinating parts of the research, I thought, was figuring out how do animals figure out where to cross? Where should I go? There are no signs, there are no stoplights. So what they use is some fences that steer the animals this direction, and they sort of gather them up and entice them to go these directions. There’s fences, of course, across the bridge itself, and then they try to replicate the vegetation across the bridge that would induce them to come across as well. And so a combination of natural effects like vegetation and these man-made devices to help steer the animals that way is really quite fascinating that it works and that it works so well.

MARK BRODIE: Does it seem to work equally well for all different species of animals? Are some sort of picking up on it more quickly?

NICOLE WALKER: It really does seem to work for all animals. The culverts, bears, and wolves and coyotes might use primarily. But the bridges themselves, I think they feel a little bit safer crossing because they can see further, and they cross readily for most creatures.

One of the most interesting things I learned was that pronghorn sheep are very shy about crossing highways, which is good in some ways because they’re not getting in collisions with automobiles as often. But one of the problems is that then they sequester themselves in these smaller areas, which leads to inbreeding. And so even pronghorn sheep, who are shy about crossing highways, are much more likely to use these wildlife bridges to cross. And this is great for their species in general.

MARK BRODIE: How do wildlife officials decide where they’re going to put these crossings?

NICOLE WALKER: So they do years of investigations. Jeff Gagnon, who works for the Arizona {Game and Fish,) he told me a lot about the process of how they figured out how to do this particular wildlife crossing. And the process began in the mid-aughts, 2007 or something. And so they study and they tag elk in particular, right? I think the I-17 corridor is primarily to reduce the number of elk that are hit. They collar the elk and then they study their habits and their behaviors and figure out where are they most likely trying to cross, where are the most accidents happening, how can we, again, where should the fencing go that sort of steers them across that corridor?

And so it’s not an easy process to figure out, and they’re not just guessing. They’re definitely doing tons of years of studies to figure out how many and how best to find the space, the spot exactly where they should build this bridge.

MARK BRODIE: Right. And I would imagine that’s pretty important because these crossings are not free to build. They take a lot of money. And in a time when, for example, the state of Arizona has a lot of competing factors for a not unlimited amount of money, you got to get that right.

NICOLE WALKER: Absolutely. And also in getting it right, you think about what this Arizona might have looked like before it was bisected and transected by highways. And animals had natural paths that they took that they’re, I’m sure you’ve been on hikes before when you’ve seen these wildlife trails.

One of the ways I think they also try to figure out where to put these crossings is to track what those natural pathways look like. And that also gives them a lot of confidence in the place that they put these bridges. It’s definitely expensive, but it’s also very expensive to take care of these automobiles that get in these accidents and to manage wildlife in other ways that is less — I’ll put it — less hopeful.

MARK BRODIE: Nicole Walker teaches creative writing at Northern Arizona University and is the writer-in-residence for the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society there. We were talking about a piece she wrote for Arizona Highways Magazine, and you are listening to The Show.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5, I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, is our technology-heavy world making it harder to read books?

BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Things that have complicated themes and difficult character arcs and stuff that you have to think on and ponder to make sense of and discuss.

MARK BRODIE: We’ll hear from the host of a local book club that’s been going strong for more than a decade. But first, nearly 63 million people in the U.S. watched Sunday’s World Cup Final between Spain and Argentina, Axios reports. Telemundo says the game, won by Spain in extra time, was the most-watched soccer match in the history of Spanish-language media.

There was evidence of the monthlong tournament across the country, from the Turkish team training in Mesa, to Scottish fans playing bagpipes down the streets of Boston, to Norwegian fans pretending to row Viking ships in Times Square. But lots of observers are asking: Will this interest in soccer last?

With me to talk about this is Andrés Martinez, author of “The Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Global Sport.” He’s also co-director of the Great Game Lab at ASU and a professor of practice at the Cronkite School there. Andrés, good morning. Thanks for being here.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: I’ll start by offering my condolences. I know you were very hopeful that Mexico would win the World Cup. I apologize that they did not, but it sounds like you did correctly predict the winner.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I did. I mean, like many other people, I should say, thought Spain was the most solid team going in, and that proved true.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so you came in to chat before the World Cup, and we talked a little bit about what a successful World Cup, specifically in the U.S. (although Mexico and Canada also co-hosted), would look like. Let’s start with those TV ratings. I mean, that seems like a lot of people watching a match that their country was not involved in.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: It’s really astonishing. One of my favorite things to come out of the World Cup was a headline from The Onion this week saying, “Nation Wakes Up From Strange Dream Where They Were Watching Soccer.” And I really think that captures sort of our wonder at how big soccer is now in the United States.

And I think we need to update the way we talk about it. We’re still talking about like, "Well, what’s our relationship going to be with the sport going forward? Has it really made it?" And yet, to your point with those TV ratings for the final, that’s more people than have ever watched a baseball game on U.S. television or an NBA game. That’s more people than have ever watched an NFL playoff game or a conference championship, short of the Super Bowl.

MARK BRODIE: Mm-hmm.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: That’s astonishing. And as you said, there wasn’t a single American involved.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: What would those ratings — I do think that we have — it’s well established that global football, soccer, is the Number 2 sport in the United States when it comes to its ability to aggregate audiences. And I do believe that when the United States Men’s National Team is playing one of these finals, the ratings will approximate Super Bowl ratings.

MARK BRODIE: You’re saying “when,” not “if.”

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I am saying “when.” I think that will happen in my lifetime, and I’m not that young. Obviously, we didn’t come close this time.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: But, you know, I was very bullish about the World Cup going in, but it sure exceeded my expectations.

MARK BRODIE: One of the things that got so much attention, and we talked about this when you came in before the tournament, were the ticket prices and observations that maybe the stadiums wouldn’t be full. That turned out not to be the case. Those stadiums were packed.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I mean, FIFA pulled off 104 Super Bowls over the course of five weeks. And again, I was very bullish, but I thought they had overreached, FIFA, in terms of where they set the pricing. Now, they acknowledged it was dynamic pricing.

So I really believed that at the 11th hour you would see sort of a clearance sale of inventory for the less glamorous, quote-unquote, "matchups" at the group stages. And yet they never had to resort to that. People were paying $300, $400, $500 for some of those group phase matches. Obviously, tens of thousands for the final.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: So FIFA came away from this tournament with a profit of $15 billion, where they had anticipated about $11 (billion).

MARK BRODIE: That’s unbelievable.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I also thought they had overreached just in terms of expanding the scale of the tournament to 48 teams. I thought, ah, the quality there is not going to be what it had been when you had 32 teams. The jeopardy is not going to be as much in the group stages because some third-place teams are going to go through. So I was worried we’d have more duds in terms of early matches, and that wasn’t the case either.

MARK BRODIE: Cape Verde would like to have a word about that.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I mean, unbelievable stories, both in terms of the stars showing up — like the Mbappés and the Messis and the Haalands and Harry Kanes — but just amazing stories of underdogs like Cape Verde.

MARK BRODIE: So, one of the other things that you had talked about was, when looking at whether or not this World Cup would be successful and what kind of impact on soccer it might have on this country, you talked about: Would it be something that was being discussed beyond, you know, at the games or on sports talk radio?

And I have to say, in the newsroom here, we have a lot of televisions, and especially in the morning, they’re all on different networks. Be it broadcast or cable, pretty much every day, at least a couple of segments were about the World Cup. It seems like this went beyond just sort of the hardcore soccer fans discussing this.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: Yes, and I think some of the social media platforms and some of the things that often can break us down into silos and reinforce our smaller, ever-smaller communities of interest and affinity — in this case, I think helped amplify. And it was kind of a reminder that people still crave shared experience. And I think one of the things that’s been wonderful to see about America becoming a footballing nation in the sense of global football is we all crave global connectivity.

And so much of this World Cup was about the vibes. Like you said, people joining the Norwegian rowing, University of Kansas marching band learning the Algerian anthem because they were hosting it. You know, people in Chattanooga for generations are going to feel that they’re world champions because they hosted the Spain team. So all of those vibes that were shared, it was wonderful and it went far beyond the stadium.

I think one of my favorite metaphors for this, or analogies, was people were saying it felt like a really fun sleepover that you get to have with your cousins, even if your parents maybe don’t always get along. So, you know, we’re in a fraught political moment, but this was just, you know, a global party.

MARK BRODIE: Well, and stories of, for example, apparently ranch dressing is not something that the rest of the world knows about, and fans who came to this country, or Texas barbecue or free refills — like, it was so interesting to hear not just what Americans thought about watching a sport that I think, frankly, many of them are not super familiar with, but what people from Europe and South America and Asia thought about coming to this country.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: Right. And we got to see ourselves reflected in that mirror, right? We got to see how others — and it was a reminder that the U.S. is just a phenomenal place to visit if you’re from the outside, and just the diversity. And this was a continental tournament, as you said, not just in the United States, but across North America. So to see that notion that we’re a region, too, and people enjoying Mexico City and then Vancouver and L.A., it was really wonderful.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so what do you think will be the lasting impact on the United States of co-hosting this World Cup?

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I think it’s another milestone in the consolidation of this sport in the U.S. and of the U.S. in this global sport. You don’t have to wait four years for the next one. The Women’s World Cup is next summer in Brazil, also very exciting, because if a lot of what we’ve experienced this summer is the U.S. importing this global sport, the women’s game is in many ways a U.S. export.

And I think global football has that two-way global engagement. And so whenever we celebrate a Women’s World Cup, we’re also celebrating the role of the U.S. in bringing that sport. And I should say Spain is the first all-around global champion of the sport in the sense that they’re the first country that is simultaneously champion in the women’s game and in the men’s game.

MARK BRODIE: Huh, interesting.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: So it’s really exciting to think about Brazil next summer, L.A. Olympics ’28, and then we get the Women’s World Cup in ’31.

MARK BRODIE: All right, lots to look forward to. That is Andrés Martínez, co-director of the Great Game Lab at ASU, author of the book "The Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Global Sport." Andrés, thanks so much for coming back in. I really appreciate it.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: Thank you, Mark. That was fun.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5, I’m Mark Brodie. There are more data centers in the Valley than just about anywhere else in the country, but that is not without its controversies and questions. This week on "The Show," we’re trying to answer some of those questions in a series called "Centers of Attention." We toured a data center to find out how they work and what they do. We profiled two Valley cities with very different approaches to the facilities. Today, it’s about dollars and cents. And to be clear, when it comes to data centers, it’s a lot of dollars and cents.

KATIE HOBBS: It’s time we make the booming data center industry work for the people of our state, rather than the other way around.

MARK BRODIE: That’s Governor Katie Hobbs in her State of the State speech in January. She was making her pitch to lawmakers to do away with a sales tax incentive the state had implemented several years earlier under then-Governor Doug Ducey.

KATIE HOBBS: More than a decade ago, we made a strategic decision to grow data centers by creating a tax exemption for them. I voted for it. Now, Arizona is a national leader in this sector. We must ask ourselves: Should taxpayers continue subsidizing the data center industry?

MARK BRODIE: It was a question that came up often as budget talks ramped up this spring. And while lawmakers didn’t agree to end the tax break, they did agree to pause it for three years. Basically, the argument Hobbs was making was: We wanted to attract data centers, so we gave them a tax break. It worked. There are a bunch of data centers here now, so it’s time to stop giving them the tax break.

MARK STAPP: I would tend to agree with her.

MARK BRODIE: That’s Mark Stapp, Fred E. Taylor Professor of Real Estate at ASU’s W. P. Carey School of Business, and he buys Hobbs’ argument.

MARK STAPP: The decision-making that’s going into locating a data center really is not driven by tax incentives, right? It’s driven by availability of land, access to power, and access to data transmission lines.

MARK BRODIE: Stapp says he finds it hard to believe that data center operators would choose locations other than Arizona just because the tax incentive isn’t available, but maybe they would.

DAN DIORIO: We have a lot of uncertainty and a lot of unpredictability in the marketplace right now, and especially in Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: DAN DIORIO Dan is vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition. He acknowledges there are a lot of factors that go into where data centers want to set up shop—things like how fast they can get built and online, access to energy and water, available workforce to build and maintain the facility, land. But also on that list, he says: a tax climate that is both favorable and predictable, two things Diorio says do not really apply to Arizona at the moment.

DAN DIORIO: It is not going to be necessarily a favorable environment right now, or it’s an uncertain environment because of the three-year moratorium. You know, we know you’re not going to be able to get a sales tax exemption certificate, and quite frankly, we don’t know what the environment’s going to be if that moratorium really and truly is lifted in 2029.

MARK BRODIE: Diorio says that uncertainty may well give companies that are looking to build data centers pause when they’re thinking about potentially investing billions of dollars. In addition to the buildings themselves, which can be hundreds of thousands of square feet, he says capital purchases are also massive. Consider the servers. Diorio says, on average, they need to be replaced every three to five years.

DAN DIORIO: You want to get the most up-to-date and energy efficient equipment into your facility. So these are ongoing capital purchases, and these programs, by defraying the sales tax on those rolling capital expenditures, they foster a continuous reinvestment into that facility, but also continuous economic activity as a result of that facility.

MARK BRODIE: Diorio says the pause in the tax incentive will lead to a slowdown in investment in Arizona and predicts that’ll cause ripple effects throughout other aspects of the state’s economy. But not everyone is convinced the impacts will extend beyond the data centers. Consider potential employees and the money they spend during the workday.

MICAH MIRANDA: So much of what communities in Arizona rely on is what I call the "sandwich tax."

MARK BRODIE: Micah Miranda is economic development director for Chandler, which has a number of data centers, but is not currently looking to add any more.

MICAH MIRANDA: It’s the sales tax from going out and getting lunch, or you run into Target and you have to get errands. That type of consumer spending is where a lot of cities generate tax revenue to provide the services. The challenge with data centers is they don’t have a lot of those employees. They do have a lot of sales tax generated through their utilities, though. So there’s—it’s a tradeoff.

MARK BRODIE: Data centers typically do not have as many people working in them as other facilities of their size. So to Miranda’s point, there are fewer people going out to lunch, generating less sales tax revenue. True, says the Data Center Coalition’s DAN DIORIO, but he also points out some communities’ infrastructure couldn’t handle that many people, so a data center may be a better fit than some other kinds of projects.

DAN DIORIO: There are communities throughout the state that would like to have a data center, that view data centers as really filling or fulfilling their economic development goals. Now the state has essentially put in a one-size-fits-all policy. It’s told those communities, you know, "We’re going to have a dramatic impact on your ability to attract a data center from a state level."

MARK BRODIE: One of the Valley cities that may be concerned about that is Buckeye. Officials are trying to bring data center development to an area just west of the city’s airport, and Mayor Eric Orsborn doesn’t love the idea of doing that without the state sales tax incentive.

ERIC ORSBORN: In our case, it seems a little unfair that they’ve put in this tax incentive to build these out here, and when some of the municipalities fill up with those data centers, now that we’re about to take advantage of those opportunities, partially because of these tax incentives and the success of them in our state, that now we want to take away that incentive, which is one of the tools in our toolbox to attract development to our community.

MARK BRODIE: It’s not just Arizona that’s reconsidering the economic development tools they make available to bring in data centers. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports as of this spring, 38 states offered some kind of tax incentive for data centers. But as of April, eight states besides Arizona had considered bills to completely repeal their incentives. 19 other states had bills that would amend their tax breaks. In addition to Arizona, states like Washington and Alabama this year have rolled back their incentives. So, what does that mean for data centers?

DAN DIORIO: Broadly speaking, as a trend in the industry, what we see now is significant development of new markets throughout the country.

MARK BRODIE: The Data Center Coalition’s Dan Diorio says while Arizona has historically been a top five market for data centers, the industry is seeing new states jump into the mix. He says that’ll be a factor in how competitive Arizona is long-term. But there are those in the industry who argue there are some limits on where data centers can locate. Jason Pfaff, general manager for Iron Mountain North America, which operates data centers here, says it comes down to demand.

JASON PFAFF: I mean, it’s the sixth-largest city now. You know, the demand is here, so that’s where you come. You don’t put a data center in some little town in Idaho where there’s no people, right?

MARK BRODIE: But that may not be the case forever. The Data Center Coalition’s Dan Diorio says as technology continues to evolve, it’ll likely make it more possible for data centers to move away from population centers. Mark Bauer agrees there’s an evolution in all of this. He’s vice chairman at the commercial real estate firm JLL in their Data Center Solutions Group. He says over the past couple of decades, Phoenix had been a backup data center facility. Primary centers were in places like California or Seattle. But he says that started to change around 2005.

MARK BAUER: So, we’ve been a really good recipient of customers that had their primary data centers in California and had backup here, and now they’ve converted. They actually now have their primary data centers here and might have a backup data center in another area of Phoenix, or Vegas, or Texas.

MARK BRODIE: Bauer says Arizona’s lack of natural disasters makes it an attractive place to locate data centers, as does the growing semiconductor industry. Going forward, he can envision smaller data centers spread throughout communities rather than the massive facilities we see now. And Mark Stapp with ASU’s W. P. Carey School of Business believes communities should think about data centers a little differently than they do other kinds of developments.

MARK STAPP: This is necessary infrastructure, and it’s necessary infrastructure not just for the local community, but on a national and global level. And that changes the calculus on how you evaluate their benefits versus the public cost of including them in your community.

MARK BRODIE: Stapp says data centers need to go somewhere, so that somewhere may as well be in this country rather than in one that maybe isn’t so friendly. But he also gets why residents don’t necessarily want those somewheres to be close to them, not only because of concerns about power, water, and land, but because of what happens inside data centers. And that’s especially true when states are offering tax breaks to bring them in.

MARK STAPP: They don’t see the public benefits equaling the public incentive, meaning the public has agreed to forego revenue in order to generate something that it believes is going to get—that is going to produce more revenue than we’re giving up, and the question is, is that actually happening?

MARK BRODIE: Data center supporters say it is, and they argue operators understand the objections people have to the facilities and are working to mitigate them. But in Arizona and elsewhere, that work may have to happen without economic help from the state. You can find all three parts of our series, "Centers of Attention," at TheShow.KJZZ.org.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5, I’m Mark Brodie. The Atlantic’s latest bombshell headline is a stark one. It says: “The End of Reading Is Here.” The theory is that it can no longer be assumed that universal literacy will be achieved, and that instead, the age of reading will be a short one in human history. Are we entering a post-literate society?

Well, our next guest has hope that reading is still relevant, even if she can see the impacts of our technology-drenched world in her own life. Barbara VanDenburgh hosts the First Draft Book Club each month at Changing Hands Bookstore. She’s the former books editor at USA Today. She told my co-host, Lauren Gilger, it’s a bleak, but not inaccurate article.

BARBARA VANDENBURGH: I can see a lot of the effects of what the article is discussing in my own life, and it scares me, right? So the article talks about how our attention spans collectively are measurably worse than they were before smartphones, before TikTok, before social media, before short-form video. You know, our brains have been hijacked by these smart devices, and you know, I see that in my own life as a lifelong reader. You know, my house is a fire hazard. I have so many books in my house. I ran out of room on my bookshelves years ago, and they’re piled on the floor. I have so many books. And I have never had a harder time getting through a book than I do now. And I love to read. It enriches my life so much. So I do think that there’s a lot of truth to this article. Do I think that we are headed for a post-literate society? Do I think all hope is lost? No, I don’t. I’m very hopeful.

LAUREN GILGER: Good. And that’s because you are involved in reading communities, it sounds like, in some ways, right? Like you host this book club at Changing Hands every month. It seems like it’s getting bigger at this moment, right?

BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Yeah. So I’ve hosted this book club, the First Draft Book Club at Changing Hands in Phoenix, for 11 years as of this summer. Every single month, including during COVID, which we did virtually, but every single month, we get together and we discuss a recently published work of literary fiction. So that’s the stuff that people are especially having a hard time reading, right? Things that have complicated themes and difficult character arcs and stuff that you have to think on and ponder to make sense of and discuss.

So we’ve been doing this for 11 years, and I would say especially in the last year and a half, it has started to really pick up. We get regularly over a hundred people per month in this gathering place at Changing Hands to discuss fiction, which is incredible outside of a classroom setting. That’s incredible.

LAUREN GILGER: Of their own volition.

BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Of their own volition. And I’m seeing a lot of—every meeting I ask who’s here for the first time, I’m seeing more and more hands come up every single time I ask who’s here for the first time. I’m seeing younger people. So Gen Z, people who are still in college or freshly out of college. It’s a predominantly female crowd. There’s lots of, you know, there’s lots of women who come together and talk about fiction. I’m seeing more and more men show up. Hey, hey. And I’m just seeing this uptick in enthusiasm, just even in this sample size group of people in, you know, Midtown Phoenix show up to talk about books. I’m so full of hope.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. And you also have ways, it sounds like, of dealing with the distraction of your phone, right? Like, and a lot of us do this, like have, you know, focus modes or apps that we use. But you have a couple of, I think, interesting tips. So run us through those.

BARBARA VANDENBURGH: So I made a—so I sat down at the beginning of the year. I don’t do resolutions, but I do sort of write a list of: What is it that I want for myself in this new year? Not so much a resolution, but what are my hopes? And a big part of that was I want to read more, I want to read more intentionally, I want to read undistracted, and I want to get off my stupid phone. I hate this device that I’m addicted to.

And so one of the things that I found that I’m now obsessed with is this app, and it’s called Focus Friend. And it was created by Hank Green, who is an author. And this app is so silly. It is a cartoon character, and it’s a little bean. I’ve named mine Dolly. And this little cartoon character, you put your phone into focus mode, and the little bean will shut down all of your apps, except for the emergency stuff like your phone, right? But it’ll shut down all of the apps, and the little bean will knit you something.

And so what I’ll do is I’ll put 30 minutes on that timer and I’ll shut down all my apps, and I’m like, "You are going to sit here and you are going to read for 30 minutes and you’re not going to look at TikTok or Instagram or check your work email for the 50th time. You’re not going to do any of that, you’re just going to sit here and you’re going to read." And I would say that after doing this all year, I am now better. Like I’ve trained myself to like know what 30 minutes feels like again. Something like that is really cute.

My friend has been giving me stickers. And this is stupid, it’s so—it ignites the kindergarten part of my brain. But she’ll be like, "Put your phone away and read at a coffee shop with me for an hour and I’ll give you a sticker at the end of it." And I’ve got this planner and it’s full of stickers, and if I go a certain amount of time without any stickers, I’m like, "I really need a sticker fix." So for whatever reason, you got to build in these little rewards and dopamine hits that will replace whatever it is your smartphone is giving you.

LAUREN GILGER: Do you think at this point in our culture, Barbara, that we can still assume that reading is like a good thing, an obviously good thing?

BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Yes, I will die on that hill. I mean, personally, obviously, I’m deeply passionate about reading and literacy and what it does for us as human beings and how it builds understanding and bridges between cultures, and there’s so much that’s worthwhile about reading. I think there’s still social and cultural cachet to reading, too. Like, I think walking around with a book or reading in public, there’s still a little allure to that. I do. Maybe that’s a little romanticized, but I do think it’s true. I think reading and sitting with something that takes a long time to get through and digest is about teaching you how to think critically. And that’s something that a YouTube video and that TikToks aren’t going to do.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so what are you reading this summer? We can’t let you go without a few recommendations.

BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Oh, so we just had an insanely great book club conversation. The book that we read last month was "Yesteryear" by Caro Claire Burke.

LAUREN GILGER: So much buzz on this book.

BARBARA VANDENBURGH: It’s so good, and it’s going to be a movie. I think Anne Hathaway—it got optioned for film rights before the book was even published. Anne Hathaway is going to be in it. So "Yesteryear" is this just delectable novel about this woman who is a tradwife, which these are influencers on like TikTok or Instagram who are sort of living and promoting an old-fashioned, more like sort of conservative lifestyle, where they’re, you know, homemakers and cooking everything in their kitchens from scratch, and it’s a very an idealized, romanticized propaganda of a kind of life that didn’t really exist the way it’s being presented, right? There’s not a controversy over tradwife influencers and content.

And so this main character of this book is a tradwife influencer, and one day she wakes up and it—she’s in the 1800s. And so she’s living the reality of this thing that she’s been promoting online, and it’s just—you will not walk away without an opinion, let’s just put it that way.

LAUREN GILGER: Ah, I can’t wait. Okay, I got to read that one, okay.

BARBARA VANDENBURGH: I’m also, independent of this book club, my friends and I have done an offshoot book club where we’re tackling a classic. And we’re doing it very intentionally over the course of months. And so the first one that we did for this book club was "Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry, which is a brick of a book. It’s like 8- or 900 pages. Intimidating size, yeah. Yeah, and we met every single month and we would assign ourselves a certain number of chapters, and we would meet every month, and we got through the book, no problem, and it was so rewarding. And now we’re doing "Middlemarch." So I cannot recommend enough, like creating accountability in the form of meeting with friends or finding other people to do it with is so effective.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, well, lots of great recommendations and ideas when it comes to reading this summer. Barbara VanDenburgh, manager of programming and communications at the Sidney Poitier New American Film School at ASU, as well as former books editor at USA Today. She hosts the First Draft Book Club at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix every month. Barbara, thank you so much for coming back on The Show. We appreciate it very much.

BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Thank you for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for listening to The Show podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban. Our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at TheShow.KJZZ.org. You can also find us on Instagram @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.