The Show for July 28, 2026: New tariffs on Canada, the case for more sun exposure and more

President Trump has levied a new round of tariffs — including 50% tariffs on Canada. We’ll hear what that could mean for Arizona businesses and its economy. Plus, the argument for getting more sun exposure.

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 doing away with energy efficiency standards may impact Arizonans’ utility bills, and the argument for getting more sun exposure.

But first, President Trump is again imposing tariffs on a number of countries around the globe. Last week, he announced 50% tariffs on most Canadian goods. Canada is one of Arizona’s biggest trading partners. On Friday, tariffs of 10% to 12% took effect on more than 80 countries. The moves come after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an earlier round of tariffs this year, saying the president did not have the authority to levy them.

With me now to talk about these new tariffs and how they may affect Arizona and Arizonans is Todd Sanders, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. Todd, good morning.

TODD SANDERS: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So, what do you make of this new round of tariffs? Both sort of the broad ones that are on more than 80 countries, but also the 50% specifically on Canada.

TODD SANDERS: Well, I think it really comes down to certainty. I think it’s proven, we’ve proven that Arizona businesses really can compete with anyone when the rules are clear. But tariffs and year-to-year uncertainty make it harder for companies to plan, to invest, hire and to keep costs down.

And I think with what we’re seeing on the trade front, at least in the last few years, is on-again, off-again tariffs, which make it really difficult to plan for the next quarter, the next year, and to make long-term plans in terms of investments or hiring.

MARK BRODIE: Was there a sense in the business community that once the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year on the last round that that was it? Or was there maybe a feeling that something else could be coming down the line?

TODD SANDERS: I think there was the hope that that would be it, but certainly the realization that the administration really sees this as one of their principal policy goals, and that they would look for additional avenues to impose tariffs as a foreign policy tool.

MARK BRODIE: So, what are some of the types of businesses, and maybe some of the types of products, that Arizona businesses import here that could be particularly affected by this latest round?

TODD SANDERS: Well, you’ve got to remember that we are in a trade state. Trade last year totaled $100 billion. It’s easy to think that this is just going to be large Arizona companies, but this impacts all companies, large and small, up and down the supply chain.

When you think about, for instance, we’ve talked a lot about TSMC in the last few years, and certainly that is a big story. But a lot of the suppliers, a lot of those businesses that do business with TSMC are small and mid-sized businesses that are impacted by these tariffs.

So, it really runs the gamut, and it also impacts businesses large and small here in Arizona. And, of course, that puts a damper on planning, spending and hiring, which is really at the core of what we’re trying to do here.

MARK BRODIE: What are you hearing from some of your members about what some of those impacts might be this time?

TODD SANDERS: Recently, I joined the governor in D.C. to talk about USMCA, for instance. We had a supplier that has folks here in Arizona, hires people here, does business here, but that has work across the border. For instance, those tariffs, or eliminating USMCA, would essentially put that employer out of business. So, it can be an existential threat for all types of businesses — small, medium and large.

I think a lot of concern about where this is going, and mostly the issue is just the lack of certainty with what they should be planning for, what businesses should be planning for, and what they can expect.

MARK BRODIE: How do businesses try to deal with that? Because I would imagine that even with this latest round, many of, if not all of them, are still not certain of what the landscape is going to be six months from now.

TODD SANDERS: Unfortunately, it’s become a new normal, but I think what we’re losing there is the opportunity cost. Certainly, with a clean runway, with certainty moving forward, businesses are able to plan more effectively and grow more effectively.

So, it’s hard to calculate what it is we’ve lost in this period where companies just are so uncertain that they pull back on capital investments and hiring. Certainly, it’s going to be probably up to folks a couple years from now doing those lookbacks to really understand what those impacts have been.

But certainly, you can feel the uncertainty and the trepidation to move forward when there’s so much opportunity here. When you look at our exports and our imports in Arizona, how much they’ve grown, the Taiwan connection and what that’s meant to our economy, it feels like we could be doing a lot more if we just had some more certainty on the trade front.

MARK BRODIE: Is it safe to say, do you think, that as businesses are dealing with this uncertainty and maybe paying more to import some products, that those costs are going to continue to be passed down at some point to consumers?

TODD SANDERS: There’s no question. I think for a while, as this got started, there was some hope that perhaps the tariffs were going to be more short-term. Businesses tried to absorb those costs, but at the end of the day, those costs will directly impact consumers.

We’re all hearing about the cost of things, we’re looking at inflation moving up and down and impacting consumers. The concern, I think, for the medium and long term is that these costs are going to be hitting consumers where it hurts at a time where everything is more expensive. So, that is certainly something that we’re thinking about and we’re talking about with the administration.

MARK BRODIE: So, Todd, before I let you go, you mentioned USMCA, the trade deal between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. What are you hoping for, and maybe what are you fearful of, as the terms of this trade deal seemingly are in flux again?

TODD SANDERS: It is in flux. I think everyone knows that we did not renew it, but we’re in sort of a year-by-year type of format now. My hope is that we’re able to move back to a trilateral agreement. Certainly, there are things that we can adjust in the agreement going forward.

But I think what we don’t want to see is — and I think the president has sort of headed in the direction of a bilateral deal with Mexico, and then perhaps we’ll see what happens with Canada. These are two huge trading partners for Arizona, so we’d love to see a trilateral agreement that is strengthened, that’s good for Arizona, good for the country, and good for our partners.

MARK BRODIE: What is your level of optimism that that’ll happen?

TODD SANDERS: I think at the end of the day, I’m hopeful that we can get there. There’s obviously a lot of animosity right now between the United States and Canada. There seems to be much more momentum with Mexico. I think last time we saw the same paradigm. I’m hopeful that once the administration is able to come to an agreement with Mexico, Canada can be folded in as well, and we’ll have an agreement moving forward.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Todd Sanders, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. Todd, thanks as always. I appreciate it.

TODD SANDERS: Thank you.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created for audience ac

MARK BRODIE: The Arizona Corporation Commission this month repealed the state’s energy efficiency standards. They’d been in effect for about 15 years. That followed utility regulators doing away with Arizona’s renewable energy standards. The GOP-controlled commission argued the rules were outdated and costing Arizona residents money. But critics of the move, like my next guest, say the opposite is true.

Diane Brown is executive director of the Arizona Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. She’s here with me now to talk more about this. Good morning, Diane.

DIANE BROWN: Good morning, Mark. Thank you for having me.

DIANE BROWN: Good morning, Mark. Thank you for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Of course, thank you for being here. So, let’s start with what exactly the energy efficiency standards were. What did they do?

DIANE BROWN: The Arizona energy efficiency standard was really set up to help ensure that the utilities were ranging programs for homes and businesses to help people reduce energy waste and save money on their electric bills. Wildly successful, and it’s a real shame that the commission did away with it.

MARK BRODIE: And this is things like, for example, helping insulate your house better, or caulk up your windows so energy didn’t leave, but also did it have to do with buying energy-efficient appliances, things like that?

DIANE BROWN: Yes. Each year, the utilities would propose different programs that would qualify, and they would change as technology changed. So, each year there would be improvements to the programs that were offered, but each program had to meet a cost-effectiveness test, and had to be verified by the commission’s staff to meet that test, which really was a barrier that no other resource had to make, and showed that it was successful through the financial savings and through just the energy that was saved in the process.

MARK BRODIE: So, one of the arguments that the commissioners made in doing away with this program is that technology is to the point now where it’s harder to buy an appliance, for example, that is not energy-efficient. So, why do we need these kinds of rules in place?

DIANE BROWN: That was one of the arguments, and I think, unfortunately, there was a lack of understanding that technology improves over time. Even appliances today that are far more efficient than they were 10, 15 years ago, they continue to improve. If you go to purchase an air conditioning unit, you have a variety of options of how efficient that unit might be. The more efficient, the more money you can save for your household or your business.

It’s not just appliances that are part of the standard, either. You mentioned weatherization. There were opportunities for energy audits that helped people find out where there were leaks in their home, and provide opportunities for sealing those up. Really, the program continued to evolve as technology evolved.

MARK BRODIE: So, do those programs just go away now?

DIANE BROWN: That is a great question. Hopefully not. The commission has said that each utility can continue to propose programs, and they’ll look at them on a ... program-by-program basis.

Unfortunately, though, we’ve seen just in the last year, APS proposed a number of programs that the commission eliminated, even though each of those programs met that cost-effectiveness test. They also dramatically reduced the budget that APS had to provide its customers with these programs. In the case of UNS Gas, they also did away with programs, and so we’re not very confident that the programs will continue in a robust manner, nor that we will see the kind of financial and energy savings that we did under a standard.

MARK BRODIE: So, were these programs funded by money from the commission? Did the commission give, let’s say, APS or Tucson Electric X dollars to send people out to check to see if there are leaks under the door or something like that?

DIANE BROWN: The ratepayers for each of the utilities helped to finance the programs, usually, depending on the utility, depending on the year, a few dollars more on their monthly electric bill.

What’s really important to note here is that for every dollar spent in these programs, close to $4 was returned. So, one in four investment return, we think, is really substantial. A very conservative estimate, $1.7 billion in net savings have been realized through the energy efficiency standard. We don’t think that any one-off program or compilation of one-off programs is going to get that same level of return.

MARK BRODIE: I wonder if there’s a certain irony in the fact that this happened so recently, and we saw just this week SRP, APS saying that they’ve broken demand records for the amount of energy as the temperatures have been unbelievably hot.

DIANE BROWN: Excellent point. One of the big concerns that we have is reliability, and we know that anyone who is living in Arizona, particularly in the Valley with this heat, wants to make sure that when we turn on the air conditioner, when we turn on our light switch, that it’s going to work.

With the new load that we are expecting through data centers, large loads, population growth, the last thing we need to be doing is putting more strain on the grid. Without being more efficient, there’s going to be more strain on the grid, and there’s going to be more of a need for additional power sources, whether that be more gas, whether that be more solar, whatever it is. It’s going to cost ratepayers money, and energy efficiency saves money.

We also know that people are talking about affordability and having real challenges paying their bills this summer, and have been for a period of time. Any tool that is removed from helping people to have more affordable bills, to help make sure that we’re not wasting energy, is something that we really think policy makers should be focused on.

MARK BRODIE: So, Diane, quickly before we wrap up, if folks are looking at their utility bills and their jaws are hitting the ground, are there ways to help them figure out things to do absent these kinds of programs?

DIANE BROWN: Yes. We absolutely recommend all consumers contact their utility. Each utility does have some programs that can offer benefits to them. Look at their website, call them, ask about the various options, and all the options that they have to save money on your bill.

You can go to savingenergytips.org for a set of things you can do, some of them don’t cost a cent, to be more energy-efficient in your home. The state also has set up efficiencyarizona.com that offers some rebates on some of the appliances that we talked about earlier.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Diane Brown, executive director of the Arizona Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. Diane, thanks so much.

DIANE BROWN: Thank you for having us.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up: Arizonans tend to avoid sun exposure where we can, clinging to shade, sunscreen, and the indoors as early as May in some cases. We’ll hear one author’s argument, though, for the health benefits of more sunlight.

But first, while the Pocket Fire burned near Sedona and Flagstaff earlier this summer, and conditions remained hot and dry, Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest power utility, made an announcement. They would shut down power to about 8,000 customers to mitigate wildfire risk near the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff. It was part of APS’s Public Safety Power Shutoff program, or PSPS, which the utility adopted in 2024, but never had to put into use until April of this year. And according to our next guest, it’s a last resort kind of option for them. Scott Bordenkircher is director of forestry and fire mitigation at APS. My co-host, Lauren Gilger, spoke with him more about it.

SCOTT BORDENKIRCHER: It’s the tool when conditions are so bad in an area that we just don’t believe that all of the other risk mitigation things that we’ve done, there’s a chance that they still might not be enough.

And so we look at specific areas where those environmental conditions — and those are really, really high fire risk conditions. So, we’re talking lots of dry fuels, very low relative humidities, wind is certainly a part of that. We look at those factors in that area, and we have to make the determination of, you know what, in this instance — and we hopefully do it for as short a time as we possibly can — but our best answer here is really to turn off power proactively in case our equipment gets damaged.

And so that’s when we exercise that tool. It’s in those very, very extreme conditions where we still believe that the risk to our customers and, frankly, the communities we ourselves live in is just so high that we don’t want to take that chance.

LAUREN GILGER: Talk about this most recent decision just in late June here to shut off power for many people in Northern Arizona near Grand Canyon, near Flagstaff. What were the conditions like? What was that decision-making process like?

SCOTT BORDENKIRCHER: So, that decision-making process started about five days before the event itself. We started to see — or I should say our meteorologists started to see — really kind of these conditions building from the west, where we were having this very, very strong high-pressure zone.

Add that to the fact that in that part of the state, we’d already had record lows in terms of any form of precipitation. So, we didn’t have the snow, we didn’t have the rain. What we had instead was very, very dry forests, very, very dry brush and other fuels that if a spark started somewhere in that area, there was a very, very high risk of a catastrophic result.

And so at the point where we start to look at four days out, we started notifying our customers. We continue to monitor then all the way through that event leading up to it to really try and pinpoint, “Hey, is the weather pattern moving, are circumstances changing, did it maybe get a little more moist in the evening?”

LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. So, not a decision, it sounds like, you take lightly. What was the reaction like from customers? As you said, this wasn’t the very first time you’ve had to do this, but this year is the first time you’ve implemented this program and turned off power for folks during wildfire season.

And that comes with risks, right? For people who maybe won’t have air conditioning, might not be able to live in the way that they’re used to. Were folks on board?

SCOTT BORDENKIRCHER: So it was a mix, as I think any of us would expect. So for any of us who’ve gotten used to having power all the time, it certainly is an inconvenience at the least. And for those folks that you mentioned that are particularly vulnerable — whether it’s our customers on medical equipment or highly susceptible to higher temperatures — for them, it goes beyond inconvenience.

We worked with county emergency managers and the Red Cross so that we’re able to allow them enough notice to open shelters and bring resources to folks that maybe need a little extra assistance during that time. That was very helpful, I think, overall, was very much appreciated.

In terms of public sentiment, I think there were a good number of folks up in that area who have either lived through wildfires, either in their past or their family’s past — because this is definitely a national problem — that I think they understood the need.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So those power shutoffs, that’s just one of the things that you do at APS, and probably at other utilities, to sort of try to monitor, try to spot wildfires. Talk a little bit about some of these other efforts. I’m not sure folks are aware of them, but I mean, you have like mountain top AI cameras, right? Like, weather stations. You even wrap power poles in fire-resistant mesh in places?

SCOTT BORDENKIRCHER: We do indeed. So, our fire mitigation program probably within the last 11, 12 years, we’ve really had a specific focus on fire mitigation as weather’s become drier and our forest health has been declining. But it’s a very broad-based program, and it really starts with the work we do just to manage vegetation in the first place. So, clearing our rights-of-way, ensuring that we have trees and brush away from our power lines, that’s really kind of that ground-level, foundational perspective.

But then we do a lot of investing in terms of grid hardening. So that gets into the idea of wrapping those power poles so they don’t burn when other fires come up to them. It includes technologies that we put in place. You mentioned weather stations. Weather stations have been very key, and they were very key, frankly, during the PSPS call that weekend, because that’s what we were using to monitor real-time conditions on the ground.

Artificial intelligence fire-sensing cameras, those are a really big effort for us and something that we believe very highly in, because that’s a piece of equipment that doesn’t just tell us that there’s been a fire started somewhere, but it tells first responders directly. And it goes directly to dispatch centers so they can get people out to that fire to fight it quicker.

And then we’ve changed our operations over the past decade in terms of, as risk has grown, we take a look at work differently. There’s work that we don’t do out in the field, for instance, during red flag conditions. And so, again, all of that comes together to try and really approach this problem the most broadly and holistically that we can.

LAUREN GILGER: So, I mean, obviously, there’s a risk of litigation, right, for utility companies like APS, which you mentioned. But I wonder also how you view the role of utilities going forward, the responsibility of utilities going forward, as wildfire season is now basically year-round.

Last year at the state Legislature, there was some debate about this, and eventually the lawmakers did pass a new law that reduces some liability for utility companies like APS, but also still allows for people to sue if you don’t follow your own kind of wildfire plan. Where do you see the balance here?

SCOTT BORDENKIRCHER: First and foremost for us, this has always been about public safety. Again, I mentioned earlier that these are the same communities that we live in. We’re not a company based in some other place looking at Northern Arizona and hoping that risk just kind of works itself out. For us, the investment we made, the programs we put in place, those all started long before even the first lawsuit in another state was enacted or happened.

While utilities account for, especially in Arizona, less than 2%, 1% of all wildfires — so the bulk is caused by lightning strikes and, unfortunately, bad human behavior — that 1% is still really important to us to make sure that we aren’t contributing to that problem.

And we have lines that obviously connect and run to all of our communities through those forested areas, through those areas that are experiencing that drought and those issues. And so, again, we just believe that it is absolutely our responsibility to do our part to help provide for wildfire safety, for wildfire mitigation.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, we’ll leave it there. Scott Bordenkircher, director of forestry and fire mitigation at APS, joining us. Scott, thank you for coming on The Show. I appreciate it.

SCOTT BORDENKIRCHER: Thank you, Lauren.

MARK BRODIE: Congress has allocated millions of dollars for body-worn cameras for ICE agents. And after two American citizens were killed by ICE in Minneapolis, then Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agency would deploy the cameras to agents around the country. But ICE agents were not wearing body cameras in two recent incidents in which people were shot and killed in Houston and Maine. The Trump administration and congressional Democrats are accusing each other of being the reason for that.

With me to talk more about ICE agents and body-worn cameras is Michael White, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at ASU.

Michael, good morning. How are you doing?

MICHAEL WHITE: I’m good, Mark. Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So, how easy or difficult is it for a federal nationwide agency like ICE to get body cameras to all of its agents?

MICHAEL WHITE: You know, Mark, I guess the short answer is that it’s complicated, but I think it’s important to recognize that there’s a bit of history here. The Department of Justice, the White House, they have supported use of body-worn cameras for well over a decade at the local level.

And this crosses presidential administrations. This is one of the few things that everyone has agreed upon is a good idea. The Obama administration, both Trump administrations, the Biden administration, all have been very, very supportive of body cameras for local and even state law enforcement agencies.

But things have been different at the federal level. Back in May of 2022, then-President Biden issued an executive order, which mandated body-worn cameras for all federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE. And then those agencies had some period of time to try to get their ducks in a row, to engage in that full process.

But then when President Trump won the election and took office in January, he immediately rescinded that executive order. So, all of that time that federal law enforcement agencies had put into planning and deployment kind of was then put on hold, and agencies were left to essentially decide for themselves whether they wanted to continue with cameras or not. Some did and some didn’t.

That’s the history there, but to get back to your question, it is very complicated. The Department of Justice and White House, like I said, they’ve been supporting local and state agencies in doing this for a long time. So, the institutional knowledge is there, but there are many, many hurdles to get over, number one of which is funding.

Body-worn cameras certainly are expensive. Procurement, you have to figure out which vendor you’re going to go with, then you have to develop your policy, you have to make sure you have the infrastructure that is required for the hardware and the software, and then training, obviously, for the officers.

So, it’s certainly more complicated when you consider the fact that ICE is operating across the nation versus, say, the Phoenix Police Department, which is in one local area. But like I said, the institutional knowledge is there, so it’s just a matter of getting all those things taken care of.

MARK BRODIE: What’s the argument for having state and local police wear body cameras, but not necessarily an agency like ICE?

MICHAEL WHITE: There’s no difference for me. The arguments for body-worn cameras, the primary arguments at the local and state law enforcement level, are pretty straightforward.

One is evidence. So, when there’s encounters between law enforcement officers and community members, you capture audio and video of what transpired. Now, they’re not perfect by any means, but still, they capture things that otherwise would be missed.

Transparency, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a chief of police give a press conference and say publicly that we’re deploying cameras because we want to be transparent. So, that when things do happen, then video and audio can be released to the community to demonstrate kind of openness and transparency about what happened.

And then accountability. So, when officers engage in behaviors that violate policy or the law, you then have the information you need to hold officers to account.

And then the other big one is this idea that the presence of the camera during the encounter will change behavior for the better. That is, community members and law enforcement officers know the camera’s there, they know their behaviors are being recorded, and as a result, they’re going to behave better. That’s called a civilizing effect.

So, those are the main reasons for deploying cameras at the local and state level. Those reasons — evidence, accountability, transparency, changing behavior for the better — all apply equally well at the federal level, especially for ICE.

MARK BRODIE: So, Michael, we have about a minute before I have to let you go.

Is there evidence to suggest that when officers, at whatever level they’re at, are wearing cameras that bad things tend to happen less frequently?

MICHAEL WHITE: The evidence, in my view, is pretty strong. So, there have been 44 academic studies that have examined whether complaints against law enforcement officers decline after they start wearing cameras, and 38 of those 44 studies have documented declines. That is really persuasive evidence.

But the point I want to make, Mark, is that what really matters is the culture of the agency, because when it boils down to it, cameras are a tool. And if officers, whether it’s local, state, or ICE, if they believe that their supervisors, their agency leaders, are not going to pay attention or not going to hold them accountable for their behavior that’s recorded on those cameras, then they make no real difference at all.

There’s an old saying that culture eats policy for breakfast. So, if the agency is not responding appropriately to what officers are doing in the field, you can’t really expect then that a technology like body-worn cameras is going to change much of anything.

MARK BRODIE: Right. Interesting. All right, that is Michael White, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at ASU. Michael, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

MICHAEL WHITE: All right, Mark. Take care.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. Lots of Arizonans do everything we can to avoid being in the sun. We search for covered parking or try to walk on the shady side of the street. If we can’t find shade, we wear hats or long shirts and pants to avoid sun exposure. And absent all of that, lots of us make sure to apply sunscreen.

But my next guest says minimizing our sun exposure may be exposing us to other health risks, including missing out on some of the sun’s benefits. Rowan Jacobsen is a science writer and author of the new book, "In Defense of Sunlight: The Surprising Science of Sun Exposure." In it, he argues there are both physical and mental health benefits of sunlight.

Jacobsen joins me to talk more about this. Rowan, you’re basically making the argument that we just aren’t spending enough time in the sun. Is that about right?

ROWAN JACOBSEN: Well, depends who “we” are — who you are and where you are. But many of us, yes, don’t get enough time in the sun. In Arizona, the math is slightly different. But yes, Americans in general would probably benefit from getting a little bit more sun exposure.

MARK BRODIE: OK. And why is that? Because as you say, the conventional wisdom is to avoid being in the sun, try to find the shade, make sure you’re wearing a hat, sunscreen, all of that. So why is that maybe not entirely the case?

ROWAN JACOBSEN: Yeah. And so all of those recommendations were based on kind of the first thing we learned about sun exposure, which is that it can raise your risk of skin cancer, which is true. So, those recommendations went into place and got very well established in this effort to lower rates of skin cancer.

Since that time, since those discoveries were made 60-70 years ago, other areas of medicine have made all these discoveries about these benefits of sunlight that actually have nothing to do with skin cancer. So we know it can lower blood pressure, it can improve the immune system, it can extend longevity and reduce your rates of cardiovascular disease and certain other cancers.

So all that sort of has come later and hasn’t been incorporated into the recommendations yet. Part of the reason I wrote the book is because I thought it was time to consider the subject as a whole and maybe come up with new recommendations.

MARK BRODIE: So when you look at the costs and benefits, do the benefits of — as you reference, lowering risks of certain diseases, that kind of thing — do those outweigh the potential risks of skin cancer?

ROWAN JACOBSEN: I think they do in many circumstances, and there’s a couple of different factors involved in that equation. Skin cancer, it’s very common, but it’s generally not a deadly disease. It doesn’t kill that many people. It’s not one of the top 40 or 50 killers. Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have impacts beyond mortality. There’s still a lot of cosmetic issues with it, and it’s no fun to get a little chunk of yourself cut out.

But in terms of moving the needle on mortality or on long-term disability, other diseases like cardiovascular disease and internal cancers are much bigger factors. And those are the ones that do seem to be improved by at least a little bit more sunlight.

MARK BRODIE: I can imagine right now any number of dermatologists screaming at the radio or at their computers if they’re listening on the radio. Have you gotten a lot of pushback on this?

ROWAN JACOBSEN: Well, to my surprise, dermatologists are some of the most interested in this subject, and I think we’re going to see some changes in dermatology in the future. But yeah, it’s going to take a little time for everyone to sort of get on the same page.

But understanding skin’s role in keeping us healthy is what dermatology is all about. And so they are going to be incorporating these new discoveries, this new science, and they’re the ones who are going to be leading the way in coming up with plans for how you can get the right amount of sun on your skin to maximize the benefits without having to really increase the risks.

And it looks like we don’t need to really raise our risk of skin cancers significantly in order to get the basic benefits of modest sun exposure. So I actually think dermatologists are going to be leading the way on this, although, as you imply, there might be some awkward conversations on the way there.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. OK, so you mentioned the amount of time we might need to be in the sun. Do we have a sense of that yet? Like, do you need to be out just for a couple of minutes in sun exposure? Do you need to lay on the beach all day to get these benefits?

ROWAN JACOBSEN: Yeah, great question. And you definitely do not need to lay on the beach all day. In fact, more and more, it looks like almost all the problems with skin cancer are stemming from that sort of all-day at Cancun approach, right? Especially if you had pretty pale skin going into that vacation time, and then you’re on the beach all day, that’s when you’re going to get into trouble.

It looks like garden variety daily doses of sun exposure don’t significantly increase the risk of skin cancer for most people, but those are enough to reap the benefits. Like say, somewhere like Arizona this time of year, you’re going to get more sunlight than you know what to do with, so you don’t need to seek it.

But say like mid-winter in Arizona? Yeah, probably somebody with fair skin could benefit from, say, half an hour in the sun midday.

MARK BRODIE: You reference that the math in Phoenix might be a little different. I wonder if it’s such a good idea, or if it’s even necessary in the summer here when it’s already so hot and so sunny to spend additional time, or if, as you kind of alluded to, what we’re doing day-to-day is sufficient here?

ROWAN JACOBSEN: Yeah, I would expect that in summer, everybody is just sort of inadvertently getting what they want. Although, I grew up in Florida, and so I know from summers in Florida, it’s almost like reverse winter, where you’re in air conditioning all the time. So, you actually don’t see a lot of light in some of these very warm places in summer.

MARK BRODIE: And does it have to be direct sunlight? Like, if somebody is outside, let’s say they’re in the sunlight, it’s sunny out, but they’re in the shade under a tree, maybe dappled sunlight, do they still get the benefits? Or do you have to be in direct sunlight?

ROWAN JACOBSEN: That is a great question, also. And yes, I’m actually a big fan of the dappled sunlight and the shade of a tree, because the ultraviolet portion of sunlight is the one that people worry about in terms of skin cancer. It’s the highest energy part, but it’s blocked very nicely by shade or trees or things like that. You only need a little bit of that.

And some of the other benefits come from the other wavelengths, like the visible part of the spectrum and the infrared part of the spectrum. And those get bounced around. They bounce off of trees and other greenery, grass. So, if you’re in the shade of a tree in a park, you’re actually getting a lot of these beneficial rays that aren’t going to raise your risk of skin cancer — and just a smidge of the riskier stuff.

The other thing that could work well is early morning and evening light, because when the sun is really low in the sky, the more atmosphere the sunlight is coming through, the more that ultraviolet light is going to get filtered out. So, that morning light is really nice in terms of giving you some of the benefits, none of the risks, and also in terms of your circadian rhythms, it’s going to jump start your day, get your metabolism running a little bit earlier, so it can be good from a cardiovascular spectrum and from setting you up with the sun schedule so that you sleep better at night.

MARK BRODIE: Do we diminish the benefits of sunlight if we’re wearing sunscreen?

ROWAN JACOBSEN: We do to a certain extent, because the sunscreen is literally screening out 95-96% of that ultraviolet light, which is why it reduces your risk of skin cancer. But again, in an environment where you’ve got tons and tons of photons coming in, like Florida or Arizona, that sunscreen is going to work for you in the brighter times of the year.

And in fact, if sunscreen gets people outside more, then that is all to the benefit. So, I kind of think of sunscreen as a good aid in this process if it does get people outside more.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Rowan Jacobsen, a longtime science writer, author of the new book, “In Defense of Sunlight: The Surprising Science of Sun Exposure.” Rowan, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

ROWAN JACOBSEN: Thanks, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: There is no shortage of discussion and debate over the role of AI in education, and that includes how students learn about the technology and how to use it. But my next guest says we just don’t know enough about AI yet to say we know how to teach it.

Justin Reich is a faculty member at MIT, where he studies online learning and how teachers learn. He’s also host of the podcast "The Homework Machine," and wrote a piece last fall in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Stop Pretending to Know How to Teach AI." In the article, Reich quotes a guide his lab has put out for K-12 educators about using AI, which says in part, "A guidebook of tying knots will show you exactly how to tie the knots the correct way. A guidebook on AI in schools in 2025 can’t possibly do that because we don’t even know what the knots are, let alone how to tie them."

I spoke with Reich earlier this year about all of this, and we started with what exactly he’s objecting to relative to how especially universities are teaching AI.

JUSTIN REICH: I object to the idea that we know what to teach students about AI or about using AI that will help them be better prepared for their futures. We do not know that yet.

MARK BRODIE: So how then should schools be handling AI? Because as I don’t have to tell you, like, this is a huge topic of discussion in terms of do we allow AI, do we not allow AI, how do we try to if our students, we figure they’re going to use it anyway, what do we do with this?

So what do you think schools should be doing?

JUSTIN REICH: Yes, we’ve done this big investigative reporting project called the Homework Machine where we interviewed 120 teachers and students across the country. And certainly one of the things we heard most from teachers was our institutions have to do something that if they don’t do something, then it pushes those pressures down on the individual teachers to figure out things on their own. And it’s inconsistent between classes, and that’s no good.

What schools need to be doing is recognizing that there are, at this moment, there are no best practices to be found. We don’t know what the right way forward is. When you have to do something and you don’t know what it is to do, then you have to put yourself in a kind of experimental mindset, and a mindset really sort of shaped by humility, that our early guesses might be wrong.

So what I would encourage schools to do is to look out, look at their institutions, listen to their teachers, listen to their students, and say, “All right, what’s our best guess for how we might move forward.?” And then you’re gonna have to test things. You have to test policies, you have to instructional practices and really think about them as tests.

Think about them as, OK, this semester we’re going to try this and we’re going to gather some evidence from before this semester, before we had this policy and we’re going to gather some evidence afterwards and we’re going to see: Are teachers happier? Are students happier? Are they learning more? When we look at student work, do we really see evidence of better learning emerging?

Eventually — eight years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now — I hope that if we had a conversation like this, I would be able to tell you, hey, we’ve studied this for a while and, and we have a good sense of these are some pretty good ways of using GPTs and LLMs in academic instruction. And these are some ways we should really stay away from that.

MARK BRODIE: That sounds like it might be challenging for schools though. I mean, in terms of just saying, “OK, we’re going to do this for some amount of time and then we’re going to do this, then we’re going to try something else.”

While scientifically it seems like it would probably make sense, I just wonder if logistically and policy-wise schools are really able to adjust quite that much.

JUSTIN REICH: Super hard. I’ll tell you a little bit about the alternative, which I think of as a really bad alternative. So Google was founded in 1996. There are other web browsers before then. And in the ’90s, we developed a series of methods for teaching students how to search the web.

And we now know that all of that guidance is really bad, that students who use those practices do worse on really important web challenges and web skills that we want every citizen to be able to do than people who learn more effective strategies. Those more effective strategies are called lateral reading.

But the point is we taught tens of millions of children and young adults provably ineffective ways of searching the web for decades. And we’re still doing it. Google was founded in 1996. The first peer reviewed paper with really effective methods for teaching students how to search the web was published in 2019.

So that’s, you know, that challenge took us 25 years to figure out in a really robust, scientifically rigorous way. So I completely agree that what I’m proposing is hard. My sense of the alternative is that we make a bunch of guesses, those guesses are wrong and we miseducate a generation of students. And that I also view as a really bad idea.

The thing that we want, which is that we can quickly guess effective strategies for teaching. This stuff is unfortunately not an option. And so that’s what we’ve got to work with.

MARK BRODIE: Sure.

JUSTIN REICH: Tough choices.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Well, I wonder if you see this and you reference the example of Google. In some way, do you see this as maybe scientific research, maybe more on the university level, where you’re asking a lot of questions and you don’t necessarily know the answer, you’re legitimately testing hypotheses to see what is effective, what is true, what is not true?

And in some of those cases, as you referenced earlier, you kind of have to lead with, “I don’t know, we’re gonna have to all figure this out together.”

JUSTIN REICH: I think we should be totally honest with students and our colleagues that we do not know and we’re going to have to figure it out together. That the challenge is not to like look out there for best practices — which don’t exist because no one has come up with them yet — but to say in our local context, like we’ve gotta do something.

Teachers are telling us over and over and we gotta do something and we don’t know what to do. So let’s be really clear and transparent about that.

The other reason to be clear and transparent about that is that we’re going to make mistakes. And we need to communicate to all the people in schools right now that some of what they’re learning, some of the early guesses they’re hearing are wrong. And they need to be ready to unlearn the those early ideas in five, eight, 10, 15 years as we get better knowledge and better science about these things.

And I totally agree that cultivating that kind of mindset about humility and uncertainty, it’s way harder than what we can do in other subjects where we can say, “Hey, we know pretty much how to teach you how to write.”

This is a different set of challenges that schools and universities face. And it comes at a terrible time for having these challenges. Universities are under tremendous strain from a kind of public and political backlash. Schools are under tremendous strain from the challenges they faced during the pandemic, the lingering effects of that.

It is a terrible time to have a giant machine released into the world that can do all the students’ homework for them. But that is what happened. And so now we all need to work together to figure out how to deal with it.

MARK BRODIE: So how big of a mindset change do you think it would be for schools to take the approach you’re suggesting? We’ve talked about sort of the logistic, the practical challenges of doing it, but in terms of the mindset of not only not coming up with a set policy that they’re going to stick with for a certain amount of time, but also, to an extent, just saying “We don’t really know, and we’re going to have to all figure this out.”

Is that a big change in the way people think about education and the way that schools should be operating?

JUSTIN REICH: It certainly is at the kind of institutional level I’m proposing. I think if you get down to the classroom level, the sort of level of teachers and instructors, if you would be like, “Hey, do you sometimes change your practice? Do you teach in a different way from one year to the next, and do you see whether or not the new thing you’re trying is better than the old thing?”

I don’t think most teachers would be like, “Whoa, you’re talking crazy talk, Professor Reich. Like, what is this?” They’d be like, “Yes, of course. We’re professionals. That’s what we do from year to year.”

Also, everyone who has been teaching for six years or longer has an extraordinary experience of this is essentially what we did instantaneously and systemwide during the pandemic.

MARK BRODIE: Are there schools that you have found that have taken this approach already?

JUSTIN REICH: No, not in the kind of systematic way. No.

I think the reason why I’m talking and writing like this is I think most schools are in the stage of saying either we have to find some best practices or we have to wait for some best practices to come out. I mean, this is like a pretty standard way of thinking about adaptation and change in schools. And is this idea that somebody’s going to figure this out pretty soon, and once they do, we’ll just take what they figure out and we’ll incorporate it into our system.

And I would just caution most institutions that we are quite possibly a really long time frame away from being able to say, “Ah, we pretty much have figured this one out.”

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Justin Reich, among other things, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Justin, thanks so much for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

JUSTIN REICH: It was my pleasure. Thanks 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.

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