The Show for Aug. 10, 2026: Preventing screwworm, a zombie apocalypse conference and more

Part of Arizona’s border with Mexico will reopen this month to cattle coming into this country. The steps that are being taken to prevent further spread of screwworm. Plus, a group of academics tackles the zombie apocalypse.

Transcript

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

LAUREN GILGER: Hi, I’m Lauren Gilger, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday, we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here’s today’s episode.

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

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, the new protocols that officials hope will keep screwworm from coming into the country in cattle.

LAUREN GILGER: And where academia and zombies meet.

MARK BRODIE: But first, a judge says the summary of Prop 145 that Secretary of State Adrian Fontes wrote is illegal. The measure would protect school vouchers for children in military families, but it would also nullify any other measures that place any other restrictions on vouchers. At the same time, though, a different judge ruled Prop 145 could not go on the ballot, saying it violates the single-subject provision. And another potential ballot measure that would put new restrictions on vouchers is the subject of an ongoing legal challenge to its signatures. Here to talk through all of this is Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services. Good morning, Howie.

HOWARD FISCHER: Good morning. Yes, I love talking about ballot measures because it’s the way the Legislature — it helps us figure out, why are we doing this?

MARK BRODIE: OK, so let’s start with the ruling late last week about this summary that Secretary of State Fontes wrote. Where would this summary have gone, and why did the judge say, “You can’t do that”?

HOWARD FISCHER: Well, this is a little different than sometimes we’ve discussed things like the ballot book that goes out to all 4.3 million voters, which has a description that’s put in there by the Secretary of State. This goes on the actual physical ballot, so when you get your actual ballot, whether by mail or you go into a voting center, you will see there a short description of what the measure does and what the effect of a yes vote is and what the effect of a no vote is. And the Secretary of State, in terms of the proposition on 145, said it will have the effect, as you point out, of nullifying Prop 212, which is the voucher measure. And he said that you need to know this, this in fact does describe what it does. It would prohibit the state from taking any money from any military families, and it would nullify the entire measure of Prop 212, which has to do with things like income limits and limits on what you can purchase, no lingerie, things like that. The judge said, “Here’s the problem.” The judge reads this to say, “The only thing you’re allowed to describe is the effect on existing law.” Prop 212 is not existing law, and therefore the judge said, “You can’t make any mention at all to Prop 212, because it would be argumentative and misleading.” Now, as you point out, and as clearly noted, there is no question but that it would have an effect on Prop 212. It was crafted that way. The sponsors acknowledge it was crafted that way. So the question that’s going to go now to the Supreme Court, presumably, assuming Adrian Fontes appeals, is: Is truth a sufficient defense against maybe the very strict reading of the law in terms of what voters are allowed to be told?

MARK BRODIE: Well, Howie, this all, in theory, could be moot, right? Because a different judge, as I mentioned, ruled Prop 145 can’t even be on the ballot to begin with.

HOWARD FISCHER: Well, that gets into the issue of: Does it affect multiple things? Again, does Prop 145, number one, it does protect military families that, right now, under Arizona law, voucher recipients can bank that money from year to year and use it for college. And that’s certainly within the permission of the Legislature to try to protect. The question that the other judge said is, “Wait, you cannot then say, ‘And, by the way, anything else that passed, whether it’s related to it or not, has to also go by the wayside.’” And that gets into the question of a whole separate constitutional provision that says you can’t offer this stuff as a take-it-or-leave-it. You may want what’s in Prop 145, but you may not want to kill Prop 212. And so that’s going to go up on appeal also, because the question becomes: What is a single subject, and what, in fact, is just a different way of protecting the military family vouchers? Again, put three attorneys in a room, I’ll give you seven opinions of exactly what that does.

MARK BRODIE: Right. Well, and there are many more attorneys, Howie, arguing about the voucher measure that you had mentioned earlier. This is dealing with signatures and whether the folks gathering the signatures were qualified to do that. This is a multi-day hearing that got underway late last week, continuing early this week. What’s going on with this?

HOWARD FISCHER: Well, the people who want to make the change in the voucher laws, Prop 212, submitted supposedly 415,000 and change in signatures, that’s according to Secretary of State’s Office. Secretary of State does an initial run-through and checks validity of certain things, got that down to somewhere around 389,000. They need 255,949 of those to be found valid. Now, the people who do not want Prop 212 on the ballot are saying, “Well, wait. Some of the circulators were not qualified to circulate.” And the reason you go after circulators is, if you knock off a circulator, you may knock out 100 signatures that they’ve gathered. They’ve raised things, for example, like: Did they, in fact, have the right address? This comes down to a question of: Were they supposed to list their home address, wherever they lived, maybe from out of state, or if they were staying in an Airbnb, is that, in fact, a proper address? And that becomes one argument for the judge. It comes down to a question of: Do they have a disqualifying criminal conviction? Because people convicted of certain crimes, unless they’ve had their civil rights restored, cannot circulate initiative and referendum petitions. And then it got into a little side question of, well, who is mentally competent to do this? Because one of the cases that was before the judge on Friday was: This woman had been found incompetent in some other case, but that had to do specifically with the facts of that case. And, in fact, she went on the stand and argued with the attorney who was trying to disqualify her, saying, “Am I incompetent? Are you not having a conversation with me?” How do you measure competence in terms of your ability to be able to circulate a petition? Now, as you point out, that case is starting again this morning. It’s going to go on to tomorrow, and at some point the judge will issue a ruling as to whether there are enough valid signatures. And my guess is, given like everything else going on in Arizona, somebody will appeal to the Supreme Court.

MARK BRODIE: Right. Well, and Howie, quickly — speaking of quickly — these have to be decided quickly, right? Ballots have to get printed, they’ve got to start getting mailed to overseas voters, military voters, people like that, right?

HOWARD FISCHER: Maricopa County says its ballot-printing deadline is Aug. 20. Here we are on the 10th, so you don’t have a lot of time in there to do it. Now, the interesting thing is some of the smaller counties may, in fact, have an earlier deadline because of the fact they just don’t have the staff to go ahead and prepare it. And this also spills over, as much as I hate to say it, into the question that, officially speaking, Katie Hobbs has not selected and told the Secretary of State’s Office who is her lieutenant governor. We’ve all got reports about who that is. If the Secretary of State said, “I needed that by last Friday,” governor’s office seems to say, “Well, but we’ve got a little more time.” Now, again, everybody’s pushing right up against that deadline, and it’s going to create one heck of a mess.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. We will watch it unfold. That is Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services. Howie, thanks as always.

HOWARD FISCHER: Have a great day.

LAUREN GILGER: One year after it rejected Project Blue amid massive outcry from the community, the Tucson City Council has adopted new regulations for large-scale data center developments. And while they will impose a host of new requirements on developers who want to build a data center there, they stopped short of putting a moratorium on them. Katya Mendoza covered the meeting for Arizona Public Media in Tucson, and she joins me now to tell us more. Good morning, Katya.

KATYA MENDOZA: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. So begin for us just with what these new regulations are. What exactly will the Tucson City Council be able to do going forward if someone comes in and says, “We want to put a data center there”?

KATYA MENDOZA: Right. So last week, the Tucson Mayor and Council adopted these regulations to govern large-scale data centers within city limits. It’s a new code amendment, which establishes large-scale data centers as a new land use. It defines large-scale data centers as a proposed facility or facilities exceeding 25,000 square feet or more that uses more than 20 megawatts of energy, which must be permitted through special zoning districts. The buildings cannot exceed 50 feet, and they must be located 1/2 mile from residential zones and about 1,000 feet from commercial and zoning districts.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so some regulations on where they can be built, how they can be built, things like that. But no moratorium, and I want to get to that in a moment. But tell us first about what community members had to say. It sounds like it was almost unanimous in people who showed up to speak at this city council meeting saying, “We cannot and should not have data centers here and in the desert in general.”

KATYA MENDOZA: Right. For the past year, since Project Blue came to the forefront for those in Pima County and Tucson, individuals have been really vocal and passionate about how they do not want data centers in any shape or form here in the desert. What I heard from community members during the public hearing last week was that they have a lot of concerns about water, natural resources, the potential effects on extreme heat, government surveillance, public health, property values, a variety of different issues. Multiple people did bring up concerns about water, especially because of the Colorado River negotiations.

LAUREN GILGER: People are angry. This seems like it’s been an ongoing story there about data centers since Project Blue came up more than a year ago, right?

KATYA MENDOZA: Oh, definitely. The community has not slowed down in terms of organizing, not only protests starting last year to try to stop this project, but also we’re seeing organized community gatherings in front of the Project Blue construction site. It sounds like these organized residents are also a part of some sort of network with other organizers throughout the country who are also trying to stop data centers from coming to their cities.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so this is definitely not an isolated effort. Back up for a moment, Katya, and just remind us what happened with Project Blue. As you’re alluding to there, it is not over. It’s still going to be created, but in a slightly different kind of way and with different resources. But tell us about the controversy over Project Blue.

KATYA MENDOZA: Yeah, so it started, I would say about June of last year when people first really started hearing about Project Blue. The Pima County Board of Supervisors decided to approve the project despite not knowing who the end user was. A lot of community members expressed concerns for the lack of information, the lack of transparency from the Board of Supervisors. They had so many questions and there were just no answers. So the supervisors, they did approve the project, and it moved to the city of Tucson. It was up to the Mayor and Council to approve the annexation of this nearly 300-acre parcel of land to be annexed to city limits.

LAUREN GILGER: And they rejected that in the end.

KATYA MENDOZA: Yes, they ultimately rejected this project.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So could the Tucson City Council last week have gone further? Why didn’t it put that moratorium in place, which is what most of those people who came were calling for?

KATYA MENDOZA: Right. So Mayor and Council did inquire to the city attorney as to what a complete ban could look like. It sounds like Tucson is bound to state law, which includes Prop 207, the 2006 voter-approved Private Property Rights Protection Act. This requires state and local governments to compensate property owners if a new land use law or regulation reduces their property value. So essentially, if the city were to consider a ban, property owners would have the right to engage in the process and sue if they potentially felt impacted by that law.

LAUREN GILGER: So there’s this Prop 207 law, but it doesn’t sound like the city council is ruling out the idea of putting a moratorium on data centers in the future. They’re considering their legal options?

KATYA MENDOZA: Yes, 100%. So they did approve this new zone code amendment or these regulations for large-scale data centers, in addition to the fact that they would be exploring legal options to potentially pursue an outright ban in the near future.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so what’s next on this front, Katya? What are you watching for?

KATYA MENDOZA: As Project Blue continues breaking ground, the community has served as sort of watchdogs in terms of where they are getting their water for construction. So because Tucson Mayor and Council rejected the project, that means that the developers could not have access to Tucson water, city water. So the community has been successful in terms of calling out, “Hey, we see that you’re hauling in trucks of water. Where is that coming from?” Well, it turns out they were using some sort of city or county water there, so they were able to stop that, and the city manager, Tim Thomure, got involved in that process as well. But also, what’s coming up for Pima County Board of Supervisors is that this week they’re actually going to be considering establishing a 120-day moratorium on data centers in unincorporated Pima County until a zoning code text amendment process has been completed.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow, OK. So there could be a moratorium at least temporarily at the county level there as well. When might the Tucson City Council make a decision on a potential moratorium in the future?

KATYA MENDOZA: It’s hard to predict that, because if they do pursue that, it would have to be at the state level is what it sounded like from the city attorney.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so watching for that. Katya Mendoza, reporter for Arizona Public Media, joining us from Tucson with the latest on data centers and regulations there. Katya, thank you for coming on The Show. Appreciate it very much.

KATYA MENDOZA: Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, the relationship between academia and a zombie apocalypse?

ATHENA AKTIPIS: The reason that I started talking about zombies in the zombie apocalypse is actually because I discovered it was a really great way of communicating about some complex issues.

LAUREN GILGER: We’ll hear the founder of the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Meeting explain the importance of discussing apocalyptic risks.

MARK BRODIE: But first, the U.S. Agriculture Department plans to reopen part of the southern border to cattle later this month. On Aug. 24, the Douglas port will become the first to allow cattle from Mexico to travel into the U.S.

The border has been closed because of the New World screwworm, which has affected ranchers and others in both countries. At the same time, officials continue work on ramping up efforts to produce and release sterile flies to try to eradicate the parasite.

Earlier, I talked about this with Paul Brierley, director of the Arizona Department of Agriculture, and we started with the factors that led to the reopening of this section of the border to cattle.

PAUL BRIERLEY: Well, there were quite a few. One is that Sonora, our sister state on the other side of the Arizona border, has done excellent work. They actually have a long history of doing excellent work on diseases. Their brucellosis-free, they’re almost tuberculosis-free, and so they work really hard on their disease protocols. And they did the same thing with New World screwworms. So their governor issued decrees, limited movement of cattle from within Mexico and everything else. So they did a great job that is recognized by USDA. On our side, certainly not having that supply of cattle coming in is really devastating the feeder industry, the feedlots that they come to and get fed in. It’s hurting the border communities, and I hear about that almost every day. And you’ve seen what it’s done to the beef supply. So beef prices are really high, that’s because the herd is the smallest level it’s been in decades. Normally, just in Arizona, about 300,000 head of cattle come across every year. And so it’s been closed for over a year, so, yeah, it was time to reopen, I think. A number of other things. It’s the Secretary of Agriculture’s decision, and she’s watching what’s happening with the screwworm, right? And they’ve been coordinating with Mexico and doing the sterile fly drops and everything else. So she’s been watching that, and then feels at this point that they’ve done as well as they can to control it.

MARK BRODIE: Is there a significance that this is the first place where it’s being reopened as opposed to, say, New Mexico or Texas?

PAUL BRIERLEY: Absolutely, a lot of significance, and I mentioned some of them. Also, we’re just physically the furthest away from where the screwworm is in Mexico, so that helps, too. And we have two ports, actually, Douglas and Nogales, both of which could open, but at this point they’re starting with Douglas. But yeah, Sonora is recognized as the best Mexican state with this, and then we’ve put a lot of new safeguards in place as far as how we inspect and everything else. So I think put all that together, and they picked Douglas.

MARK BRODIE: So, yeah, so you reference some screening practices that you’re going to be doing. What are those going to look like for cattle coming into Arizona from Sonora?

PAUL BRIERLEY: So let’s start with USDA. USDA’s actually present on the Mexican side, and when cattle come to the Mexican side for coming across, they are inspected. They’re held in pre-inspection holding pens, and I think 3-5 days they’re held there, and then they’re inspected again. And again, this is not like bird flu, avian influenza, where it’s a microscopic virus or something. This is a pest that people can see, and so if you inspect animals, you can find it. So they’re inspected twice, and then before they come across to Arizona, they go through a dip, so they’re completely dipped in a pesticide, and then they come across. OK, so that’s the USDA side, and those are enhanced protocols for the New World screwworm.

MARK BRODIE: And that’s all in Mexico.

PAUL BRIERLEY: That’s all in Mexico. So if they find anything at all, those cattle are turned away, and they never come to the United States. Once they do come across, then we on the Arizona side have put in place new requirements where, first of all, it’s required that each animal be inspected by an accredited veterinarian on our side, and they issue what’s called an International Certificate of Veterinary Inspection. So every animal has a certificate that goes with it to say, yes, it’s been inspected by a veterinarian. We require electronic ear tags, which is new, and that lets that animal be traced back to where it came from and where it’s going, because one of the things Sonora has done is said, “We’re not going to export any cattle from any other Mexican state, only Sonora.” And then when the loads leave, a lot of them, some of them are for Arizona feedlots, but a lot of them go to Kansas or Texas or other states for those feedlots, and so when a load of cattle leaves, we will have inspectors down there that put together all this documentation and say, “OK, in this load, it’s these cattle, and they’ve been inspected, and here’s where they’re going,” and all that. So, yeah, so there’s a lot of new protocols in place, and I think these animals are going to be kind of the most highly inspected animals in the world, I think, by the time they ship out of Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: So how confident are you, then, that with these protocols in place, that you can essentially keep screwworm from crossing from Sonora into Arizona and then potentially, as you referenced, into other parts of the country?

PAUL BRIERLEY: So that’s a nuanced question. I’m confident in that they won’t bring it across on cattle because of these procedures, but the screwworm is not selective. Any warm-blooded animal, and so a lot of the concern is wildlife, and can it be transported with wildlife? And it has been transported on pets, also. The one case in New Mexico was a dog that had been in Mexico and then came back. So those are kind of two different things. One is, I am very confident it won’t come across on cattle that are coming across through the legal channels and all that, but there could be cattle that come through a break in the fence or something like that, or wildlife that come across. So I’m not saying we’re completely out of the woods, but all these procedures, I believe, will keep it from coming in on cattle.

MARK BRODIE: What have you been hearing from ranchers and other folks sort of in the cattle world in Arizona about what the closed border has meant for them and what it will potentially mean for them later this month when it opens up?

PAUL BRIERLEY: Well, if you’re a rancher, for one, you’ve enjoyed the high beef prices. And you really don’t want the New World screwworm here, because it does take quite a toll on cattle. And the biggest way to combat it is to have eyes on your animals. Well, in Arizona, often you only see your cattle twice a year when you’re branding and medicating and things like that, and then the rest of the time they’re out on the range. So it’s a little hard for us to do that here. So they really don’t want the screwworm here. As I mentioned, though, we have a whole feeder industry, feedlots that feed the cattle that come up, and they’ve been just clamoring for it to open safely.

MARK BRODIE: Is it your expectation that after Aug. 24, when this port reopens, that folks in Washington and elsewhere will be sort of watching to see how it goes and then maybe use that as a template to reopen other parts of the border?

PAUL BRIERLEY: Absolutely, and they’ve even said that. So I don’t think they’ll be opening in Texas anytime soon, but they did say that based on a successful reopening in Arizona, then they would look at a couple of the ports in New Mexico. And we’ve been advocating that, again, there is Nogales, also, and Nogales is a good, functioning port. It’s actually the furthest away from where screwworm is. And Sonora still is screwworm-free, whereas Chihuahua, which is on the border with New Mexico, is no longer screwworm-free. So I think there’s a number of reasons that we kind of hope they’ll consider opening both Arizona ports.

MARK BRODIE: Do you think that we will eventually re-eradicate this?

PAUL BRIERLEY: I do. They’re putting in a very, very large, it’s like a $750 million facility in Texas to produce the screwworm, or the sterile flies. So, yeah, I do think they’ll get a handle on it. Nothing’s really changed. It’s known what needs to be done, it’s just that we just don’t have the production facilities right now. One other neat, little thing going on right now as far as the sterile flies is, if you think about it, it’s the sterile male flies that you need to impact the situation, but when you produce the flies, you’re getting about half male and half female. So there is a new technique that is about to come online that the ones you produce would all be, would be only male. So that effectively doubles the amount of sterile flies that you have to release.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Paul Brierley, director of the Arizona Department of Agriculture. Paul, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

PAUL BRIERLEY: You bet.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. What’s the value of a high school diploma in Arizona? Our next guests this morning are out with a new investigation that gets at the heart of that question. Evan Wyloge and Katie Wilcox are with The Beam at Arizona State University’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. They took a closer look at attainment levels and graduation rates in our state’s public schools and found a growing gap. They came into our studios recently to tell me more about it.

EVAN WYLOGE: In Arizona, we’ve seen over the last few years at least that the graduation rate has climbed, and we’re now at 80% of high school students who graduate. But at the same time, when we look at the 11th grade standardized test for math and for English language arts, we see that there’s only about a third of students who are actually passing those tests and meeting the state’s level that they call proficient. So it’s 40% for English language arts and 30% for math.

LAUREN GILGER: And that’s a pretty significant gap there between how many kids are passing those tests and how many are then graduating, sometimes not very long after.

EVAN WYLOGE: Yeah, and those numbers, they’ve kind of bounced up and down a little bit over the last few years, but they just remain really low, and there’s that really big gap between those numbers.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so a very interesting thing. This is especially true for low-income students.

KATIE WILCOX: Yeah, when we started to look at and see what are some of the reasons why this might be happening, and a lot of people had different opinions. Obviously, some educators will blame the test itself, but what we started to look at is, OK, but there is this very, very big gap when you just isolate students who are from low-income households. So these are the students who are getting free or reduced lunch, basically, is the way that the state categorizes them. And that’s been true historically, and that is sticking around, and it has been for years and years and years, this very strong correlation between poverty and proficiency.

LAUREN GILGER: So we have ways of telling in this state, right, which schools are doing well, which schools are not, right? We have this letter grade, this A through F system, which theoretically should give folks a window into this, right? If many of their students are not passing these tests, that should be reflected there. Is it?

KATIE WILCOX: Not really. Frankly, poverty is a part of that system as well, and so this is one of the things. When you just look at proficiency, what the State Board of Education experts will say is if you only isolated proficiency and graded schools on that, we’d have much lower-graded schools. Part of the reason why the state doesn’t do that anymore is that 10 years ago they identified that if you’re just basing it on proficiency, poverty plays such a strong role that you’re going to have much lower-graded schools in the higher-poverty districts. And so they said, “OK, well, how can we be more holistic?” And they pulled in all these other categories and factors, and now proficiency almost seems to minimize how much that is impacting your letter grade.

LAUREN GILGER: So you can, as you’re reporting, have a school with an A grade that has pretty low test results.

KATIE WILCOX: Very low test results, and we saw that even sometimes, Evan, you can talk about how we saw these schools actually decrease in some cases their proficiency scores and still get a higher letter grade.

EVAN WYLOGE: Yeah. We’ve heard from some of these districts that they have figured out kind of how to boost those scores by taking advantage of some of those other factors that are being included in those letter scores. And for parents out there, they can go and look up the letter grade for their school and for their district, but they might not dig in to all those different factors because it does take some time, and that’s where we did a lot of our reporting was looking into these factors, but also comparing those to the standardized test scores.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, and I can say as a parent, that is a confusing process. I remember looking at the letter scores and saying, “What does this mean? How do I tell what school’s good and if I live in a district with good schools?”

KATIE WILCOX: It does, and it can be really confusing. And what the educators will tell us and what teachers that we talked to said is that, “Look, the tests themselves, maybe students aren’t going to do great on any given test any given day, but we’re trying to grow them. And if you’re coming into my school behind, if you’re coming into ninth grade reading at a sixth grade reading level, I get you up to eighth grade by the time you’re done with the ninth grade thing, I’ve grown you two letter grades, you’re still below the standard.” What they’re trying to communicate is like, “Look, we’re teaching kids in these schools, they’re growing and developing.” But at the end of the day, these standardized test scores are showing us that we’re still having this huge gap between the numbers that are meeting what the state has chosen to be its standardized test, and the gaps are even worse for the kids who are already the most vulnerable. So what does that set us up for?

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Well, so what does it set us up for, right? You spoke with education advocates, experts. What do folks have to say about this gap and how it seems to be persisting?

KATIE WILCOX: Well, one of the biggest problems is that if you have really low educational outcomes, then it’s going to be harder for you to have upward economic mobility. So if you’re born poor and then you’re in a community that maybe isn’t giving you the same advantages and opportunities, once you graduate, the options to you might be more limited. And one big problem is that people have looked at college as this way to build up, but what we are still seeing is a really high college dropout rate. And what that means is that you’re saddled with more debt without the degree. So that’s a big concern for some of the education advocates we talked to. And they’re saying, “OK, let’s point to other interventions that we can do earlier that we know are going to help students get to those levels where they can read and do math in the ways that we really need them to, so that they can have more success not only in college, but also in a career or whatever path they choose to take.”

LAUREN GILGER: But is that about funding essentially, and a funding level we still see is very low in Arizona as compared to the rest of the country?

KATIE WILCOX: I mean, yes. And that’s where it gets to be a little bit more political, but I will say, even speaking with Republicans, everyone knows there’s an issue with teacher retention. If you’re not keeping a teacher around, then you’re going to have these unstable classes, and your students are going to have underqualified substitutes, or they’re going to have a different teacher every maybe even semester in some cases. And that’s a funding problem. Paying teachers to keep them around is a funding issue. Early childhood development, that’s a funding issue. Tutors can be a funding issue, right? There’s all of these different programs, and what we saw this year is that because funding is tied to enrollment in the state of Arizona, our enrollment-based funding for the state decreased by $90 million for public schools. Now, there’s some change for inflation, so net cost, there will be debate over whether that was enough, but at the end of the day, we still remained the lowest per pupil as of the latest review by the National Education Association.

LAUREN GILGER: Let me end with both of you with some bigger-picture questions about what this says about the state of our education system in Arizona, maybe what it says about the future of the state, right? Does all of this kind of raise the question of what is the point of these proficiency standards, of these tests, if most students aren’t passing them and we’re graduating them anyway?

EVAN WYLOGE: Yeah. Well, the state is right now debating some options about how they might adjust the letter grade part of this, and they haven’t settled on it, and they’re continuing to meet and discuss. And we’re tracking that. The proficiency tests, I don’t hear, when I talk to policymakers, any real plan to increase those proficiencies across the board. A lot of times what we will hear is that this is the fault of bad teaching, bad educational environments, and that by opening up enrollment, which allows parents to move their students from one district to another, one school to another, that we’re going to introduce competition that’s going to increase the outcomes. And it’s hard to tell whether that is effective or has — is having that intended outcome. And the other thing that comes to mind as we talk about the impact for the whole state, just across the board as a workforce, Arizona has an interest in making sure that we have well-educated students coming out of the system who can fill good jobs and attract technical companies that want to come here or any thriving industry.

LAUREN GILGER: The quality of the education system has so much to say about the economy, right, Katie? How does the question of the value of a high school diploma in Arizona play into this?

KATIE WILCOX: Yeah, people are questioning that. And there’s kind of a double-edged sword here because Arizona’s also pretty low in terms of actually graduating students as well. So we’re too low on that, but then also, even educators who know that their students are getting really low test scores want those to get better because it does show that they’re learning. So you can be critical of the test, but at the end of the day, everyone’s goal should be to give the most education to the most students, regardless of the home that they were born into.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. That is Katie Wilcox and Evan Wyloge, professors of practice at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Evan’s the data editor, Katie’s a reporter for The Beam, which is out of ASU’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. Katie, Evan, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for your reporting here. Appreciate it.

EVAN WYLOGE: Thanks so much.

MARK BRODIE: The Arizona Division of Problem Gambling says roughly the same number of Arizonans placed bets in the past year compared to its last report three years ago — that number was 84% — but nearly a fifth of state residents fell within the category of problem gambling. With me to talk about this new report from the state is Elise Mikkelsen, director of the Division of Problem Gambling, which is in the Department of Gaming. Elise, what stands out to you from this study?

ELISE MIKKELSEN: I think it’s important to note that gambling participation in general remains stable. Frequency did increase, which was interesting, but overall, participation was relayed as staying the same as when we did the same survey back in 2023.

MARK BRODIE: So does that mean, then, that roughly the same number of people are placing bets, but maybe they’re doing it more often?

ELISE MIKKELSEN: That’s what these folks reported. So it does seem that frequency, it shows that frequency increased. There was an increase from 25% to 30%. So it was the frequency that increased, but overall the same number of people seem to be gambling.

MARK BRODIE: Did anything that you found surprise you?

ELISE MIKKELSEN: I was very happily surprised to hear that our awareness campaigns were being effective. The awareness of our problem gambling helpline, 1-800-NEXT-STEP, increased substantially since fiscal year ’22-’23. We do a lot of outreach efforts regarding all of our different programs, so it was really nice to see that that awareness increased.

MARK BRODIE: What do you make of the fact that nearly 20% of adults in the state have exhibited signs of problem gambling? To an outsider anyway, that seems like an awfully high number.

ELISE MIKKELSEN: Yes, I understand that seems like a high number. That’s what we see nationally, that same number, so I guess it isn’t as surprising to me. With that being said, I do think that that’s an important number to take a look at. It’s something that we in Arizona are very concerned about and watching very closely.

That’s why we are planning to continue to reiterate these surveys every three years. We want to keep close tabs on things. We want to make sure that our resources are out there for folks to identify, that they’re able to utilize them. We also want to keep a finger on the pulse of what people are doing in their gambling behavior. We know that gambling is expanding — not only in Arizona, but nationwide — and so we want to watch closely, make sure that we have everything in place to address anyone that might have concerns.

MARK BRODIE: Are you finding that people are tending to place bets like in casinos, or are they using apps, or are they — how are they doing it, do we know?

ELISE MIKKELSEN: We do see gambling taking place in all those different arenas. With that being said, since the legalization of sports betting and sports wagering, we do see the biggest increase in sports wagering. So participation in sports wagering increased by 22% compared to our previous survey three years ago. Cryptocurrency-related activities increased by about 21%, and 22% of Arizonans reported online or app-based sports wagering overall.

MARK BRODIE: How much of that do you think is due to the fact that, at least if you’re betting on sports and you’re doing it through one of the apps, it’s pretty easy to do? You don’t have to go anywhere. You can do it directly from your phone.

ELISE MIKKELSEN: Absolutely. You can’t deny that accessibility plays into those numbers. It is just so much more accessible because you have that phone with you all the time. And so it is very much more accessible than, say, driving to a casino or some other modality like that.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Did this report take into account people who use prediction markets like Kalshi or Polymarket?

ELISE MIKKELSEN: We didn’t do thorough research on prediction markets, but we did ask about prediction markets and esports betting and all those different things to see if there was an overall awareness, and I would say yes, that we’re definitely seeing the emergence of these newer forms of gambling activities are taking over the market.

MARK BRODIE: You mentioned that you’ve been doing a lot of outreach in terms of the problem gambling programs here. I’m wondering how secure the funding is for those programs to make sure that they continue to be there as we see the numbers what they are.

ELISE MIKKELSEN: Well, one of the great things about Arizona and the fact that the Division of Problem Gambling falls within the Arizona Department of Gaming is that our funding is very secure. I only know of one other state that does it similarly, where we fall under the regulatory body.

So the prominence of our funding comes from casino revenue, and so we see revenues increasing quarter after quarter, and so we are very secure in that funding. We also receive $300,000 from the Arizona Lottery, and then there’s provisions in place moving forward to include some sports wagering moneys as well.

MARK BRODIE: Are you looking at evolving the kinds of services the state offers to help folks as the way that they are gambling or the frequency with which they’re gambling is changing?

ELISE MIKKELSEN: Well, we have some other great news. Our cap was lifted on our budget, so we are looking at additional funds coming to fruition this next fiscal year, so we are definitely looking at using those funds to expand our program.

We have five people within our program here in the Division of Problem Gambling, and we work really hard to bring in new programs. We take a look at the research, we do exhaustive investigations into what’s working and what’s not working, and we’re definitely interested in closely monitoring gambling behavior, and most importantly, how we can address that behavior.

So we subsidize treatment services here in Arizona. Last year it was over $1,600,000 worth, and that’s for people both experiencing problem gambling themselves, as well as what we call persons affected — and that’s any family member, loved one that may be affected by another person’s gambling.

We also offer prevention and outreach services. We can go into the community, do presentations, educate people about problem gambling. We have lots of different resources here, and we’re looking forward to expanding them.

MARK BRODIE: Is there an evolution in thinking about the best ways to help people who have a problem with gambling?

ELISE MIKKELSEN: There’s always evolution, there’s always new best practices being put in place. What we know is that these intensive therapies really do work. We’re also additionally adding peer support services, which is a lower level of intervention. Not all people need that intense seeing a treatment provider once a week service.

So we’ve added peer support services. Peer support services can be really molded to a person’s needs. You’re working with peers, so people who have lived experience in the gambling arena, problem gambling arena to be more specific. So folks are really plugged in, they’ve been there, they can relate to people who are looking for assistance. So we’re really excited to bring on that tailored form of intervention.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Elise Mikkelsen, director of the Division of Problem Gambling within the Arizona Department of Gaming. Elise, thanks so much, I appreciate it.

ELISE MIKKELSEN: Thank you, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. What do the zombie apocalypse and serious academia have in common? Well, for our next guest this morning, a lot. Athena Aktipis is a psychology professor who directs the Cooperative Futures Institute at ASU, and she is the founder of maybe the most unusual academic conference out there: the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Meeting, where each year academics gather to talk about “the science, medicine, art and culture of managing apocalyptic risks.” The whole thing happens as if we are living in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. One example: a talk on the nutritional value of eating a brain. It’s a way for academia to tackle what Aktipis calls scary futures, which she told me can be a bit taboo in academic settings.

ATHENA AKTIPIS: Often times in academia, if you’re dealing with really big, scary things or, honestly, even just topics that are not yet kind of part of the canon of what people are looking at in academia, you can be seen as fringe, as alarmist, as somebody who kind of isn’t part of the culture of academia that has certain topics and certain framings that it uses.

LAUREN GILGER: Any examples of this that come to mind for you? What are you thinking of when you’re thinking about “scary futures” and trying to tackle them in your research?

ATHENA AKTIPIS: Well, I think the easiest example, although it’s not pleasant, is the prospect that we have now for many, many different kinds of hazards and risks that we’re facing — whether we’re talking about another potential pandemic, if we’re thinking about issues with changing climate, if we’re thinking about even conflict between countries.

We’re at a time right now where there’s a lot of uncertainty, and even our future with technology, right? That’s a huge issue that we’re all kind of grappling with now, how do we navigate a future with this new kind of entity, set of entities, that are computational and that we don’t fully understand?

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, the rise of AI. OK, so you are kind of advocating for using a very kind of novel approach to this in academia, which is camp, right? First, just kind of define that for us. What do you mean by camp?

ATHENA AKTIPIS: So I would say that camp is essentially when you deliberately embrace an approach that is maybe ironic, funny, you’re being playful and a little bit subversive, too. So you’re not just following the standard ways that people are approaching a problem. You’re kind of coming at it from the side and having a little fun, honestly.

LAUREN GILGER: Having a little fun in academia? What? Right. So how does this work? You use this in particular, this form of camp, as the zombie apocalypse. This comes up in your research, it’s how you present your research often. Explain this to us.

ATHENA AKTIPIS: The reason that I started talking about zombies in the zombie apocalypse is actually because I discovered it was a really great way of communicating about some complex issues. So both on the side of understanding what happens to our brains when we get taken over by things that aren’t us, whether it’s parasites or bad relationships or social media. Many of these things actually have similar mechanisms underlying them, and kind of talking about getting zombified was a way of unifying all these different kinds of ways that we can have our brains and bodies taken over.

LAUREN GILGER: You write like when a roomful of people imagine the zombie apocalypse together, they are building a shared mental model of a possible world. It gives everybody a baseline of understanding what it is you’re trying to get at that’s bigger here.

ATHENA AKTIPIS: Yeah, and the zombie apocalypse, it’s also this way of kind of summarizing many different kinds of potential disasters. You can do something called all-hazards preparedness, where you’re like, “Oh, how do I be ready for anything?” But that feels really overwhelming.

But being like, “Oh, am I ready for the zombie apocalypse?” That feels a lot more fun and tractable, right? I’d much rather go in my garage and be like, “Am I ready for the zombie apocalypse?” than be like, “Am I ready for a tornado, for a flood, for a pandemic?” That doesn’t sound as fun.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, but it kind of gets people to the same frame of mind.

ATHENA AKTIPIS: Yeah, and it gets them there together. And one thing that I didn’t anticipate when I put together the first Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Meeting — I don’t even remember how many years ago now, long time ago — is that talking about things in terms of the zombie apocalypse, and I told everyone, “You’re going to write your talk like it’s the zombie apocalypse.” The talk is about how we’re using science and all of these approaches in this context.

So everyone was using this framing, and we had such fun talks. And on top of that, it made everybody stop using their jargon and gave everyone across all these disciplines a shared language to use. So there were a lot of cool surprises that just came from this sort of first experiment of saying, “Well, let’s have a conference that’s about the zombie apocalypse.”

LAUREN GILGER: So it sounds like it’s much more than kind of making some very serious and very scary topics fun or interesting. It can very well go beyond that, and the academic fruits of this labor might be much deeper.

ATHENA AKTIPIS: Yeah, yeah. For example, a few years ago we got a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to look at collective risk management. And that really came out of a lot of what we developed in this context of kind of being playful about disasters and about how we as social organisms deal with big challenges.

And I think one of the other lessons is you don’t necessarily have to just be focused on conventional deliverables and sort of immediate instrumental outcomes coming from doing these kinds of things, because what you’re doing is actually you’re creating an environment that allows people to self-organize, to find each other, to find new ways of approaching problems, and new ways of working together that can be extremely generative.

Obviously we should be thinking about what are the problems we need to solve, how can we solve them, and making progress towards those goals. In fact, a huge focus of my work now with the Cooperative Futures Institute is, how do we apply the science of cooperation to solving all of these issues?

But we also need to make spaces where as humans we can interact with each other, we can cooperate with each other, we can leverage our own capacities to process information as individuals and as collectives to understand these problems and figure out how to approach them better.

Because as humans, we’re built not just for individual cognition, we’re built for collective cognition. Storytelling and music and arts, those are big parts of how people in small-scale societies process things, and process them collectively, and get shared attention on them.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. It seems like it’s coming at such an apropos time, right, because as you’re getting at there, we’re in a moment that in very many ways seems very end-of-the-world. Like the scary futures thing feels here in a lot of ways.

ATHENA AKTIPIS: Yeah, yeah. My last book is called “A Field Guide to the Apocalypse: A Mostly Serious Guide to Surviving Our Wild Times.” And it’s all about how we need cooperation and community and a sense of adventure and playfulness and a readiness to kind of get out there and interact with the world and with others.

And I think we have to be proactive about setting those environments up and making it permissible for people to step into a place where they can play a little bit and they can explore things that they haven’t explored — whether it’s intellectually or socially, or even in terms of physical environment. We’re a very exploratory species, and we’ve got to lean into that now.

LAUREN GILGER: Got to lean into that. Athena Aktipis, director of the Cooperative Futures Institute at ASU, where she’s also a psychology professor. Athena, thank you so much for coming on The Show. Thanks for explaining this to us and giving us all something to think about.

ATHENA AKTIPIS: Thank you.

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.