The Show for Aug. 11, 2026: How schools handle heat, fighting back against AI flyers and more

Students are heading back to the classroom across Arizona, even though it still very much feels like summer. How schools can — and sometimes cannot — handle the heat. Plus, why a Valley music venue is taking a stand against AI-created flyers.

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 on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, how schools are and, in some ways, are not prepared to deal with the heat as students return to the classroom. And why one Valley music venue decided to try to stop bands from using AI-generated flyers.

But first, a group of protesters in Southern Arizona is trying to stop the construction of the border wall and save a cottonwood tree, and they’re doing that by staging a sit-in in the tree. KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick visited the area. She’s on the line now to talk about what’s going on there. Good morning, Alisa.

ALISA REZNICK: Good morning. How’s it going?

MARK BRODIE: Going all right. So where exactly is this happening?

ALISA REZNICK: Right. So this is in Lochiel. It’s a tiny border town that’s about 25 miles east of Nogales. There’s actually an old Customs building right along the border there, kind of an old brick building. And it’s mostly ranchland today.

And so it’s part of this larger biodiversity hotspot called the San Rafael Valley. This has been really a point of contention, I guess you could say, for environmentalists, community groups, even locals — because it’s one of the last places they say is a wildlife corridor for border wildlife.

MARK BRODIE: So it sounds pretty open. You mentioned a lot of ranchlands. What is the significance of the trees that these protesters are upset about, having some of them having been cut down, and they’re trying to save one?

ALISA REZNICK: Yeah, so these trees are old-growth cottonwood trees. There are little groves that are in Mexico and the U.S. This particular grove is right along the international boundary.

And they estimate that these trees could be anywhere from 200 to 250 years old. So in some cases, maybe even older than the border itself in that area.

And these were four trees right along the boundary that were slated for removal by Customs and Border Protection despite calls by environmentalists and advocacy groups for them to remain. They say that these are important nesting grounds for migratory birds that are active in the U.S. and Mexico, and that in some cases are on the endangered species list in the U.S.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so can you describe the tree that these protesters are sitting in? What is their setup there? What is the situation?

ALISA REZNICK: Yeah, so if you picture that old Customs building that I mentioned, essentially it’s right along the border, and then you have the border wall road. That’s a graded dirt road that was made by contractors that runs right along the boundary.

Posted up there is a sign that says people are not allowed on that road. It’s a no trespassing sign. It has an Arizona code under which people could be arrested, which actually someone was arrested when these other three trees were being taken down for refusing to leave the site where they were being torn down.

So picture this dirt road. There’s an area where you could walk on that dirt road if it were open. The protesters are not using that road. They’re on private property because this ranch land runs right up to the border wall road, essentially. And that is where the last tree is.

So it’s just this really tall grass, kind of these cottonwood trees in the distance that you can see kind of popping up in their little groves. And this particular tree is huge. It’s just this towering tree that is much taller than 50 feet. I’ve always been kind of bad at measuring how tall it is, but it’s up there, and I can say that the canopy itself, their position in the upper canopy of this old tree, so it’s this kind of wooden platform with a rope coming down. And yeah, they’ve positioned someone up in that tree at least 50 feet up there, I would say.

MARK BRODIE: Wow. OK, so you got to talk to one of the people involved in the protest. What did she have to tell you about what they’re doing there and what they hope to achieve?

ALISA REZNICK: Yeah, so I talked to Kate Scott. She’s a protester, and she’s also the founder of a local nonprofit here in Southern Arizona, an environmental nonprofit. She essentially said that these cottonwood trees have seen generations of people, and they’re important in multiple cultures. And they’re just trying to save this last slice of the borderland.

KATE SCOTT: And when we immediately found out that we were going to have a double wall through here, that’s what really put the grandmothers in the sacrificial zone, because the double wall is only 4 feet away from this private landowner’s fence.

MARK BRODIE: So, Alisa, go ahead.

ALISA REZNICK: I’m sorry. I should say that they are calling the trees the grandmother trees because of their age, of course. And the double wall she’s referencing is this project that’s been ongoing by Customs and Border Protection to not build not just the one wall, but two walls along large stretches of land in Arizona.

So they are creating what they’re calling a buffer zone, where it would be two steel bollard walls essentially right next to each other, running parallel to each other, where there would be heightened surveillance inside of this zone.

And so what Kate is saying is that initially they thought that these trees were safe if it was just the one wall, but with the two walls and the buffer zone, that is what’s putting them in the middle of this construction.

MARK BRODIE: Do the protesters have a sense for how long people are willing and able to sit up in the tree? How long could this go on?

ALISA REZNICK: Well, this was a reaction to that arrest that I mentioned. There was one protester who was arrested there a couple weeks back. This is Day 12 or 13, I believe, of people being inside of the tree, and that happened after this arrest took place and these other trees were downed.

So essentially, they have told me that they want to stay there as long as it takes. There’s some tents around on that private land near the tree where other folks are staying. There’s somebody in the tree at all times, is what they tell me.

And they’re just hoping to wait out the construction. They’re also trying to engage with Customs and Border Protection and really drive home this idea that they want to save the tree in order to preserve it for the birds that are there and for future nests as well.

MARK BRODIE: Sure. All right, we’ll see how long they can be up there. That is KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick in Tucson. Alisa, thank you.

ALISA REZNICK: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: Schools across the state are starting back up for the year. Some start this week while others have already been in class for a few days. And despite the relative cooldown to start this week, it’s still plenty hot out, and many other parts of the country are still on summer vacation.

My next guest argues lots of schools are unprepared to deal with extreme heat, either inside the classroom or elsewhere on school grounds. Ali Poulos is an associate professor in ASU’s College of Health Solutions. She joins me, and Ali, schools go into session earlier here than in many other parts of the country, but at the same time, if they waited until after Labor Day as a lot of places do, it’s not that much cooler then. So I wonder, does it make sense that schools start here when much of the rest of the country is still on summer break?

ALI POULOS: It’s a good question, and it’s a complex situation. After Labor Day, generally here in Phoenix, we do see our highest temperatures in the months of July and August. And one thing that starts to happen after Labor Day is that even though we still do in Phoenix get high temperatures during the day, we’ll start to see more cooling overnight.

And that gives us a little bit more time to acclimate, so our bodies get a chance to rest and reset easier overnight when it’s cooler. The morning temperatures are generally a little bit cooler, which when we think about how that might affect kids in school and learning, it might mean that there’s more opportunities to safely and comfortably spend more time outside when we’ve had cooler nights and cooler mornings.

So that’s a consideration when it comes to temperature and the school starts.

MARK BRODIE: So it sounds like maybe if schools here were to start a little bit later in the year, waiting for the bus or walking to school would be a little more comfortable, or for the elementary school ages, if you had morning recess, maybe you could be outside, that kind of thing.

ALI POULOS: Yeah, exactly. And even for our middle school, high schools, I think it impacts them, too. Often times the campuses open before school so kids can enjoy the grounds. Often times we’ll have sports teams that are practicing before school to take advantage of the cooler temperatures. So I think it can impact kids in schools K through 12.

MARK BRODIE: How big of an issue is air conditioning in schools, specifically in Arizona? Is this a problem that there are some schools that don’t have functional or AC that is sort of up to the task?

ALI POULOS: I’d say this is the Number 1 thing that comes up when we talk to schools, especially schools outside of Arizona. So Arizona is the only state right now that has a mandate for a certain temperature threshold in classrooms. So actually our state is in a better position than many others when it comes to having air conditioning and functioning air conditioning.

There are many other states and folks that we talk to in schools in other states where this is a huge concern because many buildings are older. Many buildings were constructed during times when heat wasn’t affecting the school years as commonly.

And in fact, in some of the older buildings across the country and across the world, built with brick and other materials that actually traps heat and actually is more hot. So not only do we not have a lot of schools that have adequate air conditioning, but they’re not designed for even airflow.

MARK BRODIE: I want to ask you also about shade, especially, you mentioned a lot of Arizona schools are open, you walk between buildings or you’re walking outside to get from class to class, and the younger grades, you have recess. How prevalent is shade relative to the amount of time that students are spending outside during the school day?

ALI POULOS: There is not enough shade on school campuses, and one of the most interesting parts about this is that when we do have shade and shaded campuses, trees and shade cover is often located in the places where students are not the most active.

So generally on school campuses, you’ll see kids playing hard in fields during sports practice or out at recess or on courts. And when schools do have shade and trees, we typically don’t see those in places like fields and courts.

MARK BRODIE: I would imagine that would be hard to put a shade over a soccer field, though. You don’t want trees in the middle of the field that students are going to run into or that would affect a game a school might be playing, but how do you go about doing that?

ALI POULOS: Yeah, absolutely. So we are seeing more and more schools with shade coverings over courts, and then making sure that we have either treed or human-made shade structures available on the perimeters of fields where the kids who aren’t playing, the coaching staff, the spectators at sporting events can be comfortable. And then also making sure that there’s purposeful rest time where the athletes out in the sun get time to take a break, get in the shade and hydrate.

We visited a school a couple summers ago, and during recess every five minutes, the staff person in charge of recess, the teacher, blew his whistle, and everybody stopped. They went to the shade, everybody had a water bottle, everybody drank, they rested, and then they went back and played, and they did that throughout recess.

MARK BRODIE: Wow. When schools are looking to do things like that, I can’t imagine it’s terribly inexpensive to do. How much of an impediment is the cost to make that happen, even for schools that want to do that?

ALI POULOS: So there’s sort of a range of different things that can be done. So things like shade structures, especially permanent large structures, are very expensive. They’re very cost-prohibitive. So it’s not an easy thing for every single school to be able to do.

There are some grants that can help support funding for shade structures. There are a lot of great community groups that can offer tree plantings to add tree canopy and shade to schools.

But things like what I just mentioned, that school where they purposefully stopped during recess every five minutes and had all the kids and all the staff move to the shade and hydrate, those are very affordable and easy strategies that can be incorporated into the school day that can make a difference.

MARK BRODIE: What are the impacts of heat on how kids do in school, like how they actually learn and absorb the material?

ALI POULOS: Yeah, heat definitely affects learning, so there are studies, there is research that shows that school absence rates for kids are higher on days when it is hotter.

There are some studies that show negative associations with learning, with test scores during hot days. Kids are more irritable. They’re not as ready to sit and learn when it’s hot.

And just anecdotally and through conversations that we have with teachers and with principals, with parents, we hear that kids are irritated. I know my own kids when they come home from school after sitting all day because it’s too hot to go outside, they’re a little nutty. They’re ready to move around, they’re ready to play, they have some energy to get out. They’re not ready to just sit and focus.

MARK BRODIE: Are you finding that there are places that are really just starting to think about this and try to deal with it now, places where maybe heat wasn’t a concern or as much of a concern in past years, but it’s getting hotter there and now they’re starting to have to really think about it and try to come up with solutions?

ALI POULOS: Yes, yes, absolutely. I think what we’re seeing now is that heat isn’t seen anymore as an occasional disruption, but rather something that we need to be thinking about and planning for and incorporating into regular planning, just like schools do with so many other things every year.

MARK BRODIE: All right, Ali, thanks so much for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

ALI POULOS: It was great to talk. Thanks for the opportunity.

MARK BRODIE: Ali Poulos is an associate professor in the College of Health Solutions at ASU.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, local bands are using AI to make flyers that promote their shows more and more often.

ARONDA MARTIN: OK, maybe they’re in a band, they already put all their time and money into the band, they don’t maybe have the art skills or they’re intimidated by the art skills, or it’s just the convenience factor. “I don’t want to think about it. I want to plug it in, and I want it to come back to me and be done.”

MARK BRODIE: We’ll hear from a music venue leader who found a new way to encourage collaboration between local bands and human artists.

But first, the Arizona Supreme Court sided with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a controversial religious rights case brought by the children of a man who admitted to church leaders to sexually assaulting them for years. The court was unanimous in its ruling, affirming the First Amendment rights of church leaders, ruling they’re shielded by Arizona’s clergy-penitent privilege law from reporting child abuse disclosed during confessions to authorities.

Advocates for abused children were disappointed in the decision, telling the Arizona Mirror it allowed predators to use what they call a confessional loophole to evade justice. Attempts by Democratic lawmakers at the state Capitol to weaken the clergy-penitent privilege have been blocked for years by Catholic Republican lawmaker Quang Nguyen (R-Prescott Valley).

For our next guest this morning, the decision in the sad case is no reason to celebrate, though he agrees with the justices’ decision. Michael Mazza is a canon and civil lawyer as well as adjunct professor of law at Marquette University Law School. He’s been on The Show before to talk about this case and the purpose of the clergy-penitent privilege, and he joined my co-host Lauren Gilger to talk about his reaction to this final decision from the state Supreme Court.

MICHAEL MAZZA: I agree with you that it’s a very sad case and very controversial, and to style this as a victory for religious liberty is one way to put it. But I think the real crux of this case was decided on First Amendment grounds, very narrow. The Arizona Supreme Court said, “Look, we don’t have the capacity, we don’t have the power to weigh in on this matter because of a fundamental constitutional right to religious freedom and religious practice.”

But that doesn’t mean that the justices weighed in on the merits and said, “This is a great outcome.” Obviously, some children were hurt in this, and that always will remain a tragedy. But in terms of the constitutional protections for religious freedom, that remains.

LAUREN GILGER: So yes, a First Amendment issue in many ways. I want to have you, because of your specialty here in canon law, Michael, back up for us a little bit and explain just what this clergy-penitent privilege is, how it functions in the states in which it’s a law.

MICHAEL MAZZA: Sure. Well, there’s a good amount of overlap here between the civil and canon law. And to understand canon law, I mean, it’s the law of the church, and so it’s thousands of years old, and there’s a great tradition in, especially the Catholic Church, but even in other churches as well, for some kind of legal structure, recognizing rights and duties.

And in the United States, the discipline around confession, someone who’s sinning goes to someone in authority in their ecclesial community and says, “Look, I need help. I did bad things. I need God’s forgiveness, and I need help.” That has spilled over into the civil forum, the secular forum, the states, because the states by and large have recognized that that kind of sacred communication needs to be protected.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So I mean, it’s almost like, I think we described it in the past as like a different language. Like, this idea of protecting the privilege, the privacy of a confession is so fundamental to what a confession is. You’re coming from the Catholic point of view, but that’s true in many religions, right?

MICHAEL MAZZA: Correct. And the church law would say, “Look, if a sinner says something to someone in church authority, there’s the famous situation in the Catholic Church where it’s called the seal of the confessional, and that can never be broken.” In other words, the priest can never ever say anything to anyone about what he has heard in confession. Other religious communities have something similar. That was clearly at work in the Latter-day Saints case.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. One question that I think most people would have, though, right, like even if you’re talking about this religious context and the protection of that privilege and privacy in this very different kind of context than the civil one, I mean, it was the children of the abuser in this case who sued the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for essentially covering up the abuse. And advocates for abused children were not happy about the Supreme Court decision. They say it’s protecting abusers.

What do you say to that argument when it does seem very black and white in that context?

MICHAEL MAZZA: There’s a saying in the legal profession that bad facts make bad law, and it was I think very easy for the court to come out the other way on this on sympathy alone. I mean, this is a horrible case where three children who were abused by their own father, and all the other facts of this sad case might trigger a sympathetic response, but it was unanimous. I mean, 7-0 on the Arizona Supreme Court.

And so I can’t speak for the justices, but I would imagine that this is what justices have to do all the time, is sift through the sympathies and then come down with the law. And the law is not unsympathetic. The law is protecting other goods, other rights and duties that we have in society.

And this goes back to what we talked about a couple years ago, which was that the right of someone to go to a church official and say, “I have sinned, I am guilty of something horrible, I need help, I need God’s forgiveness,” that right needs to be protected lest those people never go anywhere.

And so I think that is an important fact to keep in mind here, is that while some people might say, “Well, this is going to protect abusers,” actually what it might very well do is give abusers an outlet to go and get help that they need, and if we shut that down, they will never open the door to these sacred communications.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, that leads me to my other question here, which is sort of about the other responsibilities maybe civilly, but also just morally of clergy in confession-type situations like this. Like if someone admits to something awful like abuse in a situation like that or murder, something extreme, and they’re not required to report it, what should they do to try to make sure that abuse doesn’t continue?

MICHAEL MAZZA: Right. A couple of things. One is that this is a very narrow privilege. This goes to communications made in a very particular kind of way. If the clergy member sees something, if the clergy member hears about something outside of the sacred communication, simply observes the child in some other context, the clergy member can take action. It’s the very, very limited communication that’s being protected.

But the other thing is that even within those sacred communications, a lot of times the person is looking for help, and so the clergy member can say, “Look, we can talk about the spiritual repercussions of your sinful act, but now you need to go and report yourself to the police. I suggest these resources for you to get some help,” things like that.

LAUREN GILGER: I think this is especially difficult for maybe the secular world to understand, Michael, because of what’s happened in the history, the recent history of the Catholic Church with this massive child abuse scandal, similar cases within the LDS Church have arisen as well, including this one. Why do you think that the First Amendment, the religious freedom aspect of this, has to be the overriding rule of law?

MICHAEL MAZZA: That’s a very common question, and this is one of the more sinister aftereffects of the church sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and in other churches where people quite rightly look and they say, “Well, look, you guys are articulating a moral law, you’ve failed miserably, and now you’ve got a regime set up so that you’re going to protect these kinds of admissions. This is crazy, this needs to be done away with.”

The problem with that line of argument, however sympathetic it may appear at first, is that it’s not going to stop the sexual abuse. These mandatory reporting regimes are very, very tricky. We’ve got a society which doesn’t really carve out time or respect for the spiritual realities. And so a lot of people look at this and say, “Well, this is just foolishness. Why don’t you put up these microphones in church offices and pick up these terrible actors and then lock them away?”

Well, the problem is that if you put that kind of surveillance in place in the spiritual realm, you’re going to shut it down, and that would be a real loss for the human community, to have these vehicles for spiritual help, spiritual healing basically just be shut down.

LAUREN GILGER: We’ll leave it there. Michael Mazza, canon and civil lawyer, adjunct professor of law at Marquette University Law School, as well as professor of canon law at Sacred Heart Seminary. Michael, thank you very much for coming back on The Show. I really appreciate you taking the time.

MICHAEL MAZZA: Thank you, Lauren.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. You don’t have to look far to find content generated by AI, but one Tempe music venue has had it with flyers advertising bands that are created by the technology. Yucca Tap Room posted on social media with a threat of sorts: if a band sends them an AI-generated flyer promoting a show, the venue would instead post the most generic flyer possible.

In the post, the bar said in part, “We love you, but we really hate your [blank] AI flyers. They all look the same, and frankly, people aren’t showing up to your shows because of them.”

The post goes on to describe a partnership with a local arts organization that pairs artists who can produce low-cost flyers with bands that, at least in some cases, apparently need the help. With me to talk about this is Jacqueline Swan, executive director of that arts group, Tempe Art and Music Coalition, and Aronda Martin, one of the owners of Yucca Tap Room and director of programming there.

And Aronda, let me start with you. How common is it that bands use AI to create their flyers promoting their shows?

ARONDA MARTIN: It’s pretty frequent. We do live music every night or every day, and I have probably about seven to nine shows a week, and I would say maybe one to two a week would be like an AI-generated flyer, like completely AI-generated.

MARK BRODIE: When did you start to see that happening?

ARONDA MARTIN: So when I took over the music program, I was seeing it a little bit because people hadn’t really caught on to ChatGPT or Claude or hadn’t really caught on. And when people figured out it was free and could do things for you, I would say probably in the last six to eight months it’s been a barrage of just really kind of plain flyers.

MARK BRODIE: It sounds like it’s pretty easy for you to tell that they’re AI-generated?

ARONDA MARTIN: Yeah, absolutely. No, absolutely.

MARK BRODIE: What are the telltale signs?

ARONDA MARTIN: The font, and it’s not like a specific font, but it is like a ChatGPT font, and it’s the same font. It is always the same like message on the bottom. It’s like “Good times, live show, cold beer.” It’s always generating like the same — and then there’s like this filter that goes over it, and it’s kind of like this grainy filter. Sometimes it’s sepia. A lot of times it’s like this sepia filter, it’s kind of grainy.

Other times it’ll be like bold color, so it’ll be like “Make me a flyer, but with blue,” and then it’ll be blue and black and like the banners that go over the top. Like it’s really obvious, yeah.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so Jacqueline, you came up with this idea to try to do away with this idea, and it’s basically like a matchmaking service, it seems like, right, for bands and graphic artists?

JACQUELINE SWAN: That is the concept. So I am always humbled and honored at all these amazing artists I get to witness at the gallery that we manage in Danelle Plaza. And there is a monumental amount of local talent, and I am certain that any one of those artists would be happy to generate original art for a band or a business that would otherwise go to AI.

So a while ago, I start seeing the AI flyers come up, and I already knew there were a lot of artists in our community that will boycott your band, they won’t participate in the event, and it started getting me thinking and doing more reading and research of my own.

So I started to think about from the perspective of the person who is making that AI flyer. Like why are they doing this? OK, maybe they’re in a band, they already put all their time and money into the band, they don’t maybe have the art skills, or they’re intimidated by the art skills, or it’s just the convenience factor. “I don’t want to think about it. I want to plug it in, and I want it to come back to me and be done.”

So I thought, “How can we bring all of the convenience factor without necessarily taking advantage of artists?” So I shopped the idea around first with artists, and I said, “Hey, if I came to you and said, ‘I need a flyer in three days and you didn’t have to make any edits, and could you produce a digital file in a format and size someone needed and turn that around?’”

And they were like, “Totally.” I was like, “Would that be worth $25 to you, $50? Like, what is that number?” And almost everyone was like, “$25? I’d do it for free,” or “I’d do it for $10.” And I said, “No, I think $25 is fair.” Like you are human beings, and our nonprofit is really about trying to get artists paid opportunities, not putting that financial burden on them when that lifestyle already is very hard financially.

And so that was positively received by artists. So then we started trying it on our own flyers, and I’d pay an artist 50 bucks here or 25 bucks there, “Hey, make some original art for this flyer.” And it’s really well received.

And so I thought, “Well, the artists like the idea. It’s working well for us.” I happen to be talking to Aronda because we collab on a lot of stuff, and I’ll stroll over and chit-chat, and I said, “I have this idea,” and her eyes got wide and sparkly, and she said, “Let’s do it!”

And she came up with the idea of the shame template. And Aronda, I want you to talk a little bit about the shame template.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, let’s talk about this because, Aronda, you posted that basically at Yucca Tap Room, if a band submits a flyer that you determine is AI-generated, that’s not what you’re going to post. It’s going to be something very, very different.

ARONDA MARTIN: Yeah. Because what’s happening is because I also handle the marketing, I wear a lot of hats there, and so I just don’t have time to recreate flyers for these bands. And so a lot of times I am sharing these AI flyers — that’s what they wanted for their show, for their band — and I was like, “I can’t take this anymore. Maybe I’ll just do like a generic flyer.” And my talent buyer Bentley is like, "Let’s do it in crayon."

And I’m like, “Yeah, but then I got to do it in crayon and take a picture. That’s two steps. What if I just make this?” So I made this kind of like joke post like, “Hey, if you give me another AI flyer, this is what I’m going to do.” It’s Band 1, Band 2, Band 3, whatever.

MARK BRODIE: It says “Doors sometime, show probably, $$,” cost with two question marks. Like the most generic thing you could possibly have.

ARONDA MARTIN: Yes, and I used Comic Sans.

MARK BRODIE: And insult to injury there.

ARONDA MARTIN: Yes, very much. Like, “This is going to be your flyer if you can’t, you know, if you can’t just do something, a picture of yourself, whatever.” So I didn’t really expect it to take off that well, but what I was meaning with Jacqueline, I’m like, “What can we do to kind of like blow this up and to get people to maybe think about what they’re putting out to represent their band?”

We are a creative space. We market towards artists, a lot of musicians in and through, in and out of there, we have a lot of painters and just creative people. We are a creative space. So to use an AI flyer is kind of like an insult to everything that we do.

MARK BRODIE: Have you had to use the generic flyer for anybody yet?

ARONDA MARTIN: I haven’t used it yet.

MARK BRODIE: Are you really going to do it?

ARONDA MARTIN: I think I might, actually.

JACQUELINE SWAN: I feel like we have to now.

ARONDA MARTIN: I think I have to now, but it would have to be with a band that I knew was game, that had a good sense of humor. I don’t want to get in any more trouble.

MARK BRODIE: OK, kind of in on it a little bit.

JACQUELINE SWAN: You know, I don’t know if you mentioned this, but we have enough anecdotal and actual data from observation to say the bands using AI flyers do not have as good of attendance. Like we’re doing this for the good of the community. Like you will have more people come watch your show or attend your event if you’re using authentic original art, because people see the AI and it’s a turnoff.

ARONDA MARTIN: Yeah, I can actually speak to that. So obviously I’m a creative person, I’m a musician, I am an artist, and so when I see that, I’m like, “Ew.” But as a business person as well, I notice that the AI algorithm, right, so the AI algorithm identifies these AI flyers and just downgrades those posts.

So as soon as I post these AI flyers that the bands have submitted to me, it doesn’t get any views, there is no interaction with the post, and also I’ve noticed a direct link between AI flyers and attendance at shows.

MARK BRODIE: Aronda, have you seen fewer AI flyers coming in since you started doing this?

ARONDA MARTIN: Yeah. So we have a booking process that’s of such a way that the way we announce the shows with the flyers, and we have not received one AI flyer since then.

MARK BRODIE: Jacqueline, have you heard from maybe people who do similar things to what you do in other cities or states about trying to set up a similar program, where human artists can get paid for doing this kind of work?

JACQUELINE SWAN: You know, not specifically to the anti-AI art flyer, but I do have a few folks that I’m setting up consultation calls with just to talk about starting third space art gallery community space for creatives.

I think the artists just appreciate somebody coming out and saying it, because I think a lot of us have been sitting there watching AI unfold, we’re being told about its inevitability, and that can, like you can feel a little powerless, and artists have so many obstacles already.

MARK BRODIE: Aronda, have you heard from other bar owners or music venues who are either like, “Yes, let’s do this,” or “What are you doing?”

ARONDA MARTIN: Nobody’s reached out to me, but definitely a lot of different venues in other states have shared my post or have made similar posts. I’ve been tagged in posts that were like that. So I don’t want to say they copied me, but maybe I inspired them to be able to speak out.

And there have been venues before us that have spoken out and said, “Hey, quit with the AI slop” or whatever. There’s definitely been venues that have taken a hard line, and my line is that I am not anti-AI at all. Like I think it is great for extrapolating data quickly, like there’s a lot of things that it can do to actually help us, but in the creative space, I don’t feel like there’s much room for it.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Jacqueline Swan, executive director of the Tempe Art and Music Coalition, and Aronda Martin is one of the owners of the Yucca Tap Room. Thanks to both of you for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

ARONDA MARTIN: Yes.

JACQUELINE SWAN: Hey, thank you.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Mother Road. Established in 1926, the historic Route 66 spanned more than 2,400 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica. It was an important migration path for farmworkers during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and served as a precursor to the nation’s highway system as Americans became more mobile than ever before. And of course, its signage has become iconic around the world.

But one part of its history that’s not often talked about is its Indigenous history. More than half of those 2,400 miles pass through Indian Country, and much of it follows ancient Native American hunting trails and trade routes. But if you see references to its Native American history, they’re probably buried in kitsch.

Mona Gable wrote about the appropriation of Native American culture for AFAR magazine. She’s a member of the Chickasaw Tribe in Oklahoma, and she spoke with my co-host Lauren Gilger earlier this year about what this looks like along Route 66.

MONA GABLE: It looks like concrete teepees, Indian wooden heads of statues. And unfortunately, a lot of times, these artifacts, they misrepresent the particular tribe that they’re supposed to be representing.

So, for example, there is no such thing as a concrete teepee, and yet there is an entrepreneur who built a series of motels along Route 66 that were concrete teepees.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. A famous kind of Wigwam village motel, right?

MONA GABLE: Yeah, exactly.

LAUREN GILGER: And that misrepresents even what the Indigenous history looks like in this part of the country.

MONA GABLE: Right, right. And that’s a lot of the problem along Route 66 is, you know, there are 574 registered federal tribes in the United States. And, of course, Route 66 encompasses dozens and dozens of those tribes.

And yet, when Route 66 was built, the roadway was actually built, all that history was really ignored along the route in favor of misappropriating the history or illustrating stereotypes from Hollywood movies.

And that was sort of the marketing campaign was to draw tourists to these sort of romantic images of American Indians ...

LAUREN GILGER: ... and the Wild West kind of idea.

MONA GABLE: Yeah, yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: And the history goes back even further than Route 66, right. Like, this is built upon a corridor that existed already of Indigenous trade routes.

MONA GABLE: Right, exactly. And it touches on many of those trade routes. It directly goes through some of them. But it also is very close to many of the ancestral trade routes you have access to, to all of these incredible cultural resources and natural resources that have been, been in the area for hundreds and hundreds of years, and in some cases, thousands of years.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. So there’s an effort now to reclaim this history from Indigenous folks along this. The American Indigenous Tourism association is trying to kind of talk about this, especially in light of the centennial. What do Indigenous folks have to say right now about this and its impact?

MONA GABLE: They’re very forthright about it. The people that I’ve interviewed are very honest about the impact that it’s had on their communities and on also their cultural identities and how they’ve been represented, misrepresented to people coming along the highway.

And so that is really why there’s this very concerted effort among many, many tribes and, of course, the Indigenous Tourism Association to correct that and to provide authentic experiences to travelers going along Route 66.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So what does that look like? I mean, you kind of outlined some places people might consider stopping that have actual ties to Indigenous communities, right?

MONA GABLE: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And many of those, I mean, are things that you have heard about, too, are like, there are powwows along the route that you, you know, there are restaurants, there are lots of nature activities like hikes, especially in, in places in New Mexico and Arizona where you have Indigenous tribal people who have started businesses.

And there’s one called Navajo Tours USA, which I was very, I’m very impressed with what they’ve been doing. And it’s a small operation, and they do tours in some of the most beautiful desert wilderness areas in Arizona. Yeah, so that’s not something you would normally encounter if you were just driving along Route 66, something you would certainly have to look for.

But there are also lots of museums. Santa Fe has an area called Museum Hill, which has three museums on top, which all offer some insights into different American tribes. You know, they’re really, the point is, these organizations and individuals who are running businesses really want to present to travelers an honest depiction, an authentic depiction, of whatever their tribe’s life was like in that area.

And we have a new one, actually, that I wrote about in my article. It’s the Chumash Tribe there outside of Los Angeles, up near Santa Barbara, and they have a brand new museum that they took many, many years to build. And it’s really a replica. A lot of it is a replica of what the Chumash lifestyle and their villages were really like. It’s exciting to see this happening because it’s like taking back the real history of Route 66.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s really interesting. Can you tell us about the Hubbell Trading Post? I’ve never been here, and it sounds so interesting. It’s like the oldest operating trading post on the Navajo Nation, you say?

MONA GABLE: Yeah, the story is so odd. Because it was founded by a white guy who had been trading with Native Americans in different areas. And he had a really good relationship with the tribes that he was trading with. Mostly it was blankets, woven blankets, things like that. And it was owned by his family, I think, for three generations.

And now I think the National Park Service is in charge of it, but they pretty much have kept it just the way it is, so that there are all these handicrafts and goods that they sell that are all made by Native Americans. And so it’s really a wonderful slice of history, and it’s really great that it still exists.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So let me ask you lastly, Mona, just about, you know, as you’re talking to folks and visiting these places and writing about this, especially on the centennial of Route 66, which is so celebrated right now all along the route.

What do you think the impact of this could be of this kind of rethinking of the history of Route 66 in not just a, you know, this was bad and we shouldn’t appropriate these things kind of way, but in a positive way in which we’re celebrating that real history?

MONA GABLE: I think that’s one thing that the Indigenous Tourism Association, they really hope that people see this as an opportunity to incorporate Native American culture into their travels and that it will reveal, you know, so much more about Native American tribes than people imagined.

LAUREN GILGER: In a really interesting way. All right, Mona Gable, a writer for AFAR magazine, author of the book “Searching for Savannah: The Murder of One Native American Woman and the Violence Against the Many.” Mona, thank you for coming on to talk to me about this. I appreciate it.

MONA GABLE: Thank you, Lauren. It was a pleasure.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for listening to The Show’s podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban. 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.