The Show for Sept. 4, 2026: Friday NewsCap, Puppet Slam and more

The candidates for Arizona secretary of state debated how secure Arizona elections are and how people feel about them. Our Friday NewsCap panelists analyze that and the rest of the week’s top stories. Plus, we hear from one of the puppeteers performing at this weekend’s Puppet Slam in Phoenix.

Transcript

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

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

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, a puppeteer who’s not afraid to be part of the show himself, and we’ll hit the road one last time as part of our Summer Soapbox Essay Series. But first, it is time for the Friday NewsCap and some voices from the news this week.

ALEXANDER KOLODIN: There’s no doubt that confidence in our elections here in Arizona is at an all-time low, and the responsibility for that rests squarely on the shoulders of Secretary Fontes.

ADRIAN FONTES: You were one of the folks who was the architect of “the big lie” here in Arizona. You’re the one who has caused the misinformation and distrust. You’re like the arsonist who causes the fire and then says you’re going to come in and cure things.

T.J. SHOPE: It seems like what we received late last week from the AG’s office was anything but complete. I feel that that is — and that’s one of the reasons why we’re here asking for the files today.

KATIE HOBBS: I am again going to refer you to the letter that we sent to the AG as part of this investigation, and everything that’s required to be reported, we have reported.

RUBEN GALLEGO: I really do deeply regret some of the statements that my country has made about Canadian participation in terms of both supporting us in some of our fights at coalition, past sacrifices of Canadians.

ANDY BIGGS: Packing the court is not simply a policy disagreement. It is an attempt to change the structure of one of the three branches of government in order to guarantee the outcome you want. That’s not reform. That’s revolution.

MARK BRODIE: And joining me to talk about GOP lawmakers wanting more information on an AG investigation, the data center debate coming to Arizona, and more are Doug Cole of HighGround. Doug, good morning.

DOUG COLE: Good morning, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: And Democratic strategist Tony Cani. Tony, good morning to you.

TONY CANI: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: So Doug, let’s talk about a group of GOP lawmakers this week who are asking — maybe asking is not quite strong enough of a word. They would like to see the investigative files from Attorney General Mayes into the investigation that her office did into Sunshine Residential. This is the alleged pay-to-play scheme involving Gov. Hobbs.

Mayes did not find that the governor did anything wrong. There’s no reason to bring charges. It seems like the Republican legislators — including, we should point out, Warren Petersen, the Senate president, who is running against Kris Mayes for attorney general — they want to see the work here.

DOUG COLE: Well, let’s also keep in mind that there are other investigations going on, also. There’s the auditor general’s investigation, which the Legislature controls the auditor general, and also Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell is also running an investigation.

MARK BRODIE: She’s working with the auditor general. And House Republicans are also running an investigation.

DOUG COLE: Exactly. So you have all of these other entities that are also running investigations, and you’re working with the same database and group of documents. So it becomes, just from an integrity of those other investigations, it becomes very difficult to do a data dump from one investigation while those other investigations are going on.

But the big picture is here, it is now September. Early ballots are about 30 days from being mailed, which means that’s when the election starts. And everything becomes hyper-political. This has been going on for years, and no one’s been able to draw, to date, a direct line to Gov. Hobbs.

Now, were things said? Yeah, we have vendors, we have former state employees in high levels saying that promises were made or suggestions were made about keeping a director on. It all looks unseemly, but the bottom line is there has been no direct line pointed to the governor as of yet.

And Mark, this has kind of turned out to be about the only big issue that it seems that this gubernatorial race is discussing beyond Katie Hobbs’ commercials, which no one can turn on a TV without seeing them.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so, Tony, if this is such a big issue in the gubernatorial race, I would imagine that if you’re the Hobbs campaign, you don’t love that.

TONY CANI: Well, obviously they don’t want this to be the big issue. I don’t know if this is the big issue in the gubernatorial race. I think that what’s happening is the Republicans and the legislators on the Republican side want this to become the big issue. And so, this is a thing that the governor is having to answer questions about. She’s been asked about it for a long time.

But what you’re seeing is that the Republicans are scrambling because they are losing in races that, mathematically, you would think they should be winning because of the voter registration advantage. And a lot of that’s due to the past votes of Andy Biggs, how extremely far to the right he is. And so what you’re seeing here is an attempt to change the conversation, and that’s what’s going on.

And I think it is interesting that they want these documents released before their own investigations are completed. I think that’s an important thing to think about. If they had stuff that they wanted to put out there, why don’t they just release what their sort of allegations are in a way? But instead, that’s the thing that points to this being political theater to me. That part doesn’t make any sense to me.

MARK BRODIE: Well, we should point out that the attorney general has said that she does plan to release the files after they go through a legal review that they’re doing. At some point, they’ll release that.

But I guess, Doug, you mentioned that there are more allegations. There are people saying promises were made or offers were allegedly made, but there isn’t a direct line to the governor.

Like, does that matter? To the extent that this is sort of in the public conversation in an election, does it matter that there isn’t a direct line to the governor, or could it potentially be damaging just to have her name and this situation in the same sentence?

DOUG COLE: Well, first of all, what really matters, is there a direct line to the governor? And that has not surfaced yet. A lot of conversations have been revealed, a lot of them a little unseemly, but they have not made a direct line to the governor or her chief of staff. It’s been a vendor saying something to a then-agency director that was being carried over from the Ducey administration.

Remember, this was in the opening days of the Hobbs administration. This investigation and these discussions have been going on for her whole term now. So at the end of the day, unless there’s a direct line to the governor, this is just a bunch of noise because the campaign we see in polling is about water security, is about the economy, cost of gas, groceries, the affordability factor. Those are what voters are really caring about — pocketbook issues.

But if I was running the Republican side of this campaign, I’d be doing the same thing because you take every issue during an active election season and you try to make your points off of it. And that’s what they’re doing. Will it resonate with voters? I don’t think so at the end of the day unless they can directly connect a line with Governor Hobbs.

TONY CANI: Part of it, too, is I think that what was being asked for was a matching of the amount of money that the federal government was going to be paying this same group home — the room provider, the group homes — so that the state would be able to keep beds for people in need.

And so this isn’t, I think that’s one thing to keep in mind, is that they’re kind of being very careful about what they’re saying because I think they want the public to think that this was some very dirty, messy thing when really it was about, “All right, look, the federal government’s going to pay me this much. If you want to keep these beds, you’re going to need to increase the pay.” And then the ultimate decision that was made was to do that.

And so I do think that that is going to have an impact, too, is that when you start to explain it, they’re like, “Oh, that’s what was going on? All right.”

DOUG COLE: And these are beds for foster kids, too. These weren’t sober living homes or things like these. These were for foster kids. And that’s what the case is. So again, unless there’s a direct connection, it’s pretty much a bunch of noise because voters are really caring about pocketbook issues right now.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So, Doug, does that mean to suggest that voters are not necessarily thinking about how many justices are on the U.S. Supreme Court? Because talking about the governor’s race, Andy Biggs this week was in D.C. with Congress — was in session this week — he was there pushing a proposal to constitutionally limit the number of Supreme Court justices to the number that we have now.

DOUG COLE: First of all, Mark, that was a wonderful segue. That was fantastic. You’ve been doing this a while.

MARK BRODIE: Thank you. It just came to me, I promise.

DOUG COLE: Yeah. So we saw, interestingly, well, you’ve got to realize that Congressman Biggs is still a congressman. He has a day job, and he was back in Congress yesterday and this week working on a bill that he supports and has been a key backer of that would be a constitutional amendment that would limit the amount of Supreme Court justices to nine, which is what it has been since, fun fact, 1869.

There have been other attempts in the past, most recently — not recently —

MARK BRODIE: FDR.

DOUG COLE: FDR in 1937, he was trying to get his New Deal through, and the court in those days was very conservative. So he had a plan that he was trying to get through Congress to expand the court. Now Congress enjoys, constitutionally, full authority about how many justices are on the Supreme Court. So this has been talked about over time.

This was going to put a limit to it. It didn’t pass. It needed two-thirds. It didn’t even come close. It came close to passing on just a pure up or down vote, but it needs two-thirds.

But interestingly, we find Congressman Biggs in Washington making this argument when he is 30 days out from early ballots being mailed out. So that’s a challenge, being a sitting congressman, trying to have a foot in both camps here.

So I think that how courts are maintained and influenced has a lot of history, especially here in Arizona. As you know, Governor Ducey expanded our court — the state Supreme Court — just a few years ago, and there were a lot of the same issues being argued at that time, but flipped on the other side. And I think Congressman Biggs also supported that expansion of the Arizona Supreme Court.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, he was Senate president. Well, so, Tony, I mean, obviously, if you’re a member of Congress and Congress is in session, you should probably be in D.C. doing your job. So not necessarily throwing shade on Congressman Biggs for doing that.

I wonder, though, is there an argument to be made that if you’re going to be doing that, maybe this is not the issue to be front and center on while you’re doing that, given the calendar?

TONY CANI: I think it shows — it’s just another indication of the types of priorities that Biggs has taken on while he was in Congress. And so he really has very little to point to from an accomplishment perspective, the things that he did in Congress, which is why he’s not campaigning on anything like that.

It seems to me that a part of this is it’s just like a bunch of jumping up and down and waving your arms saying, “President Trump, please spend money in my race,” because the type of outside investment I think that the Biggs campaign had hoped would come in is not coming in. And so, once again, it’s just another effort to try and curry favor with the president to say, “Can you please help bail me out? We’re losing here.”

And so, you would want him to be in the state campaigning, talking to local media, talking to local voters, but —

MARK BRODIE: Which he will be now, because Congress has recessed for a little while again. So he’ll be back and doing the stuff that candidates typically do.

DOUG COLE: But to Tony’s point, Mark, it’s Sept. 4. It’s go time. It’s go time. Ballots are being prepared to be mailed out. Eighty-plus percent of Arizonans vote by mail. Four or five years ago, I think it was closer to 90%.

So it’s go time. And a campaign, especially a top-of-the-ticket statewide campaign, we should be seeing a lot of commercials. We should see a lot of big social media presence by the Biggs campaign, and it’s just not there. So it begs the question, is the cavalry coming?

MARK BRODIE: Hmm, interesting. All right, that is Doug Cole, I’m also joined by Tony Cani. I’m Mark Brodie in Phoenix. The Friday NewsCap continues in just a moment.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s the Friday NewsCap on KJZZ 91.5, I’m Mark Brodie. My guests this week are Democratic strategist Tony Cani and Doug Cole of HighGround.

Tony, let me start with you on the Secretary of State debate this week, that was on PBS. Alexander Kolodin, the Republican, Adrian Fontes, the Democrat. This was maybe not surprisingly, kind of a feisty gathering. Would you say that’s an accurate sentiment?

TONY CANI: Oh, yeah. It was probably as feisty as PBS can get.

MARK BRODIE: Come on, you can’t throw shade on my fellow public media brethren here.

TONY CANI: I’m not throwing shade at all, I think it’s great. It was contentious, and it came down to sort of the core questions of which candidate do you trust to not try and put a thumb on the scales of our elections to influence them one way or another?

And Kolodin is the Republican who was the key lawyer in many of the challenges to try and stop the transition of power in 2021 from Trump to Biden. He had a hard time answering questions about where he stands. And the general sort of feeling that Andy Biggs, who has a similar problem, and Kolodin have, they’re like, “Can we please talk about something else, please? I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Let’s move on.”

But the problem is, past decisions of individual candidates go to their judgment. And I think that that’s like fair game. I think people are really annoyed about it, they don’t want to talk about the 2020 election anymore, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a core of voters who are like, “Why are you — that just shows that you don’t have good judgment.”

And so that was I think why it focused so much, and Kolodin really struggled to get out of that. Ted didn’t seem to have to ask him the question like three, four times and end up saying, “All right, I guess you’re just not going to answer the question.”

And so it was an interesting debate. I don’t know how many people would see it, but feisty.

DOUG COLE: Well, he finally admitted that Joe Biden did win the presidency, finally. I think that was one of the first admissions to that. But Tony’s correct, they tried to — I think Secretary Fontes was very good in bringing back all the facts of what happened. Alexander Kolodin was one of the head lawyers with the famous Kraken lawsuits, and he was sanctioned by the Arizona Supreme Court for his role in that. And that’s a big deal if you have a law license.

And I think Kolodin was able to bring out that Secretary Fontes went ahead and printed a bunch of ballots during the 2020 election and was going to mail them out to everybody, which was eventually stopped by the courts, brought that issue out.

So there were good things that went back and forth, but at the end of the day, it was kind of a lot of revisionist history by the Republican candidate saying, “I think the key point here is people don’t trust elections.” Well, why don’t they trust elections? It’s because a lot of the actions that he actually was front and center and involved with has brought some distrust to the elections.

Remember, we’ve talked about this many times on this show: Early voting started in Arizona in 1991, 1992, and it has benefited Republicans time and time again. Right, Tony?

TONY CANI: Yeah, for sure.

DOUG COLE: Yeah, so I don’t understand this debate here in the state of Arizona. We do it well. We’re the Cadillac of processes here. Sure, there’s problems. Problems pop up here and there, but the fact of the matter is, as I mentioned earlier, recent elections have come close to 90% of Arizonans using early voting.

MARK BRODIE: Lots of Arizonans vote by mail.

DOUG COLE: Correct. Correct. And so I just don’t understand why Republicans would even be talking about trying to stymie it or get rid of early voting here in the state of Arizona.

TONY CANI: And that goes to the question of motivation. That goes to the question of integrity. And the reason is because Donald Trump has a problem with them, and it’s a way that he can point to something to explain why he lost that election.

And I think that is a really core issue here, especially when the president is more unpopular than he has ever been in the polling in Arizona. And that is: What is Kolodin willing to do to keep President Trump happy? And I think that he’s in a bad position. He’s not going to be able to answer that in a way that voters are going to like.

MARK BRODIE: So, Tony, we talked about some of the issues that voters maybe care about when they’re going to the polls. One of them seemingly right now is data centers, and a lot of voters don’t like them. They don’t want them in their neighborhoods.

The attorney general this week called for basically a moratorium on new data center construction in Arizona. The governor wasn’t willing to go quite that far. She said, “We put a pause on the tax incentive for them. That should be good enough. But there’s some places where data centers maybe are appropriate.”

How big of an issue do you expect this to be in Arizona specifically? We’ve seen it elsewhere. It’s becoming seemingly a really big issue. Do you think it’s going to be here?

TONY CANI: Yeah, I think it’s a really big issue. A supermajority of Arizonans and Americans are very reluctant to sort of want a data center in their neighborhood, or even to be put in. You can have an argument about the merits of that or why, but a lot of this comes down to the sort of central feeling that a lot of voters have today that the system is rigged against them for the ultra-wealthy. And one of the big people that you can point to, a group of people, are these very wealthy tech executives.

MARK BRODIE: So this is sort of a proxy for some of the bigger arguments then?

TONY CANI: So it’s a proxy for some of these bigger issues. And so a lot of the pushback saying, “Hey, but we need them. It’s important for tax revenue” or whatever, I’m not sure that’s actually getting to the central reason why people are objecting to this.

And it is an issue that will not go away. I think that for years this has been percolating, and many of these tech executives and the people who sort of represented them have been warned, “Hey, public sentiment is really turning against you.”

But a level of arrogance — you can tell that I’m not like a lobbyist — a level of arrogance and sort of elitism and sort of a sense of entitlement has had them not just wanting to get these things in the ground, but to want tax incentives and all kinds of, frankly, giveaways.

And now they’re scrambling to be like, “Here is why these are actually important.” And I don’t think that they’re going to be able to communicate that to voters before the election.

MARK BRODIE: Doug, is this going to be a big issue here, do you think?

DOUG COLE: Well, first of all, Tony, as a lobbyist, I don’t take any offense to those comments.

But, yeah, I mean, look, we were begging data centers back in the Brewer administration and the early Ducey administration. The tax incentives started back when Jan Brewer, in her last two years in office, Legislature passed it and we have it because we wanted this investment. That was before we got the hyper-scale data centers that we have now. They just didn’t exist.

TONY CANI: The AI data centers have really changed this conversation.

DOUG COLE: Yeah, so your dad’s data centers are not your son’s data centers, OK?

TONY CANI: Like, you have that data center that people are pointing to in Louisiana where the windfall from the construction taxes led to something like $40,000 bonuses for all the teachers. But the part that people aren’t talking about is they had to build 10 gas power plants in order for that thing to go up. That is not the kind of data center that we’re used to here.

DOUG COLE: OK, so fast forward, head down to Pima County and you’ve got Project Blue. I think that was probably the biggest first flashpoint last year. And that was a data center that was going to be down towards Vail on county land, and had a deal with the city of Tucson. And that thing just melted down, OK? It was a nuclear reactor core melting down.

It was unbelievable. You saw the far right joining hands with the far left, and for once agreeing on an issue. Maybe different, they just didn’t want it, but for different reasons. And then it moved to Marana. And now we have a pretty hot case down here in Ahwatukee with the Menlo Park that’s right on 48th Street across from 20 homes in an old 40-acre office call center park. And it’s going vertical. Steel girders are up.

In fact, the attorney general that you mentioned, she’s going to have a town hall on it next month on that project, but that project’s moving out of the ground. Here’s where it gets really tricky in Arizona: We have something called Prop 207, and the voters passed that in the last 20 years. What that says is you can’t do a taking, so government can’t change a zoning. So if you have the zoning — which is an entitlement, that brings value to the property. So if government would happen to go back in and change that zoning, such in the Menlo Park case back here — by the way, that zoning was put in in 1996 at that Menlo Park.

MARK BRODIE: It’s been a while.

DOUG COLE: It’s been a while. So the city of Phoenix would be on the hook. The taxpayers of the city of Phoenix, the residents of the city of Phoenix, would have to, if the city would happen to shut it down, they would owe the owners of Menlo Park tens of millions of dollars because that’s in the Constitution. So that plays into this. Yeah, it’s a flashpoint, and it is a proxy. It is a proxy for so many other issues that we could probably do a whole show on.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, that is really interesting. All right, guys, we’re going to have to leave it there. Doug Cole, Tony Cani, thanks to both of you for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

DOUG COLE: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5, I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, the Great Arizona Puppet Theater hosts its September Puppet Slam tomorrow. We’ll hear from one of the performers.

But first, trailblazing journalist and activist Gloria Steinem passed away at the age of 92 on Wednesday. Back in 2016, my co-host Lauren Gilger interviewed Steinem about her life and work. Steinem talked about her experience working with Native American women across the country, her work as a prominent feminist, her support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and what she hopes for the next generation of women. Here’s an encore of that interview from The Show’s archives.

LAUREN GILGER: So I wanted to start by talking about your book. And I wanted to talk about this theme that you talk about a lot in it about how the road is a really masculine place traditionally. Why do you think that is?

GLORIA STEINEM: We think of it as dangerous, and even if not dangerous, we think of women as guarding the hearth and taking care of the home, and men adventuring. It’s odd because in fact it turns out if you look at the DNA tests, women are the travelers and men are the stay-at-homes. Although that’s more because women marry far away and men stay home, but still nonetheless it’s true. But as I was looking at that and thinking about it, I realized that statistically speaking, the most dangerous place for an American woman is in her own home. That’s where she is most likely to be beaten or murdered. So statistically speaking, the road is less dangerous than staying at home.

LAUREN GILGER: And one other thing that really popped out at me from your book was, you talk a lot about Native lands. And since we’re in Arizona, there’s such a huge influence here from Native cultures. I wanted to talk to you about that. So tell us a little bit about your experiences on Native lands and working with Native women. What kind of strikes you about them, and what do you think is important about that?

GLORIA STEINEM: Well, what I began to understand — and I don’t pretend to know the 500 different cultures that were and in many cases still are on this continent — was the high state of civilization that was here and the high state of balance and democracy.

The principle of social organization was generally a circle, not a pyramid. Women controlled their own fertility with herbs and abortifacients, understood that very, very well. And that meant that they were in balance from the beginning, because the desire of various male-dominant systems to control reproduction is how we get into this male-dominant stuff in the first place.

But my friends in Indian Country make jokes about it. They say, “"What did Columbus consider primitive? Equal women.” But I mean Columbus incidentally was a serious bad guy, and he took women captive to be sex slaves for his crew and seemed quite mystified as to why they objected. I mean he was coming from a very patriarchal culture, and that culture obviously by warfare and by disease killed 90% — still the biggest Holocaust in history — 90% of the inhabitants of this subcontinent.

So when I began to meet people like Wilma Mankiller, the chief of the Cherokee Nation, and Rebecca Adamson, and so many other Native American women, it was both incredibly angering and incredibly inspiring at the same time. Because these egalitarian, circular, very developed in terms of science and all kinds of things, creating the biggest earthworks, system of earthworks in the world. Pyramids not of stone, but of mud, but bigger than those in Egypt. Very sophisticated forms of government, the Iroquois Confederacy, from which our U.S. Constitution is modeled after.

So on the one hand, I was inspired because I thought so much that we search for now once was here. And on the other hand, I was just deeply outraged, and I ... realized that it’s silly to say this because, of course, the people to whom it happened are the ones who know it way better than I. But I used to say to Wilma, “How can you bear it? How can you bear knowing that less advanced civilizations wiped out or almost wiped out these very advanced civilizations?” And she would always just look at me and nod and say, “We’re still here.”

LAUREN GILGER: So I don’t want to ask the most overarching question, but you talk about the seduction of the road and how you’ve sort of finally at this point in your life made a home for yourself in New York. What was that instinct in you to travel, and then how did you finally realize that you needed a place that’s home?

GLORIA STEINEM: Travel I suppose seemed natural to me because of my childhood, because my family had a little summer resort in southern Michigan. And when it ever got cold, which was around Halloween, then my father would take me out of school and my sister, we’d get in a house trailer and go from trailer park to trailer park to Florida or California, working our way since he never had enough money to make it to the other coast when we started out. But I assumed that this was abnormal, too, because I saw the movies and I saw kids living in houses and I wanted —

LAUREN GILGER: White picket fences?

GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah, right. I wanted to live in a house and have a pony like other kids. And then when I got out of college, I went to India for two years. Then I came back, and I was a freelance writer. So like my father, I wasn’t ever having a regular job.

And when the women’s movement came along, and I couldn’t publish what I hoped to publish about this burgeoning excitement, I ended up going out to speak about it because I had published some things in writing for New York Magazine, I was getting invitations.

So against all of my instincts, because I’d spent well into my 30s devoted to never speaking in public, I went out with another woman friend because I couldn’t do it by myself. And that slowly began traveling — movement travel, organizing travel. Which is so exciting and wonderful because first of all, you get to listen. I mean, you don’t learn while you’re talking, you get to listen and see how diverse and amazing people are and how magic it is to be in the same space together, in the same room together so that you can empathize with each other and everything turns into an organizing meeting.

So I did that big time, flat out, most of the time until I was in my 50s. And I did really get exhausted, because I think I was still living in an either/or world, the idea that either you travel or you settle down. And I had not yet realized what I then discovered, which is, of course, we both need both. Even birds have nests. So I needed a home of my own as well as the road.

LAUREN GILGER: You come in full circle there. All right. So we’ve kind of reached a landmark this year. I know you just said you came from a Hillary Clinton event. So nominating Hillary Clinton this year was a landmark. And I think that that’s made this election, though, particularly gendered and the rhetoric around it particularly gendered. And so I wonder, in your view, is that a good thing for women? Is that a bad thing? Is it neither?

GLORIA STEINEM: Well, it depends on the content. If it were Sarah Palin, we would not be celebrating. So this is not about biology. It’s about Hillary Clinton who, like Shirley Chisholm, who actually was the first woman to run for the presidency, though only in 14 states — but kind of single-handedly took the white-male-only sign off the White House door — stood for the majority issues of women, people of color, and most of the country.

So first, it’s the content. That’s the single most important thing. And then, if you also have somebody who knows what it’s like to walk around as a female human being for a lifetime or as an African American human being ... it’s very helpful because there’s a visceral kind of experience that needs to be brought into decision making. I mean, we just need our decision makers to look like the country.

So ... biology is not the most important thing by any means, but if she’s representing the majority in a great way and with more experience than anybody else — which she is — it means she brings with her an enormous amount of wisdom and knowledge.

For instance, here’s an example. We now can prove that the single biggest determinant of whether a country is violent inside itself or will use military violence against another country is not poverty, not access to natural resources, not religion or even degree of democracy. It’s violence against females.

Not because females are more important than males, but because the first step in hierarchy is controlling reproduction and therefore controlling women, so you get these very unequal roles. And that, if we grow up that way, it kind of convinces us that one group of people is born to dominate another or make decisions for the other, and that normalizes race and caste and class and other hierarchical unfortunate categories.

So, this should be an element in our foreign policy, because violence against females is the biggest indicator of all other violence. Only she has made it an element in our foreign policy. If it had been a consideration, say, when we supported the Mujahideen who turned into the Taliban in Afghanistan, we would never have supported them. The whole reason they overturned a more secular regime was because, as the three reasons they gave were, they were allowing girls to go to school, women had to give their permission to be married and women could go to political meetings. Those were the three reasons that they were at war with their own regime, and we supported them and armed them. We were totally on the wrong side. So if we just look at this as an indicator of attitudes and violence, we will have a way, way more effective foreign policy.

LAUREN GILGER: Did you think it would take us this long to have a woman in this position?

GLORIA STEINEM: Yes, I did. I wasn’t sure I would live to see it at all.

LAUREN GILGER: So a couple final questions for you. So I’m about to turn 30. And I think a lot of women my age have a really hard time sort of understanding what it used to be like. I hear the stories from my mom, but I don’t think I really understand it in that way before women like you kind of came along and forged this path and changed things. What was it like then?

GLORIA STEINEM: It’s helpful to know history, and I wish I had known history. It saves a lot of time. But the most important thing is to get mad at injustice right now. Gratitude never radicalized anybody. I did not walk around saying thank you for the vote. And I don’t expect you to walk around saying thank you for equal pay legislation, at least we’re moving, sort of moving toward equal pay, but we’re a long way away. Or for instance, the major way that women got into high political office when I was growing up and in college and even beyond was to marry a guy who had the office they wanted, he died through no fault of theirs, and then — seriously — that was the major way that women got into political office.

So we’ve come a long distance from that. We have phrases like sexual harassment, which didn’t have a name before, or domestic violence, which didn’t have a name, was just called life. ... All of these things have changed. But I’m not expecting you to be grateful. I want you to get angry at what’s happening to you, and I want to support you in doing something about it.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So along those lines then, so I have a lot of friends who will say, “We don’t need to call ourselves feminists. It’s not necessary anymore. It’s divisive. These problems are mostly solved.” Obviously, you don’t think that’s the case. Where do you think we need to go as women?

GLORIA STEINEM: It’s not for me to say, it’s for each woman to say what’s going on in her life. But are we as safe in the street as men? Do men raise children as much as women do? Are women even getting equal pay? Are women the same age and experience in media? It’s just insane to say that we’re equal. It’s just so clear that we’re not. But it’s hard sometimes to realize because if we grow up with it, we think it’s inevitable or normal.

LAUREN GILGER: And you don’t think that’s the case. You think that it’s obviously changeable.

GLORIA STEINEM: Oh, yes, absolutely. Yes. And where we started talking about Indian Country and original American cultures here and also on other continents, the Khoi and the San in Africa, the Dalits in India, and so on. Most of human history seems to have been cultures that were organized in a circle, that human beings were linked, we were not ranked.

And for instance, ancient, old, still-in-use languages don’t even have “he” and “she.” They don’t divide people by gender. People are people. What a concept! So it’s not about going back, but it is about understanding that most of human history wasn’t like this. And therefore, it’s quite possible that we can go forward in a new way.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. Well, Gloria Steinem, thank you so much for speaking with us.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5, I’m Mark Brodie. The Great Arizona Puppet Theater will be hosting its September Puppet Slam (Saturday, Sept. 5), and my next guest will be one of the performers.

Matt Scott is the creator of Rasputin’s Marionettes, and he’s been a puppeteer for most of his life. He joins me to talk about his work, and Matt, can you first off describe the show that you’ll be doing here?

MATT SCOTT: The show that I’m actually doing is the first show that I ever actually built. To me, it’s very primitive, but I think for that reason, it thrives on its authenticity. What people will be seeing is a marionette show done in the style of what we call cabaret, which means that rather than be from a concealed platform, it’s performed in full view.

They’re large-scale marionettes ranging about 2 to almost 3 feet in height, and the show is actually called "Freakshow Follies." It’s really just a song and dance sort of variety show, but it is performed by characters from a turn-of-the-century 1900s, 1920s freak sideshow.

MARK BRODIE: Ha, and so when you say it’s not a concealed platform, the audience will see the marionettes and you manipulating them?

MATT SCOTT: And me, yes. It’s not uncommon for people to approach me after a show, and they tell me how delighted they have been by what they saw, they loved the music, they loved the puppets, but they were equally captivated by watching my hands and trying to understand how it’s all done. The magic is all right in full view.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so sounds like you see that as part of the show, like you are one of the performers like in view along with the marionettes doing their thing.

MATT SCOTT: Yes, for years I’ve gone back and forth on how to affect that on stage. A lot of times I’ve been costumed to fit the theme of what I’m doing. Sometimes I’ve worn simply all black or just one solid color to blend out of view, but nothing has ever really stuck.

I mean, there’s no getting away from the fact that I am in full view and people see it, and so, but audiences enjoy that part because even though they can see everything that’s happening, they’re still just dumbfounded by the intricacy of what a marionette performance actually involves.

MARK BRODIE: It’s so interesting, because I think for at least most viewers, I mean, maybe not, you know, if you’re doing like a kid’s birthday party or something like that, but most adults who go to a puppet show or marionette show know that there’s a human doing the work.

They’re like, there’s a human manipulating the marionettes, manipulating the puppets, but it’s interesting like to think of it like you can see it and maybe how that affects somebody’s, you know, if somebody sees you doing it, maybe they have a slightly different appreciation or a different experience watching the show than if they don’t see you, even though they know you’re there.

MATT SCOTT: Right, well I think that’s just part of the magic of puppetry. Nobody’s ever really fooled. Everybody knows, I think even as a kid, I was aware that puppets were something that were being controlled because I got involved in puppetry at a very young age and I always knew that somehow your hand went somewhere to make something move, and I was never under the illusion that these things were moving on their own.

But it’s the way that the audience’s brain wants to process what they’re seeing, like it’s a willful suspension of disbelief or just becoming engaged in the art form of what they’re seeing. So it’s always very interesting, you know, I never get the same reaction from somebody after a show. While everybody may like what they’ve seen, everybody’s processed it a little bit differently.

MARK BRODIE: So you mentioned you have been doing puppetry since you were pretty young, like what got you into it in the first place?

MATT SCOTT: When I was a child, there was just a much more, puppets were practically everywhere. I’m first generation "Sesame Street," I was watching "The Muppet Show" when it was originally airing, Saturday morning cartoons were actually more puppet and mascot costume heavy than they were hand-drawn animation. Sid and Marty Krofft, "H.R. Pufnstuf," "Lidsville," all of that was what I grew up on.

There were also three, three marionette theaters in the Los Angeles area that were performing shows on a daily basis. And so I would go to puppet theaters and see puppet shows as part of field trips and summer camps all throughout my childhood. So at the age of 4 or 5 years old, I was already being influenced by incredibly talented puppeteers, and it just took root.

MARK BRODIE: I mean clearly, like what appealed to you so much about it?

MATT SCOTT: It’s just so magical. Well, to come back to Saturday morning programming for kids, the fact that it was puppets versus animation takes it out of a two-dimensional world and puts it in a real, in real time. And the shows that I was watching when I was a kid were specifically usually always the same sort of plot in which there was a human child who was lost and trying to get back home, but found themselves in a world inhabited by puppets.

And I just found that so engrossing on the same level that kids are drawn to stories like "The Wizard of Oz" or "Alice in Wonderland," it’s just finding yourself in something that’s so very real and yet surreal at the same time.

MARK BRODIE: Have you found that over the years your style has evolved, the way you work with the puppets or act out the roles or manipulate them in some way?

MATT SCOTT: Oh, absolutely. I would never assume that if I keep doing this well into my old age that I will have mastered anything. There’s always going to be a new way to affect manipulation or to represent a character through the style of the sculpt or the interpretation of what it is.

I’ve moved from very stylized characters, mostly influenced by a puppeteer by the name of Bill Baird, who is famous for having been the puppeteer, the puppet builder and puppeteer in "The Sound of Music" for "The Lonely Goatherd" sequence. A lot of people, a lot of puppeteers will reference back to that as a point that really changed them and encouraged them to become puppeteers, and I would probably list that scene, that one scene as a major influence of mine.

So I took my initial puppet-building skills from trying to do very stylized versions of things as seen in something like "The Lonely Goatherd" to trying to be much more hyper-realistic in my sculpt, but it always depends on what it is that I’m performing or what it is that I’m building for and the need for a particular style, so nothing has ever been the same with me. I’ve always evolved or adapted or changed to meet the moment.

MARK BRODIE: That is Matt Scott, he’s the founder of Rasputin’s Marionettes. He’ll be performing at the Great Arizona Puppet Theater September Puppet Slam here in Phoenix. Matt, thanks so much for the conversation.

MATT SCOTT: Thank you so much.

MARK BRODIE: Today we conclude our Summer Soapbox Essay Series with one last road trip story. Valley writer Audrey Treon didn’t have to travel far from home to realize how much she appreciated it.

AUDREY TREON: The dogs are boarded. My father’s run back to the house for “one last thing” for the final time. And the five of us have packed ourselves and our belongings into the family SUV. Finally, we’re on the road to New Mexico, one too many Vera Bradley duffel bags at our feet.

My sisters and I, born and raised Arizonans, all students on winter break, weren’t necessarily thrilled about driving eight hours from Phoenix to Albuquerque just two days before New Year’s Eve, but we were excited for a mini family reunion.

Late December is always a limbo period. The festive period has passed, and I don’t particularly love New Year’s celebrations. I get too in my head. Ironically, the road trip gives me time to ruminate.

Ellie and Sophie came a long way. Both go to school in the U.K. I took a 15-minute Uber ride from Tempe, plagued by incessant thoughts of post-grad life and where that life will be. So here we are.

The first quarter of the trip goes by rather quickly. I am watching the second season of Breaking Bad on my phone, seeing as I am going to Albuquerque. My sisters sit in the two bucket seats. I’m in the middle back. I like to think it’s fitting, middle child in the middle seat, but I know it’s my shorter stature dictating the decision.

Ellie is dozing. Sophie’s got her nose buried in Jane Eyre. I find it all too easy to compare myself to the two sisters I have, middle child and all. I know Ellie is listening to cool ahead-of-the-times music and that Sophie is gaining brilliant insight from Charlotte Brontë. I’m rewatching a show that I nearly have the dialogue memorized to.

Comparison is uncomplicated. These eight hours are proving a fact I know to be true: The rest of life is quite complicated.

Walter and Jesse are having a meth-cooking-related argument, but I’ve seen the show five times, so my mind wanders. In the 13 years since I was last in New Mexico, I have grown to love Georgia O’Keeffe, statement silver jewelry, and spicy pozole. I like to think the five O’Keeffe posters that line my wall miss me as I miss them.

Having nested hard into my apartment, my dad emphasizes how I am not a light traveler, on vacation or in life. I feel a deep pit in my stomach when my thoughts turn again to post-college life. What will I do with all my posters once I move out? The thought plagues me.

But I can pack my silver jewelry collection into five sandwich Ziploc bags. I used to remember where and when I purchased each piece. Now I’ve lost track. Most of them come from Arizona. Those few things are my claims to fame as a born-and-raised Southwesterner, and I’m from Arizona, not even New Mexico. Not much else.

Being from Arizona meant that come spring and summer break, you and your high school friends flocked to the beaches of Puerto Peñasco and San Diego. That is where I got to practice being someone else, someone who didn’t live in Arizona.

Around Apache County, surrounded by desert, my dad, practice lawyer and practice family orator, interrupts his Tyler Childers radio station to give a speech about how we’re lucky enough to have grown up in the Great Southwest. He points to a lone three-armed saguaro cactus as he talks.

Only a few years ago, I would have scoffed at that comment, unsure of what was so lucky about torrid summers, beige stucco, scorpion stings, and bad high school experiences.

About six hours in, the sun has set. That is one thing that doesn’t change from Arizona to New Mexico: The sunsets force you to look.

But now I’m 21, a grown-ish woman learning to be appreciative of it all. The torrid summers that mean pool days in the Valley and camping trips upstate. The beige stuccoed house where my grandparents watched all the Tom and Jerry reruns with us as kids and still host Christmas dinner. The hot nights spent scorpion hunting with my dad and his black light, still avenging my mom who was stung 10 years ago.

The navy, starlit sky hugs the metal of our speeding car, and we are two hours till Albuquerque. There are a few things in life that beat the crispness of a 45-degree desert night. I’m especially appreciative of Southwest winters.

And while I can’t say I’m necessarily grateful for the bad high school experiences, I’m still here, sitting in the car with my family, driving through the desert with a license plate that proudly showcases that Southwestern sunset currently on display in the rearview window.

We get into the Airbnb around 8:00 at night. Grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles welcome us with bottles of half-drunken wine and many sláintes. I take my glass to the front porch and sit in the cold December night, watching my breath escape my mouth. The Airbnb has a ristra hanging from the roof, and underneath, a set of patinated, turquoise French bistro chairs and table. The vastness of the desert night embraces me.

A few days later, I fly back to Phoenix. Sitting in the window seat, I raise the flimsy plastic cover and see nothing but terracotta mountains. Now, I like being a Southwesterner.

MARK BRODIE: That was Valley writer Audrey Treon. You can hear her story again and all of the essays from our Summer Soapbox Essay Series at theshow.kjzz.org.

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.