The Show for Sept. 18, 2026: Friday NewsCap, biking the Juan Bautista de Anza Trail and more

A Republican state senator has subpoenaed the governor and attorney general to testify over an alleged pay-to-play scheme. Our Friday NewsCap panelists analyze that and the rest of the week’s top stories. Plus, a cyclist traces a 1200-mile historic route from Mexico to San Francisco.

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, we’ll hear from one of the organizers of the effort to unionize a group of Banner Health providers, and a cyclist traces a 1,200-mile historic route from Mexico to San Francisco.

But first, it is time for the Friday NewsCap and some voices from the news this week.

KRIS MAYES: If this decision had gone the other way, it would have caused serious chaos in our elections. I think as of Saturday, 18 states had already sent out early ballots.

JAKE HOFFMAN: I’m very shocked that you think trying to get to the bottom of alleged pay-to-play corruption is political theater. It is absolutely not political theater to pursue this investigation.

RUBEN GALLEGO: We’re hoping that some committee in the House or in the Senate is just going to come together with some staffers and put together the framework that’s going to go into place maybe three years from now. We don’t have the time. Dr. Frankenstein is telling us the monster’s escaped. Help us stop this.

KIMBERLY YEE: Many of these children are students with disabilities. So once you start digging into their educational environment and their educational needs, you start violating the HIPAA laws.

TERESA LEYBA RUIZ: Look, I spent 25 years in the classroom teaching mathematics. Arizona is at the bottom in our nation funding, and this has all happened under my opponent’s watch.

JEFF FLAKE: He was the consummate public servant, and he could have made a lot more money and been a lot more comfortable doing something else. But he was a true public servant, and Arizona benefited significantly.

MARK BRODIE: And joining me to talk about subpoenas issued in an alleged pay-to-play scandal, a ruling on the president’s plan to restrict mail-in voting and more are former state lawmaker Regina Cobb. Regina, good morning.

REGINA COBB: Good morning, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: And Gaelle Esposito of Creasote Partners. Gaelle, good morning to you.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Good morning to you.

MARK BRODIE: So, Regina, let me start with you on State Sen. Jake Hoffman. He is chair of the Arizona Freedom Caucus. He has issued subpoenas to, among others, the attorney general, the governor, wants to talk about this Sunshine Residential investigation, and he says he wants to get to the bottom of this. And, you know, he wants to hear from them in just a couple of weeks, which will be not that long before mail-in ballots go out.

REGINA COBB: Yeah, I think the timing is unfortunate. I think that if they were going to do an investigation, do it during the session. But I also think the timing of AG Mayes releasing that she has no findings, her investigation was untimely, too. And I think that’s what they’re doing. They’re playing political theater right now, even though they say they’re not. Both sides are.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so we just heard from Jake Hoffman saying, “This is absolutely, positively not political theater.” You say it is?

REGINA COBB: Oh, I definitely think it is. Like I said, it should be done during session when you actually have a committee, if you want to do a subpoena and you want to get this rolling before a political vote during our election. I think that’s political theater. And her releasing that went — like I said, her side, too. I think they’re both doing it, and I think his response to it is because of that.

MARK BRODIE: Gaelle, political theater?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Oh, obviously. Yeah. And you want to talk about quid pro quo: Jake Hoffman’s company received over a half a million dollars to support the Biggs campaign like the day before he announced these investigations. So I think there’s a little bit of suspect timing on his part there, outside of everything else. He’s getting paid to help the Biggs campaign. Of course he’s going to announce these investigations now.

I think there’s nothing there. It’s clear there’s been nothing there. I’m not surprised by the timing of the release of that investigation. She could have held it until after the election and done it that way, but announcing this has given Jake Hoffman the opportunity to try and do these subpoenas in this investigation.

So I think there’s one side here that’s really trying to make some hay out of something, and I think there’s nothing that’s going to be found. And I think he knows that, but he wants them to say no. And I think they should, because it’s just playing into his game.

MARK BRODIE: Saying no to showing up, you mean? So you don’t think either Gov. Hobbs or AG Mayes shows up later this month?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: No. Why should they? Yeah, this is a joke. It’s a farce, and it’s coming from a man who’s getting paid really big bucks to support Andy Biggs.

MARK BRODIE: Regina, do you think they show up?

REGINA COBB: No, I don’t. I think that neither one of them are going to show up. I think that he wants that, though. He’s just trying to refocus it. He’s trying to refocus of where where the ball is.

MARK BRODIE: To keep this issue sort of front and center?

REGINA COBB: To keep it front and center. Now, I disagree. I think that there could be something there. If there wasn’t anything, it should have been released before the primary. If there was something there, then maybe released after the general election. I don’t know. I just think that their timing of what AG Mayes did just opened it up for this.

MARK BRODIE: So does this stay in the news? I mean, does this continue to be something that the attorney general and the governor and others are going to have to talk about? I mean, there’s going to be a hearing in a couple of weeks. Presumably there will be coverage of that. But do you think this gambit is going to work for Sen. Hoffman?

REGINA COBB: I don’t, because, I mean, as we know, Gov. Hobbs won’t even debate at this point. Do you think she’s going to show up for a subpoena? I mean, so this isn’t something that’s going to happen. It is out there. Does it gain any traction? I don’t think so.

MARK BRODIE: Gaelle, do you think this is a headache for either Mayes or Hobbs?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: No. I mean, Jake Hoffman got what he wanted. We’re talking about it now, but I don’t think we’re talking about it in the way that he hoped. And I think that’s going to be what continues to play out here.

Folks understand what this is. I think it only will look bad for him in the end, and maybe you’ll get some media coverage about how no one showed up and how he just put on a show. But that’s all that’s going to happen here.

MARK BRODIE: All right. So, Gaelle, I mentioned mail-in ballots going out. We got a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court this week on an executive order from President Trump that would have had some pretty significant changes to how mail-in ballots work, especially in a place like Arizona where, as we’ve talked about a lot on this show, the vast majority of voters vote early, vote by mail. Basically, status quo for at least 2026.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Yeah. And I think, you know, part of the problem here is that some damage has already been done, right? What they wanted to do was undermine faith in the mail-in voting process, and I think for a lot of folks, they managed to accomplish that.

And that’s really unfortunate because, as you mentioned, the vast, vast majority of Arizona voters use mail-in voting. It is safe. It’s secure. It works, and it’s convenient for folks. It improves participation.

And so it’s been really unfortunate to see just the skepticism that this has driven and the lack of faith that is coming out of this process. So hopefully, we got a good Supreme Court ruling, the process stays the same. Hopefully, people continue to participate in that system, and we get to protect the integrity of mail-in voting.

MARK BRODIE: Regina, is there a danger that this could backfire on the president’s party, on Republicans? I mean, the GOP in this state basically invented and perfected mail-in voting, as many people sitting in that chair have said before today. And we saw what happened in 2020 when the president told his supporters, “Don’t vote by mail.”

REGINA COBB: Yeah. I don’t think it’s going to backfire. I think it’s a non-issue. Now that the Supreme Court has made their decision, you’re not going to put that genie back in the bottle. We have mail-in ballots. It’s not going to happen, especially this close to this election. If it was going to happen, it needs to happen in 2027, and that needs to go forward.

Do we have some issues? I disagree with her that it’s completely worry-free. No, we have issues. I myself moved into my home two years ago and had three mail-in ballots that didn’t have my name on it, had somebody else’s. Now, if I was a fraudster, guess what I would have done?

So I think this year the rolls are cleaned up. I think that I only received mine. I didn’t receive the other three that I had prior. So I think that what we need to do is continue working towards making sure that it’s a safe process, and I think that’s what we got to work for.

MARK BRODIE: Can we at this point, though, separate out like legit clean-up things, tweaks that need to be made, or maybe more than tweaks, changes that need to be made to really shore up the system — can we separate those sorts of things out from general election skepticism or denialism at this point, or are the two so intertwined?

REGINA COBB: I don’t know if you can separate them. I don’t think you can separate them. I think that’s what needs to happen, but I don’t know if it’s going to separate. People that do not believe in mail-in ballots are still going to not believe in mail-in ballots, even if you clean up all of that.

MARK BRODIE: Even people who believed in mail-in ballots in 2018.

REGINA COBB: The problem we have, especially in Arizona, is we just moved our primary into July. What elderly person is going to sit out for two hours in 110-degree weather? It’s not going to happen. So there’s going to be mail — you got to have both. Like I said, you can’t put that genie back in the bottle.

MARK BRODIE: Well, Gaelle, there’s been a lot of talk this week after the Supreme Court ruling that one of the rationales the justices gave was that it is very close to this election, too close to the 2026 election to be making changes. Didn’t necessarily preclude those kinds of changes coming for 2028. So do you see this as continuing to be an issue over the next couple of years leading up to the next election?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Oh, yeah. Election denialism is here to stay, right? I don’t think this election’s going to go the president’s way, so I think we’re going to hear even more of it. And unfortunately, they will continue to do everything they can to undermine the faith in our electoral system and these processes that have worked, that have been secure, that people have trusted and habits built into utilizing.

And it’s unfortunate that we’re going to continue to see that, this undermining of our democracy. And hopefully some voices start to rise up and say no to that, but I’m not holding my breath.

MARK BRODIE: I mean, is there anything, do you think, that could happen — I’ll ask both of you — that could happen in this election that would lead people who are skeptical or election deniers to say, “Oh, OK, this actually works”?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: No. Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing, right? Is that the elections work great if they win, they are all fraud if they lose, and what is important to them is doing whatever they can to hold onto power and to have what they think is every advantage they possibly can. And that’s unfortunate because all it does is undermine faith in our democracy, like I said.

MARK BRODIE: Regina, you’re nodding along.

REGINA COBB: Yeah, no, I don’t think that you’re going to change the minds of election deniers with this election. I think they feel that it is unsafe, or that we are not doing what we should be doing to make sure the elections are credible.

MARK BRODIE: Gaelle, let me start with you. There was a debate this week between the two candidates for Superintendent of Public Instruction. It’s interesting because ESAs, otherwise known as vouchers, were thought to be going to be like a super big issue in this election. There were going to be a bunch of ballot initiatives, and in this race, none of those initiatives ended up making the ballot. So we’re kind of left with the superintendent’s race.

And, yes, ESAs were part of the discussion, but not the only part of the discussion. And there was clearly some, as you might not be surprised to learn, debate between the two of them and some disagreement over the role of where ESAs should go and what the role of the state should be in regulating them.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Yeah, yeah. You know, you saw a lot of disappointment and frustration from advocates of ESA reform this year, and I think that frustration has to go somewhere. And I think it’s going to be focused on this race. So I think that’s going to propel Dr. Leyba Ruiz into that office at the end of the day.

Because when you look at this race, Kim Yee is someone who doesn’t believe there should really be any accountability — no testing, no financial oversight really — for the ESA voucher program. And it’s really unfortunate that, like, folks can’t see what’s right in front of their face of the fraud and abuse that’s here. But that’s what ideology does to you sometimes.

So that’s what we’re seeing here with Kim Yee is just this purist who thinks that this program can do no wrong and doesn’t need any oversight or accountability. And unfortunately, we don’t know how these kids are doing. We don’t know for sure that this money is being spent wisely. We’ve seen it spent on rings and TVs and things that educational dollars should not be going for.

And so I think all of that frustration, all of that pent-up anger of voters towards this system is going to be focused right on this race.

MARK BRODIE: Are you hearing chatter in the community that people are really like paying attention to this race? And I ask only because it’s sort of a downballot race. And even four years ago when Democrats won the top three — Tom Horne, Kimberly Yee won in her race for treasurer — that once you got down ballot a little bit, Republicans still controlled the Legislature, Republicans still did pretty well.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, four years ago, Tom Horne outspent Kathy Hoffman by 10 to 1, right? And Kim Yee doesn’t have that kind of financial advantage. And it’s a very different year from four years ago, right? We’re looking towards a potential Democratic wave year, so that environment might be better.

And Kim Yee, you know, is someone who I think will perform better than a lot of other statewide Republicans. She’s been around a long time. She’s a real competent campaigner.

But I think this issue, there has been so much attention to it, so much focus on it. You had this potential for reform this year that got squandered. And I think those folks are active and engaged and they’re out there working on this race and working to flip the Legislature.

MARK BRODIE: Regina, do you see what Gaelle is talking about in terms of people who were excited about the ballot referral to sort of reign in ESAs, maybe putting that energy other places?

REGINA COBB: I don’t see it going on this race. I think this is a downballot race, and I mean if you ask how many people watched the debate, I would say it’s pretty small.

So I think what the voters are going to look at is who’s the competent person, who they feel comfortable with. Kimberly Yee has that. She’s confident, she’s been in office before, she knows what she’s doing. As our treasurer, she did a really good job, and I think that they’re going to look at those kind of records going forward.

So I disagree with her. I think that Kimberly’s going to come out on top on this one.

MARK BRODIE: Do you think voters are looking at the records or do you think they’re looking at the party affiliations next to the candidate’s name on this one?

REGINA COBB: I think they’re probably looking more at the party affiliation. Now when you talk about ESA, that may play into it somewhat, but obviously we don’t have any ballot measures on there. So you’re not going to be bringing the people out for the ballot measures one way or the other. So I think it is going to be a downballot Republican/Democrat choice.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So one thing that Democrats and Republicans, at least some of them, can or seem to agree on right now is that they’re terrified of AI. We heard from policymakers, we heard from the leaders of some of the companies this week that, you know, they need — they want things to slow down. They maybe need Congress or the federal government to regulate things. President Trump is saying he doesn’t think that’s the case. But, Gaelle, we heard from both Republican and Democratic policymakers, legislators this week that this is something we need to do, and we probably needed to do it like a month ago.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think we have a really big problem with AI here. We have let these tech bros and their fantasies run amok, and we need to reign it in. There are things you can do, just making them pay for the materials that they’re training their AI on, making them pay for the negative externalities that AI causes, like we do with other scams.

That’s the kind of stuff that we need to be thinking about. Because I think there is a lot to be afraid of here. I think, you know, the “AI is going to kill us all” through line hopefully isn’t true, but like the fact that we’re even having to talk about that, and that folks are still saying, “No, they can regulate themselves.”

I mean, that’s crazy. That’s fundamentally crazy. It’s people abdicating their responsibility to do something here to make sure that we’re not letting these billionaires just run amok. I think we need to see some action.

MARK BRODIE: Well, Regina, we’ve seen already this year that data centers and their relationship with AI have become really big campaign issues in some areas. Do you see what we saw this week with AI becoming something that candidates are going to start talking about on the trail?

REGINA COBB: Oh, we’ve been talking about this for a long time. So this is not something new. Yeah, we need some controls over AI, and with the data centers. Under medicine: right now, your claims are being reviewed by AI. Who’s responsible for that? Who’s going to take liability when that’s wrong? What if there’s a cancer treatment that could save somebody’s life, but AI says, “No, this is not going to go that direction”?

We actually have model legislation out there right now that is being proposed that says AI is an actual provider, healthcare provider, so taking the place of a healthcare provider. That is bizarre. I mean, to not have your hands on, talk to somebody and have an actual virtual person giving you all of your medical treatment would be disastrous.

MARK BRODIE: Regina, I’m curious to get your take on this, having served in the Legislature. Do you get the sense that policymakers understand AI enough to really come up with the right rules of the road for it? And this is not throwing shade on them. I think there are a lot of humans who don’t really understand AI, not just people who are elected to office.

REGINA COBB: I don’t. I don’t think they do understand it. And one of the things that we had issues on a few years ago, we had where they had to have medical necessity, an actual person look at something if it was medically necessary. And they wanted us to describe AI.

Well, California was trying to describe AI, and it was like a 35-page description of it. And it was like, that’s going to change over every day that we go through this. The average person doesn’t even know what AI is, and then you’re trying to legislate that? That’s going to be an issue.

MARK BRODIE: Gaelle, is this one that you think Republicans and Democrats can really come together on and forge something meaningful?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: I hope so, because this is one of those rare issues that isn’t partisanly sorted yet. So, yeah, hopefully. And here we are both nodding along and being, you know.

We have to stop giving AI control of pieces of our lives where they cannot be held accountable, right? A computer can’t be held accountable for a decision, like on healthcare, and a person can be. And we still keep handing over more and more control.

Legislators legislate on things they don’t truly understand all the time. And that’s not a reason for us to stop, to avoid putting some controls on this system. I think that’s what democracy is about. You may not fully be an expert on everything, but you deserve to have a voice in how it affects your own life.

And I think that AI is one of these issues where everybody has a concern here. It’s gaining traction among both parties, and hopefully we can see some action taken.

MARK BRODIE: All right. So, Regina, a little less than a minute left here. I want to ask you about former Senator Jon Kyl, who passed away this week. Somebody that you had a chance to work with a little bit. What were to you, what are sort of his lasting legacies from his time in office?

REGINA COBB: His legacy is water. And what a statesman. I mean, this is somebody that you can go back in his whole career, and just, I mean, he is an honorable man, did everything that he could as far as helping the public. I heard earlier someone say that he could have gone into his law practice and made a lot more money than he did with helping out with the state, and with the country, actually.

But when you go back and look at some of the water policies he’s had, all the way back to reservation water, and then the 1980 Groundwater Management Act. Yeah, he really put some perspective on what we needed to be going forward. We don’t have anybody like that right now to take on that champion and move forward with water, and I wish we did.

MARK BRODIE: All right, well, we’ll have to leave it there. Regina Cobb, Gaelle Esposito, thanks to you both for the conversation. I appreciate it.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Yeah, thank you.

REGINA COBB: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, why some Valley residents are missing a beloved Tempe movie house.

But first, Banner Health has filed a challenge with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging problems with a recent vote by some providers to unionize. A group of primary care providers voted earlier this month to join the Union of American Physicians and Dentists. This is the first time Banner employees have voted to unionize.

But in its challenge, Banner accuses union organizers of promising free legal counsel in exchange for their colleagues signing union authorization cards. Groups need to collect a certain number of those cards to allow the vote on whether to unionize to move forward. A hearing on that challenge is expected later this month or next month.

Earlier, I spoke with one of the organizers of the effort to unionize. Dr. Justin Watkins is a family medicine physician at Banner Medical Group in the Gilbert Health Clinic, and I asked about the concerns that he and his colleagues have that led to the effort to unionize.

JUSTIN WATKINS: Sure. The primary thing that pushed us to attempt to form the union, which we’ve successfully done now, was a loss of autonomy, a loss of decision-making control over the way certain processes in the clinics are handled, the way our workflow is handled, the way our scheduling is handled and the size of our patient panels.

So that led to an enormous amount of administrative burden beyond what is contracted for us. Those were all concerns. The specific things in that led to that greater burden and the loss of autonomy: clinical decisions that are getting made by mid-level managers who are not qualified to make those decisions.

And then the downstream effects we saw from those things, which was a drop in quality of care, a length in how long it takes to come in and see us; the length of time it takes us to address concerns that come through the patient portal; messages; turnaround times on things like lab results, imaging results, etc. So it was negatively impacting us in our work lives, and it was negatively impacting our patients and the quality of care they’re getting from Banner.

MARK BRODIE: It sounds like you felt like you were not able to treat your patients in the way that you wanted to treat them in the amount of time that you wanted to treat them.

JUSTIN WATKINS: Right. Right, absolutely. And there’s a lot of burnout going on for myself and for many of my other colleagues. And we’d raised concerns, and our managers would tell us that they heard us and, you know, repeat back what we were expressing to them and acknowledge that there’s definitely some concerns there. And then nothing ever happened on almost any of those issues.

MARK BRODIE: So this vote affects about 270 or so primary care providers like yourself. Do you anticipate or have you heard from other specialists or other folks within Banner that they are looking at this and saying, "Oh, maybe we should do this also?"

JUSTIN WATKINS: Absolutely. What’s been also gratifying really is how many people have reached out to different members in the organizing group, to UAPD — people who are not physicians, people who are employed with Banner in other positions, people who are not employed with Banner ... that are our physicians in other, you know, health groups here in the Valley.

The response has been very, very positive. And there are quite a number of people who have had their eye on this since it went public about how it was going to go, which way the results would go. And we’ve shown many others that, you know, they’re not alone, that this is the business model that Banner’s using, and it takes advantage of all of us. And, you know, they have expressed that they feel about as voiceless and powerless as we did, and they’re very interested in, you know, coming to a negotiating table with Banner themselves to make similar improvements.

MARK BRODIE: So when you talk about the concerns that you had, some of them, it seems like, you know, for example, decisions being made by, you know, folks who are maybe not providers or clinicians or not taking your input — those seem like fairly in theory easy things to fix. But when you talk about, you know, not having enough time with your patients or having too many patients or too much lag time to get them lab results or things like that, like how would you like to see those addressed? What changes would you like to see so that those are not concerns and not problems?

JUSTIN WATKINS: Sure. Those those things are all manageable, very much manageable. They all have fairly straightforward solutions. An important part of that is going to be increasing the amount of support staff. So medical assistants, hiring them helps get through those messages quicker. More, you know, pharmacy assistants is a necessary thing that’s going to help a lot with simple management once we’ve initiated, you know, management of common problems like diabetes and high blood pressure, things like that. So pharmacy assistance is there.

Mid-level, you know, either nurses or nurse practitioners who are exclusively remote to handle simple inbox questions and normal results and that kind of thing, so that we can focus on the more challenging or complex things. All of those things can help a ton, but hiring more staff that do work that doesn’t actually bring income in isn’t what a business is, you know, wanting to do, but it is how you offer better patient care.

MARK BRODIE: So, I want to ask you about Banner challenging the vote with the National Labor Relations Board. They’re accusing you of basically offering your colleagues free legal advice in exchange for having them sign the authorization cards, basically the cards that allow the vote to join the union to be held. I’m assuming that you are denying that this happened, but what do you make of this?

JUSTIN WATKINS: This is a delay tactic. It’s a very common delay tactic used by anti-union lawyers to slow the process down. The longer that it takes to come to an agreement ... the longer Banner gets to keep the status quo where they’re, you know, making as much money as they are currently making, and they, you know, keep those costs down where they currently are, and that’s going to change.

We believe that the complaint stems from the website that UAPD put out after we went public, where it explains what Weingarten rights are. And ... that’s the name given to the basic rights provided to all Americans who are working inside of a union, not just a like a for physicians or what have you. Anybody working in a union has Weingarten rights, and one of those explicit rights is that they have access through their union to a union representative, including and up to legal counsel, should they, you know, be approached by their employer for correction or disciplinary action or even up to getting fired.

And so that’s just an explanation of what happens, what rights you have available to you as a union member after the union forms. And in no way, shape, or form does that communicate if they sign a card, they will be allowed free legal counsel, you know, in exchange for signing a card. It’s a simple explanation of Weingarten rights, and we don’t believe this is going to hold any water.

MARK BRODIE: Do you feel like the relationship is reparable? Like, assuming that the union goes forward, do you get the sense that you guys and hospital company management will be able to come to an agreement that will make everybody, if not happy, at least something that you can live with, and everybody can sort of go about their business and do their thing and be OK with it?

JUSTIN WATKINS: Absolutely. This is business, right? This isn’t personal. The struggle between employers and employees for power and pay and rights, etc. — all of that is a tale as old as time. Banner’s a very large employer, and they hold an enormous amount of power in the relationship between them and their employees. And the only real meaningful way that we could see to make our voices heard was to unionize, to come together.

But that’s just business, right? We’re just going to turn into a business expense. And they’re wise. They’re going to turn this around, you know, once we’ve, you know, secured better working conditions and better pay and better support in our clinics, and they’re going to say, "Oh, well, this is great. Come come work for Banner. Look at how well we take care of our doctors." And they’ll just pretend that they didn’t fight tooth and nail against that. So we can we can make this work. I don’t think that’s going to be personal animosity.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Dr. Justin Watkins, a primary care provider with Banner Health based in Gilbert. He also led the effort to unionize primary care providers there. Dr. Watkins, thanks so much.

JUSTIN WATKINS: Thank you for having me.

MARK BRODIE: We also reached out to Banner Health. In a statement, the company says in part, “The majority of Arizona Banner Medical Group clinicians who participated in the recent union election voted to be represented by the Union of American Physicians and Dentists. We respect that decision, and if the results are certified by the National Labor Relations Board, we’ll consider our next steps in meeting our obligations to the union, our clinicians, and the community we serve. We remain deeply committed to the culture we’ve built together, which is grounded in trust, respect, and a shared dedication to our patients and communities.” We’ll post Banner’s entire statement online at theshow.kjzz.org.

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

Luis Valle is an artist, architect, and cyclist, as in bicyclist. And in his new documentary, “Anza 250,” he rides more than 1,200 miles along the historic Juan Bautista de Anza Trail to mark its 250th anniversary this year. The trail winds from Mexico to what would become San Francisco. De Anza carved it out in the late 1700s, paving the way for generations of settlers to come. For Valle, it was a chance to better understand his adopted country of Mexico. He’s from Spain and moved to his wife’s home country of Mexico. And he told my co-host Lauren Gilger he was looking for interesting routes to ride.

LUIS VALLE: I was looking for excuses for riding and learning while riding, which is the core of this project in the end.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

LUIS VALLE: So, everything was put together like, this is the perfect moment for riding, which is what I like most, and the moment to do it in a more important way.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK, so this is the time to do it. So you decided to do it. ... Tell us about the history of this trail. This was the Juan Bautista de Anza Trail. It’s 1,200 miles long, and it goes back, you know, 250 years. Tell us about Juan Bautista de Anza, and like how this whole thing began.

LUIS VALLE: Well, I’m not the perfect historian here, but of course, when you start studying something like this to prepare a route, and to create a cycling route from scratch — which is what is happening here — you start to investigate a bit about the personage.

So, Juan Bautista de Anza was a military man, and at the time when he decided to create a new route between what was the area of nowadays Sonora and Arizona, he went to Mexico City asking for the favor of the viceroy for doing a biggest expedition. And in the end, with more or less 200 families from Sonora, from the area of Tubac, and whoever was interesting to join, they all went together to what is now San Francisco. ... And they finally set the final place, March 28th of the year 1776.

LAUREN GILGER: 1776, all right. So, I mean, 1,200 miles of bike riding is a lot, and you started there in Sonora and made it all the way up through California, almost to the to the top of the state. Tell us about some of the standout moments in your mind, in your memories of this journey, some of them maybe the more challenging parts. I can’t imagine this was easy.

LUIS VALLE: In fact, the 1,200 length is only for the American parts. There is a tiny segment in Sonora—

LAUREN GILGER: So it’s even longer!

LUIS VALLE: Yeah, it’s a bit longer. Not that much, but more or less 1,400 miles.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow, OK.

LUIS VALLE: But, but yeah, after 1,200 miles, two more hundred, it’s not that bad. So, yeah, the Arizona segment wasn’t the worst part because it’s really flat. So, from the moment I crossed the border in Nogales, everything was perfect. It was flat, in fact, slightly going down up to Yuma. But while riding the Arizona part, which was really peaceful, very mindful, I was fearing the mountains in the California leg. So, I completed the California leg the last month, in March 2026. And I don’t know what weather there was at the time in Arizona, but we had a huge and unexpected heat wave.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow, yes!

LUIS VALLE: For all March. And, for example, riding in big cities as LA during this heat wave was terrible. Yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: Oh, man, I can imagine, yeah.

LUIS VALLE: Yeah, that was even worse than climbing several mountains in the desert, which also happened in Southern California.

LAUREN GILGER: Worse going through the big cities during a heat wave. Fair enough, fair enough. I mean, was it worth it? Did it feel like at the end of this when you rode into San Francisco and had gone through, you know, all three legs of this massive journey, did it feel like this was, you know, the kind of journey that you thought it would be?

LUIS VALLE: Of course it worth it. Yeah. I mean, the problem with these rides is once you finish it, you are planning the next one. ... So, this is what is happening right now. I have a family here. I have my wife and a son and a normal life here in the city. So, there is a challenge in planning projects like this while your family is waiting for you. ...

But my idea for the future is to motivate them to join me and do some type of family cycle trip somewhere ... with this kind of connection with history and more than only riding.

LAUREN GILGER: So you have lots planned, even with the family. I love that. I want to ask you lastly, Luis, about your drawings that you did throughout this journey as well, because you’re also an artist, you’re also an architect, so you draw buildings. And you kind of do these spontaneous kind of sketch-type drawings as you’re sitting and watching these landmarks go by. Why do you do that? What did it bring to this journey for you?

LUIS VALLE: Well, I like to travel, right? So, when I was younger, I took a lot, hundreds of photographs of one place, a tiring amount of photographs. And after every trip, I had to spend a lot of hours in front of the computer retouching those photographs to create in the end perfect photographs like the other perfect ones you could find in internet of the same place. ... So, at some point, I decided to register less images, but increase what those images represent for me.

... So, when I was studying architecture, I had several subjects about sketching, drawing, as you can imagine. But after that, for years, that part of me was almost forgotten. So, I wanted to bring back that part, and I connected it with the idea of when I’m drawing, for example, for an hour in a important spot, I’m not only seeing, but also using the rest of senses. So, when I see every sketch I’ve done, I not only remember the place visually, I also remember sometimes the flavor if I was eating something —

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

LUIS VALLE: The company if I was with more people, the smell, everything.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

LUIS VALLE: So, yeah, I believe it’s a a more concentrated way of remembering places. And as this phrase — at least in design — "less is more," I believe that phrase applies also here.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Well, it’s a beautiful way to look back on it. That is Luis Valle, an architect, artist, cyclist. The documentary is "Anza 250." Luis, thank you so much for joining us, and congratulations on completing this. It’s amazing.

LUIS VALLE: Thank you so much for this moment to share the project, Lauren.

MARK BRODIE: The first chapter of “Anza 250” screens at ASU this weekend. Its official release is next month.

MARK BRODIE: As the pandemic morphs from a current event to a chapter in the history books, life is largely back to normal, whatever that means. But there are a few lingering reminders of the shutdown, most notably in the form of businesses that still have not reopened. One of the most notable around here is the Valley Art Theatre on Mill Avenue in Tempe. Locals have been calling on Dan Harkins, the movie theater’s owner, to reopen next month to once again screen The Rocky Horror Picture Show. KJZZ contributor Robrt Pela says it would be an ode to the value of small business.

ROBRT PELA:
In the old days, you were either a Sombrero Playhouse person or a Valley Art Theatre patron.

These two revival houses—one of them at Seventh Street and Camelback in Phoenix, the other on Tempe’s Mill Avenue — showed Old Hollywood classics and obscure foreign films and indie arthouse movies on double bills that changed five times a week. You heard that right — two movies every other day, Monday through Thursday, with special double bills every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

On Tuesday you could see a Humphrey Bogart double-header from the 1930s, and on Wednesday it might be Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” paired with George Franju’s “Les Yeux sans Visage,” both from 1960. If you wanted to throw rice and shout obscenities at a movie screen, you went to one or the other of these cinemas on Friday and Saturday at midnight to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

We were very much a divided community. Everyone who went to the Sombrero to watch Richard O’Brien’s camp musical were convinced that the Valley Art “Rocky Horror” fans were a bunch of poseurs. And of course, the Valley Art people knew for a fact that the Sombrero midnight movie crowd just plain sucked.

Originally a proper playhouse, where one might see a bus-and-truck production of some old warhorse starring a Tinseltown has-been, the Sombrero had become a movie revival house in 1976, showing double features until it closed in 1981. The Valley Art, opened in 1940 as a first-run movie house, had a similar schedule. Though it lasted as a revival house and boutique cinema until closing up shop during the COVID pandemic.

Harkins Theatres, which owns Valley Art, has been promising to reopen its flagship movie house for six long years. Local cinema fans have been whining that it has yet to. And when “Rocky Horror” star Tim Curry died last month, the grumbling reached a crescendo. Fans are demanding that the Valley Art reopen right away, with a retrospective of Tim Curry films, and then stay open for good.

It’s a sweet argument, and not entirely wrong. But it’s also a reminder of how complicated our nostalgia-driven demands can be.

Because, on one hand, I’m not sure there are enough of us these days who want to go to the movies — or do anything that requires leaving the house and sitting next to strangers. We can blame streaming services (seriously, when’s the last time you went to the movies?), or parking, or the fact that we’ve all become too tired to go out after 8 p.m.

Would those of us who’d gone to a local revival house in the 80s be able to support one today? Or are we just asking to revisit our youth for a night, leaving Dan Harkins to pay the bills on his parents’ old movie theater? Nostalgia doesn’t pay the rent. Running a single-screen art house in 2026 can’t be cheap. Licensing fees are high, and the audience for such a place can be unpredictable. It may not be economically feasible to resurrect Valley Art in the form we remember.

Or, as my husband put it when I asked him about this: “Look, if the Mason Jar reopened and Gentlemen After Dark were playing there, would it be any fun? They’d be old and I’m old and I’m sure we’d all rather be at home watching ‘Ted Lasso.’” But, you know. My husband watched “Rocky Horror” at the Valley Art in the 80s, so don’t listen to him.

And, on the other hand, Variety recently reported that a national survey by the Art House Convergence, a coalition of independent film exhibitors, suggests that audiences are returning to independent cinemas in surprising numbers. Not just returning, but seeking them out. The survey found that people are craving communal viewing experiences, especially ones that feel local, and curated, and a little eccentric.

In other words, exactly what Valley Art used to offer.

So maybe when people say, “Reopen Valley Art in honor of Tim Curry,” they don’t just mean “so I can wear a sequined corset and yell at a movie screen one more time before I die.” Maybe what they’re really saying is, “Give us back a place where a movie feels like an event.”

It does feel like a disservice to the community to leave this gorgeous little movie house empty for so long. Valley Art isn’t just a building; it’s part of Tempe’s history. Its neon marquee, its old-timey ticket booth, its decades of oddball programming are all part of a story about how the East Valley once valued art that wasn’t shiny or corporate. Letting it sit dark suggests a kind of indifference that Tempe doesn’t deserve.

And if the Art House Convergence survey is right, Valley Art might even thrive. Not because we’re clinging to the past, but because we’re finally ready to admit that our past held more than a couple pretty good ideas.

MARK BRODIE: That was KJZZ contributor Robrt Pela. Dan Harkins did not respond to his requests for comment.

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.