The Show for Sept. 29, 2026: Restoring faith in elections, Indigenous wellness and more

Claims of election fraud and vote rigging continue, as early voting starts soon in Arizona. Hear about an election attorney trying to boost public faith in the system. Plus, an Indigenous wellness advocate on balance, good design and cultural appropriation.

Transcript

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

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

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, a pair of election attorneys is trying to convince skeptics that the system is sound and fair.

MARK BRODIE: And designing your home with spiritual wellness in mind.

LAUREN GILGER: But first, transgender students competing in girls sports is one of the culture war issues that most Americans actually agree on.

According to a recent Pew Research poll, 73% of Americans say they’re uncomfortable with transgender athletes competing on sports teams that don’t match their sex at birth; 66% said they’d support a law that made them compete on teams that do match their sex at birth.

But that’s not what’s on your ballot to decide this November with Proposition 318, even though the campaign for the proposition is called Protect Girls’ Sports in Arizona. KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez is here to explain. Good morning, Camryn.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so Prop. 318 doesn’t talk about trans sports at all. Is that the case here?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: It’s really about bathrooms and locker rooms. So we actually already passed legislation a few years ago, which went through the whole court process of being challenged and then approved — and that was about sports and keeping them separate.

So it was banning what Republicans call “biological males” — which means in this case, trans girls — from competing in girls sports teams. So that’s already Arizona state law. And this measure that Republican lawmakers put up on the ballot is specifically about not letting schools that have athletic programs or athletic associations let trans kids use the bathroom that doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth.

LAUREN GILGER: So this has to do with bathrooms, locker rooms, things like that?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: Those other ideas, right, of trans sports are in the measure, but they’re already on the books. So the only effective part, essentially, is this part about bathrooms. Is that right?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, which is why it’s kind of weird to me because it keeps being marketed as this bill about sports and about athletics and about “protecting girls’ sports,” quote-unquote. And that’s what the Republican state lawmakers on the campaign trail have been saying, you know, like, “We’re taking this action to protect your kids, and the fairness and the safety and all this stuff.” When really, the bill doesn’t have anything to do with that.

LAUREN GILGER: So I mentioned, Camryn, how public polling on transgender athletes in sports is pretty clear at this point. What about polling on the actual part of this bill that would make changes to state law here about where transgender students can use the bathroom or locker room?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: So it’s a little more fuzzy. And like you mentioned, I mean, I think we’ve seen Republicans over the last several years through a process of kind of like trial and error and testing out the public feel that, like, this is an issue that they can campaign on, right?

People typically don’t approve of the idea of trans people in sports, even if they don’t play sports or even if it doesn’t affect them personally. They kind of think, “Oh, well, that doesn’t seem fair.” This, you know, is like tangential to that, and they’re tying it to that.

But I think this specific issue of the bathrooms and locker rooms, I do think that it has a good shot of passing. I think that there’s a large group of Arizonans who would still not approve of, you know, trans kids being able to use bathrooms. But I think there are fewer people who can see this as a concern.

LAUREN GILGER: This proposition survived an attempt to get it thrown off the ballot by opponents, right? What was that about?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Well, the opponents of the bill were basically Democrats. And they were saying, “Oh, this is an issue of single subject because, you know, this is about bathrooms, but it’s also about sports, and you can’t have that under the same piece of legislation.”

And the judge said no. And I think that was a bit of a fishing expedition, kind of. I mean, they didn’t approve of the ballot measure, so they would have challenged it, I think, kind of no matter what, and they had to go after it for something. But the single-subject rule, in this case, the judge said it’s not too broad of a measure.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, so measures that end up on the ballot have to be about one thing, this single-subject rule. What about the opposition campaign here? Has there been much of one, Camryn?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah. I mean, we had a press conference back in August at the state Capitol where some of the big candidates, including Andy Biggs, who’s running for governor, and his running mate came out, and they were saying that they were supporting this legislation and how important it is for the kids. And sort of using it in their campaign as well, even though, you know, it was the state Legislature who passed it, and neither of them were, like, involved in that. And it’s a separate measure from their race. But they, again, talked about it as a sports issue. And they brought in this young athlete to talk about sports and fairness in sports, even though that’s not what the measure says.

LAUREN GILGER: We also heard from state Rep. Alex Kolodin at that press conference about this measure. Let’s hear a little bit about what he had to say, what the messaging was like.

ALEX KOLODIN: What father out there wants their minor child, their minor daughter, in a bathroom with somebody with male anatomy?

LAUREN GILGER: So what about on the Democratic side, Camryn? As you mentioned, they’re kind of opposed to this, but are they wading into this one?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, I think Democrats are trying to convince the public that this is nothing more than a political stunt and a culture war issue. And I think that people understand that it’s a culture war issue, and people understand that there’s politics at play here, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will vote against it, if that makes sense.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK, so let’s talk then about predictions, maybe. You said you wouldn’t be surprised if this did pass come November in Arizona, given the way this kind of issue polls. But this is also happening in a year in which Democrats are expected to do pretty well here and across the country. How does that broader political context play into this one?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, I think that if this measure passes, it would be more narrow than maybe in a different election cycle. And I think that the Democrats do have a good chance of a blue wave. Everything that we’ve seen kind of indicates that.

So could this issue get swept up in it? Maybe. But it’s also possible — you know, Arizona voters have a tendency to maybe vote yes on one thing and no on another thing if that doesn’t align with their personal values. Like, you could vote for a Democrat and a Republican, for example, on the same ballot.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, which doesn’t happen as many places, but definitely happens here. All right. KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez with our Politics Desk joining us. Camryn, thank you so much, as always. Appreciate it.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: California Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency in advance of what is expected to be a Super El Niño — bringing heavy rains and flooding. Arizona is also anticipating wetter-than-typical conditions over the next several months.

That extra water presents both challenges and opportunities to an area in the midst of ongoing drought.

Ian James with the Los Angeles Times joins me to talk more about this. Ian, good morning.

IAN JAMES: Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So do we have a sense of why the California governor declared a state of emergency at this point? Like, what does that mean? What does that do?

IAN JAMES: Yes, it’s to mobilize state resources ahead of possible flooding, and to basically be ready for it. Be ready for inland flooding in low-lying areas as well as coastal flooding and heavy waves that could come from El Niño, which can be quite destructive. So it’s to have resources in place to prepare for the potential emergency in the first place.

MARK BRODIE: Maybe preposition some of that stuff to maybe mitigate some of the worst impacts?

IAN JAMES: Right.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So you’ve been writing about sort of what all this extra rain and water that California and Arizona are expected to be getting over the next several months could mean.Obviously, this part of the world could use some more water. But how are officials in California trying to prepare to not sort of let this opportunity go to waste, that, you know, all this extra water potentially falling from the sky?

IAN JAMES: That’s right. There could be this bonanza of water, and it’s important to recognize that, of course, El Niño doesn’t necessarily guarantee a winter of wet storms. But the idea is that if a lot of water comes with this El Niño, that California should be prepared to take advantage of that water and capture as much of it as possible to help in the next drought.

MARK BRODIE: How are they trying to do that?

IAN JAMES: Well, there are several major ways. One is by having recharge basins that have been built over the years. They’ve expanded in areas like the Central Valley. Los Angeles County has 27 spreading grounds to capture runoff from the flood control system with these constructed recharge basins that also exist in Arizona that can be used to capture those surges of floodwater when it comes in.

And there’s also been a growing emphasis in California on capturing water and sending it to farm fields where it can be done and where it won’t damage the crops. And farmers have been putting more effort and resources into that in recent years, partly because of the state’s groundwater law, which is incentivizing people to capture more stormwater.

And in 2023, it was a big test of California’s ability to do that, and many more farmers and irrigation districts put floodwater onto farm lands and effectively helped recharge more water during that flooding period when water was also going underground in large quantities naturally. And, of course, 2023 was not an El Niño year, but the idea at the state level and at a number of water agencies in California is: Let’s prepare for this year in case it’s that wet or even possibly wetter.

MARK BRODIE: What kind of infrastructure is needed to get some of that rainwater — I mean, obviously if it falls on a farm, that’s great, you don’t need anything. But, you know, if it falls sort of somewhere outside of the agricultural areas, how do you get it from there to where it can be used on farms?

IAN JAMES: A lot of these efforts do require investment and planning for years. And I spoke with one farmer near Fresno who has invested a number of — he’s invested about $13 million, received a state grant, put in about 5 miles of canals to direct floodwater when it’s available to the farm fields. And in 2023 was able to put as much water underground as basically a small city and is looking to do more of that.

It does require the canals. It requires having pumps in place. You know, last time, they used a number of diesel pumps that they brought in quickly to respond to the flooding. And this time, that farm has in place some electric pumps that will be able to handle a large volume of water quickly.

MARK BRODIE: So it sounds like, at least in some cases, it’s a matter of like dusting off equipment that had been there for some amount of time and making sure it still works?

IAN JAMES: Right. And last time, Gov. Newsom did declare a state of emergency ... during the heavy storms in 2023 — to facilitate the movement of water on farms. And the state did help both buy and rent dozens of pumps to get water where it needed to go quickly. And so part of what irrigation districts and the state are looking to do again this time, and with the governor’s order again, is to help local agencies and farmers figure out how to move water quickly where it needs to go.

MARK BRODIE: Obviously, one even super El Niño is not going to necessarily pull California or any other state out of what has been a very, very long drought. But do water officials there have a sense of like best-case scenario, how much water they might be able to get, like how much of a dent into the shortage they might be able to put?

IAN JAMES: I think that’s just a big question mark. A large part of California, about 70% of the state, is currently classified as being abnormally dry. And so how much this year could make a big dent in that or swing things back the other way is really a question mark. In 2015 and 2016, it was an El Niño year, and there was a lot of talk about potentially a deluge, but it turned out to be more of a disappointment.

MARK BRODIE: The other side of this, of course, is the possibility of flooding — in some cases, severe or life-threatening flooding. Do the efforts to try to get water to where it can be used and to collect it to seep underground, does that also have the effect of potentially mitigating some of the effects of flooding?

IAN JAMES: Definitely. And one of the big solutions that I’ve spoken with experts about is restoring natural floodplains along rivers, especially in the Central Valley, where farmland can be repurposed to become a natural floodplain with vegetation.

And basically, if levees are cut into or set back in these areas and the land is dedicated to giving water more space, it can allow water to spread out, slow down and sink into the ground, and also help reduce flood risk downstream.

And in the last several years, California has made progress on several thousand acres of new floodplain restoration, and that basically gives water more space for these flood periods, and there are plans to do quite a bit more of it.

MARK BRODIE: That’s interesting. All right, that is Ian James with the LA Times. Ian, thanks so much.

IAN JAMES: Thank you.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, why an Indigenous wellness expert says treating your home as a living being can improve your physical and spiritual health.

MARK BRODIE: Early voting begins in Arizona in a little more than a week [Oct. 7]. But the claims of election fraud and rigging that’ve been prevalent here and around the country since 2020 have not gone away.

My next guest is trying to change that. Ben Ginsberg is an election attorney — you may remember his name from his time working for George W. Bush and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns. He was national counsel for the Bush/Cheney campaign during the 2000 election and played a big role in the Florida recount.

Now, he’s the co-chairman of a group called Pillars of the Community, which is trying to boost public faith in elections. He was in the Valley recently for an event with elections and elected officials here. And when he came by the studio to talk about this work, I asked how much of what he and this group try to do is convince people who may be skeptical that elections are safe, secure and reliable.

BEN GINSBERG: Really, all we do is try and convince people that elections are reliable and safe. I mean, the fact of the matter is that I co-chair this group with Bob Bauer, who was my Democratic adversary for years and years. And we served together as co-chairs of a presidential commission on election administration when all around the country, trying to make voting better, talked to tons of election officials.

And I think both of us, who were political combatants, came to see the election system in a much different light, that we saw how much election administrators care, and we saw all the safeguards in the election system.

MARK BRODIE: So you had, you know, kind of an insider’s look at that election system. Is that part of the key, do you think, to get people who are skeptical of the way elections work to really sort of see how the sausage is made, as it were?

BEN GINSBERG: Yes. That’s really our goal with the Pillars of the Community program. I mean, we believe that you hear an awful lot of information about elections, most of it not true. And the way to deal with that situation is not to mutter on the couch about it, but rather to take advantage of an opportunity to kick the tires of the election system.

It can be through us. We try and get people, especially skeptics, together with election officials, give them tours of election facilities, let them ask all the questions that they want. I think people can also get involved in the election process themselves by becoming poll workers for their local governments or poll watchers on behalf of their political parties, if they want.

MARK BRODIE: At the risk of asking a question that might give you heartburn, though, you know, you can give tours to people of election systems, but, you know, you can take, you know, a couple dozen at a time. Somebody sends out a tweet, that could reach 100,000 or more people in five seconds. Like, it seems like it would be hard to sort of combat that with sort of the facts here.

BEN GINSBERG: Very fair observation, really a great part of the challenge that we face. But we do believe that finding people who are leaders in their local communities with networks is the best way to combat it. And, of course, the real test of an election system is in a close race.

And we hope if there are close elections here in Maricopa County or in the state of Arizona, that there will be enough people who will have seen the election systems up close to be able to say that the supervisors and the recorders, all the people who put on elections, know what they’re doing and have followed the safeguards.

MARK BRODIE: Well, it’s interesting you mention close races here in Maricopa County because one of the things that you hear from a lot of political consultants and election officials here is that the system is roughly the same as it has been for a couple of decades.

But now, you know, the state of course gets a lot of flak for the amount of time it takes to get the final results. But a lot of election folks say is like it’s always taken that long, just the races weren’t in doubt, so nobody paid attention. It’s really because the races now are closer and more in doubt that people are paying more attention to how long it takes to count all the votes.

BEN GINSBERG: Yes. That and the fact that elections have become the focus of a national debate in a way that they really weren’t. There have certainly always been recounts and contests throughout the history of the country, but they have been sort of isolated incidents that came about just because of close races. Now there’s the assault on the reliability of the election system that puts much more into play.

MARK BRODIE: You mention recounts and everything. I want to ask about some of your experience because you worked for the George W. Bush campaign and were involved in a very, very close election, of course, in 2000. Could you have imagined at that time that 20-plus years later this is where we would be in terms of the way people feel about elections?

BEN GINSBERG: No. I mean, the Bush versus Gore recount, the 2000 recount, was a really sort of tumultuous, very anxiety-producing incident. But what Florida 2000 did is also prompt a revamping of the election system and the election machinery so that I think we would not have forecast an assault like this on the basic integrity of the system the way it’s taken place.

MARK BRODIE: Do you find that you are able to convince election skeptics or election deniers that elections are, in fact, fair and accurate and run properly?

BEN GINSBERG: Well, it’s been very interesting for us because we do try and recruit people from across the political spectrum into our Pillars program. And we do put them there with election officials and let them ask any question. And the truth is is that I don’t know if we convince everyone that we bring in, but I do know that there is a change in attitude once somebody gets to ask all the questions, hear all the answers, see the equipment, understand how the process works.

MARK BRODIE: Is this the new normal, do you think? Like, can the toothpaste go back in the tube at this point?

BEN GINSBERG: Yeah, I think it can. I mean, so far, there has been absolutely no evidence of systemic problems with the system produced. Suspicions, which are plentiful and have always been, are nonetheless not evidence. So after the 2020 election, there were 64 court cases filed, including plenty here in Arizona. No evidence of systemic fraud. President Trump, in his first term, was able to appoint a commission to look specifically at that. No evidence.

Right now, there is an unprecedented unleashing of federal investigative power to look at elections. So far, no evidence produced despite a series of extraordinary steps. If there’s really evidence of problems with the election system, they have to be fixed. But having all the investigative powers of the government, if there is no proof of election unreliability that comes out of this election, then it is, I think, the responsibility of people in charge to stop the talk.

I think the answer to your question of is this going to stop is that this seems to me to be very much a sort of political strategy to talk about elections. If that strategy is not successful because people realize that it’s not correct, then I think it goes away.

MARK BRODIE: So you think that this election, it sounds like you’re saying this is maybe a bit of a turning point because there hasn’t been evidence, as you referenced, since 2020 of there being problems. And yet, there are still a great number of people who think that the elections are rigged and fixed.

BEN GINSBERG: Yes. And again, every investigative power that the federal government has seems to be being employed to root out that systemic problem that they believe exists. So we’ll see what the evidence is. And if there’s evidence, I think we’ll all try and fix the problems.

MARK BRODIE: How do you gauge the success of this program that you’re running?

BEN GINSBERG: Really great question. We have metrics about number of people involved and public communications. But the truth is, elections are a one-day sale. You don’t know if it’s successful or not until November 3, 2026, and then the aftermath, because contests, recounts, litigation, all part of the process that should go forward. And so I don’t know how to judge the success of the program in the interim stages, although we do try and measure where we are. But it is a one-day sale.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Ben Ginsberg, co-chair of the group Pillars of the Community. Ben, thanks so much.

BEN GINSBERG: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: You might assume a college education means you’re less likely to go to church every Sunday. Conventional wisdom says you go to college and lose your faith — it’s where you learn the error of religious ways or are freed from a childhood of dogmatic beliefs.

But, new data out from Pew Research Center shows that’s not always the case. In fact, for some Americans, there’s a pretty strong correlation between higher education and church attendance. And that trend is very stark among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Pew reports in a national survey gathered in 2023 and 2024, 86% of Mormons with a bachelor’s degree or higher go to church every week. That’s compared to 59% of those who didn’t go to college, a whopping 27% gap. That gap is just 7% among Christians overall.

Tamarra Kemsley wrote about why for the Salt Lake Tribune and told me this trend did not surprise her.

TAMARRA KEMSLEY: If you look at data going back at least to 2008, hundreds of studies all show the same thing. Far and away, those with a college degree or higher, so four years or more, are multiple times more likely to stay in church. And I think a lot of Latter-day Saints see that just on the ground in their personal experience.

I think if you talk to a lot of members of the church in the United States and said, like, “Do most of the people in your congregation, do they have a college degree?” I think a lot of them would say, “Yeah, actually, yes.”

So then the question is, why? And I spoke with experts, a couple of different ideas kind of percolated to the top. And one is definitely culture. It is a buttoned-down environment. You go into a Latter-day Saint worship service and it is a man in a suit conducting, different people go up, they have different speakers, everyone sort of takes a turn, we don’t have paid pastors, and they share their message, but there’s no clapping, there’s no call-and-response. It’s very buttoned-down. The hymns are very traditional. There’s no guitar, it’s just like organ music.

And I think that, plus the fact that the leadership itself is usually educated. So if you have a college degree or more, you are more likely to be assigned to the volunteer role of bishop. And if you’re a bishop, you and your family are more likely to stay active, right? You are deeply entrenched now into the culture, into the community, so it creates this feedback loop.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So the ministry in the LDS Church sort of depends on or is enhanced by the level of education you might have.

TAMARRA KEMSLEY: Yes. So if you talk again to members of the church and say, “Who are your local clergy?” it’s probably going to be someone who’s like a dentist or has an MBA or is a lawyer. It’s very much the case that there is this sort of elevation of people with education.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. The church, the LDS Church, right, also runs a bunch of universities, right? That has to have something to do with this.

TAMARRA KEMSLEY: Like a lot of universities! Everyone thinks of BYU, it doesn’t stop with BYU. There’s BYU-Idaho, there’s BYU-Hawaii, there’s what’s called Ensign College, it’s kind of a community college-esque environment in Salt Lake City. It has so many institutions, and these are all just — they are just churning out graduates. I think there’s something like — it’s over 10,000 graduates easily a year, maybe twice as many.

So if you’re going to school in an environment where you’re required to study the Book of Mormon, where you’re required to talk about how LDS theology around the family is important to sociology, let’s say you’re studying sociology, right? It’s infused throughout, both through these classes that are strictly religion classes, and then professors are expected to integrate theology into their classroom settings, whether you’re a physicist or someone working in the humanities.

And so I think there’s an argument possibly to be made there that if this is an effort by the church to really engrain a sense of LDS identity and belief into those students, that it’s working.

LAUREN GILGER: So I mean, it sounds like in a way, the LDS Church just values education, higher education in particular, and that’s sort of creating this culture.

TAMARRA KEMSLEY: That, I think, is part of it. There have always been pro-education messages, explicit, not just the implicit that we were talking about before. There’s this both implicit and then explicit where they say that learning and knowledge is part of growing and becoming the person that God wants you to be. There’s also that pro-family message, which requires often, you know, a certain level of education if you’re going to have three-, four-, five-, six-plus kids.

LAUREN GILGER: So I wonder, though, what about all of those people who have not, you know, participated as actively, who do not have college degrees, who are not going to church every week in this way? Are they left behind, left out of this?

TAMARRA KEMSLEY: I think culturally there can be a disparity there. And I think it depends in part where you are, where you’re located, who your leader is. But I think that there’s also a sense that one of the things that I uncovered is that a lot of the people who aren’t going to church as frequently are converts. And converts are also less likely to have a college degree. So I think there’s something going on there. And so part of this just has to do with were you raised in the church or not.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK. So let me ask you, though, what did church officials have to say about this trend? Is this something that they’re happy about, you know, concerned about, both?

TAMARRA KEMSLEY: Yeah. So I think the church is just happy to see that there are people who are going to school, getting educated and staying. That creates a great workforce to draw from, of course. It didn’t say as much in any of the comments or statements that I received.

One of the things that they have talked about is — there is this flourishing taking place, that across the globe, quote, “The church is experiencing a season of spiritual vitality and growth.” So not speaking directly to this connection between education or its long-standing impact on attendance. However, they did try to frame it within this larger sort of revival, which I think if, depending on which statistics you choose to look like, either is or isn’t happening.

It’s absolutely true that the LDS Church has more missionaries out than ever. I think it’s 90,000 right now. And these are full-time missionaries. Not all of them are the young men and young women you see with badges, some of them are senior missionaries, but that’s full-time across the globe. That’s huge.

The schools that we just talked about are constantly expanding. Its other programs for youth and part of their church education system, programs called Institute, which is kind of these sort of extracurricular classes, religion classes for college-age students, regardless if they go to an LDS institution, those, they’re growing. And so there are these indications.

On the other hand, we do see falling retention. We also saw, for the first time, we’re seeing across the United States some stagnation in overall growth as well, just in terms of raw numbers. So, some headwinds there.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So interesting the way you look at the numbers here seems to matter. All right. Tamarra Kemsley, religion reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune, joining us to talk more about this data. Tamarra, thank you so much for coming back on The Show. Appreciate it very much.

TAMARRA KEMSLEY: Yeah, thanks Lauren.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It is The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie.

Some of the top minor league prospects in baseball will be in the Valley next month for the Arizona Fall League. And a number of those players are from the Dominican Republic. The country is the birthplace of about 10% of players on Major League Baseball rosters, despite having a population roughly the size of Ohio.

A new investigation from ProPublica finds many teenaged players from the DR do not end up getting their full salaries or signing bonuses from their MLB teams. That’s because of a system of informal agreements between players and teams, and the involvement of trainers who identify players and the money lenders who work between when a team says it wants to sign a player and when they’re actually allowed to do so.

And one of the main players in this story is a Diamondbacks prospect named Belfi Rivera. Trainers started scouting him by the time he was 7.

Gus Garcia-Roberts is an investigative reporter at ProPublica and wrote the story; he joins me. And Gus, since teams can’t officially sign players to contracts until they’re 16 years old, it sounds like there are these sort of handshake agreements before that and then this whole culture of people who come in on the money side — is that about right?

GUS GARCIA-ROBERTS: Yeah, that’s about right. It’s a very convoluted, highly competitive, kind of frenzied system in which Major League Baseball gets its Dominican players, or gets its young players from the Dominican Republic.

So Major League Baseball teams have, particularly over the last decade or so, arrived at this kind of routine which is meant to skirt the minimum age at which Dominican players can be signed — and all international players can be signed — which is they have to be at least 16 years old. And instead, teams will make handshake or verbal agreements with trainers, who are the Dominican men who sort of control these kids, two, three, maybe four years before those kids reach that age.

And those agreements essentially say, when you are of age to be signed, X team will sign you for X amount of money — and sometimes that’s in six figures, sometimes it’s in the seven figures.

And on the ground, the results of these kind of handshake agreements, which are basically just a fact of the ecosystem now, Major League Baseball is aware of them, is often these boys come from impoverished families. And so you have this strange financial reality for their families in which they are informed, “Hey, there’s been a deal for your son. So in two, three years, he’s going to make, let’s say, $1.8 million.” But the next day, that family still doesn’t know where their meals are coming from.

And so, yes, as you mentioned, there is a thriving cottage industry of high-interest money lenders who circle the baseball industry now, and they swoop in when a family is in that situation — which happens hundreds of times a year — and offers them deals at often predatory rates, and then more and more sophisticated financial vehicles that in many cases takes advantage of those families and siphons away the future signing bonus of the player.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so one of the players to whom this has happened is a player named Belfy Rivera, who is a prospect in the Arizona Diamondbacks organization. He’s sort of one of the central characters of your story. What was his story? What happened to him?

GUS GARCIA-ROBERTS: So Belfy Rivera is a kid who is well-known in his neighborhood for just being an almost supernaturally talented baseball player. And so when Belfy is 14, according to the family and others I spoke with, the Diamondbacks make a deal with his trainer to pay him $1.8 million when he’s of age.

And so for his family, they come from extreme poverty. So enter a man who kind of specializes in that situation. His name is Santo Caraballo. And he is probably the most notorious money lender in the Dominican Republic.

And so he makes a series of agreements with Belfy’s parents. The first one he says, “I will purchase 10%” — this is according to the family — “I will purchase 10% of Belfy’s eventual signing bonus,” which is $180,000, and in return he gives them an amount of pesos which roughly equates, they said, to $25,000.

The deals get more and more sophisticated from there, and the family is not given contracts to see, which they would be unable to read anyways. The parents are semiliterate. And the net result of this is Belfy is just playing baseball. He has no idea that these agreements are being made when they are made.

But when it’s time to — in 2024, when the Diamondbacks, you know, make public that they are signing Belfy, make it official, when Belfy goes to the bank to actually collect these bonuses on two separate trips to the bank, he’s essentially left with nothing.

According to him, he received $200,000 of that $1.8 million because the trainer takes out roughly 35%. And Santo Cataboio, somebody who had nothing to do with training Belfy, takes out nearly $1 million.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so you mentioned that MLB knows that this is going on. Like, is there any effort or has there been any effort to clean this process up a little bit?

GUS GARCIA-ROBERTS: So Major League Baseball has not sort of tackled holistically the issue of early agreements. Instead, whenever an official is asked about it, they either downplay the importance of these early agreements or they say, yes, you know, for example, Rob Manfred, the commissioner for baseball, when he was asked about this during a trip to the Dominican Republic, he said, “We agree that these are problematic, but we think that the only solution to problems in the Dominican Republic is an international draft.”

And that’s something that Major League Baseball has said over and over for years. And up until now, the union has strongly resisted that and said instead that Major League Baseball could be following its own rules and enforcing its own policies that already outlaw early agreements.

MARK BRODIE: I mean, it seems like it really would affect a lot of folks in the Dominican Republic if this system were to change. You know, it would probably stand for a lot of these lenders and trainers to lose a lot of money and for the players and their families to get a lot more of it, right?

GUS GARCIA-ROBERTS: You know, I’m cynical enough that I think no matter what happens as far as the overhaul of the system, that these young prospects who come from undereducated, impoverished backgrounds will still somehow be prey to sophisticated financial schemes against them.

I think trainers will always be a big part of the system there because there’s just not that many other vehicles for somebody to scout, for example, a 5-year-old or a 7-year-old in the countryside of the Dominican Republic and sort of usher that kid up a scouting ladder until he finally reaches Major League Baseball.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so your reporting focused on the Dominican Republic, but I’m wondering if in the course of your reporting, you got the sense that this situation is unique to the Dominican Republic or this happens in other countries where there also is no amateur draft for MLB?

GUS GARCIA-ROBERTS: The biggest grounds for foreign players to Major League Baseball is the DR, Venezuela. And those countries, their players are basically treated the same way, which is they are treated as like sort of bulk commodities.

Major League Baseball has a system in which roughly 1,500 mostly teenage prospects play in academies after their signing by Major League Baseball teams. They play in academies in the Dominican Republic. And so what you see is a system in which the philosophy is clearly that Major League Baseball teams sign as many of these players as they can — usually for about $30,000 — and then strain for the best.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Gus Garcia-Roberts, an investigative reporter with ProPublica. Gus, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

GUS GARCIA-ROBERTS: Thank you. Appreciate it.

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

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger.

Chelsey Luger and her husband, Thosh Collins, have spent their careers teaching wellness in tribal nations all over North America. It’s part of their organization, Well for Culture. Their first book is called “The Seven Circles,” and it outlines their model for balance and wellness. They want to reclaim and revitalize Indigenous health and wellness.

Now Luger is out with a new book: “Native Home: The Ancestral Art of Creating Healing Spaces.” It takes that idea of wellness one step further, into the home.

The Lakota and Anishinaabe wellness expert will be at Changing Hands Bookstore this weekend, and she told me, she was raised with wellness without ever having heard the word.

CHELSEY LUGER: In Lakota spirituality, there’s an understanding that our life is comprised of mental, physical, spiritual and emotional health. And we aim to be in balance in all of those areas. So being raised in ceremony and being raised in my culture, I had a really good understanding of wellness from that perspective. And that’s kind of how I got into the wellness industry and realized that I had something to offer there.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s really interesting. So I mean, it’s very — this sounds very different than the kind of wellness industry stuff that I often see on social media, right? Like, I mean, you’re thinking about this in a more profound, maybe a more spiritual way.

CHELSEY LUGER: Absolutely. Spiritual health is integrated in all of those. All of the circles are mental, physical, spiritual, emotional. And it is very different from, I think, what’s often marketed as wellness because we’re not selling anything, and we don’t believe that it’s my way or the highway. We believe that there are about a million different ways to approach health, but it’s quite individual and it’s quite community-based.

LAUREN GILGER: So you and your husband will teach wellness in Indigenous communities. But I know you’ve also spoken about kind of the whiteness of the wellness world, especially on social media today. And you’re on social media and kind of doing this stuff, but what do you make of the wellness world online today?

CHELSEY LUGER: I think the wellness world online today can be really gimmicky, and it can be very commercialized, which ultimately doesn’t necessarily help anyone. In fact, it can be harmful. But there’s also a positive side in that it has become a lot more diverse since diverse creators have the ability to put themselves out there.

Before social media, you would have never seen Indigenous voices, or often Black voices or Latino voices in some of the bigger health magazines and stuff like that. And so I think it has diversified quite a bit, and it’s become a little bit more egalitarian.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, and you’ve, I’m sure, found your audience in that, right? Like, who are you talking to? Are you talking to just people who have Indigenous roots or, you know, anybody who’s interested?

CHELSEY LUGER: You know, our primary audience is always going to be our communities because our communities have been disenfranchised and sort of excluded from the wellness conversation for so many years. And so that’s going to be our priority, and that’s who we’re accountable to. That’s who we were raised by, and it’s who we feel responsibility toward.

But at the same time, I believe firmly that Indigenous teachings are simply good for anyone. And so, of course we address that topic of cultural appropriation and we don’t encourage that, but there are many ways that anybody can learn from the philosophies that go hand-in-hand with Indigenous wellness. And we feel pretty proud of the fact that we’ve been able to teach that, I think, in a good way for all people.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s really interesting, right? Like, there’s a very fine line there. But let’s talk more about this new book, right? This is about wellness as well, but sort of about wellness in a different realm in terms of home design, right? There’s a connection there that I was surprised to hear, I think, and I don’t think you hear very often. Tell us about your approach to designing a home and how you think it’s connected to something like your mental, physical, spiritual, emotional wellness.

CHELSEY LUGER: So caring for the home, curating the home, creating a home is a huge part of our wellness because our environment impacts how we feel. My ancestors would say that we have a reciprocal relationship with our surroundings. What we put into our surroundings is what’s given back to us.

And so there are many beautiful teachings from across Native Country about caring for the home and loving the home and really treating the home as a living, breathing relative and entity so that you get to experience that reciprocity. While we often look at housework and chores as simply that, a chore, if we reframe it, we can realize that it’s this wonderful opportunity to feel better in our days.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, you have the space that you want to be in and you can function so much better in other ways. Tell us about your grandmother and her home on the Standing Rock Reservation, which I read inspired much of what you are writing about here in this book.

CHELSEY LUGER: Yeah, so my late Grandma Thelma lived in this neat, beautiful little red ranch house on top of a hill, overlooking the rolling hills and the prairies in Standing Rock. And she was an incredible woman in her own right. And I thought her house was such a wonderful balance of being beautiful and clean, but also inviting and warm and not too stuffy. It was well-decorated, but it was comfortable.

And I think experiencing her home planted the seeds of my interest in the way that a home can make a person feel. So Grandma Thelma’s house was definitely a big inspiration for me when I started to think about the way that our home and our surroundings can impact our health.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. You reframe here the idea of minimalism, right? Like, it’s not a design trend, but it’s sort of a way of life. And that strikes as so countercultural in today’s world, like this culture of consumerism that we live in in which you can always buy more and instantly, right? I mean, are you meaning for this to be something that is a little bit pushing back against the mainstream?

CHELSEY LUGER: Absolutely. I think there’s a few things that are super mainstream and very common and even aspirational in American home life that I think that we can rethink. So for example, I think the American goal is often bigger is better. We want the biggest footprint of square feet, we want the highest ceilings and the best house on the block is considered the biggest house.

I would argue that that’s been really counterproductive for the environment and also for our mental health, as there’s a competitive aspect there. It puts a financial burden on a lot of people. And the bigger the home is, the harder it is to care for and the more stressful it becomes.

And so I think our goal should be, how about I have some restraint and I’m going to choose the smallest house that is comfortable for my family? Those of us who are millennials and younger are experiencing the hardest time economically with not having as much purchasing power to buy a home. And so I think, hey, let’s take some pride in the fact that it’s cool to live in a smaller house. My ancestors did it for thousands of years, and why not do it again today?

LAUREN GILGER: So let me ask you lastly then about how this applies to anyone who picks up the book and reads it, right? Like, as you said, your main audience is always going to be the kind of Native communities that you come from that have been left out of this conversation for so long. But you do, it sounds like, want other people to benefit from this knowledge. Where is the line, you think, between doing this and adopting these ideas in a way that’s useful, but not crossing the line into cultural appropriation?

CHELSEY LUGER: I think that anybody who is aware of that is already probably going to be respectful about it, you know? And no one is a stranger to learning something from another culture while also respecting that culture. So we learn about many home teachings from the Danish and the Japanese and the Chinese. Most people know something about feng shui or about hygge — I always say it wrong.

So I think it’s absolutely a good thing when people are somewhat mindful of that. And I think hopefully, you know, it’s my responsibility as an author, and I think I’ve done a good job of it over the years with our previous wellness teachings and with this book, “Native Home,” in teaching folks and guiding folks through: how do I learn from Indigenous teachings while also just being myself? And that’s all I can hope for.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. Well, leave it there. Chelsey Luger, the new book is “Native Home: The Ancestral Art of Creating Healing Spaces.” Chelsey, thank you so much for coming on The Show. Appreciate it very much.

CHELSEY LUGER: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for listening to The Show podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban. Our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram @kjzztheshow.