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In 1887, a 7.4 earthquake on the Arizona–Sonora border rewired the desert’s water in about forty seconds. Historian Mary Elizabeth Reynolds talks with Jennifer Jenkins about The Quake That Drained the Desert: a doctor, an engineer, and a photographer chasing the epicenter, malaria pools washed away, springs born and lost, and a binational story the history books mostly forgot.

In 1919, two sons of the Diné medicine man Gunshooter stopped at a trading post for a snack and ended up in a shooting that killed Charles Hubbell, brother of one of the West's most famous Indian traders. What Dorothy Denetclaw's family had always known was self-defense cost the brothers years of their lives and was followed by a century of flattering stories about the Hubbells. On this episode of JSW Radio, Jennifer Jenkins talks with Denetclaw, Gunshooter's granddaughter, and former investigative reporter Matt Fitzsimons, co-authors of The Sons of Gunshooter: A Navajo Resistance Story (University of Arizona Press, 2026). Speaking from Santa Fe's Indian Market, they explain how the oral history Denetclaw's father passed to her in Navajo held up against the National Archives, right down to a horse missing one shoe. They also discuss what the Hubbell Trading Post at Ganado still leaves out, why resistance and Diné teachings of love and ethics can't be separated.

Richard Felger was a botanist, ethnobiologist, and conservationist, one of the great interpreters of the Sonoran Desert. Over decades, his work crossed borders, ranging from the Gran Desierto de Altar and the Gulf of California to points across Northwest Mexico, the US Southwest, and beyond. In this episode, Jeff Banister talks with Ben Wilder and Bill Broyles about The Botanical Odyssey of Richard S. Felger, a new book they compiled and edited with Thomas Bowen, the latest volume in the Southwest Center series with the University of Arizona Press. The conversation traces Richard's remarkable life and work, and the odyssey of bringing this book into the world: not quite Homeric, perhaps, but full of people, places, and more than a few epic stories.

A burned-out cop named Tweed, a neighbor with a dead horse, nods to John Wayne, Waylon Jennings, Charles Portis, and the Phoenix Suns. These are just a few of the elements of Jonathan Danielson’s The Lowest Basin: Arizona Stories, a purposeful recasting Arizona’s place—and Arizona as place—in contemporary Western fiction. Hailed by Arizona's Poet Laureate Alberto Ríos as quieter than old Westerns but "louder in the depths of the heart," the stories fill a real gap in literature of the region. Author of The Cactus League Emily Nemens compared the stories to desert rocks that "hold their warmth long after sundown." Dr. Jennifer Jenkins talks in this episode with author Jonathan Danielson, a second-generation Scottsdale denizen and guide to the vagaries of 21st century Arizona in fiction. He holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco and a PhD from Arizona State University, and is an active proponent of Arizona Regionalism as a distinct literary genre. His linked short story collection, The Lowest Basin: Arizona Stories, was long-listed for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and was chosen by the Pima County Public Library as a 2026 Southwest Book of the Year.

Historian and anthropologist Carlos Vélez- Ibáñez famously stated that the U.S.-Mexico border is only two grandmothers old. Those grandmothers would recognize many things about the 21st century border, but other aspects would seem as strange to them as the technology, slang, and styles of their great-great-grandchildren. Yet the border is, as Gloria Anzaldúa and Homi Bhabha have both written, a third space unto itself, not fully of either country, but fully participating in both cultures, lifeways, economies, histories, foodways, and facing the shared challenges that arrive from distant capitals. Jennifer Jenkins talks in this episode with Colin Deeds, a lifelong Arizona resident and longtime interpreter of the U.S., Mexico. He holds degrees in anthropology and Latin American studies from the University of Arizona and has studied in Argentina, worked as an archaeologist for the National Park Service, and has conducted research in Mexico on politics and migration for many years. Colin is the Assistant Director and Director of Graduate Studies in the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona.

On April 25, 2023, a phone call from an out-of-state number ended La Estrella de Tucsón, leaving the city without a Spanish-language newspaper. For Liliana López Ruelas, who had spent years as an editor there, it was a moment of frustration—but also of determination. Host Carlos Quintero speaks with Liliana about what happened next: a return to school, a master's degree at the University of Arizona, and the launch of Somos Tucson, a digital news outlet focused on serving Tucson's Latino community with útil, celebratory journalism. Born in Douglas and raised in Agua Prieta, Liliana shares her journey across borders, from Mexico City's political magazines to Tucson's newsrooms, and why she now embraces her identity as a Latina journalist. This is a conversation about community journalism, collaborative resistance, and the power of staying close to the stories that matter most.

Since 1986, La Estrella Bakery has been much more than a place to buy pan dulce, it’s been a pillar of Tucson’s cultural life, a space of ritual, memory, and early morning conversations over conchitas and cuernitos. As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage month, host Carlos Quintero speaks with Erica Franco, second-generation member of the family behind La Estrella, about what it means to carry on a tradition baked in love, community, and resilience. Erica shares stories of 3 a.m. baking shifts, drawings from kindergarten fans, and the return to the barrio bakery where it all began. This is a conversation about food, but also about family, belonging, and the quiet power of staying close to your roots.

In this powerful conversation, Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Southwest Center, speaks with Don Unger, recent PhD and environmental historian, about his groundbreaking research on uranium mining reclamation on the Navajo Nation. Unger discusses the ethics of storytelling, the balance between technical and spiritual approaches to healing the land, and his concept of Critical Reclamation Studies, a framework grounded in both Western policy and Navajo cosmology. Together, they explore the lived realities of land restoration, long drives and “cabin conversations,” and the wisdom of community leaders like Mr. Melvin Yazzie and Mr. Ernest Greyeyes. This episode opens a window into environmental justice, language, and the ongoing legacy of Cold War uranium mining in the Southwest.

In this episode, we talk with Roberto Wolfe, Mexico General Manager for the Northern Jaguar Project, a binational conservation effort based in Tucson, Arizona, and Sahuaripa, Sonora. NJP’s mission is to preserve and recover the world’s northernmost population of jaguars, an apex predator and keystone species whose survival supports entire ecosystems. Through partnerships with local ranchers, environmental education in Sonoran schools, and long-term scientific research --including extensive use of camera traps-- NJP protects over 56,000 acres of core jaguar habitat in the Sierra Madre foothills. Roberto grew up in Mexico City and began his journey into wildlife care as a teenage volunteer at Chapultepec Zoo. Trained in veterinary science, he brings deep knowledge of big cat biology and a passion for transboundary conservation. As jaguar habitats across the Americas shrink due to deforestation, development, and border infrastructure, Roberto helps lead efforts to ensure these elusive cats continue to roam from Sonora to southern Arizona.

Dr. Nicolás Pineda Pablos is a political scientist and researcher at the Colegio de Sonora, in Hermosillo, and one of Mexico’s foremost experts on urban water provision. Here, Dr. Pineda rings us up to speed on Hermosillo’s current water situation. Hermosillo, the state capital, is a Sonoran Desert city with close to one million people and faces profound climate-related challenges: a swiftly warming and drying environment, ongoing drought, and the threat of ever-more severe storms. Mexico’s north and northwest are currently experiencing some of the worst drought conditions in recorded history, with reservoir levels down by as much as 70 or 80% in some regions. Dr. Pineda is part of a diverse group of concerned citizens and experts called Hermosillo Cómo Vamos? – Hermosillo, How are We Doing? –  working together to provide research-based solutions to this hairy problem. Dr. Pineda talks about all of this and much more, including the question of whether Hermosillo is facing a so-called Day Zero scenario, in which the city becomes unable to provide a basic reliable supply of potable water to its citizens.

Our guest for this episode of JSW Radio is Alex La Pierre. Alex is co-founding director, with his wife Rocío La Pierre, of the binational, Southern Arizona-based non-profit organization, Borderlandia. Borderlandia’s mission is to expand public understanding of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands through a diversity of activities, including, especially, educational tours in southern Arizona and in Sonora, Mexico. I ask Alex about this work and about his view of public history more broadly. We also discuss how perceptions of the borderlands region seem to become more distorted the farther away one gets, and how Borderlandia’s work aims to combat this distorting effect of distance and politics. https://www.borderlandia.org/

Politics and Prison Ink in Arizona: A Map for Navigation in a World of Post-structural Violence, by Enrique Alan Olivares-Pelayo was published in the Autumn 2023 edition of Journal of the Southwest. In this episode, the author of the piece discusses his work on embodied carceral geographies, how the punishment of the prison system manifests in and on the bodies it ensnares. And that's a lot of people. One in five prisoners in the world is incarcerated in the United States. Tens of thousands of those people are in Arizona. The state spends over a billion dollar of our general budget on the correctional system; it´s the third highest cost, eight percent. Enrique was confined in that system for almost five years. In his work, he situates prison, the constellation of institutions that create the penal complexes at every level of government, including those which retain people on behalf of national immigration and customs enforcement, as a landscape of structural violence. His piece on the Journal looks at the tattoos that many acquire during their time locked up as visible representations of their experiences. Music Credits: Nostalgia – Composed and performed by David Garrido Guil. Used with permission. Sol de Invierno II – Composed and performed by David Garrido Guil. Used with permission. Find more of his work at http://www.davidgarridoguil.com Help us improve the content of JSW Radio taking this brief survey: https://uarizona.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3fTagjmStzrz4EK

This episode is a companion to our November 2024 piece about invasive plants and land management in the Sonoran Desert. It features three practitioners of Indigenous cultural and ecological preservation – Karl Hoerig who works for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe; Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan whose academic work captures Tohono O’odham history; and Raeshaun Ramon, who serves as a Saguaro National Park Ranger. JSW is grateful for their perspectives, and for the chance to broaden the land management conversation— in part by using the Saguaro cactus as a case study for key considerations about how humans exist within desert ecologies.

The Sonoran Desert is renowned for its iconic, endemic species—and home to many people who are dedicated to studying and preserving them. Invasive species present a threat to desert ecologies that is growing along with globalized plant trade, climate change and resource depletion. Harmful, prolific plants displace native species and disrupt ecological processes like fire regimes and food production cycles. Today’s episode is part one of an expansive conversation about invasive species and how they relate to regional land management strategies in general. Patricia Schwartz talks with Kim Franklin, Associate Director for Conservation at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and with Brian Powell, Division Manager in Pima County's Conservation Lands and Resources Department.

In episode 3 of the Flood Justice en las Fronteras podcast doctoral candidate Lucas Belury interviews Dr. Caroline Tracey, a geographer, journalist, and author of the forthcoming book Salt Lakes (W.W. Norton, 2026). In this episode we discuss the politics of the 1954 Falcon Dam (Presa Falcón) in the Rio Grande/Río Bravo river. This dam provided irrigation water and hydro-electricity to both Texas and Tamaulipas, yet flooded and displaced thousands of border residents.