Your two cents
Today’s the day to sound off on what you like about the Agenda, and what you don’t.
Happy Friday, readers!
We’re heading into that time of year where everything slows down a little, and we can do some introspection and planning for the election year ahead.
And we’ve got a lot brewing for 2026.
But before we settle those plans, we’d love to hear from you subscribers who keep the Agenda going.
So we put together a quick survey to gather some feedback. It’s just five questions, but it’ll help guide what we cover and how we cover it in 2026.
So please take a moment to share your thoughts!
As we reach the tail end of the year, we’ve got a few things in the works that we’re super excited to share with you, including the massive project currently on our plates: migrating away from Substack, our email publishing platform.
It’s a whole complicated, time-consuming undertaking, but we’re fully convinced it’ll be worth the effort.
A new email system means we get new formatting options — and, ultimately, new ways to tell stories. And a new website gives us a landing place for stuff that just doesn’t fit in a newsletter.
We’re growing, and we need a real home base beyond what Substack provides.
Before we go: Next week is Thanksgiving, so we’re giving the team a little time to slow down, hang out with their families and work on some longer-term stories and projects we have brewing.
So we won’t be publishing our regular editions — we’ve got something special planned for you instead.
In case you missed it: We publish three other weekly policy newsletters focused on education, artificial intelligence and water. Here’s what dropped this week.
Education Agenda
This week’s mash-up edition covers pre-session bill drops (yes, they’re already coming for libraries), an update on the Trump compacts for universities and the troubling data on teachers quitting and schools closing.
Plus: the big plans Arizona’s fifth- and sixth-graders have for their futures.
A.I. Agenda
Are we in an AI bubble? This week’s AI Agenda breaks down what that means, the red flags and how worried you should really be about an AI-fueled economic crash.
Plus: Self-driving cars on the move, jailbreaking Claude to hack the planet and mapping the genome.
Water Agenda
Hitting deadlines is not one of the strong suits for the multi-state gang of negotiators fighting it out over water rights along the Colorado River — this month’s deadline came and went with no real proposal for how to divvy up the scarce resource.
Upriver, they sound pretty confident that something will get done. But here in Arizona, Gov. Katie Hobbs wants the feds to step in and help.
Plus: How do actual farmers feel about negotiators’ failure to land a deal on Colorado River water? We sat down with Elston Grubaugh, the general manager of the Yuma-area Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage district, to find out!
Yesterday was Guinness World Records Day — a thing we only learned existed thanks to Axios’ Jeremy Duda, who wrote about four Arizona boys who teeter-tottered for 7.5 days straight in 1971.
Unfortunately, Guinness has a 16-year age limit for entries, and the boys were ages 12–15. Plus, two men bested them after seesawing for 10 days in 2021, Duda writes.
The story made us wonder, what kind of Arizona records has Guinness accepted?
We weren’t disappointed.
A museum owner in Williams holds the world record for the largest collection of fossilized poop. George Frandsen has about 8,000 pieces of shit on display at the Poozeum. (Admission is free, if you’re interested.)
Chuck Goad is the world’s oldest fitness instructor. The 86-year-old works at a Scottsdale LA Fitness.
In 2014, Adam Winrich got the record for most candles extinguished by cracking a whip: 102. He also has the records for loudest whip crack and heaviest whip cracked, but Winrich didn’t achieve them in Arizona.
The Arizona Science Center holds the record for the world’s largest pair of scissors, which it made specifically to cut the ribbon on its new Guinness World Records exhibit. A handful of local politicians showed up for the ceremony in 2023, but we’re not convinced the scissors actually worked. (Rep. Matt Gress’ video mysteriously cuts off after the big snip.)
