Sept. 15, 2025: Violence and teen brains; Gov. Jared Polis on endorsements and what's next

In Evergreen today, students will gather around the town's scenic lake as the community tries to support them. School shootings, of course, reverberate beyond any single classroom or campus or community. We've invited back a family therapist to discuss the violence we've seen here and elsewhere lately. Later in the show, do Democrats take Colorado for granted? They have total control of state government. It's been 20 years since a Republican was governor. It's a question I have for Jared Polis in the final installment of our special from Grand Junction. About 50% of the voters are not Democrat or Republican. Doesn't mean that they're not conservative or liberal. Some of them are. But they're not into the party labels. They care about what the candidate is and what they're going to do. They're certainly open to split-ticket voting. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and KRC. I'm Ryan Mortar. At Evergreen Lake, the community will gather to support Evergreen High School students. There will be therapy animals and music. Last week, a 16-year-old shot two classmates before taking his own life. Police believe the young assailant had been radicalized, but haven't expounded. Children, shooting, children. Always difficult to wrap our minds around. So joining us is family therapist, Craig Nippenberg of Denver. He wrote a book about adolescent brain development titled Wired and Connected. And Craig, welcome back to the program. Thank you very much, Ryan. It appears the shooter was radicalized online that he had a fascination with previous attacks. The Anti-Defamation League finds he'd been on a site. where people post and interact with extremely graphic, violent content. Based on your understanding of the teenage brain, how might a young person be uniquely affected by an environment like that? Yeah, so if you think about all, so we have to think about the brains of all teens. And there's three critical areas for them in development. The brain is just massively growing. So first, in the prefrontal cortex where we have our stop mechanisms for impulse control, that drops, the functioning that drops about in half. At the same time, the emotions, which the prefrontal cortex is supposed to slow down and stop, double. in teenagers. So their hormone systems light up and they have twice the emotion as children or as adults. So this almost explosive emotion. And then the governor on it, the brakes, are at essentially half capacity. Yeah, half capacity. Okay. And then I think there was a third. And the third one is the what's called the nonverbal system, which is what helps us be social creatures and experience empathy, hopefully.

But the nonverbal system just explodes in the teen brain. So everything's about connecting with friends, being in a group, reading each other. There's sarcasm. There's politicking. All of that going on. And the good phrase is that they're learning how to be future leaders, but it's not always very nice. And there is a craving then to be... Well, to belong. To belong. To belong. Yes. And I am guessing that bad actors online know this. Yes. And con men know that. Bad actors know that. And they recruit kids who we know in the research of past school shootings, the perpetrators often have sort of three traits. One is they tend to be very rigid thinkers, sort of black and white. I'm right, you're wrong. Don't really see the gray areas. They often have obsessive fantasies and obsessive hobbies. And the third is they're often socially isolated so they don't fit in. So there's people out there online, especially on social media. apps on the dark web that know they're out there and they're following. And those kids, they're just looking for an answer. Everything you've described becomes a perfect storm potentially. And it makes me wonder if a kid wants to hide their online activity from their parents, can anything truly stop them? That's a tough one. I wish I had an answer for that because almost every time you see something on here's how to protect your kids on social media, they figure it out. They know ways around it. In fact, several years ago, the Wall Street Journal family person said she was no longer going to cover stories on how to protect your kids on social media and phones because they get around it. They just figure it out. They're ahead of the adults. Craig, you have to have better advice for us than that. Well, I do have someone in that regard. So first of all, start young. I always promote waiting until at least 16 before you give your kid a smartphone. But its digital awareness starts young. And just like you teach your little ones about safe people and unsafe people, they need to learn what's safe and what's not safe online and how online. platforms, gaming, social media, manipulate you. It basically hijacks your brain. I mean, I remember thinking of this as stranger danger when I was a kid. And it was always the fear of someone with a van that was going to be. Right. Yeah, the white van. You know, with candy. This is almost an online version of that. It is very much. And what they do is they offer. So when someone starts exploring things, the algorithms, they start you out with the vetted kind of. popular post on it. Whatever topic is, it could be self-arm, it could be eating disorders, it could be suicide or extremist thoughts. And they start you out with simple ones. And then the algorithm picks up that you liked it. And then they feed more to you and they keep feeding you more and more. And the more they do, the more extreme they get. And they're probably not monitored. They're newer, not monitored post. Then the person starts connecting with them online and all of a sudden they're offered a group that they want.

them to join and they're there to help them. They tell you you can be a hero of the group. They have different symbols they often have or, you know, their mottos and a sense of belonging that I can serve a purpose. Okay, so having these conversations early. Yes. Okay, you look at Evergreen. You look at Utah. You look back at Arapaho and Columbine. And in these cases, all young white men. I wonder if you've seen patterns in your own client base that might give us some insight. You know, pretty much what I talked about, the profile of those kids, that fits it pretty well. In my own practice, I tend to see a lot of the kids who have been victimized or experiencing the trauma of shock that they went through and really trying to just wrap their heads around. Why did that happen? I tend in my own practice, I've had to deal fortunately more with self-harm. Um, that's, it's been a lot of suicides in my career. Um, I'm sorry. But you do see kids and I'll work with some who, you know, other kids will say, oh, that was horrible, that was repulsive. And I always have one or two or like, that was so cool. And I hated that guy and, and celebrating death. And how do you encounter that as a therapist? Very delicately. First, I have to not get triggered myself. But, you know, it's for parents when your kids are struggling with that. The first thing you do is validate what they're experiencing. And then as a therapist, I'm trying to help them work that into their therapeutic goals. And is that kind of a process going to help you achieve your goals or not? And try to work with them through that perspective. Jessica Armand Trout of Littleton is a mom. She was in eighth grade during the Columbine attack in 1999. And she remembers feeling very much alone after that mass shooting. My experience was I came home. My parents were at work. And we actually had to walk home that day because all the buses were transporting students. And we did not know if a shooter had been apprehended or not. So realizing as an adult now that that was a traumatic moment, my grownups weren't there. And I continued to watch the news and try to stay updated. And knowing that continuing media really impacted me has allowed me to... change that experience for my children. That it's about being available in those moments. And Ormond Trout tries to make sure she doesn't let her own fears affect her children too much. Every day I drop my children off at school. I ensure no matter how the morning's gone, the last thing out of my mouth is I love you and I hope you have a wonderful day. So I'm not communicating to them in any way a sense of fear. But I know it's a fear-based response because I would never want to have a situation where I questioned what was the last words I ever said to my child. Before we go, square that deep desire not to make kids afraid with the fact that guns remain the leading cause of death for children and teens.

Yeah, that's just the most horrendous statistic. I think several things she said real quick, the sense that isolation and having been a first responder, Mental Health Respondent, was critical for the kids and these children and have evergreen to connect with their peers to feel safe and secure. And as to terms of her children, you want them to feel safe at school. And statistically, school is the safest place for kids. They have far less accidents than they do. other places. And this idea that you don't want to scare a child, but you also want to be real with them in just a few seconds? So you have to, and that's why they do school drills, which work effectively. We know that, even though it's frightening for children, we have school drills, but you want to remind your children they are safe and we're here for you and we love you and care about you. And that school... Still, even though these stories make the news, school overall is still a safe place for them. Yes. And that's where you have to help. The younger ones, it's hard to understand statistics, but it's helping them understand that. Even though it's incredibly horrible how it's escalated, it's still relatively small in terms of actual people being hurt. Denver family therapist Craig Nippenberg. His latest book is shame-free parenting, building resiliency in times of hardship, guns, and social media. This is Colorado Matters from listeners-supported CPR news. It's been almost two decades since Colorado had a Republican governor. Next year, voters will decide if that streak is broken. In the final part of our conversation with the current guy, whose term limited, we get to more politics than policy. Let's rejoin Democrat Jared Polis in Grand Junction. At the Astoria Theater, he took questions from the community. A question from a Western Slope wannabe. Ryan Warner asks. By the way, my aunt lived in Clifton, recently named Worst Place to Live in Colorado. Sorry, Clifton. It hurt my heart when I read that. But my question here is, what's your next job? Wait, what did that have to do with the first part? Oh. That I was pretending to be from the Western Slope asking a question. Oh, oh, you're trying to establish your Bonifides. Yeah, the joke didn't land well, but you don't have to keep pointing it out. Well, I can just say my next job is to be a Western Slope resident. Okay, all right. Pandering a little bit, but what is your next... Don't give me... I'm too focused on my job now. What is your next job, Jared Polis? Well...

I mean, look, I have a job. I'm here for a year and four months. I know, this is what you tell me. I spend zero time thinking about that. I mean, this is an amazing, exciting, exhilarating job where I get to do good for the people of Colorado, like we establish universal free preschool for every child. We're focused on protecting our environment and our air quality. This is what I love doing. So I'm going to run through the tape, and I'll be taking a three month sabbatical when I'm done. I just can't imagine someone, you know, maybe it's because you're moneyed, but like if my job were running out in a year, I'd be thinking, what am I going to do? You, you know, are well-heeled, so maybe you don't have to answer that from an existential point of view, but I think you're a planner. The conversation doesn't come up. No. I mean, I think my family is relieved that at least I'll take a three months, if I could make it three months without doing anything. I'd never done that before my life, but we'll see if I can make it through a three month sabbatical and have some fun and spend some time with the family. Do you want to be president? Not particularly. Do you? Why? Oh, God, no. No, no, I wouldn't want to be governor either. There is a race underway for your current job. I want to know, are you going to endorse in the Democratic primary or abstain? I don't have any plans to. There's two great candidates. I know them both very well, Phil Weiser and Michael Bennett. I think highly of both of them, and I would rest easy as a Coloradoan with either of them as governor. So if either of them or both of them ask for your endorsement, the answer is not going to do it. I've told both of them. I mean, my plan is to stay out of it. It doesn't mean I have to if there's other people that I think would be terrible governors that are running. I mean, I could certainly say that if I did. But I think those are two high caliber folks that will do a fine job. I think they're both in different ways well prepared for the moment and would be good custodians of Colorado. A new poll from the Colorado firm Magellan finds that establishment Democrats like yourself are underwater with voters. They're not exactly high on the GOP either, but I wonder, before we go, does your party take Colorado for granted? I mean, could this be the next blue wall to fall? So first of all, that's as you probably know, a conservative-leaning polling firm, Magellan. You sometimes media identify it as such. So just to be clear, it doesn't mean that they don't get it right sometimes. No, Colorado's a competitive state. Absolutely. If the Republicans ran somebody, there would be a good governor. It would be a competitive state. I mean, they have trouble doing that as a party. They often nominate people that are very far from the mainstream. focused on issues that are not important everyday Coloradoans. But I think, look, Coloradoans are about 50% unaffiliated. And Democrats are only, what, maybe 3% more than Republicans. So the vast majority of folks are unaffiliated. They want to know what you're going to do. Don't care as much if you're a D or an R. So it's really about the people. I don't see that yet from Republicans that are running for governor. But if there was somebody that would be a good governor, I don't think the people of Colorado would hold the R against them definitively. I think they'd be open to that.

Lots of talk lately about converting downtown Denver's empty office space into residential. Well, not too far away, you'll find just such a transformation taking place. CPR Sarah Mulholland has that story. From the outside, the building in the Denver Tech Center looks like a pretty typical office building at the sprawling business complex south of downtown Denver. It's four stories high, lots of glass, parking lots everywhere. But that's just the outer shell. It used to be walls everywhere. So there would be conference rooms, people's offices, and we demolished all of that. Peter Colshaw is the executive vice president at developer Shea Properties. Colshaw's company is in the process of transforming the 120,000 square foot property into 143 affordable apartments. We're standing in the entryway of the building. The whole thing has been ripped down to the studs. When you take out all the former partitions and walls, you have a very clear open space to work with, which makes this... easier to convert to residential. Shea bought the property in April for $12 million. They got a good deal on the real estate. The building had been sitting vacant since the last tenant left seven years ago. Bought it inexpensively and that allows you to do these things and obviously the market is whether it is for office space. So we're... fortunate to take advantage of that. The plan is to have tenants moving in by next June. The idea of offices turned into apartments has been kicked around since the pandemic left a glut of empty office space downtown, much of it sitting in dated skyscrapers. Denver mayor, Mike Johnston, wants to convert four million square feet of that into middle-class housing. But as Colshaw knows, that's going to be an expensive and complicated proposition. Let's pretend there's an apartment here and give me a tour. If you can do one floor up, you're walking into what will be an apartment. This one's a two-bedroom, so you'd walk in, you'd have a coat closet. And you're going to walk in, and sorry, this box isn't storage, but this is the living area. It definitely feels different than a typical apartment space. There are trade-offs. The windows are set up differently in an office building. Some bedrooms don't have a window. But at the same time, the windows are huge. One of the nice things about converting an office building to residential is you get higher ceilings. So these windows are 10 feet high. You don't get that in. Most apartments are less than that, so this is going to feel very spacious. The property will be a mix of studios and one to four bedrooms. We've found in our other affordable projects that the threes and fours are pretty necessary for families. Kulshaw says one of the most challenging parts of the projects is figuring out where to drill the holes to bring down all the pipes. All the units are different, and of course an office building doesn't come with the necessary plumbing. So it's like a jigsaw puzzle of...

finding where you can bring the plumbing down, which then relates to where you can put the bathroom, which then relates to where you can put the sink, and then add to that all the air conditioning. They had to be really careful not to drill into structural supports. I don't know how many holes we've drilled in the building, but a lot. They're all drilled at this point, which I'm happy about. But if you ask me what kept me up at night, it was probably that. He says the building is better suited to be turned into apartments than a lot of other offices, like those skyscrapers downtown. For one thing, it's not too tall, which makes it easier to bring down all those pipes. Also, it's not too old, built in 2001. I think it's much more difficult with older buildings, and I think the higher the building gets, the more difficult this is. It doesn't mean you can't be done. But I think it's not an easily transferable. idea. The project is Shaped Property's seventh affordable apartment project and its first conversion. The upfront investment and energy spent on this has been significant. It's hard. You've got to find the right property to do it. And you've got to be willing to invest a lot at the beginning. But he's hopeful that the project will be the first of many. I'm Sarah Mulholland, CPR News. And I'm Ryan Warner. This is Colorado Matters from Public Powered. CPR News. In Southern Colorado, sixth graders don't merely have a class pet. They get a living lesson that takes them into the wild. KRC's Kendra Carr has the story from just outside Manitou Springs. The sound of Fountain Creek and Fields Park is rushing because of a bevy of rain showers that recently covered the area. Even with the high water, it can't overcome the sounds of children engulfing the park on this particular morning. We got to tell them! We are you passed!

The children triumphantly marched towards the creek. With them is a bucket of water, holding rainbow trout ready to be released into the wild. The fish grew along the sixth graders at Ute Pass Elementary in Cascade. Sixth grader Kay Ivey Polos says they watched them grow from the tiny, fragile, fry life stage. We kept them in like a little container at the top at first, and then we like... Once they got big enough, we let them into the tanks this from around. That's the beginning of the fingerling stage. Throughout the process, the students were responsible for feeding the fish and cleaning tanks. Teacher Miles Gross says they started with 400 trout eggs at the beginning of the school year. We went to the Pueblo Fish Hatchery, so we see it on a huge scale. So we did that at the beginning of the year when we got the eggs. Growth says the trout have gotten easier to grow since he started doing this nearly a decade ago, but they still run into challenges. We started losing fish, and I think they were mostly eating each other. So, yeah, we lost more than we probably should have. And students saw how hard it is. to keep the fish alive firsthand when the trout release was postponed a week due to weather, says sixth graders Irving and Kay Ivey. So we would have had more, but our fish are cannibals and they ate each other. The student's work raising the rainbow trout culminates in a fish release. This past year was the classroom's most successful growing trout with 102 fingerlings ready to release. only just exceeding the limit for most release sites. Most sites allow a maximum of 99 fish, but this site allows us to release over 100. It's an event the entire school assembles to watch. The younger students sit on the creek bank as growth leads the sixth graders in the release. But today we get to say goodbye to our fish. We've raised them since October. Six graders, how big were they when we got them? They were about this big. We have a hundred two that we've taken care of all year. This is what they look like when they're adults, they're rainbow trout. The fish are in individual plastic cups. Students hold their hands over the top until they're close enough to release.

The released trout will stick around, says Trout Unlimited volunteer Craig Haney. And those fish will spread out up and downstream here. Those are all rainbow trout that were released. And in about three years, they'll be something you could actually catch and eat if you wanted to. They're an important part of the ecosystem, explains sixth grader Claire McMarton. They can help. and improve the bug population. And the students take with them memories that will last a lifetime. Here's sixth grader Brayton Van Kirk. I kind of just learned how cool it is to just raise them from little like spawn or whatever. Yeah. It was really cool. But saying goodbye can be difficult, explained to growth. So six-readers wrote little letters. They are welcome to say goodbye. Wish them a wonderful journey. Kendra Carr, KRC News. Bye, little fishies. Spawn or whatever, my favorite words of the morning. This is Colorado Matters from listener-supported CPR News and KRCC.