Access Utah

When the state of Colorado ordered its residents to shelter in place in response to the spread of coronavirus, writers Pam Houston and Amy Irvine—who had never met—began a correspondence based on their shared devotion to the rugged, windswept mountains that surround their homes, one on either side of the Continental Divide.

Christopher Gonzalez and Frederick Luis Aldama join us for the hour to talk about their book “Reel Latinxs” on Thursday’s Access Utah.

“Sky Songs: Meditations on Loving a Broken World” is a collection of essays that takes inspiration from the ancient seabed in which Jennifer Sinor lives, an elemental landscape that reminds her that our lives are shaped by all that has passed through. Beginning with the conception of her first son, which coincided with the tragic death of her uncle on an Alaskan river, and ending a decade later in the Himalayan home of the Dalai Lama, Sinor offers a lyric exploration of language, love, and the promise inherent in the stories we tell: to remember.

Our guest today on Access Utah is Selina Gallo-Cruz, Associate Professor of Sociology at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester Massachusetts. We’ll talk about the women’s suffrage movement, women's resistance in civil war, civics education and the ongoing movement for voting rights.

Pulitzer prize winning New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg joins us in the first half of the program today. Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit” explores the science of habit formation in our lives, companies, and society. His book “Smarter Faster Better” explores the science of productivity. Duhigg says that in today’s world, it’s more important to manage how you think, rather than what you think. (Encore broadcast from 2011).

Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving, possessive, and ambitious father. As the former mayor of Boston, Bernard Doyle wants to see his sons in politics, a dream the boys have never shared. But when an argument in a blinding New England snowstorm inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child, all Bernard cares about is his ability to keep his children all his children safe.

John Taylor fled to a welcoming St. George in 2018 to escape California’s foul air. A graduate of New York University, writing letters to the editor helped launch a 30-year career as a newspaper reporter and editor. He especially relished covering religion, health care and education. A native of Brooklyn, he’s a fan of the Yankees, the Packers and Fresno State roughly aligning with where he’s worked as a journalist and, until retirement, as public affairs director for nonprofit Community Medical Centers in Fresno. He and wife Judy, a retired teacher, relish chatting with everyone they meet, helping address community needs such as homelessness and discovering the special pleasures of being Utahns.

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Part elegy, part ode, part investigative science journalism, Jonathan Thompson’s book “River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster” (Torrey House Press), tells the gripping story behind the 2015 Gold King Mine disaster that turned the Animas River in southwestern Colorado orange with sludge and toxic metals for more than 100 miles downstream, wreaking havoc on cities, farms, and the Navajo Nation along the way.

Gary Ferguson’s books include “Land on Fire: The New Reality of Wildfire in the West.” We’ll talk with Gary Ferguson about the wildfires burning now in the west. We’ll also talk about his latest book “The Eight Master Lessons of Nature: What Nature Teaches Us About Living Well in the World.”

Once again during this Fall Member Drive, we’re doing the Best of Access Utah. Today our focus is on the arts and music.

It’s a member drive special edition of Access Utah today. My special guest for the hour is Ken Sanders from Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City. We’ll reach into the archives for parts of some of our favorite recent episodes of the program.

It’s UPR’s Fall Member Drive. We’ll be joined for the hour by USU Associate Professor of Communications Studies Jason Gilmore. And we’ll present parts of several recent Access Utah interviews.

It’s UPR’s Fall Member Drive and Tom Williams will be joined for the hour by Lynne McNeill, Co-Director of the Digital Folklore Project at USU and Associate Professor of English.

Katharine Coles, former Utah Poet Laureate and current Distinguished Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Utah, joins us today for Access Utah to talk about her seventh collection of poems, Wayward, published last year.

Tom Paxton says folk music is lumber with the bark still on. His legendary career spans six decades of traditional music and topical songs. He says today's political climate presents an embarrassment of riches to the song writer.

Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Nation's Divide, a New York Times Bestseller, Washington Post Notable Book of 2016, and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner.

Thursday on Access Utah we’ll spotlight the ongoing Moab Music Festival. We’ll talk with master fiddler Alasdair Fraser, cellist Natalie Haas, and violinist Charles Yang, all of whom are performing at the festival. We’ll also hear music performed by these artists.

Witty, inspiring, and charismatic, Oscar Wilde is one of the Greats of English literature. Today, his plays and stories are beloved around the world. But it was not always so. His afterlife has given him the legitimacy that life denied him.

In 2012, photographer Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and created Project 562, which reflects her commitment to visit, engage with and photograph all 562 plus Native American sovereign territories in the United States. With this project she has traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, many in her RV (which she has nicknamed the “Big Girl”) but also by horseback through the Grand Canyon, by train, plane, and boat and on foot across all 50 states.