Access Utah

There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world’s oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.

George Bird Grinnell, the son of a New York merchant, saw a different future for a nation in the thrall of the Industrial Age. With railroads scarring virgin lands and the formerly vast buffalo herds decimated, the country faced a crossroads: Could it pursue Manifest Destiny without destroying its natural bounty and beauty?

In CONFLUENCE: NAVIGATING THE PERSONAL & POLITICAL ON RIVERS OF THE NEW WEST, paddler and journalist Zak Podmore takes readers down Western rivers and deep into some of the most pressing environmental and social justice issues of our time, including uranium tailings on the Ute Mountain Ute lands near the San Juan River, the treatment of asylum-seekers crossing the Rio Grande, and one of the largest dam removal projects in history on Washington’s Elwha River. CONFLUENCE follows in the tradition of Thoreau or Edward Abbey — it takes us into the wild but always has one eye turned back toward the blessings and ills of civilization.

Over 70% of Americans—and two-thirds of Utahns—think that climate change is happening. Research led by Dr. Peter Howe reveals this statistic, along with much more detailed data about how Americans think about climate change from the national to the local level.

You’re riding in your self-driving car when suddenly the doors lock, the route changes and you have lost all control. Then, a mysterious voice tells you, “You are going to die.” Just as self-driving cars become the trusted, safer norm, eight people find themselves in this terrifying situation, including a faded TV star, a pregnant young woman, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an illegal immigrant, a husband and wife, and a suicidal man.

Today, a conversation with Jeff Metcalf about his new novel “Wacko’s City of Fun Carnival.”

Yoram Bauman is the world’s first and only stand-up economist. He is co-author of the “Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change” and the two volume “Cartoon Introduction to Economics,” and the 1998 book “Tax Shift,” which helped inspire the revenue-neutral carbon tax in British Columbia. He is campaign co-chair for the new Clean the Darn Air initiative, which supporters are working to get on the ballot in Utah in 2020.

For 12,000 years, people have left a rich record of their experiences in Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park. In The Capitol Reef Reader, award-winning author and photographer Stephen Trimble collects the best of this writing—160 years worth of words that capture the spirit of the park and its surrounding landscape in personal narratives, philosophical riffs, and historic and scientific records.

Charlie Huenemann is professor of philosophy at Utah State University. He is the author of several books and essays on the history of philosophy, as well as some fun stuff, such as “How You Play the Game: A Philosopher Plays Minecraft.” He was recently on the BBC talking about a thought expiriment, "When Capt. Jean-Luc Picard beams aboard the Enterprise, do the carbon atoms that make up his body make the leap, i.e., are the molecules compressed into a data stream? Or is he basically replicated aboard ship using his cellular coding, memories and other neural impulses — basically a blueprint of “him”?" That inquiry was made on BBC Radio4's “Naturebang.” On this episode of Access Utah, we discuss the inquiry and other philosophical questions about the self and continuity.

Today on Access Utah, we preview an event next week. Living historians Nathan Richardson and Renée-Noelle Felice will perform on the USU campus as Frederick Douglass and Lucretia Mott, honoring their amazing lives and legacies, which are as relevant today as they were one hundred years ago.

Skier and debut author Ayja Bounous explores threats to the winters and watershed in the face of climate change and the far–reaching impacts of a diminishing snowpack on the American West—not only from ecological and economic perspectives, but also in regard to emotional and psychological health, as she realizes how deeply her personal relationships are tied to the snow–covered mountains of Utah's Wasatch range.

Explorer, lawyer, art collector, publisher, and author, Erling Kagge is the first person to have completed the Three Poles Challenge on foot—the North Pole, the South Pole, and the summit of Mount Everest. He has written six previous books on exploration, philosophy, and art collecting, and runs Kagge Forlag, a publishing company based in Oslo, where he lives.

H. W. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. chair in history at the University of Texas at Austin. A New York Times-bestselling author, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for The First American and Traitor to His Class. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Nearly every US city would like to be more walkable—for reasons of health, wealth, and the environment—yet few are taking the proper steps to get there. The goals are often clear, but the path is seldom easy. Jeff Speck’s follow-up to his bestselling Walkable City is the resource that cities and citizens need to usher in an era of renewed street life. Walkable City Rules is a doer’s guide to making change in cities, and making it now.

We’re compiling another UPR Community Booklist and we want to know what you’re reading. What’s on your nightstand or device right now? What is the best book you’ve read so far this year? Which books are you suggesting to friends and family? We’d love to hear about any book you’re reading, including in the young adult & children’s categories. One suggestion or many are welcome.

Jeff Meldrum is Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University. He is author of “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.” He is a leading expert on Bigfoot or Sasquatch, or the term he prefers: “Relict Hominoid.” He says “...[I]t is one matter to address the theoretical possibility of a relict species of hominoid in North America, and the obligate shift in paradigm to accommodate it, but there must also be something substantial to place within that revised framework. There must be essential evidence to lend weight to the hypotheses, and counter the critics’ various aspersions. I was once confronted by a colleague, who declared, ‘After all, these are just stories.’ My response: ‘Stories that apparently leave tracks, shed hair, void scat, vocalize, are observed and described by reliable experienced witnesses. Hardly just stories.’”

Thi Bui was born in Vietnam three months before the end of the Vietnam War, and came to the United States in 1978. She will present a lecture "Finding Home," based on her debut graphic memoir, “The Best We Could Do,” a beautifully illustrated and emotional story about the search for a better future and a longing for the past. The lecture is Thursday, November 7, at 7:00 p.m. in the Nancy Tessman Auditorium at The Salt Lake City Public Library. The main sponsor/organizer is the Asia Center and the University of Utah along with The Office for Equity and Diversity.

Bill Lipe is professor emeritus of anthropology at Washington State University. He has spent much of his more than 50 year career in Utah archaeology beginning with the archaeological salvage of Glen Canyon before the dam construction and on into Cedar Mesa where he became a leading scholar in the early Basketmaker agricultural societies of southeastern Utah. Dr. Lipe began his work at a time when there was little federal legislation protecting archaeology or guiding preservation efforts. He became a leader in the development of what we now know of as Cultural Resource Management archaeology. Because of his involvement in CRM and his work in Cedar Mesa, he remains one of archaeology's main voices in the Bears Ears controversy.

We know the elements of erosion: wind, water, and time. They have shaped the spectacular physical landscape of our nation. In her new book “Erosion: Essays of Undoing” Terry Tempest Williams explores the many forms of erosion we face: of democracy, science, compassion, and trust. She asks: "How do we find the strength to not look away from all that is breaking our hearts?" And she says what has been weathered, worn, and whittled away is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our becoming.

Crystal Marie Fleming, Ph.D.is an author, public intellectual and expert on white supremacy and global racism. She is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University with affiliations in the Department of Africana Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Dr. Fleming is the author of two books: the critically-acclaimed How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy and the Racial Divide and Resurrecting Slavery: Racial Legacies and White Supremacy in France. Additionally, her scholarship appears in journals such as The Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Poetics,Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race and Mindfulness.