Access Utah

Scott Howell and Thomas Wright, co-chairs of the Utah Debate Commission will join me to talk about the debates, which are airing on Utah Public Radio, and the political climate in Utah and the nation as we head into the midterm elections, now less than three weeks away. Scott Howell is a former state senator and senate minority leader, and candidate for the U.S. Senate. Howell is CEO Howell Consulting Group and a retired IBM Executive. Thomas Wright is former chairman of the Utah Republican Party and current President & Principal Broker, Summit Sotheby’s International Realty. Wright is one of eight chairpeople of the Republican National Committee.

Religious courts in the Middle East had historically banned women from adjudicating domestic and family matters - in both the Shari'a courts of Islam and the Rabbinic courts of Judaism -until Kholoud Al-Faqih, dares to challenge that history. With the support of a progressive Sheik, Kholoud becomes the first woman judge with her appointment to a Palestinian Shari'a court in the West Bank, bringing a subtle new perspective garnered from her early professional life working with battered women as an attorney in both the criminal and Shari'a courts.

On Monday's Access Utah, Jim DeFelice joins us to talk about his new book “West Like Lightning: The Brief Legendary Ride of the Pony Express."

For generations, the Wrights of southern Utah have raised cattle and world-champion saddle-bronc riders ― some call them the most successful rodeo family in history.

Today we're speaking with Margaret Barker, Dr. David Haberman, and Anuttama Dasa, panelists at the conference God & Smog: The Challenge of Preserving Our Planet. The conference is taking place today in the USU John M. Huntsman School of Business Perry Pavilion until 5 p.m.

A coalition of faculty and students at USU have come together to organize a day-long discussion of sexual violence, in order to understand the issues that informed the Kavanaugh hearings and investigation. This teach-in will happen on Tuesday, October 9 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the USU Anthropology Museum (Old Main 252) on the USU campus.

“Bridge of Clay” is the new sweeping family saga from Markus Zusak, author of the international bestseller “The Book Thief,” which swept the world and was made into a movie.

In a remote corner of Oregon, James Pogue found himself at the heart of a rebellion. Granted unmatched access by Ammon Bundy to the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Pogue met ranchers and militiamen ready to die fighting the federal government.

In the age of the Nano-second, folklore studies claim a perspective on the critical importance of the short-lived, as observed in numerous traditional forms such as memorial altars, henna-painted Yemen brides, and evaporative moments, such as the traces left by marginalized queer encounters or the reformulation in art of Mormon legend by local Provo artist Bryan Hutchison.

An eminent professor of History and Religious Studies at Utah State University, Dr. Norman Jones has spent a career learning what makes an "educated person."

Iconic Utah outfitter Ken Sleight began his river-guiding career in Glen Canyon during the mid-1950s, just as the Glen Canyon Dam blueprints jumped from the drawing board to remote desert terrain. The pulse of the Colorado River through the canyon would soon be halted by a cement wall and Glen Canyon backfilled with water. Sleight knew the condition of the canyon was terminal. He used every ray of daylight to memorize every detail of the canyon before inundation: to learn its 125 side canyons, to observe Native American ruins and mining relics, and to immerse himself in the lives of seminal guides who preceded him like Dave Rust, Bert Loper, and Moki Mac.

The Block Film and Art Festival is this weekend in Logan. Today, we're previewing the festival. Our guests include Michael Bingham, founder of Jump the Moon Art Studios, Jolynne Lyon, UPR feature correspondent for our Diagnosed series, Steve Smith, submission manager for the festival, and Brenda Hawley, the festival's art curator.

Our guest for the hour is Ann Burroughs, president and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles and newly elected chair of the Global Assembly of Amnesty Interational. She gave the keynote speech for the Tanner Center for Human Rights lecture series on August 30th at the University of Utah. The title of her lecture was "Never Again is Now: Remembering and Reaffirming Our Collective Commitment to Protecting Civil Rights."

Once upon a time, Melissa believed a teacher who told her she would never amount to anything; a guy in high school who stood her up at the senior prom and made her feel unworthy of love; and a friend who said she was fat and an embarrassment.

This year’s Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture will be presented by Darius Gray. The lecture, titled “Redeeming a People: The Critical Role of Historical Examination in Moving Cultural and Moral Trajectories,” is 7 p.m. today at the Logan Tabernacle, 50 N. Main St. The evening’s events will also include performances by the Deborah Bonner Unity Gospel Choir.

It’s a pledge drive special edition of Access Utah today. My special guest for the hour is rare bookseller Ken Sanders. We’ll reach into the archives for parts of some of our favorite episodes of the program. We’ll hear a segment from our conversation on the exhibit Glen Canyon: A River Guide Remembers. Then we’ll revisit a portion of our interview on poetry with Edward Hirsch and Michael Sowder. And finally, we'll hear from Anthony Doerr, author of "All the Light We Cannot See."

It’s a pledge drive special edition of Access Utah today. My special guest for the hour is Dean Craig Jessop of USU's Caine College of the Arts. We’ll reach into the archives for parts of some of our favorite episodes of the program. We’ll hear a segment from our interview with composer John Luther Adams. Then we’ll revisit a portion of our conversation with GENTRI, the Gentlemen Trio. And finally, we'll hear from Ann Cannon, author of "I'll Tell You What," tell how her father LaVell Edwards and mother Patty Edwards met.

It’s a pledge drive special edition of Access Utah today. My special guest for the hour is Dr. Lynne McNeill, assistant professor of English at Utah State University. We’ll reach into the archives for parts of some of our favorite episodes of the program. We’ll hear a segment from our conversation on Slender Man, with Amanda Brennan, Dr. Elizabeth Tucker, and Dr. Trevor J. Blank. Then we’ll revisit a portion of our interview with Michael Poland and Jamie Farrell on the Yellowstone Supervolcano. And finally, we'll hear from commentor Gina Wickwar on dogs, Barbara Streisand, and cloning.

Historian and Harvard professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich was recently on the USU campus to give a talk presented by the USU History Department and sponsored by the Tanner Talks Series in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

It’s a pledge drive special edition of Access Utah today. My special guest for the hour is Dr. Jason Gilmore, assistant professor of Communication Studies at Utah State Unviersity. We’ll reach into the archives for parts of some of our favorite episodes of the program. We’ll hear from Phillip Dray, author of "At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America." Then we’ll hear part of my conversation with Sonia Nazario on the family separation and zero tolerance immigration crisis. Sonia Nazario is author of the book "Enrique's Journey." And we'll conclude with a segment from my interview with Gary Paul Nabhan who is working to use food to unite people across social and political divisions. We also discuss Chimamanda Adichie's TED Talk, "The Danger of a Single Story."