Access Utah

From tedgenoways.com: For forty years, Rick Hammond has raised cattle and crops on his wife’s fifth-generation farm. But as he prepares to hand off the operation to his daughter Meghan and her husband Kyle, their entire way of life is under siege. Confronted by rising corporate ownership, encroaching pipelines, groundwater depletion, climate change, and shifting trade policies, small farmers are often caught in the middle and fighting just to preserve their way of life. Following the Hammonds from harvest to harvest, This Blessed Earth is both a history of American agriculture and a portrait of one family’s struggle to hold on to their legacy.

A.J. Jacobs, author of the new book: “It’s All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World’s Family Tree,” joins us for the hour on Monday’s Access Utah.

Martin Luther's posting of the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517 is one of the most famous events of Western history. It inaugurated the Protestant Reformation, and has for centuries been a powerful and enduring symbol of religious freedom of conscience, and of righteous protest against the abuse of power.

Today's discussion is on the importance of science communication. We are joined by the Director of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University Laura Lindenfeld, Improv Program Leader of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science Valeri Lantz-Gefroh, Phd candidate and UPR Science Reporter Daniel Kinka, and Aimee Tallian and Director Nancy Huntly of the USU Ecology Center.

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.’”

From Torrey House: Pursued by a hired killer after they protested at a mining site gate, Luna Waxwing and Hip Hop Hopi seek refuge in the remote Southwest village of Stony Mesa where they start over as micro-farming restaurateurs with a dangerous secret. With their rodeo princess partner Kayla and a colorful cast of unlikely allies, they struggle to find common ground between coyote-killing cowboys and bird-watching retirees.

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. He hasn't penned a Trump song yet, but that will come.

Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's—Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. Thomas Ricks writes in his new book “Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom” that In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then they acted on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's co

"Remember that you will die..."

A new sexual revolution is sweeping the country, and college students are on the front lines. Women use fresh, smart methods to fight entrenched sexism and sexual assault even as they celebrate their own sexuality as never before. Many “woke” male students are more sensitive to women’s concerns than previous generations ever were, while other men perpetuate the most cruel misogyny. Amid such apparent contradictions, it’s no surprise that intense confusion shrouds the topic of sex on campus.

One month after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, 3 million Puerto Ricans, or 80%, are still without power. More than a third of households are without reliable drinking water at home. The death toll may be in the hundreds. CNN reports that “much of the island feels like it was hit by a storm yesterday.” And some Puerto Ricans are expressing the worry that the news cycle will turn and the island’s needs will be forgotten.

Before men ruled the earth, there were wolves.

For thousands of years, tracking animals meant following footprints. Now satellites, drones, camera traps, cellphone networks, and accelerometers reveal the natural world as never before. Where the Animals Go offers a comprehensive, data-driven portrait of how creatures like ants, otters, owls, turtles, and sharks navigate the world. Based on pioneering research by scientists at the forefront of the animal-tracking revolution, James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti’s charts and maps tell fascinating stories of animal behavior, explaining how warblers detect incoming storms using sonic vibrations, how baboons make decisions, and why storks prefer garbage dumps to wild forage; they follow pythons racing through the Everglades, a lovelorn wolf traversing the Alps, and humpback whales visiting undersea mountains.

In her first year of eligibility, Gailey was nominated for a Hugo Award for her critique and celebration of the women of Harry Potter, in a category alongside legendary fiction writer Neil Gaiman and the late Carrie Fisher.

Bestselling author Ted Stewart explains how the Supreme Court and its nine appointed members now stand at a crucial point in their power to hand down momentous and far-ranging decisions. Today's Court affects every major area of American life, from health care to civil rights, from abortion to marriage.

Fairy tale expert Jack Zipes says that the tales "serve a meaningful social function, not just for compensation but for revelation: the worlds projected by the best of our fairy tales reveal the gaps between truth and falsehood in our immediate society."

Robert Zellner is a civil rights activist and original Freedom Rider. The Alabama-born son and grandson of Ku Klux Klan members, Zellner has devoted his life to building relationships across color lines. In 1963, he was a young organizer of the March on Washington, which gave us Martin Luther's King "I Have a Dream" speech. He describes his 50-plus year career in the memoir The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement.

A gunman opened fire on the crowd at a country music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday evening, killing at least 59 and wounding hundreds.

A documentary directed by Jenny MackenzieDying in Vein is a deeply personal exploration of opiate and heroin addiction through a cinéma vérité style that drops you directly into the lives of an addict in recovery, a couple trying to get clean, a family grieving the loss of their son, and an Emergency Room Physician trying to save one patient at time. Through these stories, the film explores the contemporary belief of 'living life pain free', and the shame and blame that exists around addiction. The film looks at the impact of socioeconomic class on our broken treatment system, and how a group of emergency care physicians are working to save their patients.

Opera comes in all shapes and sizes. Considered an elitist art form by many, it is capable of touching souls from pioneers and farmers to apostles and politicians. While it may be an acquired taste, we are lured to it via recitals, concerts, oratorios, and even Broadway musicals and anecdotal tales.