Access Utah

On Monday’s Access Utah, beloved folk singer Dar Williams joins us to talk about her latest book, described as “an impassioned account of the fall and rise of the small American towns she cherishes.”

On our last pledge drive show, we go into the importance of books on Access Utah. We love getting to interview authors and we hope you enjoy listening to these interviews. Ken Sanders from Rare Books and our own Teri Guy join us for the hour to talk about the importance of these book interviews, and encourage your pledges. You will excerpts from some of our favorite book shows, and you can find full interviews for those shows below. Thanks for listening.

We are continuing our pledge drive this week with more of the best of Access Utah. Today's program has excerpts from our lighter and fun programs. USU assistant professor of English Lynne McNeill, and our own development officer Ted Twinting join us for the hour to encourage your pledges and talk about what makes Access Utah so great. We appreciate your support and hope you have as much fun listening to our show as we have making it.

We continue our fundraising efforts this week with another Best of Access Utah show. Today we focused on our current event shows and emphasized freedom of speech. Associate professor of communication studies at Utah State University Jason Gilmore, and our own Katie Swain join us for the hour to encourage your pledges and discuss the importance of free speech in America. You will hear excerpts from our shows on the Charlottesville Riot, Bears Ears National Monument, and the March For Science. Links to the full shows can be found below. Thanks for listening to Access Utah.

Wednesday, we are taking pledges and replaying excerpts from some of our best interviews on Access Utah. We appreciate your support not only of us, but of the arts as well. Dr. Craig Jessop, Dean of Utah State University's Caine College of the Arts, and UPR's station manager Peg Arnold join us to discuss the unique importance of the arts. Join us as we revisit our favorite interviews — the best Access Utah has to offer.

At twenty years old, Pete Fromm heard of a job babysitting salmon eggs, seven winter months alone in a tent in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. Leaping at this chance to be a mountain man, with no experience in the wilds, he left the world. Thirteen years later, he published his beloved memoir of that winter, Indian Creek Chronicles ―Into the Wild with a twist.

How did we get here?

What would it be like to see everyone as a friend?

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has completed the review of national monuments mandated by President Trump. He has not released his recommendations. The New York Times is reporting that those recommendations include reducing the size of 4 national monuments, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah. Reports are that Secretary Zinke may recommend a drastic reduction in size for Bears Ears.

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.” We’ll talk about white supremacists’ fascination with Nietzsche and ask if they are misreading the German philosopher. (Huenemann has written a book on Nietzsche).

Family history, usually destined or even designed for limited consumption, is a familiar genre within Mormon culture. Mostly written with little attention to standards of historical scholarship, such works are a distinctly hagiographic form of family memorabilia. But many family sagas in the right hands can prove widely engaging, owing to inherent drama and historical relevance. They can truthfully illuminate larger matters of history, humanity, and culture.

We'll discuss the recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia. We’ll ask if there should be any limits to free speech and assembly. What provisions should be made if the protesters are armed? Should ideas repugnant to most people be allowed expression? When such ideas are expressed what should the push-back look like? Is President Trump right to see an equivalence between the protesters and counter-protesters in Charlottesville? Regarding controversial monuments and memorials: How should we make decisions on what stays and what gets removed? We’ll try to put the seemingly-escalating tensions over race in context, and look at where we go from here.

Quoting CNN: “More than 70% of antibiotics sold in the U.S. are for food production animals, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. The problem is that many experts believe this is an overuse of antibiotics, and they fear significant public health consequences.

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor making a living treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. Just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air... chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a young neurosurgeon at Stanford, guiding patients toward a deeper understanding of death and illness, and finally into a patient and a new father to a baby girl, confronting his own mortality.

Physics professor, bestselling author, and dynamic storyteller James Kakalios reveals the mind-bending science behind the seemingly basic things that keep our daily lives running, from our smart phones and digital “clouds” to x-ray machines and hybrid vehicles.

Hope, Heart, and the Humanities tells the story of how Venture, a free, interdisciplinary college humanities course inspired by the national Clemente Course, has helped open doors to improve the lives of people with low incomes who face barriers to attending college. For over a decade, this course has given hundreds of adults, some of them immigrants or refugees, the knowledge, confidence, and power to rechart their lives.

Using minimal tools and a simple technique of bending, interweaving, and fastening together sticks, artist PatrickDougherty creates works of art inseparable with nature and the landscape. With a dazzling variety of forms seamlesslyintertwined with their context, his sculptures evoke fantastical images of nests, cocoons, cones, castles, and beehives. Over the last twenty-five years, Dougherty has built more than two hundred works throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia that range from stand-alone structures to a kind of modern primitive architectureevery piece mesmerizing in its ability to fly through trees, overtake buildings, and virtually defy gravity. Stickwork, Dougherty's first monograph, features thirty-eight of his organic, dynamic works that twist the line between architecture, landscape, and art. Constructed on-site using locally sourced materials and local volunteer labor, Dougherty's sculptures are tangles of twigs and branches that have been transformed into something unexpected and wild, e

Timothy Hawkes and Warren Petersen join Tom Williams to discuss the governors proposed 50 year water plan.

In 2016, now President Donald Trump became the first major-party candidate in more than half a century to advocate a return to the gold standard for the U.S. dollar. In ONE NATION UNDER GOLD: How One Precious Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination for Four Centuries (Liveright: June 2017) INC Magazine editor and financial writer James Ledbetter explains how most mainstream economists argue the idea of returning to the gold standard is just not possible.

Monday's program is a window into the world of music therapy: an interesting intersection of arts and science.