Access Utah

According to the Salt Lake Tribune “Brigham Young University students who are victims of sex crimes say they are investigated by the school and sometimes disciplined after reporting their abuse, a consequence that critics say silences victims and emboldens offenders.” Several thousand people have signed an onlinepetition urging BYU not to investigate rape victims for Honor Code violations. BYU says it is studying the connection between its Title IX Office, which investigates sexual assaults, and its Honor Code Office.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty joins us to talk about her new book “Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife” She says: “When I was in my early 50s, I became quite convinced I was having a midlife crisis. I was an on-air correspondent for National Public Radio -- with a partly paralyzed vocal cord that left me without a voice for days or weeks at a time and with chronic pain that dominated my every waking hour. I wondered if my career at NPR had reached its peak as I observed the new opportunities going, understandably, to younger journalists."

Henry William Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. He writes on American history and politics, and his books include “The Man Who Saved the Union,” “Andrew Jackson,” “The Age of Gold,” and “TR”. Several of his books have been bestsellers; two, “Traitor to His Class” and “The First American,” were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Brands lectures frequently on historical and current events and can be seen and heard on national and international television and radio.

On Monday’s Access Utah we’ll talk with biographer Ron Chernow as a part of the Pulitzer Prizes Centennial Campfires Initiative. Chernow’s “Alexander Hamilton” is the inspiration for the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton!” We’ll ask Chernow if he thinks the musical faithfully represents Hamilton’s life and ideas, and why it is resonating so powerfully with audiences. Chernow says that Hamilton “was a messenger from a future that we now inhabit.” We’ll ask Chernow what Hamilton has stood for over time and what he stands for now.

Hollie Smith grew up in Tooele, went to Southern Utah University and became a journalist. After a key incident experienced as a reporter, she changed careers. She’s now Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Rhode Island. She gave a presentation recently at Utah State University titled “Journalists as Storytellers: The Media’s Role in Shaping Environmental Attitudes.” We’ll talk about how the media covers climate change.

Hospital intensive care units have changed when and how we die--and not always for the better. So says medical researcher and ICU physician Samuel Brown. In his new book “Through the Valley of Shadows: Living Wills, Intensive Care, and Making Medicine Human” (Oxford University Press) Dr. Brown uses stories from his clinical practice to outline a new way of thinking about life-threatening illness.

Former Utah Poet Laureate and current Professor of English at the University of Utah, Katharine Coles is author of two novels and several volumes of poetry. The latest, published in March by Red Hen Press, is titled “Flight.”

In her new book, “Epiphany in the Wilderness: Hunting, Nature, and Performance in the Nineteenth-Century American West,” historian Karen Jones uses the metaphor of the theater to argue that the West was a crucial stage that framed the performance of the American character as an independent, resourceful, resilient, and rugged individual.

Plural marriage is the next frontier of North American marriage law and possibly the next civil rights battlefield.

Matt Lewis’ book “Too Dumb to Fail” is an impassioned argument that to stay relevant the Republican Party must look beyond short-term electoral gains and re-commit to historic conservative values. As we navigate the 2016 presidential season, Lewis has an urgent message for fellow conservatives: embrace wisdom, humility, qualifications, and inclusion--or face extinction.

Many are responding to an invitation from the LDS Church to participate in a new effort to help refugees. The church has launched a new website,, and Utah Refugee Center executive director Deb Coffey told the Deseret News that her phone has been ringing off the hook. "I've got people all over the state doing service projects," Coffey said. "My phone is blowing up; my email is blowing up. It is unbelievable what's already happening." We talked about refugees and Utah in December, when Gov. Herbert was the lone Republican governor to say his state would accept Syrian refugees. We’ll talk about refugees again today in the wake of this groundswell of energy on this issue.

Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva are producers of the duPont-Columbia Award-winning NPR series Hidden Kitchens, and two Peabody Award-winning NPR series, Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project, with Jay Allison. They are also the producers of the Hidden World of Girls and the Hidden Kitchens heard on NPR Morning Edition. The series inspired their first book, Hidden Kitchens: Stories, Recipes, and More from NPR's The Kitchen Sisters, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 2005 and nominated for a James Beard Award for Best Writing on Food.

During a long and distinguished career with the U.S. State Department, Ambassador Christopher Hill was sent to some of the most dangerous outposts of American diplomacy, from the Balkans to North Korea to Iraq. In his memoir, “Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy,” he takes us from one-on-one meetings with Slobodan Milosevic, to Bosnia and Kosovo, to the Dayton conference, where a truce was brokered. He draws upon lessons learned as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon early on in his career and details his extensive experience as a U.S. ambassador.

All her life, Emily felt different from other kids. Between therapist visits, sudden uncontrollable bursts of anger, and unexplained episodes of dizziness, things never felt right. For years, her only escape was through the stories she crafted. It wasn’t until a near-fatal accident when she was twelve years old that Emily and her family discovered the truth: a grapefruit-size brain tumor at the base of her skull. In her new memoir, “All Better Now,” Utah writer Emily Wing Smith chronicles her struggles with both mental and physical disabilities, the devastating accident that may have saved her life, and her way through it all: writing.

We recently received an email from a listener: “I wanted to suggest a potential topic to explore in an upcoming show. I came across an article in the [Odgen] Standard Examiner the other day about a man getting arrested for an unpaid ambulance bill. He died while in jail."

Temple Grandin didn’t talk until she was three and a half years old, communicating her frustration instead by screaming, peeping, and humming. In 1950, she was diagnosed with autism and her parents were told she should be institutionalized. Instead, she went on to become professor of animal science at Colorado State University and a world leader in designing humane facilities for livestock. She is a prominent author and activist in the autism field, and her life is the subject of a 2010 HBO movie.

The murder/suicide involving a prominent Cache Valley couple has shocked the community and highlighted issues of suicide, depression, mental illness, and other issues among the elderly. We’re going to talk about these issues on Access Utah today. Tom Williams is joined by Pat Sadoski, with Cache Valley Senior Consulting; and Amy Anderson, with the Sunshine Terrace Foundation. We’ll also hear some recorded comments from commentator Thad Box.

In his early 20s, Benjamin Franklin embarked on a “bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection,” intending to master a list of thirteen virtues. He soon gave up on perfection but continued to believe that these attributes, along with a generous heart and a bemused acceptance of human frailty, laid the foundation for both a good life and a workable society.

UPR is presenting quarterly folk music programs, featuring musicians from around Utah. We hope you joined us for the most recent program Saturday evening. We’ll continue the conversation and music with four musicians: Hal Cannon and Greg Istock from 3hattrio, Cory Castillo, and Todd Wilkinson.

In "Frank: The Voice" (2010), James Kaplan told the story of Frank Sinatra's meteoric rise to fame, subsequent failures, and reinvention as a star of live performance and screen. Frank Sinatra was the best-known entertainer of the twentieth century-infinitely charismatic, lionized and notorious in equal measure. Kaplan examined the complex psyche and turbulent life behind that incomparable voice, from Sinatra's humble beginning in Hoboken to his fall from grace and Oscar-winning return in From Here to Eternity.