Access Utah

On Tuesday’s AU we’ll look at the problem of homelessness with author Elaine Taylor, who writes in her new book "Karma Deception and a Pair of Red Ferraris" of how she came to find her self dedicated to helping the homeless. Previously Taylor wrote on her blog, “the best of my life is behind me. I’m entering the period of throat wattles and colonoscopies every five years … and uselessness. Irrelevance.”

From their earliest days on the American frontier through their growth into a worldwide church, the spatially expansive Mormons made maps to help them create idealized communities, migrate to and colonize large parts of the American West, visualize the stories in their sacred texts, and spread their message internationally through a well-organized missionary system. This book identifies many Mormon mapmakers who played an important but heretofore unsung role in charting the course of Latter-day Saint history. For Mormons, maps had and continue to have both practical and spiritual significance. In addition to using maps to help build their new Zion and to explore the Intermountain West, Latter-day Saint mapmakers used them to depict locations and events described in the Book of Mormon.

“Many scientists say it’s impossible to study thought and emotion in non-humans. Animals, they say, don’t communicate their inner turmoil through spoken word, which is why any attempt to understand their psyche is typically sneered at as ‘anthropomorphism’ (transferring your own experiences and emotions onto the animals you study) and deemed ‘unscientific,’” writes Becca Cudmore on www.audobon.org.Marine Biologist Carl Safina says that scientists who watch wild animals realize the absurdity of not addressing an animal’s inner life. In his new book “Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel” he takes us inside the lives and minds of animals, witnessing their profound capacity for perception, thought and emotion.

On Tuesday's Access Utah we're airing interviews conducted in Vernal, while the Utah Public Radio team visited the Utah StoryCorps Booth. Vernal, and much of the Uintah Basin, are a community very much tied to oil and gas development, so we talk about the issues the area faces as their economy depends on oil industry. We speak with Vernal City Council member JoAnn Cowan, Vernal City Manager Ken Bassett about the future of Vernal and the Uintah Basin. Then later in the program we hear from Danielle Anderson, from StoryCorps.

In Lucy Sana's newest novel, "The Cherry Harvest," she outlines a memorable coming-of-age story which explores a hidden side of the home front during World War II, when German POWs were put to work in a Wisconsin farm community. In the novel, the war has taken a toll on the Christiansen family. With food rationed and money scarce, the protagonist Charlotte, struggles to keep her family well fed. When their upcoming cherry harvest is threatened, strong-willed Charlotte helps persuade local authorities to allow German war prisoners from a nearby camp to pick the fruit.

So what do men really want when it comes to choosing a mate? Apparently the answer to that question is complex and part of it comes down to population size. A recent study conducted by anthropologists provides clues to why and when men will seek long-term relationships. Today on the program Sheri Quinn talks to Ryan Schacht, anthropologist at the University of Utah and co-author of the study, who breaks down sexual stereotypes.

This broadcast of "Access Utah" is an encore presentation. Our interview with Paul Vanouse originally aired in April, 2015 on Utah Public Radio.

This broadcast of "Access Utah" is an encore presentation. Our interview with Dr. Katharine Hayhoe originally aired in March, 2015 on Utah Public Radio.

We waste 2.8 trillion pounds of food every year, worldwide. Meanwhile, 805 million people don’t have enough to eat. There is no one simple solution, but Dr. Eric Handler, Orange County Public Health Officer, is trying something new–Using Yellow Cabs deliver the food. Dr. HAndler proposes using cabs to connect the dots between gathering extra food, identifying those in need, getting it to them, making it easy for food service folks to participate. He’s the co-chair of the Waste Not OC Coalition (WNOC), which he hopes can serve as a model elsewhere. He was recently featured in National Geographic’s “The Plate,” where he discussed his work with using cabs to help the hungry. Later in the program we speak with Matt Whitaker, Director of the Cache Valley Food Pantry.

Today's broadcast of "Access Utah" was an encore presentation. Our interview with Dr. Gary Weitzman originally aired in March, 2015 on Utah Public Radio.

In 1859 Brigham Young sent two Mormon missionaries to live among the Hopi, "reduce their dialect to a written language," and then teach it to the Hopi so that they would be able to read the Book of Mormon in their own tongue. Young also instructed the men to teach the Hopi the Deseret alphabet, a phonemic system that he was promoting in place of the traditional Latin alphabet. While the Deseret alphabet faded out of use in just over twenty years, the manuscript penned by one of the missionaries has remained in existence. For decades it sat unidentified in the archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints-a mystery document having no title, author, or date. Computational linguist Kenneth Beesley and Dirk Elzinga, an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Brigham Young University, have now traced the manuscript's origin to those missionaries of 1859 and decoded its Hopi-English vocabulary written in the short-lived Deseret alphabet. Their new book, "An 186

Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla produced hundreds of inventions and ideas which have changed our lives in profound ways, ranging from alternating current to wireless communication to remote control. Tesla's AC defeated Thomas Edison's DC, but Edison is celebrated in America and Tesla is relatively unknown. Where he is remembered, Tesla is known as the man who invented the twentieth century, but also as an early archetype of the mad scientist.

Anonymous. WikiLeaks. The Syrian Electronic Army. Edward Snowden. Bitcoin. The Arab Spring. In every aspect of international affairs, digitally enabled actors are changing the way the world works and disrupting the institutions that once held a monopoly on power. In "Disruptive Power: The Crisis of the State in the Digital Age," Taylor Owen asks: How does the rise of hackers, digital humanitarians, cyber activism, automated violence and citizen journalists change the way we understand and act in the world? Are digital diplomacy and cyberwar the future of statecraft, or a sign of the crisis of the state? What new institutions will be needed to moderate emerging power structures and ensure accountability and the rule of law?

From undocumented men named Angel, to angels falling from the sky, Natalie Scenters-Zapico’s gripping debut collection, The Verging Cities, is filled with explorations of immigration and marriage, narco-violence and femicide, and angels in the domestic sphere. Deeply rooted along the US-México border in the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, and Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, these poems give a brave new voice to the ways in which international politics affect the individual. Composed in a variety of forms, from sonnet and epithalamium to endnotes and field notes, each poem distills violent stories of narcos, undocumented immigrants, border patrol agents, and the people who fall in love with each other and their traumas.

“The True American” tells the story of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to America and working in technology. But days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into the Dallas minimart where Bhuiyan has found temporary work and shoots him, maiming and nearly killing him. Two other victims, at other gas stations, aren’t so lucky, dying at once.

On Wednesday’s AU, we’ll be talking again about Race in America. We’ll be responding, of course, to the killing of nine people in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as the killing of Walter Scott in North Charleston. These deaths are, tragically, just the latest in a series of recent killings of African Americans.

Michael Nees, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Lafayette College, writing in theconversation.com, says that "self-driving cars are expected to revolutionize the automobile industry. Rapid advances have led to working prototypes faster than most people expected. The anticipated benefits of this emerging technology include safer, faster and more eco-friendly transportation. But, says Nees, we shouldn't ignore the human element of automated driving. Self-driving cars will still need people. He says "we can draw insights from aviation, as many elements of piloting planes already have been taken over by computers."

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in landmark case, Obergefell v. Hodges, that Same-Sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states. Today on the program we get your reaction, as well as the opinion of Utah's only openly gay politician, Senator James Dabakis, D-Salt Lake City, and Gay rights activist Derek Kitchen, who was the namesake of the Kitchen v Herbert Case that led to the strike down of Utah's Amendment 3, allowing for same-sex marriage in Utah back in 2013. Later in the program we here from Lynn Wardle, Bruce C. Hafen Professor of Law at Brigham Young University and Clifford Rosky, Professor of Law at University of Utah.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, and President Obama says the ACA is "here to stay." What's next for health care in Utah? What does this mean for you? We'll open the phone lines, email and Twitter for your comment or question and we'll look at possible expansion of Medicaid in Utah and related issues on a special edition of Access Utah. Joining us from the Utah Health Policy Project are Medicaid Policy Analyst RyLee Curtis and Randall Serr, Director of Take Care Utah. Also Joining the program are state Senators Brian Shiozawa and Luz Escamilla, along with State Representative Ed Redd.

It was 2004, and Sean McFate had a mission in Burundi: to keep the president alive and prevent the country from spiraling into genocide, without anyone knowing that the United States was involved. The United States was, of course, involved, but only through McFate's employer, the military contractor DynCorp International. Throughout the world, similar scenarios are playing out daily. The United States can no longer go to war without contractors. Yet we don't know much about the industry's structure, its operations, or where it's heading. Even the U.S. government-the entity that actually pays them-knows relatively little.