Access Utah

Stand-up comedian and “Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me” panelist Paula Poundstone will be performing in Logan on Saturday.

The latest World Health Organization weekly data showed the epidemic has killed 8,235 of the 20,747 infected people worldwide. Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia contain the vast majority of cases.

On Access Utah today we have Dr. Hope Jahren, Professor of Geobiology at University of Hawaii Manoa.

On Thursday’s AU Charles Hawley will join us from Alaska to talk about Kennecott and the history of mining.

In the words of Michael Pitre:

For our Access Utah Holiday Special, we bring back guitarist and Utah State University Professor Emeritus of Music Mike Christiansen, and University of Utah Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and playwright Tim Slover, to bring you great holiday guitar music and holiday readings on today's program. For more information on Mike Christiansen and Tim Slover, please visit their websites. From the Utah Public Radio family, we hope your holidays are filled with great music and stories, and we wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

During this holiday time of year, charitable giving seems to come to the forefront. But there is a lot of good being done in our communities throughout the year. We hope to encourage this good by spotlighting several non-profit groups on Wednesday’s AU.

In a time of excess for many, some are living with less. A lot less! Tiny living has become increasingly popular in the past few years and today on Access Utah we’ll talk about this thirst for simplicity, how it’s changing the lives of those who live this way, how it’s affecting the environment around them, and if Tiny Houses could be in the future for more of us.

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.

Paleontologist Kenneth Carpenter is the museum director of the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum and author or co-author of several books on dinosaurs and Mesozoic life. His main research interests are armored dinosaurs as well as the Early Cretaceous dinosaurs from the Cedar Mountain Formation in eastern Utah. He joins us on Friday’s Access Utah.

Temple Grandin is noted for autism and for her groundbreaking work on many of the nation's slaughterhouses - making them more humane. She is Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University and has authored numerous books and papers on autism and agriculture. On Science Questions, she discusses the latest brain research on autism.

Last month President Obama issued executive orders on immigration that will impact nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Those who have been in the United States for at least the past five years, with no criminal history, and in many cases with familial relationships to American citizens, will no longer face deportation from the United States.

UPR Reporter Melissa Allison’s recent story is headlined “Brown Lawns Popular in Blanding.”

When his new step-daughter is kidnapped during a visit to the Grand Canyon, archeologist Chuck Bender faces up to his secret past and his unfamiliar family-man role as he confronts every parent's worst nightmare--a missing child. In Tony Hillerman fashion, “Canyon Sacrifice,” a new novel by Scott Graham, (Torrey House Press) explores the rugged western landscape, the mysterious past of the ancient Anasazi Indians, and the modern Southwest's ongoing cultural fissures. “Canyon Sacrifice” is the first book in a National Park Mystery Series.

Are corporations people? The U.S. Supreme Court says they are, at least for some purposes. Monday, in part two of our series, we’ll look at the impact of the U. S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling which allowed corporations and unions to spend freely in political campaigns. We’ll also examine the subsequent Move To Amend effort which seeks to overturn that ruling.

In 1961, Helen Andelin, housewife and mother of eight, languished in a lackluster, twenty-year-old marriage. A religious woman (Mormon) she fasted and prayed for help. As she studied a set of women's advice booklets from the 1920s, Andelin had an epiphany that not only changed her life but also affected the lives of millions of American women. She applied the principles from the booklets and found that her disinterested husband became loving and attentive. He bought her gifts and hurried home from work to be with her.

A new 800-page study released by the Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office argues that Utah could afford the management costs that would come with acquiring the more than 30 million acres of public lands now controlled by the federal government. (Elaine Taylor UPR)

Benjamin Franklin conceived of it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle endorsed it. Winston Churchill campaigned for it. Kaiser Wilhelm first employed it. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt went to war with it, and the United States fought an energy crisis with it.

We know that UPR listeners are avid readers. We’ve had a lot of fun on past episodes of AU, putting together UPR Book Lists, and it’s time to do it again. What are you reading? You may have discovered a must-read book that we’d all enjoy. We’re looking for everything from fiction, non-fiction, and classic literature to young adult and children’s books. It might even be a textbook or manual that you recommend.

StoryCorps promotes the day after Thanksgiving as a National Day of Listening, saying that listening, sharing and recording stories of family members and friends is the least expensive but most meaningful gift you can give this holiday season. Access Utah has promoted this concept for a few years now, and Wednesday we’ll continue the tradition. We’ll invite you to share your story.