Access Utah

Are you interested in learning your genealogy and researching your family's history? Have you already traced your lineage back hundreds of years? Or are you just beginning?

Are you Vegan? Vegetarian? Meat-eater? We’d love to hear from you on Thursday’s AU. We’re going to examine the vegan diet and lifestyle.

On Wednesday’s AU we revisit a conversation from December: Alyson Hagy’s novel "Boleto," explores the themes of men and horses, the American West, and the dream of a ticket out. The protagonist Will Testerman is a young Wyoming horse trainer determined to make something of himself.

Two Utah Valley University professors who describe themselves as similar to hosts Click and Clack from NPR’s "Car Talk," set out to repeatedly bike the Great Western Trail, observing and writing about its variations with every season. The accounts of their adventures, however, refuse to be limited to flora and fauna.

A couple of years ago we took a fascinating look at zombies with Kyle Bishop, author of “American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture.” Bishop says that zombie movies reflect our cultural anxieties.

The 2014 Utah legislature closes Thursday night. Medicaid expansion, air quality, education, the budget...these are just some of the topics we’ll talk about on Friday’s AU.

Rep. Lynn Hemingway’s (D- Salt Lake City) “Living Wage” bill (HB 73) would raise the minimum wage in Utah from $7.25/hour to $10.25/hour. According the Poverty in America Living Wage Calculator, a living wage for a Utah family with two adults and two children is $18.54/hour. That same family would need to earn $10.60/hour to hit the poverty line. President Obama is pushing for a higher federal minimum wage, saying that "nobody who works full-time should ever have to raise a family in poverty."

Tim Medvetz is a former member of the Hells Angels and host of the National Geographic Wild series “Going Wild.” After a horrible motorcycle accident and still not fully recovered from his extensive injuries (he was not expected to walk again) he decided to fly to Nepal, live with Sherpas, and summit Mt. Everest. He eventually created The Heroes Project, with the mission of taking veterans who suffered catastrophic injuries on climbs to the world’s seven tallest summits. Medvetz’ goal for these climbs is to mirror the mental, physical and emotional challenges it takes to overcome losing limbs in battle.

Today on the program we explore the connection between fire, prehistory, and biodiversity with researchers in Nevada who reviewed anecdotal and anthropological data on the historical uses of fire in the Great Basin. Their literature review revealed how lessons learned from the uses of fire hundreds and thousands of years ago can improve modern land management practices.

Should Utah take federal money and expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act? Governor Herbert is pushing for expansion using $258 million in federal dollars.

Wednesday on AU we remember Ed Abbey, author of “The Monkey Wrench Gang” and “Desert Solitaire,” and consider his legacy. What is Abbey's relevance today? What is the status of the environmental movement today?

A while back, UPR listener Derek Butcher emailed us saying that he’s pleased that “UPR has devoted a fair amount of airtime to discussions of Utah's air quality...which is great because it's an important issue that affects all of us."

On Monday’s Access Utah we’ll not only talk about key writers of the Beat Generation--such as Allen Ginsburg, Philip Whalen, and Kenneth Rexroth, but we’ll hear their voices as well. John Suiter, author of “Poets on the Peaks,” a book about Beat poets and their experiences as fire lookouts in the Northwest during the 1950s, discovered some historic photographs and audio tapes during his research.

NASA and a team of four aerospace companies are ready for two missions that will propel humans into outer space. The space shuttle launch and Orion rocket are ready for launch towards deep space starting in early fall this year.

Living in the second-driest state in the U.S. most of us are closely attuned to water issues, especially as we face changes to our climate. Three experts at USU recently chose water as the topic of their TEDxUSU talks.

What’s the best way to involve people in the political process? Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney is in favor of the Count My Vote initiative, which would mandate a change to direct primaries to determine party nominees. He says that the current caucus and convention system excludes many people and rarely reflects how rank-and-file party members feel.

It’s a tradition that every year about this time “Evening in Brazil” presents a concert or two in northern Utah. And each year, we gather group members in UPR’s studio C to enjoy some great Bossa Nova and Samba on Access Utah. Linda Ferreira Linford, Christopher Neale, Eric Nelson and Mike Christiansen will join us with their music on Tuesday. We hope you will too, beginning at 9:00 a.m.

We’re putting more and more of our lives in the cloud. More and more our transactions are electronic. Which is convenient and fast. But is it safe? How secure is all that stuff in the cloud or moving around electronically, like your credit card information or your bank records?

Today on the program author Teresa Small from the Shoshone-Bannock tribe in Southeastern Idaho joins us to talk about her book "How To Love An Addict." It is a detailed personal account of her experience coping with a meth addicted son. Rather than write another tragic story, she says she chose to instead write her story as a "how to manual" for anyone wanting to change the situation they are in with an addict.

After two years of marriage, a gnawing feeling leads Belinda "Pecan" Morrow to suspect that getting married before the conclusion of her senior year in high school and after her father's sudden death--was a huge mistake. She packs up her few belongings and her baby girl and attempts to leave her husband, Ricky Morrow, an up-and-coming boxing sensation from Mississippi.