Access Utah

In a 6-3, party-line vote, the Salt Lake County Council votes to overturn the public health school mask order issued by county health director Dr. Angela Dunn. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issues a call to its members to wear masks and get vaccinated. And new census figures cement Utah's place as the fastest growing state in the nation.

“Sleeper Agent” is the story of the only Soviet military spy to have full security clearance in America’s top-secret project to build the first atomic bomb. He was a U.S. soldier born and raised in Iowa who charmed everyone he met, loved baseball and Walt Whitman, and all the while he was sending atomic secrets to Moscow to help build their own atomic bomb. He was never caught.

Today we’ll talk with Senator Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, the first Asian American woman and the only immigrant currently serving in the U.S. Senate. Her new memoir "Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter’s Story" is an inspiring account of one woman coming into her personal and political power, a heartwarming homage to the women who raised her, and a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most fraught m...

St. Anne’s Retreat, located in Logan Canyon, is well-known to Cache Valley residents due to the folklore of the place: tales of demonic nuns, evil witches, murdered babies, and more. Often referred to as “The Nunnery,” the site is a hub for thrill-seekers who trespass onto the property to see for themselves if the stories are true.

Part memoir, part meditation on poetry, part conversation with her husband, friends, and the many animals that live with and around her, Katharine Coles’s The Stranger I Become probes the permeable boundary between inner life and outer, thought and action, science and experience. Coles begins this collection of lyric essays with a meditation on walking, and “the urge to move beyond, to understand...

Quoting the Salt Lake Tribune: “In response to the uproar over critical race theory, the Utah Board of Education has approved a new set of standards that spell out what teachers can — and especially what they cannot — say to their students about ethnicity, inclusion, equity and culture.” The Utah Legislature has also passed resolutions on the topic. Today we’ll try to define what Critical Race The...

In 2019, Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal was commissioned to write a poem commemorating the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad’s completion. The result is “West: A Translation:” a linked collection of poems that responds to a Chinese elegy carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station where Chinese migrants to the United States were detained. “West” translates thi...

Today we’re doing another non-profit spotlight. There are many needs in our communities and many step up to help. We’d love to shine a light on your favorite non-profit or individual doing good in your community.

In his new book, Last Best Hope, award-winning author and staff writer at The Atlantic George Packer explores the four narratives that now dominate American life and describe our divides: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, th...

It sometimes seems like life is nothing but conflict these days, with heated disagreements on Social Media and around the dinner table. And you may be dreading a high-stakes conversation in your near future. Next time on Access Utah we’ll talk with consultant and USU lecturer Clair Canfield.

Jean Lowe is an American pop/conceptual multimedia artist whose work carefully and humorously unpacks the ironies and challenges of our 21st-century culture. Lowe employs wit and satire to create work that is both entertaining and seductive as well as intellectually provocative. Her work revolves around the intersection of popular culture, environmentalism, commerce, politics, and art history.

Next time on Access Utah, we’ll present another live episode of Debunked, the only Utah podcast combining evidence-based health practices with storytelling to challenge the stereotypes, and debunk the myths about harm reduction, substance use disorders and homelessness. This time we’re debunking the myth, “There are plenty of resources but people just don’t want the help.”

Witty, inspiring, and charismatic, Oscar Wilde is one of the Greats of English literature. Today, his plays and stories are beloved around the world. But it was not always so. His afterlife has given him the legitimacy that life denied him.

In the span of a single lifetime, light pollution stemming from Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) has severed the connection with the stars that we’ve had since the dawn of time. With the nocturnal biosphere significantly altered, light’s anthropogenic influence has compelled millions of people to seek out the last remaining dark skies.

Dr. Susan Madsen, Director of The Utah Women & Leadership Project (UWLP) at Utah State University will join us on Tuesday’s Access Utah to talk about new research from UWLP into how the pandemic has affected women and work, specifically focusing on caregiver experiences.

Christine Montross has spent her career treating the most severely ill psychiatric patients. Several years ago, she set out to investigate why so many of her patients became caught up in the legal system when discharged from her care—and what happened to them in that legal system.

8:36 P.M. EST, December 12, 1972: Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt braked to a stop alongside Nansen Crater, keenly aware that they were far, far from home. They had flown nearly a quarter-million miles to the man in the moon’s left eye, landed at its edge, and then driven five miles into this desolate, boulder-strewn landscape. As they gathered samples, they strode at the outermo...

In his memoir, “The Weight of Shadows,” José Orduña chronicles the process of becoming a North American citizen in a post-9/11 United States. Intractable realities—rooted in the continuity of US imperialism to globalism—form the landscape of Orduña’s daily experience, where the geopolitical meets the quotidian.

American Indian Services Pre-Freshman Engineering Program (AIS PREP) is a free STEM summer school program for middle schoolers from eight different Native American tribes. Alice Min Soo Chun, founder and CEO of Solight Designs, Inc., is this year’s AIS PREP graduation keynote speaker.

All of us—people, fish, and many other creatures—depend on the water in Utah’s rivers. The choices we make about how to develop water resources have big impacts on river habitats. In “Decisions Downstream,” an exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Utah, watershed scientist Sarah Null teams up with artists Chris Peterson and Carsten Meier to explore new ways of seeing river habitats. Critical wa...

For much of a year, writer Sebastian Junger and three friends—a conflict photographer and two Afghan War vets—walked the railroad lines of the East Coast. It was an experiment in personal autonomy, but also in interdependence. Dodging railroad cops, sleeping under bridges, cooking over fires, and drinking from creeks and rivers, the four men forged a unique reliance on one another.

American Festival Chorus and Orchestra (AFCO) is performing the Mozart Requiem this weekend. Craig Jessop, Director of AFCO and Gary Griffin, Managing Director of Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theater (UFOMT) will join us in-studio to talk about Mozart, the Requiem, and performing arts as we come out of the pandemic.

When the pandemic struck, nature writer David Gessner turned to Henry David Thoreau, the original social distancer, for lessons on how to live. Those lessons—of learning our own backyard, rewilding, loving nature, self-reliance, and civil disobedience—hold a secret that could help save us as we face the greater crisis of climate. Gessner’s new book is Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight: Sheltering...

As you know, NPR is celebrating 50 years. You’ve been hearing some memories from UPR staff members and now it’s your turn! Continue the conversation and share your memories by emailing upraccess@gmail.com.

When Kate Washington and her husband, Brad, learned that he had cancer, they were a young couple: professionals with ascending careers, parents to two small children. Brad’s diagnosis stripped those identities away: he became a patient and she his caregiver. Brad’s cancer quickly turned aggressive, necessitating a stem-cell transplant that triggered a massive infection, robbing him of his eyesight...