Access Utah

Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things.

Helen Thayer once walked 4,000 miles across the Sahara from Morocco to the Nile River, kayaked 2,200 miles of the Amazon River, and became the first woman to travel alone to any of the world's poles.

Today our guest is writer Azar Nafisi. We’ll talk about her new book "Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times."

Derek Black was raised to take over the white nationalist movement in the United States. Their father, Don Black, was a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan and started Stormfront, the internet’s first white supremacist website.

We’re compiling another UPR community booklist and we want to know what you’re reading. What’s on your nightstand or device right now?

Part elegy, part ode, part investigative science journalism, Jonathan Thompson's book "River of Lost Souls" tells the story of the 2015 disaster that turned the Animas River in southwestern Colorado orange with sludge and toxic metals.

In the midst of a contentious presidential election year, many of us are feeling the need for increased peace in the world, the nation, our neighborhoods, families, and in our hearts.

On this episode we revisit our conversation with novelist, feminist, and philanthropist Isabel Allende about her latest book.

Anthony Doerr’s' All the Light We Cannot See' was published in May 2014 and in September of that year Anthony Doerr visited Utah for several events as a part of the Utah Humanities Book Festival. We revisit our conversation from then.

“I began my writing career by exploring the tracks humans have left in nature. Now I’m mostly interested in the tracks nature leaves in us.” That’s author Gary Ferguson. He says that nature provides beauty, mystery and community, traits that each of us very much needs. He is the author of 25 books.

On this episode we revisit our 2018 conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winner John Branch about cowboys, the rodeo, and traditions of the West.

A new biography revives the groundbreaking voice of Sanora Babb. John Steinbeck relied on Babb's field notes and oral histories of migrant farmworkers to write "The Grapes of Wrath."

From the thundering cavalry of Alexander the Great to the streets of New York during the Great Manure Crisis of 1894, horses have shaped the grand arc of history and our everyday lives.

What do a bunch of well-seasoned river gals do on river trips without their men? Everything you might imagine, and more.

Graffiti-covered industrial concrete ruins are all that remain today to remind us of the lives, adventures, and human relationships that once animated Bauer, Utah.

With former president Donald Trump’s announcement that Sen. J.D. Vance will be his running mate, we revisit our interview from October 2016 with then-bestselling-author J.D. Vance.

Pam Houston is the author of the memoir, Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, as well as two novels and a collection of essays. We revisit our conversation from September 2021.

On this episode we’ll revisit our conversation from August 2018 with Richard Russo about his book Chances Are…

We’ll revisit our conversation from August 2018 with Earl Swift, talking about his book Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island.

Our guest Richard Hatch joins us for the hour to talk about magic, as well as his recent translation of the 1933 book 'Die Juden in der Zauberkunst', or 'Jews and Magic,' from a German author killed in the holocaust.

Lynne McNeill is an associate professor at Utah State University as well as co-founder of and faculty advisor for the USU Folklore Club.

The Salt Lake Tribune recently reported that a Utah State University employee was paid for 2 years while he didn’t work. The employee at the school’s Price campus was supposed to oversee programs for local businesses.

“Once on the brink of extinction, the bald, feathered symbol of the West is making a promising comeback. If only we can get the lead out."

Today our guest is northern Utah resident and bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne. She published her 75th book, "The December Market," earlier this year.

Today we’ll check in with reporter Alex Hager. He reports for the Colorado River Reporting Project and you hear his stories regularly on UPR.