Access Utah

Our guest for the hour today is Brooke Williams, author most recently of Open Midnight:

A Republican party official in Wasatch County recently criticized a bill that addresses a pay gap in the workforce. According to the Washington Post, James Green “said that men have traditionally earned more than women and, citing ‘simple economics,’ argued that things should stay that way.” Green’s letter to the editor, published in two Utah newspapers, produced a backlash and prompted him to wri...

Jennifer Sinor is the author of Letters Like the Day: On Reading Georgia O'Keeffe, a collection of essays inspired by the letters of the American modernist Georgia O'Keeffe and Ordinary Trauma, a memoir of her military childhood told through linked flash nonfiction. She teaches creative writing at Utah State University where she is a professor of English. She is also the author of The Extraordinar...

Natalie Andrews, a Wall Street Journal social media editor and reporter, will give a talk today at USU as a part of the Morris Media & Society Lecture Series, which is facilitated by Utah State’s Department of Journalism and Communication. Here’s how the department describes the talk: “It's now clear that we live in an era of fake news, troll tweets and email dumps. So what does that mean for medi...

Representatives from the group New American Economy participated Tuesday in a National Day of Action and marked the launch of their Map the Impact project, highlighting the economic impact of immigrants, and calling for immigration reform.

Our guest on Wednesday’s Access Utah is Damion Searls, author of "The Inkblots," a scientific and cultural history of the Rorschach test and the first biography of its creator, Hermann Rorschach.

On this episode of Access Utah our guest is Pulitzer Prize-Winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. The website for the Half the Sky Movement, founded by Mr. Kristof and his wife Cheryl WuDunn, says: “The central moral challenge of our time is reaching a tipping point. Just as slavery was the defining struggle of the 19th century and totalitarianism of the 20th, the fight to end the oppr...

The Outdoor Industry Association has announced that after next year, Salt Lake City will no longer host the Outdoor Retailer show, which has called Utah home for 20 years. Some companies, like Patagonia, had said they would not participate in the shows because of the Utah Legislature’s opposition to the new Bear’s Ears National Monument and desire to shrink the size of the Grand Staircase Escalant...

For Meridian Wallace—and many other smart, driven women of the 1940s—being ambitious meant being an outlier. Ever since she was a young girl, Meridian had been obsessed with birds, and she was determined to get her PhD, become an ornithologist, and make her mother’s sacrifices to send her to college pay off. But she didn’t expect to fall in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetston...

The confirmation battle over Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was riveting political theater, but it also highlights deep divisions regarding our K-12 education system. Quoting from the Washington Post: “Trump’s pick has intensified what already was a polarized debate about school choice. Advocates for such choice see in the Trump administration an extraordinary opportunity to advance their cause o...

On Valentine’s Day 2017, we’re going to talk about the history, the idea, the cultural phenomenon of Valentine’s Day. It’s a wonderful day for some and painful for others. What do you think? Is Valentine’s Day an artificially-constructed minefield of expectations or a welcome opportunity to celebrate your romance? Has your view changed over time? What are your Valentine’s plans? We hope you’ll sha...

The tumult at Rep. Jason Chaffetz’ recent town hall meeting made national news, but it’s not unusual of late. Marches and protests continue in the early days of the Trump presidency. In addition to the women’s marches, and protests at airports, there is the Indivisible movement and unusual events on Capitol Hill, such as the recent controversy surrounding Senators Warren and McConnell. Some are co...

From time to time we gather as a UPR community to compile a book list. On the next Access Utah we’re going to concentrate on Children’s Books. What are you reading to your kids? What are your children reading? What’s your favorite children’s book of all time? How about a new title or something you’ve just discovered that you’d like to share with us?

State Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck, D-Salt Lake has proposed that Utah follow the example of six other states and legalize assisted suicide (HB76 End of Life Options Act). Each of those states requires that the patient be of sound mind and have less than six months to live. Proponents say that individuals should have more control over decisions about quality of life and the timing of the end of life.

In an era when humans spend much of their time indoors staring at the dim glow of a screen, many of us have forgotten the simple pleasure of a stroll through a wooded glen, a hike up a secluded mountain path, or a nap in the grass. Many of us have a dog or go to the beach occasionally. But is that enough? In “The Nature Fix,” prize-winning science journalist Florence Williams asks, "What if?" What...

New York, 1888. The miracle of electric light is in its infancy. Thomas Edison has won the race to the patent office and is suing his only remaining rival, George Westinghouse, for the unheard of sum of one billion dollars. To defend himself, Westinghouse makes a surprising choice in his attorney: He hires an untested twenty-six-year-old fresh out of Columbia Law School named Paul Cravath.

One prominent theme of the recent election was a refrain that our political system is broken. The preferred fix of many Trump voters came in the person of now-President Trump. Others (including some UPR listeners) are prescribing such reforms as abolishing the Electoral College, instituting term limits, and changing the redistricting process.

On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending refugee admissions for 120 days, placing an indefinite ban on immigrants from Syria and a 90-day ban on people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen (Salt Lake Tribune).

Faculty of CHaSS present a Panel Discussion: Election 2016 – Opportunities and Challenges for a New Era. Wednesday, February 1 at 4:00 PM, Merrill Cazier Library, room 101. Listen to a lively panel discussion with faculty members from throughout CHaSS: Debra Jenson, Journalism and Communication; Jason Gilmore, Languages, Philosophy and Communication Study; Anna Pechenkina and Damon Cann, Political...

On a frigid April night, a classically trained opera singer, five months pregnant, and her husband, a former marine biologist, disembark an Amtrak train in La Plata, Missouri, assemble two bikes, and pedal off into the night, bound for a homestead they've purchased, sight unseen. Meanwhile, a horticulturist, heir to the Great Migration that brought masses of African Americans to Detroit, and her h...

Organizers of the “Clean Air, No Excuses Rally” which happened on Saturday in Salt Lake City say that “...each year clean air protections measures are considered at the legislature, and each year many of those proposals fail to become law. It’s time for a change, it’s time for Utah’s elected leaders to listen to the people. ...We must turn over every stone to find strong proposals to protect our f...

Ash and Pia move from hipster Brooklyn to rustic Vermont in search of a more authentic life. But just months after settling in, the forecast of a superstorm disrupts their dream. Fear of an impending disaster splits their tight-knit community and exposes the cracks in their marriage. Where Isole was once a place of old farm families, rednecks and transplants, it now divides into paranoid preppers,...

From Epicurus to Sam Cooke, the Daily News to Roots, Gregory Pardlo’s collection “Digest” draws from the present and the past to form an intellectual, American identity. In poems that forge their own styles and strategies, we experience dialogues between the written word and other art forms. Within this dialogue we hear Ben Jonson, we meet police K-9s, and we find children negotiating a sense of t...

Join us for the Opening Day of the 2017 Utah Legislature with this special 2-hour edition Access Utah from the Utah State Capitol.

The Women’s March on Washington organization estimates that more than more than 1,300,000 people will participate in the Women’s March on Washington or in one of the estimated 600 sister marches happening on January 21 or in the days following. (The Women’s March on Utah State Capitol is January 23).