Access Utah

Today's broadcast of "Access Utah" was an encore presentation. Our interview with Dr. Gary Weitzman originally aired in March, 2015 on Utah Public Radio.

In 1859 Brigham Young sent two Mormon missionaries to live among the Hopi, "reduce their dialect to a written language," and then teach it to the Hopi so that they would be able to read the Book of Mormon in their own tongue. Young also instructed the men to teach the Hopi the Deseret alphabet, a phonemic system that he was promoting in place of the traditional Latin alphabet. While the Deseret al...

Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla produced hundreds of inventions and ideas which have changed our lives in profound ways, ranging from alternating current to wireless communication to remote control. Tesla's AC defeated Thomas Edison's DC, but Edison is celebrated in America and Tesla is relatively unknown. Where he is remembered, Tesla is known as the man who invented the twentieth century, but also...

Anonymous. WikiLeaks. The Syrian Electronic Army. Edward Snowden. Bitcoin. The Arab Spring. In every aspect of international affairs, digitally enabled actors are changing the way the world works and disrupting the institutions that once held a monopoly on power. In "Disruptive Power: The Crisis of the State in the Digital Age," Taylor Owen asks: How does the rise of hackers, digital humanitarians...

From undocumented men named Angel, to angels falling from the sky, Natalie Scenters-Zapico’s gripping debut collection, The Verging Cities, is filled with explorations of immigration and marriage, narco-violence and femicide, and angels in the domestic sphere. Deeply rooted along the US-México border in the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, and Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, these poems give a brave new vo...

“The True American” tells the story of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to America and working in technology. But days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into the Dallas minimart where Bhuiyan has found temporary work and shoots him, maiming and nearly killing him. Two other victims, at other gas stations...

On Wednesday’s AU, we’ll be talking again about Race in America. We’ll be responding, of course, to the killing of nine people in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as the killing of Walter Scott in North Charleston. These deaths are, tragically, just the latest in a series of recent killings of African Americans.

Michael Nees, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Lafayette College, writing in theconversation.com, says that "self-driving cars are expected to revolutionize the automobile industry. Rapid advances have led to working prototypes faster than most people expected. The anticipated benefits of this emerging technology include safer, faster and more eco-friendly transportation. But, says Nees, we sh...

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in landmark case, Obergefell v. Hodges, that Same-Sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states. Today on the program we get your reaction, as well as the opinion of Utah's only openly gay politician, Senator James Dabakis, D-Salt Lake City, and Gay rights activist Derek Kitchen, who was the namesake of the Kitchen v Herbert Case that led to the strike dow...

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, and President Obama says the ACA is "here to stay." What's next for health care in Utah? What does this mean for you? We'll open the phone lines, email and Twitter for your comment or question and we'll look at possible expansion of Medicaid in Utah and related issues on a special edition of Access Utah. Joining us from...

It was 2004, and Sean McFate had a mission in Burundi: to keep the president alive and prevent the country from spiraling into genocide, without anyone knowing that the United States was involved. The United States was, of course, involved, but only through McFate's employer, the military contractor DynCorp International. Throughout the world, similar scenarios are playing out daily. The United St...

There are many needs in our communities, and there are dedicated individuals and nonprofits working to meet those needs. They sometimes don’t get the recognition they deserve, and you may want to help somehow but don’t know where and how. On Wednesday’s AU we’re opening the phone lines, email and Twitter and giving you the opportunity to spotlight a nonprofit or individual doing good in your commu...

Ken Valyear, Lecturer in cognitive neuroscience at Bangor University, writes in the Conversation that “Erik Sorto, 34, has been paralysed from the neck down for the past 13 years. However, thanks to a ground-breaking clinical trial [conducted by scientists at Caltech and USC], he has been able to smoothly drink a bottle of beer using a robotic arm controlled with his mind. He is the first patient...

Logan attorney Herm Olsen recently spent several weeks in the South Pacific island nation of Palau, helping the legal community there to make a transition to the jury trial system. Palau uses the American judicial system, but until recently they didn't allow for jury trials. Olsen reports to the Logan Herald Journal that "The Palauans were somewhat skeptical about a jury system, They said, 'Why do...

The Mau Mau Rebellion was a military conflict that took place from 1950 to 1962 in British Kenya. The Mau Mau failed to capture widespread public support partly due to the British policy of divide, conquer and rule. The movement remained divided despite attempts to unify its many arms . Today on the program author Laura Lee discusses one man's history as a Mau Mau General and how he broke through...

Since 2003, StoryCorps has collected and archived more than 50,000 interviews with over 100,000 participants. Each conversation is recorded on a CD to share, and is preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. StoryCorps is one of the largest oral history projects of its kind, and millions listen to their weekly broadcasts on NPR’s Morning Edition. StoryCorps’ mission is “...

Our guest on Tuesday's AU is Mary Norris, who has spent more than three decades in The New Yorker's copy department. She's out with a new book "Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen" in which she addresses some of the most common and vexing problems in spelling, punctuation, and usage―comma faults, danglers, "who" vs. "whom," "that" vs. "which," compound words, gender-neutral language―and...

Readers of physical books leave traces: marginalia, slips of paper, fingerprints, highlighting, inscriptions. All books have histories, and libraries are not just collections of books and databases, but a medium of long-distance communication with other writers and readers.

Biologist Niall McCann has made capturing the world's most dangerous creatures his part-time career, the rest of time he is at school working on his PhD focused on the much less threatening animal, the tapir.

Sandhill Cranes are some of the best-known, and loved, birds in the United States. Their tall stature and echoing calls combined with their close association with agricultural fields makes them easy to locate and instantly recognizable. But there is far more to cranes than meets the eye. These magnificent birds have been part of the North American landscape for more than 9 million years. They have...

David McCullough, widely-acclaimed as a master of the art of narrative history, joins us for Wednesday’s AU to talk about his latest book, “The Wright Brothers.” McCullough has twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for “Truman” and “John Adams,” and twice received the National Book Award, for “The Path Between the Seas” and “Mornings on Horseback.” His other, widely- praised, books include “1776,” “B...

Utah author John Starley Allen joins us for the hour today. His latest book (from Cedar Fort Press) is "A Splash of Kindness: The Ripple Effect of Compassion, Courage & Character." Allen says that the little things you do make a big difference and small acts of goodness have a ripple effect and eventually change the world. He'll tell true stories of positive change, including stories of Romanian o...

Arizona State University Professors Ben Minteer and Stephen Pyne say that from John Muir to David Brower, from the creation of Yellowstone National Park to the Endangered Species Act, environmentalism in America has always had close to its core a preservationist ideal. Generations have been inspired by its ethos—to encircle nature with our protection, to keep it apart, pristine, walled against the...

For the first time scientists have dissected, from skin to blood and bones, a life-like Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur. The massive creature was one of the fiercest carnivores in the history of the planet. On Friday's AU, Sheri Quinn talks with the paleontologist leading the T. rex Autopsy, which is featured on the National Geographic Channel Sunday night. Then, Science Questions explores new studies...

Ferguson, Cleveland, Baltimore...Utah. Officer-involved shootings and incidents continue to happen and to concern us, and Utah has not been immune to these issues. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the first three homicides of 2015 were officer-involved shootings, and the Deseret News reports that so far this year police in Utah have shot and killed four people and wounded at least one. The Utah...