Access Utah

Monday on Access Utah we feature an encore presentation of a program first aired in July 2013:

One of the most talked about species in Utah these days is the Greater Sage Grouse. This native, chicken-like bird, is at the forefront of controversy due to its unique mating ritual and its dwindling numbers in the west. As a result of its disappearance, the federal government is considering listing it is an endangered species, the state of Utah would like to avoid this and protect the bird on it...

Scott Hammond and his golden retriever, Dusty, are volunteer search and rescue workers with Rocky Mountain Rescue Dogs. In his new book, “Lessons of the Lost: Finding Hope and Resilience in Work, Life, and the Wilderness,” Hammond says that wilderness can be unforgiving and dangerous, yet fill our souls with awe and wonder and that the wilderness is a classroom where we learn to survive, thrive an...

Tamar Haspel, writing for the Washington Post, vividly describes the debate over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs,) “It’s not just genetic modification. We’re arguing about organics, honeybees, factory livestock, fishery depletion, aquaculture, yields, antibiotics, monocrops and chemicals. Some of these can be as polarizing as the most difficult social issues; there’s as deep a schism in the f...

The Utah Health Policy Project has been presenting “Health Care 101” events to show how the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) is being implementing in Utah. Utah residents have until March 31st to enroll in new private insurance on healthcare.gov.

Gary Paul Nabhan is a nature writer, food and farming activist, and proponent of conserving the links between biodiversity and cultural diversity. He has been honored as a pioneer in the local food movement and seed saving community by Utne Reader, Mother Earth News, New York Times, Bioneers and Time magazine. As the W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Arizo...

In his book, “The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society,” Notre Dame History Professor Brad Gregory shows how the unsolved doctrinal disagreements and religious and political conflicts of 16th- and 17th-century Europe continue to influence American political, social, intellectual, and economic life today. He asks what propelled the West into a trajectory of plurali...

On today's Encore presentation of Access Utah, Sheri Quinn meets with Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, a group of over 300 medical doctors, last year declared an air-pollution public health emergency on Capitol Hill. The problem has been so bad that it drew a crowd of about 5,000 citizens to the State Capitol in late January, now regarded as the largest air-pollution-specific protest in...

Political satirist and “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” panelist, P.J. O’Rourke, trains his eye on his own generation in his new book, “THE BABY BOOM: How It Got That Way…And It Wasn’t My Fault…And I’ll Never Do It Again.” O’Rourke writes, “Yes, we’re spoiled rotten. We’re self-absorbed. And it seems like we’ll never shut up. But the boomers made a better world for everyone else. You’re welcome.” P.J....

U. S. House Republican Leaders recently outlined principles they believe should be followed in any overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws. This has raised hopes that immigration reform might move forward in Congress. What you think: Path to citizenship? Increased border security? What’s needed most? Or should this issue not be a priority? Do you have a personal experience or concern regarding i...

This is an encore presentation of Access Utah, originally broadcast in May 2013.

Dr. Vernon L. Smith was teaching at Purdue in 1955 when he decided to test out an approach he hoped would help his students better understand how the marketplace functions. He conducted a classroom experiment that had half his students selling fictitious goods to the other students who were acting as buyers. That led to his research in experimental economics which eventually won him the Nobel Priz...

For the first fourteen years of their marriage, Utah residents Curtis and Pauline Hansen had it all--laughter, babies, vacations, and ball games--but the nine years that follow define their future, and it all begins with a dream. Curtis believes his dream to be direct revelation that they will receive a very large sum of money, but to receive it, they must play and win what is revealed to Curtis a...

The title of a recent rally at the State Capitol aptly describes the feelings of many Utahns: “Clean Air, No Excuses.” We’re going to open the phones and email to you on Tuesday’s AU to tell us what your experience has been with this bad air. And: how do we solve the problem? What to do in the meantime? We’ll also be talking with rally organizer, Carl Ingwell; and with members of the newly-formed...

On the opening day of the 2014 Utah Legislature we’re at the State Capitol. We’ll speak with Utah Governor Gary Herbert; Senate Majority Leader Ralph Okerlund; Senate Minority Leader Gene Davis; House Majority Leader Brad Dee; and House Assistant Minority Whip Rebecca Chavez-Houck. We’ll discuss air quality, education, the economy, Medicaid expansion, the budget and more.

Welcome to Access Utah. The Utah State University Science Unwrapped series this winter and spring focuses on "SuperPower Scientists." Today on the program, Sheri Quinn talks to tonight's featured speaker astro-physicist Lucianne Walkowicz about NASA's Kepler Mission and the search for planets.

Monday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day; so designated because January 27, 1945 was the day that the largest Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated by Soviet troops. We’ll mark the occasion on Thursday by revisiting a conversation with Eva Kor, a Holocaust survivor and victim of Dr. Josef Mengele’s medical experiments on twins at Auschwitz. Mengele was given the name “Angel o...

M. B. McLatchey is recipient of the May Swenson Poetry Award for “The Lame God,” a collection of powerful poems on a very sensitive subject: the kidnap and murder of a young girl. Using the art of poetry she gives voice to a suffering—and a love—that might otherwise go unheard. Philip Brady says of this collection, “in magisterial cadences, this powerful poetic sequence gives voice to the unspeaka...

Jared Farmer’s new book is “Trees in Paradise: A California History.” We’ll also talk about Utah history, and Farmer will offer his list of iconic Utah trees as well. California now has more trees than at any time since the late Pleistocene. This green landscape, however, is not the work of nature. It's the work of history. In the years after the Gold Rush, American settlers remade the California...

In 2011, with U.S.–Iran relations at a thirty-year low, Iranian-American writer Hooman Majd decided to take his blonde, blue-eyed Midwestern wife Karri and his infant son Khash from their Brooklyn neighborhood to spend a year in the land of his birth. “The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay” traces their domestic adventures and tracks the political drama of a terrible year for Iran's gov...

It’s all there in “Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies” (from University of Utah Press) -- The Three Nephites, The Beehive, Creative Date Invitations, BYU Coed Jokes, The Folklore of Mormon Missionaries, The Apocalypse, and more. “Latter-day Lore” explores society, symbols, and landscape of regional culture; formative customs and traditions; the sacred and the supernatural; pioneers, heroes,...

Utah State University ecologist Daniel McGlinn was part of a research team that created the largest evolutionary "time-tree" of plants. This tree is helping scientists understand how plants evolved to tolerate frigid winter temperatures. Today on the program Sheri Quinn talks to McGlinn about the project and his field of study macro-ecology.

It’s been an eventful few weeks: First, a federal judge struck down Utah’s laws against gay marriage, including Constitutional Amendment 3, which defined marriage as only between a man and a woman. More than a thousand gay and lesbian couples were married across the state. Then, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay as the ruling was appealed to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Now Governor...

A group called the Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) says that In light of Utah’s growing air quality concerns and the real and potential effects of climate instability, the time to act is now. The purposes of Citizens Climate Lobby are: 1) to create the political will for a stable climate; and 2) to empower individuals to have breakthroughs in exercising their personal and political power They engage...

“The gap between rich and poor has never been wider . . . legislative stalemate paralyzes the country . . . corporations resist federal regulations . . . spectacular mergers produce giant companies . . . the influence of money in politics deepens . . . bombs explode in crowded streets . . . small wars proliferate far from our shores . . . a dizzying array of inventions speeds the pace of daily lif...