RadioWest

Steven Spielberg has been making movies about aliens since the 1960s, and his interest is key to understanding the ongoing American fascination with UFOs, too.

The journalist McKay Coppins wasn’t a gambling man. But when his employer The Atlantic staked him $10,000 to bet on the 2025 NFL season, he couldn’t say no.

To a lot of people, the political challenges facing the country today feel unique in American history, but the historian Greg Jackson says that’s just not true.

Jeff Strong was devastated when his son left the LDS Church. It was a familial rupture that led him to ask difficult questions about the experience of being Mormon today.

Summer is officially here, which means it’s time to gather our trio of local booksellers to hear their picks for what to read poolside, beachside or wherever else you’re spending time this vacation season.

“The Chosen” is a TV drama about the life of Jesus — and it’s grown into a worldwide phenomenon. Now it’s paving the way for other Christian entertainment.

In the future, artificial intelligence will make us either centaurs or reverse-centaurs. If that made no sense at all, Cory Doctorow is joining us to explain.

Enslaved African-Americans in Texas didn’t learn they’d been freed until weeks after the Civil War officially ended — when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to break the news.

A massive data center proposed in Box Elder County received approval from county commissioners weeks ago, and yet the shape of the plan remains very much up in the air. Salt Lake Tribune reporter Megan Banta joins us to discuss where things currently stand.

Multilevel marketing is something of an American tradition. A new book tells the story of the money-making schemes that continue to ensnare people today.

Dogs have long stood beside us, not just in life, but in art as well. In a new book, cultural historian Thomas Laqueur explores why dogs, more than any other animal, so often figure in the way we picture ourselves.

College sports are getting more expensive. To meet rising costs, the University of Utah is doing something no other school has tried: a private equity partnership.

There’s a mismatch between what people say about marriage and what they really do about it. Stephanie Coontz’s book explains how we got here and where we could go.

Lewis and Clark’s expedition is the stuff of American legend. Craig Fehrman’s new book highlights the people who helped make the journey possible.

Justin R. Garcia is the director of the Kinsey Institute, the famed sex research institution. He’s joining us to talk about his new book, “The Intimate Animal.”

There are 48 data centers currently in operation across Utah. Few of them received public attention as they went through the public planning process. But the data centers currently in development are being put under the public’s microscope. Deseret News reporter Art Raymond and New York Times reporter Karen Weise join us to help understand why that is.

These days, we take the polarization of faith in America for granted: Christians are mostly conservative, and liberals are hardly religious at all. But it wasn’t always this way.

The Stratos Project, a massive data center planned for Box Elder County, has run up against equally massive public opposition, even as state officials champion its benefits. A panel of local journalists joins us to help make sense of the debate.

The chronically-online young men pushing Republicans further right are called “Groypers.” The journalist Antonia Hitchens explores their extremist agenda.

As big freighters go, the Edmund Fitzgerald was the biggest, the best and the most profitable ship on the Great Lakes. Then, on Nov. 10, 1975, facing gale-force winds and 50-foot waves, the ship sank, taking all 29 men aboard her down into the icy depths of Lake Superior.