Small Lake City

Utah summer can feel like two stories happening at once: the mountains and red rock are calling, while wildfires and heat keep raising the stakes. We start with a clear update on the state’s biggest blazes, including the Babylon Fire in San Juan County crossing 100,000 acres and becoming the largest active wildfire in the United States. I break down what “containment” really looks like on the grou...

A museum director who still gets asked “What’s your favorite dinosaur?” might sound like a dream job, but Jason Cryan’s story is more surprising than that. Jason leads the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City, and his path runs from a Vermont childhood shaped by the outdoors, to tropical entomology, to building genetics labs and advocating for teams of scientists inside major natural h...

The biggest story in Utah right now is fire, and it’s changing how all of us should think about summer. We break down the latest on the Cottonwood Fire near Beaver, now stretching across an area that puts it in the conversation with the most significant wildfires in Utah history. You’ll hear the real-world impacts, from closures and evacuations to the early estimate of structures lost, plus why of...

A lot of people leave a high-demand religion and end up with either a scorched-earth break or a lifetime of quiet resentment. We wanted a third option, so we called up Eli: a gay, ex-LDS writer and lawyer who somehow keeps deep, loving ties with a still-practicing Mormon family while staying honest about why he left. The result is a Salt Lake City conversation about faith, identity, and what it ta...

Smoke is hanging over the Salt Lake Valley, the mountains are barely visible, and it’s not just “summer haze.” We break down what’s behind Utah’s rough early wildfire season, which major fires are driving the worst of the air right now, and what Stage 1 fire restrictions actually mean for real life. If you’ve been wondering whether it’s safe to run outside, take your kids to the park, or hit the t...

A lot of people see the highlight clip and assume the rest is luck. Tom Wallisch doesn’t. From lapping small hills outside Pittsburgh to becoming one of the defining names in modern freestyle skiing, Tom breaks down the unglamorous parts that made the glamorous moments possible: repetition, confidence built from community, and learning how to evolve when the sport evolves. We talk about the early...

Your costs in Salt Lake City are changing fast, and the numbers are finally on the table. We walk through the newly adopted Salt Lake City budget and translate it into what residents actually feel: a 12.5% increase to the city’s portion of property taxes, utility rate increases that can add more than $32 a month for a typical household, and the end of the discounted Hive transit pass. We also expl...

S2, E18: Thieves Guild Cidery - Max Knudsen & Jordy Kirkman A fantasy tavern where you can grab a tankard of cider, play a board game you’ve never seen before, and watch a Dungeons and Dragons campaign unfold at the next table sounds like a gimmick until you hear how Thieves Guild Cidery actually got built. We sit down with Max and Jordy to trace the real story behind one of the most distincti...

A $145 million warehouse near the Salt Lake City airport was supposed to become an ICE “megacenter” holding thousands of people and now the story is shifting fast. We walk through the new joint lawsuit from Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County against DHS and ICE, why leaders say the process was “cloaked in secrecy,” and the detail that has everyone watching the property again: after a reported pau...

A 40-hour scramble to Argentina with a dead computer and zero Spanish. A Japan train sprint with ski bags, closed ticket counters, and strangers translating “three stops” into pure stress. And back home in Utah, a kid getting towed into illegal jumps behind a Honda Civic because that is what ski culture looked like before everything was documented. This conversation with pro skier and ski builder...

A 16-year-old signs with a pro club, steps into an adult locker room, and says the people in charge never built basic protections around him. That’s the heart of the biggest Salt Lake City story we’re unpacking this week: a major Real Salt Lake lawsuit filed by former goalkeeper Jeffrey Duznup against RSL, Major League Soccer, and the U.S. Soccer Federation. We walk through the allegations, what’s...

A lot of people talk about “networking,” but we wanted to get honest about what actually holds a life together when things get hard: reciprocity, loyalty, and the people who show up when you have nothing to offer. We start with the awkward truth about perks and connections, then pull the thread into something bigger, how success can reveal who is really in your corner and why one-way relationships...

Utah’s leaders are telling all of us to conserve water, fix leaks, and rethink thirsty lawns, and they’re right to. But the same week Governor Spencer Cox declares a statewide drought emergency, he also publicly admits the Stratos data center rollout “was not that good,” a major reversal on a massive Box Elder County proposal tied to the Great Salt Lake. We sit with that contradiction and unpack w...

Once someone working for the LDS church and creating temple dresses became a voice for womens rights. Rosie Card, a Utah creator and writer whose path through Mormonism is about as classic as it gets: BYU, a mission, church work, and even running a temple dress company for nearly a decade. What makes her story hit is how clearly she names the tension so many people feel in Salt Lake City and beyon...

A project pitched as “the future” is running straight through the most sensitive nerve in Utah: the Great Salt Lake. I break down the latest developments in the proposed O’Leary Digital data center campus in Hansel Valley, including the procedural twist that has people fired up. After thousands of formal protests, the developers withdrew a water-rights application, then immediately refiled under H...

He built a life around skiing, then rebuilt his identity around a camera and now he’s rebuilding it again as a startup founder. Adam Barker joins us to talk about the real mechanics behind an “overnight success” in outdoor photography: the grit from team sports, the obsession that made him chase better skiers, and the unglamorous work of planning shots, directing athletes, and executing when condi...

The Utah Jazz just got the kind of lottery luck that should feel like a party, and somehow it still stings. We break down what it means to jump to the No. 2 overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, why losing out on BYU star AJ DeBanza hits a nerve across the state, and what the next few weeks could look like as the trade-up question hangs in the air. I also look at the roster context and why a top-two...

Homelessness in Salt Lake City gets treated like a debate, but on the street and inside shelters it’s a web of housing costs, addiction, trauma, mental health, and the gaps between systems. We sit down with AJ and Dan from Volunteers of America Utah, a 40 year nonprofit that works right at those intersections, to talk about what actually helps and what gets in the way. We unpack how VOA Utah opera...

A single vote in Box Elder County just set off one of the biggest Utah fights in years: a proposed mega data center campus on the northern edge of the Great Salt Lake, backed by O’Leary Digital and shepherded by MIDA. The numbers are staggering, from the sheer land footprint to an on-site natural gas plant proposed at up to 9 gigawatts, more than double Utah’s current electricity use. That’s why s...

Tyler Glenn (Neon Trees) has lived a version of the Utah story a lot of people only whisper about: growing up Mormon, feeling out of place, and using music as the safest room in the house. We talk about what it’s like to build an identity when your faith, your family culture, and your sexuality all pull in different directions, and why “fitting in” can feel like disappearing.  We also rewind the N...

Salt Lake City is moving fast and the headlines prove it. One week we’re celebrating a first-ever NHL playoff win on Utah ice, and the next we’re asking bigger questions about what kind of city we’re becoming and who gets to shape it. We start with a quick nod to the latest conversation with Guy and Debbie Perry of Salt Lake Running Company, because building community in Utah often starts with sha...

You can buy running shoes anywhere, but you can’t buy real guidance, community, and confidence from a dropdown menu. We’re joined by the people behind Salt Lake Running Company, a Salt Lake City run specialty store that’s spent decades proving a simple point: service still wins. We talk about what it’s like to “wake up and go to work” for 30 years, why focus matters when everyone tells you your ni...

Utah can feel like it’s changing by the hour, and this Tuesday update is a quick tour through the stories that reveal what’s really behind that momentum. We start with the AI shift that’s changing how people search for answers and how businesses get discovered, then move straight into the bigger theme I can’t stop noticing: growth that comes with real friction. When Utah talks about becoming a maj...

Google trained all of us to hunt through links. AI is training your customers to ask one question and take one recommendation. That shift is already changing who gets the call, who gets the booking, and who gets ignored even with a beautiful website. We sit down with Dustin, founder of Found For AI, to unpack what “AI search optimization” actually looks like on the ground for local businesses and...

Salt Lake City can feel calm right up until it suddenly is not, and this Tuesday update is proof. We bounce from serious stakes to absurd little moments without losing the thread: what’s happening in town, why it matters, and what it says about the kind of community we’re building. We start with the Great Salt Lake, where the Miller, Marriott, and Magalit families just committed $30 million toward...