Access Utah

“In our region fire is to dry forests as rain is to rainforests; both are important in the life of a forest to provide clean water, climate stabilization, hunting and fishing, outdoor recreation and wildlife habitat. A fire does not destroy a forest; rather, it simply resets nature’s clock as it has been doing for millennia,” said Chad Hanson, Director and Ecologist with the John Muir Project, Ear...

On Monday's Access Utah we discuss the recruitment of western peoples by ISIS, the extremist militant group terrorizing Iraq and Syria. The group, utilizing social media, has managed to lure thousands of young adults from the United States, Canada and Europe to join their efforts in the Middle East. On the program today we speak with Christianne Bourdreau, a Canadian mother whose works to prevent...

Joe Hill was a Swedish immigrant, a songwriter, a worker and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies. He was a prolific songwriter for his union, which contributed to the IWW’s growth in the early 20th century AS a singing union. While working in Utah, he was accused of a double homicide, which he likely did not commit. Despite an international campaign to save him, which inc...

Author Leanne Brown moved to New York from Canada to earn a master’s degree in food studies at New York University. Facing the reality that 46 million Americans have to survive on only $4/day, her focus soon became food insecurity, and more specifically the question: how well can someone really eat on $4 a day? That’s the amount provided through the U.S. government’s food stamp program. To determi...

During its sometimes awkward years of adolescence and maturation, Utah was gradually incorporated into the American political, social, and economic mainstream. Urban and industrial influences supplanted agrarian traditions, displacing people socially, draining the countryside of population, and galvanizing a critical crisis in values and self-identification. National corporations and mass labor mo...

As Holly Isaac sees it, Planned Parenthood saved her life.

Research on human beings saves countless lives, but has at times harmed the participants. To what degree then should government regulate science, and how? The horrors of Nazi concentration camp experiments and the egregious Tuskegee syphilis study led the US government, in 1974, to establish Research Ethics Committees, known as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to oversee research on humans. The...

Anyone would be hard-pressed to find a pastime more emblematic of the western spirit than fly-fishing. Liberating, poetic, wild, soothing and inspiring, it pushes the boundaries of the mind. In essays ranging from introspective to ironic, angler authors Chadd VanZanten and Russ Beck distill the purest truths of fly-fishing into essential, often humorous rules of thumb. With kernels like "always te...

In the spring of 1983, a massive snowmelt sent runoff racing down the Colorado River toward the Glen Canyon Dam. Worried federal officials desperately scrambled to avoid a worst-case scenario: one of the most dramatic dam failures in history. In the midst of this crisis, a trio of river guides secretly launched a small, hand-built wooden boat, a dory named the Emerald Mile, into the Colorado just...

Journalist, advocate, and teacher, Michael frome has spent decades engaged with conversation and America’s national parks. From this experience and knowledge he understands what challenges remain and what momentum must be recovered to revitalize and preserve these special places. Part memoir, part history, and part broadside against those who would diminish our natural heritage, Rediscovering Nati...

Jamie Bianchini needed a lift. A big one. After a series of spectacular business flops drove him into bankruptcy and the love of his life kissed him goodbye, Bianchini knew he needed a world of help. But instead of seeking assistance from a counselor or support group, he sought comfort where he’d always found it…on his bicycle. As his world hit rock bottom, Bianchini hatched a crazy plan that just...

Gina Barnett has coached C-suite executives and leaders worldwide from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups, small businesses and non-profits. She has been speaker coach for TED TAlks for the past five years. In her new book, “Play the Part: Master Body Signals to Connect and Communicate for Business Success, Barnett is distinguished from other communication experts with her understanding of embodim...

On March 12, 1990, activists with disabilities pulled themselves up the 83 stone steps at the Capitol Building to demand equal rights. “The Capitol Crawl” symbolized the barriers confronting people with disabilities and helped propel the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. The bill passed on July 26, 1990.

Today, August 10th, marks the debut of many new programs on Utah Public Radio. Bringing more news, talk and culture to the station, we sit down with Utah Public Radio Station Manager Peg Arnold, to discuss the programming changes, and the exciting new content you can now find on UPR.

Thursday on Access Utah we revisit a conversation from March of 2011 with singer-songwriter Janis Ian. Her song “Society’s Child” about an interracial romance placed her right at the flash point of the racial tensions of the sixties. She writes in her autobiography about at least one experience performing the song: “I was having a hit record. I was singing for people who wanted me dead. I was fift...

I’ve had conversations with scientists that go like this: I say: “A significant percentage of Americans/Utahns don’t believe in human-caused climate change.” They say: “But they should, the science is overwhelming.” “But they don’t, and if effective political action is going to happen, they’ll need to be convinced.” “Well they should.” “But they don’t.” “But they should.” And etc. While it’s not s...

Tuesday's interview with James Anderson is an encore presentation.

Today's broadcast of AU is an Encore presentation which originally aired earlier this year.

“This summer Congress finds itself once again driving full-speed toward the ‘highway cliff,’ the moment when our transportation law expires and Washington suddenly can't meet its promises to help states build highways, fix their bridges, and keep the nation's cars and trucks moving.”

In 2005, historian James Whiteside bought a Harley Davidson Heritage Softail, christened it “Old Blue,” and set off on a series of motorcycle adventures. Over six years he traveled more than 15,000 miles. In his new book “Old Blue’s Road” Whiteside recounts his travels to the Pacific Northwest, Yellowstone, Dodge City, Santa Fe, Wounded Knee, and many other places and considers the ongoing struggl...

Should Spanking Children Be Forbidden in the U.S.? Renowned criminologist Christian Pfeiffer from University of Hannover, Germany recently presented the European experience as a of the USU Provost’s Series on Instructional Excellence, and he joined us for AU. We’ll revisit that conversation today.

On Tuesday’s AU we’ll look at the problem of homelessness with author Elaine Taylor, who writes in her new book "Karma Deception and a Pair of Red Ferraris" of how she came to find her self dedicated to helping the homeless. Previously Taylor wrote on her blog, “the best of my life is behind me. I’m entering the period of throat wattles and colonoscopies every five years … and uselessness. Irrelev...

From their earliest days on the American frontier through their growth into a worldwide church, the spatially expansive Mormons made maps to help them create idealized communities, migrate to and colonize large parts of the American West, visualize the stories in their sacred texts, and spread their message internationally through a well-organized missionary system. This book identifies many Mormo...

“Many scientists say it’s impossible to study thought and emotion in non-humans. Animals, they say, don’t communicate their inner turmoil through spoken word, which is why any attempt to understand their psyche is typically sneered at as ‘anthropomorphism’ (transferring your own experiences and emotions onto the animals you study) and deemed ‘unscientific,’” writes Becca Cudmore on www.audobon.org...

On Tuesday's Access Utah we're airing interviews conducted in Vernal, while the Utah Public Radio team visited the Utah StoryCorps Booth. Vernal, and much of the Uintah Basin, are a community very much tied to oil and gas development, so we talk about the issues the area faces as their economy depends on oil industry. We speak with Vernal City Council member JoAnn Cowan, Vernal City Manager Ken Ba...