Access Utah

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...

In the wake of the recent expiration of key provisions of the Patriot Act, our guest for the hour on Wednesday's AU is Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr., former Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate's Church Committee on Intelligence, and author of the new book: "Democracy in the Dark: The Seduction of Government Secrecy" (The New Press) which explores key questions such as: how much secrecy does good gover...

According to the Deseret News National Edition: "In the spring of 2009, California-based writer Sharael Kolberg did the math and estimated that she spent four months of her year using some form of entertainment technology - whether watching TV or surfing the Internet. So Kolberg, 44, proposed a bold plan to her husband, a marketing executive, and their 5-year-old daughter: rid their home of all te...

While the wealthy stay wet in lush high-rise cities, the poor are forced to pay $6.00-plus for a gallon of water, and struggle to find ways north through militarized state lines. That's the frighteningly-plausible future depicted in Paolo Bacigalupi's new novel "The Water Knife."

On Thursday's AU we revisit our conversation with Jennifer Jacquet, author of "Is Shame Necessary? New Uses for an Old Tool."Robert Sapolsky (author of Monkeyluv) says: "In the age of Anthony Weiner and Miley Cyrus, shame seems an antiquated concept-a quaint tool of conformity-obsessed collectivist societies, replete with scarlet letters and loss of face ..." Jacquet says that in recent years, we...

Former Cache Valley resident Denice Turner has released a new book. “Worthy” is a memoir of loss and the search for acceptance. Raised in a Mormon household, she strives to find her place in the Church, and longs to be worthy of her mother’s love. When her mother dies in a suspicious house fire, Turner is forced to face the stories she has inherited. Contemplating the price of worthiness, she grap...

Dave DeWitt is one of the world’s foremost authorities on chile peppers and spicy foods. He is a food historian and an associate professor in the College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at New Mexico State University, and co-producer of the National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show. He is author of more than fifty books, mostly on chile peppers and fiery foods, but also including no...

“At All Costs” details the life of Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard L. Etchberger, a Pennsylvania native who was among 12 U.S. airmen killed March 11, 1968, when a North Vietnamese Army special forces team scaled a 3,000-foot cliff and attacked their secret radar camp.

Welcome to Access Utah. The new book "Pig Tales: An Omnivore's Quest for Sustainable Meat" will make you think twice about eating bacon. Author Barry Estabrook investigates the pork industry from the big factory farms to the small heritage pig farms, where pigs are raised on pastures instead of slaughterhouses. He reveals the intelligence of pigs through stories about pigs using computers and he w...

"Cars, for Americans, more than anything else represent freedom." So says Matt Hardigree, executive director of Jalopnik.com, who is featured in National Geographic Channel's new documentary film, "Driving America," which premieres on Memorial Day. The film examines how car culture has changed the way we live, work, travel and socialize; and looks into the future, including potential game changers...

Access Utah is presenting a periodic series of conversations on the hotly-debated topic of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs.) Our last such program, a few months ago, presented the case for GMOs. Wednesday on AU, public interest attorney Steven Druker will present a vigorous case against GMOs. Mr. Druker initiated a lawsuit that, according to him, forced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (...

How do you sum up a life? What do you include and what do you leave out? Heather Lende, author of the new book "Find the Good," is the obituary writer for the Chilkat Valley News in a beautiful but often dangerous spit of land in Alaska. She says "we are all writing our own obituary every day by how we live." Shanan Ballam, who teaches Creative Writing at Utah State University, wrote her brother D...

In the 1960s, humans took their first steps away from Earth, and for a time our possibilities in space seemed endless. But in a time of austerity and in the wake of high-profile disasters like Challenger, that dream seems to have ended. In early 2011, Margaret Lazarus Dean traveled to Cape Canaveral for NASA's last three space shuttle launches in order to bear witness to the end of an era.

The Coast Guard aviation community consists of approximately 800 pilots. They’re some of the best pilots in the world. Today Sheri Quinn talks to helicopter pilot Rick Hipes who served two decades in the Coast Guard, where he rescued people in the seas and mountains, and on the ground in cities. He also helped capture one of the world's most notorious drug traffickers.

In 1891, Lucien L. Nunn, working with Nicola Tesla and George Westinghouse, Jr., pioneered the world’s first commercial production of high-tension alternating current (AC) for long-distance transmission—something Thomas Edison deemed dangerous and irresponsible. After creating the Telluride Power Company, Nunn constructed the state-of-the-art Olmsted Power Plant in Provo Canyon and the Ontario Pow...

Joe Hill, labor icon and songwriter for the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, was executed by a Utah firing squad in November, 1915, after being convicted of two murders in a controversial trial. To commemorate the centenary of Hill's death, Folk musician and labor activist John McCutcheon is releasing a new album "Joe Hill's Last Will" which grew out of a one-man play of the same name...

In a time of excess for many, some are living with less. A lot less! Tiny living has become increasingly popular in the past few years and today on Access Utah we'll talk about this thirst for simplicity, how it's changing the lives of those who live this way, how it's affecting the environment around them, and if Tiny Houses could be in the future for more of us. Our guests include Christopher Sm...

The producers of the new documentary film "The True Cost" note that there has been a 500% increase in clothing consumption in the past two decades, and that the U.S. has gone from producing more than 90% of its clothing in the 1960s to just three percent today. They say that the price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically.

Welcome to Access Utah. Small farmers are increasingly women these days. They are currently raking in roughly 13 billion dollars in produce every year. Today on the program, Sheri Quinn talks to Audrey Levatino, a female farmer, who left her teaching job to start a small sustainable farm selling cut flowers, pretty much all by herself. She is the author of "Woman Powered Farm."

We'll dive into some great Mariachi music and learn its history on Thursday's AU. We'll talk about how Mariachi music conveys Mexican culture, in Mexico and around the world, and we'll hear music performed by Lila Downs, Selena, and Vicente and Alejandro Fernandez, among others.

Homesickness today is dismissed as a sign of immaturity: It's what children feel at summer camp. But in the nineteenth century it was recognized as a powerful emotion. When gold miners in California heard the tune "Home, Sweet Home," they sobbed. When Civil War soldiers became homesick, army doctors sent them home, lest they die. Such images don't fit with our national mythology, which celebrates...