Access Utah

The Personal Librarian is a historical novel about J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict, and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

In a 6-3, party-line vote, the Salt Lake County Council votes to overturn the public health school mask order issued by county health director Dr. Angela Dunn. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issues a call to its members to wear masks and get vaccinated. And new census figures cement Utah's place as the fastest growing state in the nation.

“Sleeper Agent” is the story of the only Soviet military spy to have full security clearance in America’s top-secret project to build the first atomic bomb. He was a U.S. soldier born and raised in Iowa who charmed everyone he met, loved baseball and Walt Whitman, and all the while he was sending atomic secrets to Moscow to help build their own atomic bomb. He was never caught.

Today we’ll talk with Senator Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, the first Asian American woman and the only immigrant currently serving in the U.S. Senate. Her new memoir "Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter’s Story" is an inspiring account of one woman coming into her personal and political power, a heartwarming homage to the women who raised her, and a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most fraught moments of the Trump administration.

St. Anne’s Retreat, located in Logan Canyon, is well-known to Cache Valley residents due to the folklore of the place: tales of demonic nuns, evil witches, murdered babies, and more. Often referred to as “The Nunnery,” the site is a hub for thrill-seekers who trespass onto the property to see for themselves if the stories are true.

Part memoir, part meditation on poetry, part conversation with her husband, friends, and the many animals that live with and around her, Katharine Coles’s The Stranger I Become probes the permeable boundary between inner life and outer, thought and action, science and experience. Coles begins this collection of lyric essays with a meditation on walking, and “the urge to move beyond, to understand myself as a stranger, estranged.”

Quoting the Salt Lake Tribune: “In response to the uproar over critical race theory, the Utah Board of Education has approved a new set of standards that spell out what teachers can — and especially what they cannot — say to their students about ethnicity, inclusion, equity and culture.” The Utah Legislature has also passed resolutions on the topic. Today we’ll try to define what Critical Race Theory is and isn’t and talk about what should and shouldn’t be taught in Utah’s K-12 schools.

In 2019, Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal was commissioned to write a poem commemorating the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad’s completion. The result is “West: A Translation:” a linked collection of poems that responds to a Chinese elegy carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station where Chinese migrants to the United States were detained. “West” translates this elegy character by character through the lens of Chinese and other transcontinental railroad workers’ histories, and through the railroad’s cultural impact on America.

Today we’re doing another non-profit spotlight. There are many needs in our communities and many step up to help. We’d love to shine a light on your favorite non-profit or individual doing good in your community.

In his new book, Last Best Hope, award-winning author and staff writer at The Atlantic George Packer explores the four narratives that now dominate American life and describe our divides: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups that inflict or suffer oppression.

It sometimes seems like life is nothing but conflict these days, with heated disagreements on Social Media and around the dinner table. And you may be dreading a high-stakes conversation in your near future. Next time on Access Utah we’ll talk with consultant and USU lecturer Clair Canfield.

Jean Lowe is an American pop/conceptual multimedia artist whose work carefully and humorously unpacks the ironies and challenges of our 21st-century culture. Lowe employs wit and satire to create work that is both entertaining and seductive as well as intellectually provocative. Her work revolves around the intersection of popular culture, environmentalism, commerce, politics, and art history.

Next time on Access Utah, we’ll present another live episode of Debunked, the only Utah podcast combining evidence-based health practices with storytelling to challenge the stereotypes, and debunk the myths about harm reduction, substance use disorders and homelessness. This time we’re debunking the myth, “There are plenty of resources but people just don’t want the help.”

Witty, inspiring, and charismatic, Oscar Wilde is one of the Greats of English literature. Today, his plays and stories are beloved around the world. But it was not always so. His afterlife has given him the legitimacy that life denied him.

In the span of a single lifetime, light pollution stemming from Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) has severed the connection with the stars that we’ve had since the dawn of time. With the nocturnal biosphere significantly altered, light’s anthropogenic influence has compelled millions of people to seek out the last remaining dark skies.

Dr. Susan Madsen, Director of The Utah Women & Leadership Project (UWLP) at Utah State University will join us on Tuesday’s Access Utah to talk about new research from UWLP into how the pandemic has affected women and work, specifically focusing on caregiver experiences.

Christine Montross has spent her career treating the most severely ill psychiatric patients. Several years ago, she set out to investigate why so many of her patients became caught up in the legal system when discharged from her care—and what happened to them in that legal system.

8:36 P.M. EST, December 12, 1972: Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt braked to a stop alongside Nansen Crater, keenly aware that they were far, far from home. They had flown nearly a quarter-million miles to the man in the moon’s left eye, landed at its edge, and then driven five miles into this desolate, boulder-strewn landscape. As they gathered samples, they strode at the outermost edge of mankind’s travels. This place, this moment, marked the extreme of exploration for a species born to wander.

In his memoir, “The Weight of Shadows,” José Orduña chronicles the process of becoming a North American citizen in a post-9/11 United States. Intractable realities—rooted in the continuity of US imperialism to globalism—form the landscape of Orduña’s daily experience, where the geopolitical meets the quotidian.