Access Utah

Jeff Meldrum is Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University. He is author of “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.” He is a leading expert on Bigfoot or Sasquatch, or the term he prefers: “Relict Hominoid.” He says “...[I]t is one matter to address the theoretical possibility of a relict species of hominoid in North America, and the obligate shift in paradigm to accommodate it, but there must also be something substantial to place within that revised framework. There must be essential evidence to lend weight to the hypotheses, and counter the critics’ various aspersions. I was once confronted by a colleague, who declared, ‘After all, these are just stories.’ My response: ‘Stories that apparently leave tracks, shed hair, void scat, vocalize, are observed and described by reliable experienced witnesses. Hardly just stories.’”

Meatpacking plants in Cache Valley have been hit hard with COVID-19 with several hundred workers diagnosed with the disease in the past several weeks. Community organizations and individuals are trying to provide needed help to the affected families. Some of the workers at the JBS plant in Hyrum staged a walk-out to protest the company’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

This Is Her Place is a new podcast that tells the remarkable stories of Utah women, past and present, in all their diversity. Businesswomen and religious leaders, poets and politicians, healers and homemakers, artists and activists, women in the Beehive state have never fit into easy stereotypes.

Barbara Farris is a retired health education teacher who lives in Cache Valley. Until March of this year she was in Zambia with the Peace Corps DREAMS program.

Derrik Tollefson is Professor of Social Work and head of the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology at Utah State University. He also directs the I-System Institute for Transdisciplinary Studies at USU.

Today on Access Utah, a look at state air quality legislation. This episode was first broadcast in March during the final week of the 2020 session of the Utah Legislature.

Today on Access Utah we revisit a conversation from last year with presenters at the Mountain West Center and Evans Biography Awards Writers Workshop for Auto/Biography.

On Tuesday’s Access Utah, Tom Williams will talk with UNLADYLIKE2020 Executive Producer Sandra Rattley and series creator Charlotte Mangin.

Today on Access Utah, Ginger Gaffney joins us to talk about her memoir “Half Broke," about an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico conducting a daring experiment: setting the troubled residents out to retrain an aggressive herd of horses.

Co-directors of the USU Digital Folklore Project Jeannie Thomas and Lynne McNeill (USU English Department Head and USU Assistant Professor of English, respectively) will join Tom Williams to talk about the 2019 Digital Trends of the Year.

During these times of unrest and uncertainty we’ve been checking in with writers, poets, and musicians. Next time on Access Utah our guest is Craig Jessop, Director of American Festival Chorus and Orchestra and former Director of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, also former Dean of the USU Caine College of the Arts.

In fighting to pass the 19th Amendment, brave suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Emmeline B. Wells fought to end laws and take down barriers that prevented them from voting. Champions of Change introduces young readers not only to Anthony and Wells, but also to a diverse group of firsts and freedom-fighters in America’s fight for equality.

Today a conversation with Wyoming-based writer Craig Johnson. Craig Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Walt Longmire mystery novels, which are the basis for Longmire, the Netflix original drama. Craig Johnson has received many awards for his books. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population twenty-five. His latest novel in the Longmire series is “Land of Wolves.”

A study from the Urban Indian Health Institute found that Utah ranks 8th in the nation for the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

David Maisel (b. 1961, New York) is an artist working in photography and video, and the recipient of a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts.

A team from the University of Southern California has embarked on a 50-state tour to give cybersecurity training to poll workers and state and local campaign staffers who will be the last line of defense against Russian hacking in 2020. The group, called the Election Cybersecurity Initiative, views itself as a bottom-up, grass-roots counterpart to national-level election security efforts led by the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of Russia’s election interference in 2016.” (Washington Post January 30, 2020)

It’s been several days now of unrest, protests, and riots in many cities across the U.S. and the world (including Salt Lake City) since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. We'll talk about it on Access Utah today.

Today, a conversation with Jeff Metcalf about his new novel “Wacko’s City of Fun Carnival.”

The Gates of Eden isa historical novel inspired by Nadene LeCheminant’s great-great-grandmother. When Josephine Bell journeys from the slums of Victorian England to a remote Mormon settlement in Utah, the girl finds the Promised Land is not what she expected. Pressed into becoming the bride of an older polygamist, her struggle to find her own path takes her to unexpected places.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, Utah Public Radio and the Cache County School District, in partnership with the Cache Celebration of Women's Suffrage 2020, sponsored a writing contest for students in elementary, middle, and high school.