Access Utah

Following the death of George Floyd in May, protests across the nation have demanded police reform and an end to systemic racism in policing. Today we’ll talk about how we’re doing with this in Utah. We'll speak with Rep. Sandra Hollins, D-Salt Lake City; and Darlene McDonald, Chairwoman of the Utah Black Roundtable and a member of the newly-created Salt Lake City Commission for Racial Equity in Policing. We'll discuss systemic racism and police reform on the city and state level.

Today we’ll take a look at the Coronavirus pandemic’s effects in Utah jails and prisons. Our guests will include Salt Lake Tribune reporter Jessica Miller; Mayra Cristobal, whose husband has contracted COVID-19 and is incarcerated at the Weber County Jail; and Angie Millgate, whose former husband is incarcerated in the Washington County Jail.

The work of photographer Craig Law is included in an exhibition at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University. The exhibit is called Sky Above, Earth Below: A History of Western Landscape Photography. You can view the exhibit at artmuseum.usu.edu.

Patty Rayman was born with the ability to communicate with animals and has helped thousands of people resolve many types of behavior, health, attitude and relationship issues with their animal companions. In working with all types of animals, she has developed techniques to help people move from conflict to cooperation in their relationships.

Every year for Earth Day, we check in with writer and photographer Stephen Trimble, author of “Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America,” and many other books. This time, Stephen Trimble suggested we also reach out to his friend, ecologist, ethnobotanist and writer, Gary Paul Nabhan.

While artist Chris Terry is known for his contemplative interior landscapes, an exhibition at the USU Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) featured the experimental work he was able to create during four sabbaticals throughout his tenure at USU.

Today we talk with Heather Lende about her new book Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics.

We’re compiling another UPR Community Booklist and we want to know what you’re reading. What’s on your nightstand or device right now? What is the best book you’ve read so far this year? Which books are you suggesting to friends and family? We’d love to hear about any book you’re reading, including in the young adult & children’s categories. One suggestion or many are welcome.

Douglas Tallamy’s first book, “Bringing Nature Home,” awakened thousands of readers to an urgent situation: wildlife populations are in decline because the native plants they depend on are fast disappearing. His solution? Plant more natives.

Several years ago, writer Paisley Rekdal created a digital community project that mapped the people, places, buildings and events that defined Salt Lake City. When she became Utah’s poet laureate, she decided to build on this idea and create a literary map for the entire state.

Photographer, marriage and family therapist and Utah State University alum Kimberly Anderson was on the USU campus in early March to give a presentation on her work. Her presentation, “Transitioning Within Landscapes: The Photography of Kimberly Anderson,” touched on her work as a photographer interwoven with her identity as a transgender woman.

On Thurday's Access Utah, we looked back on our

Jodi Byrd joined Tom Williams to discuss the next lecture in the USU College of Humanities’ Tanner Talks series: “Digital Animus in the Age of Liberation.”

From Utah State Magazine, "In the parched black desert of northeast Jordan, archaeologists recently unearthed a stone hearth containing loaves of flatbread more than 14,000 years old.

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.