Access Utah

UPR listeners are avid readers, so our periodic question to you isn’t if you’re reading, but what are you reading? We hope you’ll share your booklist with us and we’ll compile a UPR list and post it on www.upr.org You can share your booklist by email to upraccess@gmail.com or on Twitter @upraccess. We’re also asking if you have any suggestions for beach or camping or summertime reading. And what do your children read during the summertime? Elaine Thatcher will join Tom Williams in studio for the hour and we’ll be talking with Betsy Burton from The King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City and Andy Nettell from Back of Beyond Books in Moab.

With wildfires raging in Utah and other areas, we’ll turn to writer Gary Ferguson for a timely discussion about wildfires on Monday’s Access Utah. Wildfire season is burning longer and hotter, affecting more and more people, especially in the west. Ferguson’s book Land on Fire: The New Reality of Wildfire in the West explores the science behind this phenomenon and the ongoing research to find a solution and details how years of fire suppression and chronic drought have combined to make the situation so dire. Ferguson also brings to life the extraordinary efforts of those responsible for fighting wildfires, and explains how nature reacts in the aftermath of flames.

In The Evolution of Beauty, Richard O. Prum’s award-winning career as an ornithologist and his lifelong passion for bird-watching come together in a thrilling intellectual adventure. Scientific dogma holds that every detail of an animal’s mating displays—every spot on the peacock’s tail—is an advertisement of its genetic material superiority to potential mates. But thirty years of research and fieldwork around the world led Prum to question this idea. Deep in tropical jungles are birds with dizzying array of plumages, songs, and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, and Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. Many such traits struck Prum as out-landishly unlikely to provide practical information.

Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate have delayed a vote on their Obamacare repeal bill (the Better Care Reconciliation Act) until after the 4th of the July recess.

The 2017 Bennion Teacher Workshop and Literature of Protest: Civil Rights, Democracy, Social Justice is ongoing at USU. Sponsored by: The Mountain West Center for Regional Studies Utah State University.

Across Utah, nearly 70 mentally ill men and women who are supposed to be receiving mental health treatment are instead trapped in jail cells. They're getting sicker. They're being released without treatment. They're dying.

According to Colin Dickey, author of the forthcoming book about conspiracy theories called “The Unidentified,” such theories appear and spread at moments of upheaval and cultural anxiety. Dickey, writing recently in The New Republic magazine, examines the rise of conspiracy theories, long thought to be more the province of the right wing, on the left in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election as president. We’ll ask what it means that the president himself has dabbled in conspiracy theories and has applauded such figures as Alex Jones. And we’ll investigate the what, why, where, when, and how of conspiracy theories with Colin Dickey, next time on Access Utah.

The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny.

Craig Jessop, Dean of Utah State University’s Caine College of the Arts, Director of the American Festival Chorus and Orchestra, and former Music Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, has led an interesting life in the arts. He’ll join us today to talk about USU’s Year of the Arts which begins this month.

Cory Christiansen is a recording artist, writer, educator and performer. He has played and taught around the globe for the last decade alongside the likes of Dr. Lonnie Smith, Vic Juris, Danny Gottlieb, Jeff Coffin, James Moody, Steve Houghton, Jeremy Allen and other jazz greats. His last recording, "Lone Prairie" received critical acclaim for its blending of jazz, rock, blues and music of the American Frontier.

It’s Summertime! The kids are out of school and life slows down for some of us and speeds up for others. Trips to favorite vacation spots and into the backcountry ramp up. Today on Access Utah, we came together as a UPR community to share ideas for summertime trips, activities, traditions and stories.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has released his interim report on Bears Ears National Monument.

Having lost eight friends in ten years, Cooley retreats to a tiny medieval village in Italy with her husband. There, in a rural paradise where bumblebees nest in the ancient cemetery and stray cats curl up on her bed, she examines a question both easily evaded and unavoidable: mortality. How do we grieve? How do we go on drinking our morning coffee, loving our life partners, stumbling through a world of such confusing, exquisite beauty?

President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement was met with mixed reactions across the country and especially in Utah. While some climate scientists and government leaders including Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski called the decision a mistake, others argued the decision could have positive economic consequences for the United States.

Michael Patrick Lynch is featured in a TED talk about "Finding Common Reality." In his talk, Lynch explains the future of how we know information is true. Just because we can Google information does not mean the information is accurate. And even more surprising, Lynch explains how we are not just polarized in our opinions or values, but in the facts we learn.

After oil was discovered beneath their land in the 1920's, the richest people per capita were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. They rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions and sent their children to study in Europe.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is preparing a ruling to roll back net neutrality rules enacted under President Obama, to, in part, spur innovation and investment. President Obamademanded that the FCC reclassify the Internet as a public utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. He wanted rules to ensure “that neither the cable company nor the phone company [would] be able to act as a gatekeeper, restricting what you can do or see online."

The Colorado River is an essential resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from Colorado's headwaters, to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. HE takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and rv parks, to the spot near the U.S.-Mexico border where the river runs dry.

According to the Dessert News, "Some disaffected Republicans and Democrats who say extreme views are co-opting their parties have decided to carve out a middle ground in Utah politics. Taking a centrist approach, the group announced the formation of the United Utah Party.

NPR reports that “The World Health Organization has called on nations around the globe toenact taxes on sugary beverages. AndBloomberg Philanthropies says raising taxes on sugary beverages can be part of the strategy to ‘reduce consumer demand for unhealthy foods and beverages, improve the food environment, and make healthier choices easier for everyone.’”