Access Utah

From time to time we gather as a UPR community to compile a book list. On the next Access Utah we’re going to concentrate on Children’s Books. What are you reading to your kids? What are your children reading? What’s your favorite children’s book of all time? How about a new title or something you’ve just discovered that you’d like to share with us?

State Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck, D-Salt Lake has proposed that Utah follow the example of six other states and legalize assisted suicide (HB76 End of Life Options Act). Each of those states requires that the patient be of sound mind and have less than six months to live. Proponents say that individuals should have more control over decisions about quality of life and the timing of the end of life.

In an era when humans spend much of their time indoors staring at the dim glow of a screen, many of us have forgotten the simple pleasure of a stroll through a wooded glen, a hike up a secluded mountain path, or a nap in the grass. Many of us have a dog or go to the beach occasionally. But is that enough? In “The Nature Fix,” prize-winning science journalist Florence Williams asks, "What if?" What if something serious is missing from our lives? What if an occasional trip to the neighborhood park isn't enough? What if we've turned our backs on something that isn't merely pleasant and enjoyable, but is in fact vital to our happiness, our capacity to learn, and even our survival? And if the latest science shows that nature is necessary in our live, how do we recapture it?

New York, 1888. The miracle of electric light is in its infancy. Thomas Edison has won the race to the patent office and is suing his only remaining rival, George Westinghouse, for the unheard of sum of one billion dollars. To defend himself, Westinghouse makes a surprising choice in his attorney: He hires an untested twenty-six-year-old fresh out of Columbia Law School named Paul Cravath.

One prominent theme of the recent election was a refrain that our political system is broken. The preferred fix of many Trump voters came in the person of now-President Trump. Others (including some UPR listeners) are prescribing such reforms as abolishing the Electoral College, instituting term limits, and changing the redistricting process.

On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending refugee admissions for 120 days, placing an indefinite ban on immigrants from Syria and a 90-day ban on people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen (Salt Lake Tribune).

Faculty of CHaSS present a Panel Discussion: Election 2016 – Opportunities and Challenges for a New Era. Wednesday, February 1 at 4:00 PM, Merrill Cazier Library, room 101. Listen to a lively panel discussion with faculty members from throughout CHaSS: Debra Jenson, Journalism and Communication; Jason Gilmore, Languages, Philosophy and Communication Study; Anna Pechenkina and Damon Cann, Political Science; and Lawrence Culver, History.

On a frigid April night, a classically trained opera singer, five months pregnant, and her husband, a former marine biologist, disembark an Amtrak train in La Plata, Missouri, assemble two bikes, and pedal off into the night, bound for a homestead they've purchased, sight unseen. Meanwhile, a horticulturist, heir to the Great Migration that brought masses of African Americans to Detroit, and her husband, a product of the white flight from it, have turned to urban farming to revitalize the blighted city they both love. And near Missoula, Montana, a couple who have been at the forefront of organic farming for decades navigate what it means to live and raise a family ethically.

Organizers of the “Clean Air, No Excuses Rally” which happened on Saturday in Salt Lake City say that “...each year clean air protections measures are considered at the legislature, and each year many of those proposals fail to become law. It’s time for a change, it’s time for Utah’s elected leaders to listen to the people. ...We must turn over every stone to find strong proposals to protect our families and our communities!”

Ash and Pia move from hipster Brooklyn to rustic Vermont in search of a more authentic life. But just months after settling in, the forecast of a superstorm disrupts their dream. Fear of an impending disaster splits their tight-knit community and exposes the cracks in their marriage. Where Isole was once a place of old farm families, rednecks and transplants, it now divides into paranoid preppers, religious fanatics and government tools, each at odds about what course to take.

From Epicurus to Sam Cooke, the Daily News to Roots, Gregory Pardlo’s collection “Digest” draws from the present and the past to form an intellectual, American identity. In poems that forge their own styles and strategies, we experience dialogues between the written word and other art forms. Within this dialogue we hear Ben Jonson, we meet police K-9s, and we find children negotiating a sense of the world through a father’s eyes and through their own.

Join us for the Opening Day of the 2017 Utah Legislature with this special 2-hour edition Access Utah from the Utah State Capitol.

The Women’s March on Washington organization estimates that more than more than 1,300,000 people will participate in the Women’s March on Washington or in one of the estimated 600 sister marches happening on January 21 or in the days following. (The Women’s March on Utah State Capitol is January 23).

VidAngel is Provo-based streaming service that lets viewers set custom filters to screen out content they might not like or find objectionable. VidAngel CEO Neal Harmon says that VidAngel honors two sides of a libertarian coin. “We agree with Hollywood that the director should have the right to determine how their work is performed in a public setting. That’s free speech. That’s everything America’s about. [But] once you take something into your own home, it makes sense that nobody has the right to tell you how to consume something in your own home.” Several Hollywood studios have sued VidAngel and a judge has granted a preliminary injunction against the company. In the meantime there’s a petition http://savefiltering.nationbuilder.com/ going around to ‘#SaveFiltering’ and VidAngel has crowdsourced more than 10 million dollars to help pay for their lawsuit

In his new book “Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World,” Steven Johnson argues that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change, and that throughout history, the cutting edge of innovation lies wherever people are working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused.

There are many needs in our communities, and there are dedicated individuals and nonprofits working to meet those needs. They sometimes don’t get the recognition they deserve, and you may want to help but don’t know where and how. On the next Access Utah we’re opening the phone lines, email and Twitter to give you the opportunity to spotlight a nonprofit or individual doing good in your community.

Join us for Tuesday’s Access Utah when our topic is Fake News & Journalism in the Age of Trump.

Today we revisit our conversation from October with Rita Moreno:

Nicholas Carr started his blog “Rough Type” in 2005, when MySpace was a fast-growing social networking site and Facebook was a Palo Alto startup. Now in his book “Utopia Is Creepy and Other Provocations,” he has collected the best of those posts and added influential essays such as “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Privacy,” which were published in such magazines and sites as The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and Politico. Carr’s favorite targets are zealots who believe so fervently in computers and data that they abandon common sense. Cheap digital tools, he says, do not make us all the next Fellini or Dylan. Social networks are not vehicles for self-enlightenment. And “likes” and retweets are not going to elevate political discourse.

When Michael Copperman left Stanford University for the Mississippi Delta in 2002 - recruited by Teach for America - he imagined he would lift underprivileged children from the narrow horizons of rural poverty. Well-meaning but naïve, the Asian-American from the West Coast says he soon lost his bearings in a world divided between black and white. Trying to help students, he often found he couldn’t afford to give what they required―sometimes with heartbreaking consequences.