Access Utah

Victor S. Navasky former editor and publisher of The Nation, and at The New York Times Magazine is on Access Utah.

Yesterday on Access Utah we talked with members of a modern-day polygamous community. Today, in part two of our series, we’ll learn how polygamy began in America. When Joseph Smith began to reveal and teach the doctrine of plural marriage in 1841, even stalwart church members like Brigham Young were shocked and confused. In her new book, “Revelation, Resistance, and Mormon Polygamy--The Introduction and Implementation of the Principle, 1830-1853” (USU Press) historian Merina Smith considers the ideological, historical, and psychological elements of the process and captures the emotional and cultural detail of this exciting and volatile period in Mormon history.

In Utah we often have occasion to talk about polygamy. But it is rarer to be able to talk with people who practice it. Wednesday we'll talk with members of the Centennial Park community near the Arizona/Utah border. They are being featured on National Geographic Channel’s Polygamy USA series and recently recorded their stories when UPR hosted StoryCorps in St. George.

CEO Marissa Mayer’s recent decision to require Yahoo! workers to come to headquarters for work has provoked a vigorous discussion about telecommuting. On the other end of the spectrum, some suggest that in today’s world, employees shouldn’t have set hours just clear goals. And no matter what else may change, we’ll likely always have to deal with office politics. How is your workplace changing? Is telecommuting working for you? What are your company's rules? Are you able to manage a good work/life balance?

Utah Attorney General John Swallow is the subject of a federal and state investigation into a series of allegations, including that he helped broker deals to assist a businessman suspected of fraud and that he promised protection to potential campaign donors to his predecessor, Mark Shurtleff. House Democrats are calling for his impeachment and point to the case in renewing their call for ethics reform. Some Republicans are calling for Swallow accept paid leave or resign, and at least one, Rep. Spencer Cox, says the House should consider impeachment. The Attorney General insists that he broke no laws and says he has no plans to quit.

More than 800 movies have been filmed in Utah since filmmaking began in the state in the 1920s with the Parry brothers near Cedar City. Utah has played host to all manner of moves from potboilers on lean budgets to some of the most memorable films ever made, including The Searchers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Planet of the Apes, Footloose, and Thelma & Louise. Through the years millions of dollars have been poured into the economy. As one Utah rancher said, Hollywood moviemakers "don't take anything but pictures and don't leave anything but money." And with changes in landscapes, movies are the only places to see how some Utah areas used to look.

Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings has been a guest on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! but last week he appeared as a panelist. Wednesday we’ll revisit an Access Utah conversation with Ken Jennings from January. His latest book is “Because I Said So! - The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, & Warnings Every Generation Passes Down to Its Kids.” Many of these myths and warnings are culture-specific. We’ll talk about the Korean “Fan Death” tale, which Jennings first encountered growing up in Seoul.

Angelina Jolie’s recent announcement that she’d received a double mastectomy to reduce her chances of cancer, highlights a series of decisions we all may be facing in this age of genetic testing: Do I want to know? Whom should I tell? What should I do with the information? Should I take a chance on passing on genetic problems? What about privacy and insurance? Dr. Robert Klitzman addresses these concerns in his book, Am I My Genes?: Confronting Fate and Family Secrets in the Age of Genetic Testing.

When the national park system was first established in 1916, the goal "to conserve unimpaired" seemed straightforward. But Robert Keiter, author of a new book, To Conserve Unimpaired: The Evolution of the National Park Idea, argues that parks have always served a variety of competing purposes, from wildlife protection and scientific discovery to tourism and commercial development. He says that parks must be managed more effectively to meet increasing demands in the face of climate, environmental, and demographic changes. Keiter argues that parks cannot be treated as special islands, but must be managed as the critical cores of larger ecosystems.

Last year, in a surprising development, more than 300 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints marched in the Utah Pride Parade. The group Mormons Building Bridges predicts that with Mormons for Equality also involved, church members will turn out in record numbers to march in this year’s parade on Sunday. Are you planning to march in the parade this year? What do you think of those who are? What does it mean that some Mormons are marching again?

As National Bike Month comes to a close, we’re talking bicycling on Wednesday’s Access Utah. Is biking a legitimate form of everyday transportation? Should more of us park our cars in favor of our bicycles? Could you get by without owning a car? Is your community bike-friendly? How can you stay safe while cycling? How can we better accommodate each other as drivers and bikers?

Parenting in an online world is our topic for the hour on Tuesday’s Access Utah. We’ll be talking with tech-savvy Utah parents Jonathan & Loralee Choate and Dr. Jim Taylor, author of several books, including Raising Generation Tech: Prepare Your Children for a Media-fueled World.

In his new book, "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation," Michael Pollan explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen. Here, he discovers the power of the four classical elements—fire, water, air, and earth—to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. "Cooked" becomes an investigation of how cooking involves us in a web of social and ecological relationships: with plants and animals, the soil, farmers, our history and culture, and, of course, the people our cooking nourishes. Cooking, above all, connects us.

Almost 20 billion times each year, a person walks into a doctor's office and becomes a patient. Dr. Kevin Jones says that physicians can’t tell you what they don’t know. They can tell you when they don’t know, but they might not. Dr. Jones, in his book "What Doctors Cannot Tell You: Clarity, Confidence, and Uncertainty in Medicine," explores the uncertainty that pervades medicine.

Over the years, the Selfhelp Home in Chicago has brought together more than 1,000 refugees and Holocaust survivors under one roof. A new documentary film, "Refuge: Stories of the Selfhelp Home", features the stories of the eventual residents of Selfhelp, who spent the war years surviving by any means necessary – fleeing to the Jewish ghetto of Shanghai, hiding in the French countryside, taken in by English families as part of the Kindertransport, or as prisoners in Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

The once quiet field of epigenetics is now making big waves in the biological sciences. Laboratories across the world are filling up with researchers studying the human epi-genome. It literally means above the genome. On the program, producer Sheri Quinn explores this paradigm shift in biology with German scientist Wolf Riek, recognized as a world leader in the field of epi-genetics.

A few months ago we explored the culture of hunting with Stephen Rinella author of “Meat Eater.” He asserts, as does Michael Pollan who wrote “The Omnivore’s Dilemma & Cooked,” that Americans are losing their connection with the way their food finds its way to their tables. Hunting, Rinella argues, is intimately connected with our humanity; and assuming responsibility for acquiring the meat that we eat, rather than entrusting it to proxy executioners, processors, packagers and distributors, is one of the most respectful and exhilarating things a meat eater can do. Thursday we explored this idea from the other direction, talking about vegetarian and vegan culture with a panel of vegetarians & vegans and a former vegetarian.

The United States’ rate of incarceration is the highest in the world. Why and how did this happen? Marc Mauer’s “Race to Incarcerate,” first published in 1999, has become an important text for understanding the growth of the US prison system and a canonical work for those active in the US criminal justice reform movement. Now Sabrina Jones, a member of the World War 3 Illustrated collective and an author of politically engaged comics, has collaborated with Mauer to adapt and update the original book into a comics narrative designed to reach new audiences.

Aired: 5/10/13 We hear about the war in Afghanistan from the perspective of one of the nation's leading industrialists there until the 1980s. Author Nasser Shansab joins us to talk about his experience growing up in Afghanistan within one of the nation's most prominent families and how his forced exile influenced his unique role in the u.s us government.

The Utah Prairie Dog Recovery Implementation Program (UPDRIP) has two goals: “Recover the Utah prairie dog so that it no longer requires protection under the Endangered Species Act; and allow for existing land uses and continued growth and development within the historic range of the Utah prairie dog.” Some in the area want the process to move faster.