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.

Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate have delayed a vote on their Obamacare repeal bill (the Better Care Reconciliation Act) until after the 4 th of the July recess. We’re going to talk about the U.S. health care system on Wednesday’s Access Utah. What do you think health care in the U.S. should look like? Are you in favor of keeping the Affordable Care Act? Would you like to see the American Health Care Act, which passed the U.S. House, or the Senate bill, take its place? Should the health

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.

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. They're not supposed to be there. Charges with crimes but too sick to answer for them in court, they are stuck, waiting for an opening at the only facility in the state that can prepare them to face the legal system - the Utah State Hospital in Provo. The Deseret News

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.