Access Utah

To call these unsettling times is an understatement: our political leaders are less and less respectable; in the realm of business, cheating, lying, and stealing are hazily defined; and in daily life, rapidly changing technology offers permission to act in ways inconceivable without it. Yet somehow, this hasn’t quite led to a complete free-for-all—people still draw lines around what is acceptable and what is not. In her new book "Behaving Badly: The New Morality in Politics, Sex, and Business," Eden Collinsworth sets out to understand how and why. In her quest, she seeks out, among others, a prime minister, the editor of the Financial Times, a holocaust survivor, a pop star, and a former commander of the U.S. Air Force and grapples with the impracticality of applying morals to foreign policy; precisely when morality gets lost in the making of money; what happens to morality without free will; whether “immoral” women are just those having a better time; why celebrities have become the new moral standard-bearers; and if testosterone is morality’s enemy or its hero.

NYU professor Mitchell Stephens’ recent article in “Politico” is headlined “Goodbye Nonpartisan Journalism. And Good Riddance.” Stephens says that “journalism in the United States was born partisan and remained, for much of its history, loud, boisterous and combative. He says that this changed in the 1930s and 40s beginning with influential radio newsman Lowell Thomas who “intuited that the best way to hold [his] large audience was to avoid excessively offending any major political group. He tried to play it, as he put it, ‘down the middle’ ... “And Thomas’ main successors in the role of national newsmen—David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw—aimed for somewhere around “the middle” too.

NYU professor Mitchell Stephens’ recent article in “Politico” is headlined “Goodbye Nonpartisan Journalism. And Good Riddance.” Stephens says that “journalism in the United States was born partisan and remained, for much of its history, loud, boisterous and combative. He says that this changed in the 1930s and 40s beginning with influential radio newsman Lowell Thomas who “intuited that the best way to hold [his] large audience was to avoid excessively offending any major political group. He

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 [email protected] 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.

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 [email protected] 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

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.