Access Utah

According to the Salt Lake Tribune “Brigham Young University students who are victims of sex crimes say they are investigated by the school and sometimes disciplined after reporting their abuse, a consequence that critics say silences victims and emboldens offenders.” Several thousand people have signed an onlinepetition urging BYU not to investigate rape victims for Honor Code violations. BYU says it is studying the connection between its Title IX Office, which investigates sexual assaults, and its Honor Code Office.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty joins us to talk about her new book “Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife” She says: “When I was in my early 50s, I became quite convinced I was having a midlife crisis. I was an on-air correspondent for National Public Radio -- with a partly paralyzed vocal cord that left me without a voice for days or weeks at a time and with chronic pain that dominated my every waking hour. I wondered if my career at NPR had reached its peak as I observed the new opportunities going, understandably, to younger journalists."

Henry William Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. He writes on American history and politics, and his books include “The Man Who Saved the Union,” “Andrew Jackson,” “The Age of Gold,” and “TR”. Several of his books have been bestsellers; two, “Traitor to His Class” and “The First American,” were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Brands lectures frequently on historical and current events and can be seen and heard on national and international television and radio.

On Monday’s Access Utah we’ll talk with biographer Ron Chernow as a part of the Pulitzer Prizes Centennial Campfires Initiative. Chernow’s “Alexander Hamilton” is the inspiration for the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton!” We’ll ask Chernow if he thinks the musical faithfully represents Hamilton’s life and ideas, and why it is resonating so powerfully with audiences. Chernow says that Hamilton “was a messenger from a future that we now inhabit.” We’ll ask Chernow what Hamilton has stood for over time and what he stands for now.

Hollie Smith grew up in Tooele, went to Southern Utah University and became a journalist. After a key incident experienced as a reporter, she changed careers. She’s now Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Rhode Island. She gave a presentation recently at Utah State University titled “Journalists as Storytellers: The Media’s Role in Shaping Environmental Attitudes.” We’ll talk about how the media covers climate change.

Hospital intensive care units have changed when and how we die--and not always for the better. So says medical researcher and ICU physician Samuel Brown. In his new book “Through the Valley of Shadows: Living Wills, Intensive Care, and Making Medicine Human” (Oxford University Press) Dr. Brown uses stories from his clinical practice to outline a new way of thinking about life-threatening illness.

Former Utah Poet Laureate and current Professor of English at the University of Utah, Katharine Coles is author of two novels and several volumes of poetry. The latest, published in March by Red Hen Press, is titled “Flight.”

In her new book, “Epiphany in the Wilderness: Hunting, Nature, and Performance in the Nineteenth-Century American West,” historian Karen Jones uses the metaphor of the theater to argue that the West was a crucial stage that framed the performance of the American character as an independent, resourceful, resilient, and rugged individual.

Plural marriage is the next frontier of North American marriage law and possibly the next civil rights battlefield.

Matt Lewis’ book “Too Dumb to Fail” is an impassioned argument that to stay relevant the Republican Party must look beyond short-term electoral gains and re-commit to historic conservative values. As we navigate the 2016 presidential season, Lewis has an urgent message for fellow conservatives: embrace wisdom, humility, qualifications, and inclusion--or face extinction.