Access Utah

This campaign season has been extraordinary, and the show is coming to Utah, with caucuses on Tuesday and a Republican presidential debate that was scheduled for Salt Lake City and is now canceled.

How did early American writers think about the spaces around them? Today on Access Utah we’re talking about regions—imagined politically, economically, racially, and figuratively—and the roles these regions played in the formation of American communities, both real and imagined.

In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians.

Pulitzer prize winning New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg joins Tom Williams for Access Utah. Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit” explored the science of habit formation in our lives, companies, and society. His new book “Smarter Faster Better” explores the science of productivity. Duhigg says that in today’s world, it’s more important to manage how you think, rather than what you think. This episode of Access Utah is a part of the Pulitzer Prize Centennial Campfires Initiative in partnership with Utah Humanities, the Salt Lake Tribune, and KCPW.

From the extra pounds and unrelenting bullies that left her eating lunch alone in a bathroom stall at school to the low self-esteem that left her both physically and emotionally vulnerable to abuse, Jasmin Singer’s struggle with weight defined her life.

Some people love it, some people hate it. Like it or not, on Sunday, daylight saving time (DST) begins in Utah. Tuesday on Access Utah we’re going to revisit an episode from December 2014.

Should Utah abolish the death penalty? Sen. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, says yes. His SB 189 has passed the Utah Senate and now goes to the House as we head into the last week of the 2016 Utah Legislature. Gov. Gary Herbert is among those maintaining support for the death penalty.

In essays that combine memoir with biography of place, Kevin Holdsworth creates a public history of the land he calls home: Good Water, Utah. The high desert of south-central Utah is at the heart of the stories he tells - about the people, the “survivors and casualties” of the small, remote town - and is at the heart of his own story.

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives. For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the grief and shame of that day.

“It’s a sight Utahns are all too familiar with -- gray, smoggy air filled with dangerous particulate matter. Officials say sensitive groups like children and the elderly should be especially cautious during times of inversion. During red air days the air is unhealthy for everyone. We know this. So why do we continue driving to work? Why do we idle our cars, contributing to the problem?”