Access Utah

In 1859 Brigham Young sent two Mormon missionaries to live among the Hopi, "reduce their dialect to a written language," and then teach it to the Hopi so that they would be able to read the Book of Mormon in their own tongue. Young also instructed the men to teach the Hopi the Deseret alphabet, a phonemic system that he was promoting in place of the traditional Latin alphabet. While the Deseret alphabet faded out of use in just over twenty years, the manuscript penned by one of the missionaries has remained in existence. For decades it sat unidentified in the archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints-a mystery document having no title, author, or date. Computational linguist Kenneth Beesley and Dirk Elzinga, an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Brigham Young University, have now traced the manuscript's origin to those missionaries of 1859 and decoded its Hopi-English vocabulary written in the short-lived Deseret alphabet. Their new book, "An 1860 English-Hopi Vocabulary Written in the Deseret Alphabet" (from University of Utah Press) is a fascinating mix of linguistics, Mormon history, and Native American studies.

Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla produced hundreds of inventions and ideas which have changed our lives in profound ways, ranging from alternating current to wireless communication to remote control. Tesla's AC defeated Thomas Edison's DC, but Edison is celebrated in America and Tesla is relatively unknown. Where he is remembered, Tesla is known as the man who invented the twentieth century, but also as an early archetype of the mad scientist.

Anonymous. WikiLeaks. The Syrian Electronic Army. Edward Snowden. Bitcoin. The Arab Spring. In every aspect of international affairs, digitally enabled actors are changing the way the world works and disrupting the institutions that once held a monopoly on power. In "Disruptive Power: The Crisis of the State in the Digital Age," Taylor Owen asks: How does the rise of hackers, digital humanitarians, cyber activism, automated violence and citizen journalists change the way we understand and act in the world? Are digital diplomacy and cyberwar the future of statecraft, or a sign of the crisis of the state? What new institutions will be needed to moderate emerging power structures and ensure accountability and the rule of law?

From undocumented men named Angel, to angels falling from the sky, Natalie Scenters-Zapico’s gripping debut collection, The Verging Cities, is filled with explorations of immigration and marriage, narco-violence and femicide, and angels in the domestic sphere. Deeply rooted along the US-México border in the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, and Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, these poems give a brave new voice to the ways in which international politics affect the individual. Composed in a variety of forms, from sonnet and epithalamium to endnotes and field notes, each poem distills violent stories of narcos, undocumented immigrants, border patrol agents, and the people who fall in love with each other and their traumas.

“The True American” tells the story of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to America and working in technology. But days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into the Dallas minimart where Bhuiyan has found temporary work and shoots him, maiming and nearly killing him. Two other victims, at other gas stations, aren’t so lucky, dying at once.

On Wednesday’s AU, we’ll be talking again about Race in America. We’ll be responding, of course, to the killing of nine people in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as the killing of Walter Scott in North Charleston. These deaths are, tragically, just the latest in a series of recent killings of African Americans.

Michael Nees, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Lafayette College, writing in theconversation.com, says that "self-driving cars are expected to revolutionize the automobile industry. Rapid advances have led to working prototypes faster than most people expected. The anticipated benefits of this emerging technology include safer, faster and more eco-friendly transportation. But, says Nees, we shouldn't ignore the human element of automated driving. Self-driving cars will still need people. He says "we can draw insights from aviation, as many elements of piloting planes already have been taken over by computers."

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in landmark case, Obergefell v. Hodges, that Same-Sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states. Today on the program we get your reaction, as well as the opinion of Utah's only openly gay politician, Senator James Dabakis, D-Salt Lake City, and Gay rights activist Derek Kitchen, who was the namesake of the Kitchen v Herbert Case that led to the strike down of Utah's Amendment 3, allowing for same-sex marriage in Utah back in 2013. Later in the program we here from Lynn Wardle, Bruce C. Hafen Professor of Law at Brigham Young University and Clifford Rosky, Professor of Law at University of Utah.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, and President Obama says the ACA is "here to stay." What's next for health care in Utah? What does this mean for you? We'll open the phone lines, email and Twitter for your comment or question and we'll look at possible expansion of Medicaid in Utah and related issues on a special edition of Access Utah. Joining us from the Utah Health Policy Project are Medicaid Policy Analyst RyLee Curtis and Randall Serr, Director of Take Care Utah. Also Joining the program are state Senators Brian Shiozawa and Luz Escamilla, along with State Representative Ed Redd.

It was 2004, and Sean McFate had a mission in Burundi: to keep the president alive and prevent the country from spiraling into genocide, without anyone knowing that the United States was involved. The United States was, of course, involved, but only through McFate's employer, the military contractor DynCorp International. Throughout the world, similar scenarios are playing out daily. The United States can no longer go to war without contractors. Yet we don't know much about the industry's structure, its operations, or where it's heading. Even the U.S. government-the entity that actually pays them-knows relatively little.