Access Utah

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints renounced the practice of plural marriage in 1890. In the mid- to late nineteenth century, however--the heyday of Mormon polygamy--as many as three out of every ten Mormon women became polygamous wives.

Stories of backyard bears and cat-eating coyotes are becoming increasingly common—even for people living in non-rural areas. Farmers anxious to protect their sheep from wolves aren’t the only ones concerned: suburbanites and city dwellers are also having more unwanted run-ins with mammalian predators.

“The principle of net neutrality guarantees a level playing field in which Internet users do not have to pay Internet service providers more for better access to online content, and content generators do not have to pay additional fees to ensure users can access their websites or apps. In other words all Internet traffic should be treated equally.” (Leticia Miranda, The Nation).

There was a time when the phrase "American family" conjured up a single, specific image: a breadwinner dad, a homemaker mom, and their 2.5 kids living comfortable lives in a middle-class suburb. Today, that is no longer the case, due to divorce rates, single parenthood, and increased out-of-wedlock births. Most Americans fail to identify the root factor driving the changes: economic inequality that is remaking the American family along class lines.

Concerned community members say that because of a new joint operating agreement between the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News, the Tribune is in danger.

With Memorial Day approaching, we’ll honor our military veterans on Wednesday’s Access Utah. Mark Lee Greenblatt, author of “VALOR: Unsung Heroes from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front,” will join us along with Sergeant Buck Doyle, a Utah resident who is featured in the book. We'll also speak with WWII veteran Edgar Harrell who will recount his experiences in the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the sharks, hypothermia and the struggle to survive one of the U.S. Navy's greatest catastrophes at sea. Edgar Harrell is author of “Out of the Depths.” Then Terry Schow, former Utah Director of Veterans Affairs will discuss how changes in health care are affecting those who fought for our country.

A new documentary from Greentech Films, “Scaling Wind,” looks at people championing the proposal of the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2008 report, “20 Percent Wind Energy by 2030,” the film profiles people working to overcome the challenges facing achievement of the 20% vision, including the need to modernize and expand the power grid and smarten the nation’s energy policy for a stable market.

The red rock canyon country of southeastern Utah and northeastern Arizona is one of the most isolated, wild, and beautiful regions of North America. Europeans and Americans over time have mostly avoided, disdained, or ignored it. Wrecks of Human Ambition illustrates how this landscape undercut notions and expectations of good, productive land held by the first explorers, settlers, and travelers who visited it. Even today, its aridity and sandy soils prevent widespread agricultural exploitation, and its cliffs, canyons, and rivers thwart quick travel in and through the landscape.

Historians and novelists alike have described the vigilantism that took root in the gold-mining communities of Montana in the mid-1860s, but Mark C. Dillon is the first to examine the subject through the prism of American legal history, considering the state of criminal justice and law enforcement in the western territories and also trial procedures, gubernatorial politics, legislative enactments, and constitutional rights.

For more than a century, oil has been the engine of growth for a society that delivers an unprecedented standard of living to many. We now take for granted that economic growth is good, necessary, and even inevitable, but also feel a sense of unease about the simultaneous growth of complexity in the processes and institutions that generate and manage that growth.