Access Utah

When the pandemic struck, nature writer David Gessner turned to Henry David Thoreau, the original social distancer, for lessons on how to live. Those lessons—of learning our own backyard, rewilding, loving nature, self-reliance, and civil disobedience—hold a secret that could help save us as we face the greater crisis of climate. Gessner’s new book is Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight: Sheltering with Thoreau in the Age of Crisis, published by Torrey House Press.

As you know, NPR is celebrating 50 years. You’ve been hearing some memories from UPR staff members and now it’s your turn! Continue the conversation and share your memories by emailing [email protected].

When Kate Washington and her husband, Brad, learned that he had cancer, they were a young couple: professionals with ascending careers, parents to two small children. Brad’s diagnosis stripped those identities away: he became a patient and she his caregiver. Brad’s cancer quickly turned aggressive, necessitating a stem-cell transplant that triggered a massive infection, robbing him of his eyesight and nearly of his life. Kate acted as his full-time aide to keep him alive, coordinating his treatments, making doctors’ appointments, calling insurance companies, filling dozens of prescriptions, cleaning commodes, administering IV drugs.

By the time he turned nineteen, Derek Black was regarded as the "the leading light" of the white nationalist movement. While at college he started to question his worldview. Then he decided to confront the damage he had done. In the book, Rising Out of Hatred,” the author, Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Eli Saslow, asks what Derek Black's story can tell us about America's increasingly divided nature.

Utah’s path to statehood was the most tortuous in U.S. history, due in no small part to the Mormon practice of polygamy. Frank J. Cannon, newspaperman, Congressional delegate, and senator, guided Utah toward becoming the forty-fifth state in the Union in 1896. But when he lost favor with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, his contributions fell into obscurity.

Many wildfires continue to burn across Utah, with the threat of more fire with the persisting hot and dry conditions. We’ll talk about wildfires in Utah today. Our guests will include Staci Olson, who has fought wildfires in the western U.S. for 10 years; Kait Webb with the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands; and Moab Mayor Emily Niehaus.

The Monarch and Other Winged Wonders Festival will happen on Thursday in Nibley. We’ll preview the event next time on Access Utah. We’ll learn about Monarch butterflies, bats, bees, fireflies, night pollinators, dragonflies and birds. We’ll talk about the decline in some of these species and how we can help. And we’ll discuss how being in nature can improve our health and well-being.

History isn’t always written by the victors. 19th century America saw a series of high-profile court cases that stripped civil rights from Black Americans following the Civil War. John Marshall Harlan was the only U.S. Supreme Court justice to stand in dissent, and his blistering, passionate rebuttals inspired future justices, such as Thurgood Marshall, who said that Harlan’s writings were his “Bible” and his blueprint as he helped to tear down Segregation a century later.

In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, titled “America’s Brutal Racial History Is Written All Over Our Genes,” Libby Copeland writes: “The debate around race consuming America right now is coinciding with a technological phenomenon — at-home genetic testing kits — revealing many of us are not who we thought we were. Some customers of the major DNA testing companies, which collectively have sold 37 million of these kits, are getting results that surprise them.”

The Mountaintop by Katori Hall is a gripping two-person drama about the last day of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the play, King is alone in his hotel room when he is joined by Camae, a maid who works for the Lorraine Motel. What follows is a reflective, often funny, often touching conversation in which Dr. King examines his achievements, his failures, and his unfinished dreams.