Speak Your Piece: a podcast about Utah's history

Date: April 17, 2023 (Season 5, Episode 12: 1 hour, 7 minutes long).  Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood, Chelsey Zamir, and Dr. Katherine Kitterman, with sound engineering and post-production editing from Jason T. Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.

In this Speak Your Piece episode, we hear from Dr. Constance Lieber, author and historian, on her book Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon: Suffragist, Senator, Plural Wife (Signature Books 2022), with SYP host Brad Westwood, and co-host Dr. Katherine Kittermann, Utah State Historical Society’s women’s history coordinator. In this episode, Dr. Lieber discusses the subject of her book, Martha “Mattie” Hughes Cannon, who in 1896, became the first elected female state senator in the United States, an extraordinary accomplishment as she was elected 24 years before most women in the United States could vote. 

A groundbreaking late 19th-century woman, Cannon vacillated between her goals, her public ambitions, being a devout Mormon, a polygamist wife (she was the fourth of six wives), an attentive mother, and a practicing physician.  Cannon was a standout suffragist locally and nationally, a compelling writer and orator, and a pioneering public health leader for the state.

In this episode, hear Drs. Lieber and Kitterman discuss a myriad of insightful details compiled by Lieber after many years of research. A statue of Dr. Hughes Cannon is slated to be installed, sometime in 2024, within the U.S. Capitol National Statuary Hall, to represent Utah,  among likenesses of prominent Americans, from across the United States.

For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. 

Do you have a question? Write [email protected].

Date: May 30, 2023 (Season 5, Episode 13: 54 minutes and 21 seconds long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here.  The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Jason Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.

Speak Your Piece Host Brad Westwood hosts Megan Weiss, a Ph.D. student specializing in the history of the American West, at the University of Utah, about the fascinating history of the DUP (the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers); officially known as the International Society Daughters of Utah Pioneers. 

 As one of the last states in the country to establish a state history museum — the Museum of Utah is projected to open in 2026 — Utah has made numerous attempts to tell, officially, Utah’s fascinating yet complex history. The state’s first attempts to conceptualize its history started with the 1897 Pioneer Jubilee, as the state clung to its pioneer narratives and sought to preserve them.  As Weiss tells it, the Jubilee was seen as a “reset” moment for Utah, after pioneers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints of Latter-day Saints arrived in the territory in 1847, and finally achieved statehood in 1896. 

Many of Utah’s history-related organizations and celebrations, still held dear today, were derived from that original 1897 Jubilee festival — the Book of Pioneers, Days of ‘47’ celebrations, the Utah State Historical Society (1897) and the DUP (1901), were all established in its wake. With this intent to preserve the Pioneer narrative, Utahns also started keeping and preserving objects, which also became a means to re-examine the past. The Deseret Museum, established in 1869, was a private enterprise and a menagerie curio hall to begin with, but later the collection became more professionalized. Weiss adds that during this professionalization stage, Utah women started the Daughters of Utah Pioneers in 1901. This coincides with the establishment of female-led historical agencies across the country. 

Together, these descendants of Utah’s pioneers commemorated their families, focusing primarily on Utah’s “pioneer period” from 1847-1869. Among many social and intellectual endeavors, in the mid-twentieth century, the DUP envisioned and built a Mormon pioneer museum (something of a de facto state museum), with funds gathered widely from private sources, along with funds and a building site, furnished by the Utah State Legislature. Opened in 1950, this prominently placed building serves as the visual terminus looking northward on Main Street.
This episode offers a heretofore untold story regarding the public history of Utah; also women’s history, twentieth century politics, and perhaps equally as important, how Utah has constructed and presented history in the past. As Utah prepares to open in 2026, a new, more inclusive, state-funded history museum, this backstory is essential listening. 

For the speaker's bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. 

Do you have a question? Write [email protected].

Date: December 2, 2019 (Season 1, Episode 4 - Part 2: 20 minutes long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Conner Sorenson (Studio Underground) and Jason Powers (Utah State Library Recording Studio).

This two-part episode series is an interview with Richard E. Turley Jr., former Assistant Church Historian of The Church of Latter-Day Saints, with SYP host Brad Westwood in 2019. Turley discusses his thirty-five-year long career in Mormon history including the creation of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. In this near decade quest, Turley and the Church History Department (hereafter CHD) tracked down every known and newly discovered historical source (books, manuscripts, letters, government documents, etc.) about the church founder, in every conceivable location, and then digitized them, ensuring instant digital availability to anyone around the world. During Turley’s tenure the church also created regional history centers across the globe, and digitized millions of other manuscripts, photographs and historical records. To see the church's vast holdings on-line, without a paywall, click on digital holdings. All this and more is discussed in this two-part episode series.  

For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. 

Do you have a question? Write [email protected].

Date: December 2, 2019 (Season 1, Episode 4 - Part 1: 31 min. & 18 sec. long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Conner Sorenson (Studio Underground) and Jason Powers (Utah State Library Recording Studio).

This two-part episode series is an interview with Richard E. Turley Jr., former Assistant Church Historian of The Church of Latter-Day Saints, with SYP host Brad Westwood in 2019. Turley discusses his thirty-five-year long career in Mormon history including the creation of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. In this near decade quest, Turley and the Church History Department (hereafter CHD) tracked down every known and newly discovered historical source (books, manuscripts, letters, government documents, etc.) about the church founder, in every conceivable location, and then digitized them, ensuring instant digital availability to anyone around the world. During Turley’s tenure the church also created regional history centers across the globe, and digitized millions of other manuscripts, photographs and historical records. To see the church's vast holdings on-line, without a paywall, click on digital holdings. All this and more is discussed in this two-part episode series.  

For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. 

Do you have a question? Write [email protected].

Date: March 10, 2023 (Season 5, Episode 10: 53 minutes long). For the entire show notes and additional resources for this episode, click here. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with sound engineering and post-production editing by Jason T. Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.

This episode is a conversation with Speak Your Piece host Brad Westwood and Gary Bergera, Mormon and Western historian, book publisher and editor, and recently retired managing director of Smith-Pettit Foundation, and former managing director of Signature Books (established in 1981). In this episode, Bergera discusses personal stories as an historian and book publisher. Bergera covers the value of reading and writing history, what sparked his interest in the field of history, and the beginning story of the newspaper the Seventh East Press (1981-1983). Bergera also notes some of the works he’s most proud of, in both writing history and in shepherding history, through the publication process.

Bergera’s contributions and nearly fifty years’ work in the field of history, reflect the curiosity and passions of one who has always been intellectually curious. Bergera discusses his years as a Mormon and western historian; the beginning story of his work, publishing and editing and serving as managing director of Signature Books and the Smith-Pettit Foundation, including founders George D. Smith and Scott Kenney; his and Ron Priddis’s book Brigham Young University: A House of Faith (1985); the edited volume regarding Everett Ruess, a young artist and solo-adventurer who disappeared in Utah’s wilderness in 1934, called On Desert Trails with Everett Ruess (Gibbs Smith, 2000); and what Bergera sees as one of his most important contributions, a three-volume edited work Confessions of a Mormon Historian: The Diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997 (Signature Books, 2018). Bergera describes Arrington’s history creating processes; how he was a conscientious diarist, knowing his diaries would be appreciated as a primary source; and finally, Arrington's devotion to his faith, alongside his pursuit of evidence-based scholarship and sound historical methods. This candid conversation is a refreshing reflection on the work of another contributor to the history of Utah.

For the guest's bio, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. 

Do you have a question? Write [email protected].