Tom Williams

Gary Ferguson’s books include “Land on Fire: The New Reality of Wildfire in the West.” We’ll talk with Gary Ferguson about the wildfires burning now in the west. We’ll also talk about his latest book “The Eight Master Lessons of Nature: What Nature Teaches Us About Living Well in the World.”

Looking around at the world today—a world of skyscrapers, super highways, melting ice caps, and rampant deforestation—it is easy to feel that humanity has actively severed its ties with nature. It’s no wonder that we are starving to rediscover a connection with the natural world.

Once again during this Fall Member Drive, we’re doing the Best of Access Utah. Today our focus is on the arts and music.

It’s a member drive special edition of Access Utah today. My special guest for the hour is Ken Sanders from Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City. We’ll reach into the archives for parts of some of our favorite recent episodes of the program.

It’s UPR’s Fall Member Drive. We’ll be joined for the hour by USU Associate Professor of Communications Studies Jason Gilmore. And we’ll present parts of several recent Access Utah interviews.

It’s UPR’s Fall Member Drive and Tom Williams will be joined for the hour by Lynne McNeill, Co-Director of the Digital Folklore Project at USU and Associate Professor of English.

Katharine Coles, former Utah Poet Laureate and current Distinguished Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Utah, joins us today for Access Utah to talk about her seventh collection of poems, Wayward, published last year. 

Tom Paxton says folk music is lumber with the bark still on. His legendary career spans six decades of traditional music and topical songs. He says today's political climate presents an embarrassment of riches to the song writer. 

Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Nation's Divide, a New York Times Bestseller, Washington Post Notable Book of 2016, and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner. 

Thursday on Access Utah we’ll spotlight the ongoing Moab Music Festival. We’ll talk with master fiddler Alasdair Fraser, cellist Natalie Haas, and violinist Charles Yang, all of whom are performing at the festival. We’ll also hear music performed by these artists. 

Witty, inspiring, and charismatic, Oscar Wilde is one of the Greats of English literature. Today, his plays and stories are beloved around the world. But it was not always so. His afterlife has given him the legitimacy that life denied him.

In 2012, photographer Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and created Project 562, which reflects her commitment to visit, engage with and photograph all 562 plus Native American sovereign territories in the United States. With this project she has traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, many in her RV (which she has nicknamed the “Big Girl”) but also by horseback through the Grand Canyon, by train, plane, and boat and on foot across all 50 states.

The Atlantic magazine recently “asked photographers in 24 locations around the globe to point their cameras up to the sky at precisely the same moment—1 p.m. GMT, April 25. At a time when the world is so isolated, these photos are a reminder of what we share.” The resulting article is We Are All Living the Same Moment, written by Gretel Ehrlich.

In 2007, the number of refugees worldwide hit 26 million. Thirteen years later that number has more than doubled to 70.8 million people displaced, cementing this crisis as the humanitarian issue of our time. And while the crisis itself has been well covered, the question that has not been explored is what happens to those “lucky” few who not only manage to escape persecution, but also get what is perceived to be the “golden ticket” of resettlement in the United States?

Renowned American political activist, scholar and author Ibram X. Kendi visited USU in 2017 for a keynote presentation on “How to be an Anti-Racist.” The presentation was sponsored by the USU Inclusion Center.

The USU Center for Anticipatory Intelligence (CAI) looks across all disciplines to spot threats posed by emerging technologies and other threats. CAI is an interdisciplinary nexus fusing expertise in national security and geopolitics with cutting-edge instruction in cyber threats, data analytics, and emergent technology. CAI students predicted a novel zoonotic outbreak last year. 

You swab your cheek or spit into a vial, then send it away to a lab somewhere. Weeks later you get a report that might tell you where your ancestors came from or if you carry certain genetic risks. Or the report could reveal a long-buried family secret and upend your entire sense of identity.  

Today on Access Utah, writer Bill Shapiro joins us to talk about what draws him to other people's photos. He says other people's photographs are "like time-travel and a shortcut to empathy." We talk about how photography can pull us outside of ourselves, connecting us to something greater. 

Today we remember a friend of Access Utah, the writer Jeff Metcalf, who died this summer. I had the privilege of interviewing him several  times on the show. He was unfailingly warm, witty, open, funny and profound.

A while back on Access Utah, Michael Sowder, USU professor of English and affiliated professor of religious studies, helped us learn some of the history and current practice of yoga. On Tuesday’s Access Utah he’ll lead us in an exploration of mindfulness and meditation, which may be of special interest during these times of pandemic.

Students will be returning to schools in many districts across Utah soon. How are officials planning to keep students and teachers safe amid the pandemic? What will the mix of in-person and online teaching be? How does everyone feel about going back to school?

“Leave it as it is,” Theodore Roosevelt announced while viewing the Grand Canyon for the first time. “The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” Roosevelt’s rallying cry signaled the beginning of an environmental fight that still wages today.

Matthew Crawford, author of the new book “Why We Drive:Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road,” says that once we were drivers, the open road alive with autonomy, adventure, danger, trust, and speed. Today we are as likely to be in the back seat of an Uber as behind the wheel ourselves. Tech giants are hurling us toward a shiny, happy “self-driving” future, selling utopia but equally keen to advertise to a captive audience strapped into another expensive device. Are we destined, then, to become passengers, not drivers? He says that much more may be at stake than we might think.

“There are few subjects that interest us more generally than the adventures of robbers and bandits.” That’s Scottish writer Charles MacFarlane, quoted in Charles Leerhsen’s new book. One such outlaw was Robert LeRoy Parker, born in Beaver, Utah and raised in Circleville, who became, of course, Butch Cassidy. Charles Leerhsen brings the notorious Butch Cassidy to vivid life, revealing the fascinating and complicated man behind the legend in the new book BUTCH CASSIDY: The True Story of an American Outlaw. Charles Leerhsen joins us for the program today.

A coalition of organizations is hosting a national virtual event today, August 6, and Sunday, August 9, on the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to commemorate the survivors of nuclear weapons and production. Still Here: 75 Years of Shared Nuclear Legacy will include highlights from local events, stories from survivors, and a look toward a future free from nuclear threats.

Today on Access Utah we’re doing another non-profit spotlight. We’d love to shine a light on your favorite non-profit or individual doing good in your community. Amy Anderson, Director of Outreach for the Sunshine Terrace Foundation and Spiritual Counselor with Sunshine Hospice in Logan will join us for the hour and we’ll hear from representatives of other nonprofits throughout the hour

Today on Access Utah we’re going to check in with CAPSA, a domestic violence, sexual abuse, and rape recovery center serving Cache County and the Bear Lake area. CAPSA’s Misty Hewitt says that rates of domestic violence are up during the pandemic. We’ll talk about services, reporting abuse, and healing from trauma, among other topics. We’ll also check in with Hilary Renshaw from USU’s Office of Equity, addresses cases of sexual misconduct and discrimination at USU

Poet Ben Gunsberg will join us for Access Utah on Monday. He’s been writing poems for the pandemic. We’ll hear some of those poems today. His latest collection is “Welcome, Dangerous Life.” He writes about the vulnerability of being a parent. He says (in an article in Utah State University Today) “The stakes are raised once you’ve got children. The title [of the collection] sort of hints at the way life seems more dangerous once you have children, once you have this vulnerable being you’re responsible for, and the way the world has colored and changed.” Ben Gunsberg will read some of these poems as well. 

“I began my writing career by exploring the tracks humans have left in nature. Now I’m mostly interested in the tracks nature leaves in us.” That’s author Gary Ferguson. He says that nature provides beauty, mystery and community, traits that each of us very much needs. He is the author of 25 books.

Venezuelan double bassist Edicson Ruiz is one of the premier double bass soloists in the world. He is a previous winner of the International Society of Bassists solo competition and in 2003 became one of the youngest members of the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of 18. He’s described as a shining example of the ground-breaking El Sistema.

In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational–in the fringe–is on the rise. There’s a new book out called “The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained.” The author, Colin Dickey, will join me for the hour on Monday’s Access Utah. We’ll talk about everything from the great Kentucky Meat Shower of 1876 to UFOs to QAnon and Pizzagate.