Access Utah

Robin Williams’ apparent suicide has us not only remembering his life and talent but trying to come to terms with the reality of suicide. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, "Suicide claims more than 38,000 lives each year in the United States alone, with someone dying by suicide every 13.7 minutes. A suicide attempt is made every minute of every day, resulting in nearly one million attempts made annually." Utah author and suicide prevention advocate Wendy Parmley knows this reality all too well. Her new book “Hope after Suicide: One Woman's Journey from Darkness to Light,” details her journey following the suicide death of her mother nearly 40 years ago. She was 12-years-old at the time, the oldest of five children, and her mother was just 31. For years, Ms. Parmley locked away the pain of her mother's death. But after a disabling bike accident in September 2011 that left her unable to return to her nursing career, she began to write her mother's story--and her own healing journey be

The legendary conflict between sheepherder Frank Clark and Old Ephraim the giant bear is one of the most widely-told stories in the Logan area. Old Ephraim was a very large grizzly who roamed the Cache National Forest from about 1911 until his death on August 22, 1923. Old Ephraim stories are still told. We’re going to talk about local legends on Monday’s AU. Our guests include Daniel Bishop, The Storyteller; and Daniel Davis, Photograph Curator at the USU Merrill-Cazier Library, Special Collections. We want to hear your Old Ephraim story. Maybe you can tell us about the Bear Lake Monster. Tune in Monday and share with us a legend from your hometown or family.

Jeff Guinn, author of “Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson” (now out in paperback) says he wanted to answer two questions with the book: “Why does Manson’s name still resonate with us, all these years after those famous murders? And what happened in his life to make him the way he turned out?” Guinn says that in answering those questions “it was really like a trip across American history because Manson represents so many aspects of American society.” More than 40 years ago Charles Manson and his mostly female commune killed nine people, among them the pregnant actress Sharon Tate. It was the culmination of a criminal career that Guinn traces back to Manson’s childhood. Guinn interviewed Manson’s sister and cousin, neither of whom had ever previously cooperated with an author. Childhood friends, cellmates, and some members of the Manson family provided new information about Manson’s life. Guinn made discoveries about the night of the Tate murders, answering unresolved questions, such as why one person

Fairy tales have endured as a part of our culture since at least the days of the Brothers Grimm, and they’re still going strong on television, movies and books today. What do fairy tales mean? What do they reflect in our shared concerns? And what does the continuing trend toward fractured and reinvented fairy tales say about us? We’ll talk about this with Lynne McNeill, an instructor and director of online development for the folklore program at Utah State University and co-founder of and faculty advisor for the USU Folklore Society; and Utah author RaShelle Workman, who writes reinvented fairy tales. Her books include “A Beauty So Beastly,” in which she imagines what would happen if the beauty was also the beast. And her “Blood and Snow” series is a retelling of Snow White with a vampire twist.

At 22, Michael Leach’s dream of becoming a Yellowstone ranger came true. It wasn’t long before he’d earned the nickname “Rev” for his powerful Yellowstone “sermons.” In Grizzlies on My Mind: Essays of Adventure, Love, and Heartache from Yellowstone Country,” Leach shares his love for Yellowstone—its landscapes and wildlife, especially its iconic bison and grizzlies—as he tells stories of human lives lost, efforts to save a black bear cub, a famous wolf who helped Leach through some dark personal days, the unique and often humorous Yellowstone “culture,” backpacking trips that nearly ended in disaster, and Leach’s spiritual journey with his Assiniboine-Gros Ventre “brother.”

Lewis Buzbee was a self-proclaimed “average student,” one whose parents did not go to college. After the death of his father he began to spiral downward, but was saved from failing high school by attentive teachers-teachers who had ample resources thanks to a well-funded California school system. But now, schools have been devastated by funding cuts, and Buzbee wonders in his new book “Blackboard: A Personal History of the Classroom,” if it’s still possible to save at-risk students when “the public will to fund public education remains pallid, timid, hypocritical.” Searching for solutions, Buzbee looks to the origins of kindergarten, muses on the architecture of schools, and organizing principles and objects of the classroom like the blackboard and the desk, to discover what those spaces and objects tell students about the importance of learning. Buzbee offers insight not only as a student but also as a teacher and a father, contrasting his daughter’s experiences with his own. And, in the book’s epilogue, he

Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture, made public parks an essential part of American life and forever changed our relationship with public open spaces. He was co-designer of Central Park, head of the first Yosemite commission, leader of the campaign to protect Niagara Falls, designer of the U.S. Capitol Grounds, site planner for the Great White City of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, planner of Boston’s “Emerald Necklace” of green space, and of park systems in many other cities.

If scientists supposedly now agree it’s not nature versus nurture; but the interaction of nature and nurture, why does the debate still go on? James Tabery, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Utah says it’s because those scientists aren’t just arguing about data and results. They’re engaged in a fundamentally philosophical debate about what “the interaction of nature and nurture” actually means. He says that “from disputes in the 1930s regarding eugenic sterilizations, to controversies in the 1970s about the gap in IQ scores for black and white Americans, to the contemporary debate about the causes of depression—this frustratingly persistent debate keeps emerging, even as the cast and context of each iteration of that debate changes from decade to decade.”

In “Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal,” Mary Roach explores the much-maligned but vital tube from mouth to rear that turns food into the nutrients that keep us alive. She introduces us to scientists who tackle questions no one else thinks to ask. Why doesn't the stomach digest itself? Can wine tasters really tell a $10 bottle from a $100 bottle? Why do Americans eat, on average, no more than thirty different foods on a regular basis? “Gulp” is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies. We meet a “disgust” researcher, a saliva expert, and one of medicine’s oddest couples: Alexis St. Martin, a French Canadian trapper with a hole gut-shot in his stomach, and William Beaumont, the army surgeon who achieved fame by placing food inside St. Martin to see what happened. We revisit our conversation with Mary Roach on Wednesday’s AU.

In May of 1934, outside of Hugo, Oklahoma, a homeless man and his 13 year-old daughter are befriended by a Texas drifter newly released from the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. The drifter, Clint Palmer, lures father and daughter to Texas, where the father, Dillard Garrett, mysteriously disappears, and where his daughter Lucile begins a one-year ordeal that culminates in four Utah killings and Palmer’s notorious Greenville, Texas “skeleton murder” trial of 1935.

Lily Nakai and her family lived in southern California, where sometimes she and a friend dreamt of climbing the Hollywood sign that lit the night. At 10, believing that her family was simply going on a “camping trip,” she found herself living in a tar-papered barracks, nightly gazing out instead at a searchlight. She wondered if anything would ever be normal again.

Nicholas Basbanes is author of a trilogy on all things book-related including “A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books,” In his latest, “On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand Year History,” he considers everything from paper’s invention in China two thousand years ago, which revolutionized human civilization, to its crucial role in the unfolding of historical events, political scandals, and sensational trials: from the American Revolution to the Pentagon Papers and Watergate.

Justin Hocking, author of a new memoir, “The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld,” writes: “Fifteen years ago, I first dove into the immense, dark waters of Melville's masterpiece...I became obsessed with a book about obsession.

For decades, Walter Cronkite was known as "the most trusted man in America." Millions across the nation welcomed him into their homes, first as a print reporter for the United Press on the front lines of World War II, and later, in the emerging medium of television, as a host of numerous documentary programs and as anchor of the CBS Evening News, from 1961 until his retirement in 1981.

Armando Solórzano, Director of Chicano Studies at the University of Utah, says that years of neglect and omission from historical records have taken their toll on the historical consciousness of Latinos in Utah. For a long time, many people, including a large percentage of the Latino community, believed that the presence of Latinos or their ancestors in the state was merely a twentieth-century phenomenon.

Sometime next year, a federal judge will decide whether Native Americans are still being shut out of political power in San Juan County, where now more than 52 percent of residents are Navajo or Ute tribal members. At issue will be the Navajo Nation’s claim that voting districts in the county have been gerrymandered to assure a permanent white majority in local elections.

Andrea Powell and Stephanie Henry join us Wednesday on Access Utah to discuss their work in helping victims of human trafficking. We’ll also share comments on human trafficking in Utah from our Public Insight Network. You can respond right now at www.upr.org. Click “Become a Source.”

As a loving father, Paul Holton found it hard to reconcile his innate goodwill with his role as an interrogator for the Army National Guard. Until one day, deep in Iraqi territory, surrounded by the horrors of war, he realized how he could make a small but significant difference in the lives of the children all around him.

Author Ed Kociela has a knack for taking his readers behind closed doors and now walks you backstage to hang out with some of the biggest stars in rock 'n' roll history in "It Rocked! Recollections of a reclusive rock critic.

Two members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were recently notified that they potentially faced disciplinary councils which could result in excommunication from the church for apostasy. Kate Kelly is a human rights lawyer who founded Ordain Women, a group seeking access to the LDS church’s all-male priesthood.