Homeless Crisis on the West Coast

Guest: Farina King, PhD, Assistant Professor, History, Northeastern State University and member of the Navajo Nation Monuments of all sorts are a focal point for debate in America today: whether it’s Confederate War memorials, statues of conquering explorers like Columbus or natural landscapes like the Bears Ears National Monument President Trump recently scaled back significantly.  A monument is really about us saying “this is a place, a memory, a culture, a history we want to preserve.” But given the diversity of views and complexity of America’s history, is it any wonder we’re having trouble agreeing on our monuments? Let’s have a look at this from the perspective of America’s indigenous communities.

Guest: Mark Engler, National Parks Superintendent, Homestead National Monument The westward expansion of the United States was fueled by the Homestead Act, which gave free land to intrepid settlers willing to claim and tame a plot. The act was passed in 1862. But guess when the last file was claimed under the Homestead Act? 1974—hardly ancient history, right? The Park Service’s Homestead National Monument in Nebraska has a new artifact on display in its lobby to commemorate the lesser-known modern history of homesteading in America—an old tractor that brings the history of homesteading full circle.

Guest: Carla Zollinger Gordon, Adult and Teen Services Manager, Provo City Library Are you still shopping for a book-lover on your list, or looking for a book you can curl up with by the fire? We’ve got some suggestions, whether you like fiction or true stories. Or fiction based on true stories.  Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom by Condoleezza Rice Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Guest: Rod Gustafson

Guests: Milt Lee, PhD, Professor, Chemistry, Brigham Young University; Mike Alder, Director, BYU Technology Transfer Office Winter is bad air season in a lot of places like the Wasatch Front here in Utah, where the landscape and temperature changes manage to trap pollution from cars and power plants close to the ground. BYU chemists have developed a portable device that air quality monitors could take with them to a location in the community and immediately check to see what pollutants we’re breathing at that moment, in that one spot. The device could also be helpful when there’s a chemical spill – it works with pollutants in both gas and liquid form.