Teen Suicide, Little Fires Everywhere, Next Gen of Journalists

Guest: Spencer Cox, Utah Lieutenant Governor Nationwide, the suicide rate has increased markedly over the last decade. The highest rates are found in the Western mountain states, and here in Utah, the rate of teenage suicide is rising at nearly four times the national average. The Centers for Disease Control did a close study of Utah’s teen suicide problem last year and a state-wide task force was organized to recommend strategies for prevention. It’s co-chaired by Utah’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox, who has taken the effort very personally.

Guest: Annette Lyon, Author, “Sweeter Than Any Dream” The novel “Little Fires Everywhere” just hit the big time last week when Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington announced that they’d be making it into a short TV series. "Little Fires Everywhere" is the second novel from Celeste Ng and it’s set in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where the author grew up. The novel tells the story of how the orderly planned community was rocked by the arrival of an itinerant, free-thinking photographer, Mia Warren, and her daughter.

Guest: Patrick Ferrucci, PhD, Assistant Professor of Journalism, University of Colorado Boulder In “The Post” – the movie starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep – reporters at the Washington Post have just gotten their hands on a trove of documents from the top secret Pentagon Papers, which the New York Times was reporting on until the White House sued to stop it. Now The Post has a chance to run with the story, but there’s not much time to comb through the documents, figure out what’s most important and craft stories around that. If that story were happening 2018, the secret trove of documents would be more likely to come in the form of a digital dump. And that’s bad news for those of us who rely on journalists to inform us and hold our public officials accountable.

(Originally aired: Sept. 11, 2017) Guest: Jeremy Carl, PhD, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University Just a decade ago, there was talk of a “nuclear renaissance” in the US. Plans were in the works for several new nuclear plants – the first to be built in the US in 40 years. But a few months ago, construction was abandoned on two of those new nuclear reactors – they weren’t even halfway built, but had already cost 9 billion dollars. And the energy companies building them decided just to cut their losses and walk away. The future of nuclear power in America looks bleak at the moment. But Jeremy Carl says it’s not too late to save it. He’s a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and co-author of the book “Keeping the Lights on at America’s Nuclear Power Plants.”

Guest: Travis Patten, Store Manager, Pioneer Book If you – or someone you love – would like to see the load on your bookshelves lightened just a bit, it’s time to make friends with your local used bookseller. You could turn those books you haven’t read in ages into cash or a new reading experience.