In Site Zion Canyon Mesa

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a friend is “one joined to another in mutual benevolence and intimacy. Not ordinarily applied to lovers or relatives…a boon companion.” It first appears in “Beowolf” in 1018 A.D. as “freondum.” Though the opposite of “fiend,” both words root in the same Germanic word soup for “love” and “hate,” so therefore inextricably intertwined. Here, two old friends, Teresa Jordan and Judith Freeman, both remarkable and accomplished writers and artis...

We’ve podcasted about the Lake Powell Pipeline, so we thought, as the drought continues and water levels continue to drop, let’s go have a look. We told our board about the idea and it turns out that board member Catherine Smith rafted the Colorado River through Glen Canyon as a teenager in 1955. We were so pleased that she insisted on coming along. We included David Petitt, a well-known photographer now painter, and of course, our producer and host Logan, his wife Angie, and our assistant pr...

For anyone concerned about the current global state of Democracy, which should be everyone, Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister, may be our greatest hope:“I’m not here to make citizens transparent to government, I’m here to make government transparent to citizens.”She has flipped Big Brother, proving that this very same unprecedented internet connectivity can be harnessed to cultivate and manifest the very best of us as well — connecting instead of isolating, confirming truths instead of s...

In Part 3, we continue searching for that special something that no one can quite put their finger on; whatever it is that is drawing people to Helper like a magnet. Gary DeVincent made his way to Helper because he has an eye for quality. He has been restoring old motorcycles and cars his whole life, giving him a penchant for recognizing things that were built with care and intention. So, several years ago when he saw the beautiful but run-down buildings on Helper’s main street he saw a ...

In her new book Gender(s), a new volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Kathryn Bond Stockton explores the fascinating, fraught, intimate, morphing matter of gender. Stockton argues for gender's strangeness, no matter how normal the concept seems; gender is queer for everyone, she claims, even when it's played quite straight. And she explains how race and money dramatically shape everybody's gender, even in sometimes surprising ways. Playful but serious, erudite and witty, Stockt...

With the downturn of the coal mines in the 70s and 80s came a period of economic decline for Helper, Utah. The town was starting to look a little shabby, so proud residents Neida Garcia and Lois Giordano took it upon themselves to spruce things up a bit. They started planting flowers on Main Street with a hunch that caring would beget caring. They were right. Every business on Main Street wanted to be a part of it, and pretty soon there were pots of flowers outside every storefront. But it di...