A few years ago, David Finch’s marriage was on the skids. Moments of joy and affection between he and his wife, Kristen, had become rare. One day, Kristen sprung a 150-question quiz on David. It was an informal test for Asperger syndrome, and David aced it. The diagnosis explained David’s long list of quirks and compulsions, and set him on a quest to better understand himself and to become a better husband. His book is called THE JOURNAL OF BEST PRACTICES and he’ll talk with Doug about it on Thursday.

We're cramming all six members of the Salt Lake City-based band L'anarchiste into the studio on Wednesday as part of our Local Music series. The music of L'anarchiste began as a one-man project in Rob LeCheminant's basement. As great as his solo-produced debut EP is, it's not much fun to go to a concert to see a guy hit the play button on his computer. So LeCheminant recruited five musicians to help perform his densely structured take on indie folk. We'll talk to L’anarchiste and survey new local bands and albums.

The oil and natural gas fields of the rural West -- from North Dakota to Wyoming to Colorado and Utah -- have produced thousands of jobs and brought great prosperity to communities and families alike. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Energy development has also brought ill consequences: high crime, drugs, adverse health conditions, poor air quality and environmental degradation. Tuesday on RadioWest we’ll discuss the social and cultural effects, both positive and negative, of energy development in the rural West.

When science writer Florence Williams was breastfeeding, she decided to have her milk tested for environmental contaminants. Her results were average for American women and included chemicals found in flame-retardants and jet-fuel. It's not, she says, what her daughter had in mind for dinner. It set her off on a journey to study the history of breasts: how they evolved and what modern life is doing to them. Williams is in Utah on Monday and joins Doug in studio.

Friday on RadioWest the historian Will Bagley is with us to talk about his epic quest to chronicle the westward migration of American settlers. Bagley's book tells the story of the Overland Trails that brought more than half a million Americans to the far West of Oregon and California. It's the story of families and fortune hunters and the effect that all of it had the native people who for centuries had already been calling the West home. (Rebroadcast)

Richard Dutcher has been called the “father of Mormon cinema,” though he actually left the LDS church in 2007. Dutcher says he has always tried to make films that exhibit great personal integrity and appeal to viewers with every manner of belief. His film FALLING chronicles the devastating spiritual and emotional collapse of an ambitious videographer, and it mirrors his own personal and professional crises. The movie is currently showing in Salt Lake City, which gives us an opportunity to talk to Dutcher on Thursday.

Wednesday on RadioWest, we're rebroadcasting our conversation about Maurice Sendak's classic children's book "Where the Wild Things Are." The brilliant writer and illustrator died yesterday at the age of 83. His book changed children's literature when it was first published in 1963. Like most good art, it was seen as subversive and outrageous. We'll talk about translating it into a movie - but mostly, our fond memories of Max and his extraordinary adventure. (Rebroadcast)

In 1978, technology historian Rachel Maines was researching needlework when she came across ads for vibrators in 19th century magazines. They were sold as medical treatment for women with "hysteria." Symptoms were depression, irritability, confusion and more. Maines' research is the basis of a play on stage in Salt Lake and a Hollywood film that opens here next month. Tuesday, we'll talk to Maines about the history of the vibrator and what it can still tell us about women's roles in society.

When former University of Utah President Chase Peterson began writing his memoir, it was largely to displace panic after a cancer diagnosis. He says his book is not the story of an academician, a scientist or a physician, though Dr. Peterson is all of those things. It's what he calls a "human and spiritual journey," that took him from the American West to New England and home again. Monday, Chase Peterson talks with us about the people he has served and the moments that brought his life meaning.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. But not everybody really knows what it is, either. The writer Cullen Murphy has written a book about the Catholic Church's 700-year persecution of its enemies, both real and imagined. And he says the "inquisitorial impulse" lives on - in America's massive surveillance and routine use of torture in the wake of 9/11, for example. Murphy joins Doug on Friday to remind us the Inquisition isn't something safely relegated to the past (Rebroadcast)