Profiles

Friday, we're broadcasting our conversation with Ron Paul. The congressman and former presidential candidate joined us yesterday on the campus of Utah Valley University. Paul's dogged adherence to his basic tenet – that government impedes liberty – has garnered him a passionate and diverse following. Ron Paul is currently serving the last of his 24 years in the House and we spoke with him about his philosophy for an ideal society. For Paul, that means as little government as possible.

When historian John Turner decided to write a book about Mormonism, it didn't take him long to settle on Brigham Young as his object of study. Turner says that the LDS Church's second leader was a colossal figure not just in American religion, but also in the history of politics and westward expansion.  His new biography reveals a complicated man: blunt, aggressive and sometimes profane, but also charismatic and a fierce protector of his people. Thursday, Turner joins us to talk about the "Pioneer Prophet."

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. Chase Peterson talks with us about the people he has served and the moments that brought his life meaning. (Rebroadcast)

Tuesday on RadioWest we’re talking with legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin about the fraught relationship between America’s highest justice and its commander-in-chief. Toobin says that when Chief Justice Roberts flubbed newly-elected President Obama’s inaugural oath in 2008, a very important relationship got off to a very tense start. Not much has changed in four years. In a new book, Toobin examines the uneasy rapport of two of the world’s most powerful men, both determined to change the course of American history via radically different agendas.