If you live in the Salt Lake area, you may have noticed that the air is a little clearer these days, with so few cars on the road due to the COVID-19 shutdown.

According to a 2015 Pew research poll, a hefty percentage of Americans believe in a traditional Christian afterlife, with 72% of those polled stating they believe in heaven and 58% believing in hell.

Not in recent memory has the question “How are you feeling” been asked by so many with such sincerity.

Theoretical physicist Brian Greene has a very special talent: He can explain deeply complicated scientific principles in a way that makes them comprehensible to the layperson. 

We’re talking about the impact of the coronavirus on Utah – our local businesses, arts organizations, neighbors and friends. How are we coping?  

Lawmakers wrapped the 2020 Utah legislative session at the stroke of midnight on Thursday. Friday morning, we're looking back at the past 45 days to discuss what did – and didn’t – happen on Capitol Hill this year.

It was an international corporation that became an eighteenth century colonial power with its own army – and all entirely run by British stockholders who reported  to a board of directors in London, most of whom had never been to India. 

In his recent article for The Atlantic, Dr. Jeremy Brown, author of Influenza: The 100-Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History, wrote: “If the terrible influenza pandemic of 1918 and the current coronavirus outbreak share one feature, it is this: People are terribly afraid.” 

As an essayist and novelist, writer Ben Fountain was an unlikely choice to pen a monthly column about the 2016 presidential election for the British newspaper, The Guardian. He’d never worked as a journalist, and although he’s passionate about U.S. politics, he had never written about a presidential election.

To ensure statehood, Utah had to ban the practice of polygamy. But the laws against plural marriage are rarely enforced here, and a bill passed by lawmakers yesterday takes the extraordinary step of decriminalizing polygamy.