Arts, Theater & Film

Lee Hale says faith is complicated. In his podcast Preach, he talks to people in the messy middle of belief — not fully bought into religion, not out of it either. At age 19, he served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and now his relationship to Mormonism is, well, messy, too. 

The playwright Eric Samuelsen died last week. He was a leading figure in Mormon literature and the local theatre scene. We're talking about his influential life and work.

Twenty years ago, the film SLC Punk! premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It’s about two young punks living on the fringes and rebelling against Utah culture, while also dealing with the realities of growing up.

In her new documentary film, director Irene Brodsky follows her son Jonas as he sets out to learn Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” Like the legendary composer, Jonas is deaf, and struggling to live between the worlds of sound and silence.

If you play The White Album backwards, is John Lennon really saying “turn me on, dead man”? Join Doug for a conversation about the paranoia around hidden messages in rock music and what it reveals about our fears today.

Critics have called Provo painter Jon McNaughton's work "junk" and "visually dead as a doornail." But McNaughton isn't worried about impressing the arts community; he says his goal is to communicate a political opinion. This episode was picked by Doug Fabrizio.

In 2016, Cambridge Analytica took millions of Facebook users’ data and used it to sew dissension in the presidential campaign and aid Donald Trump. Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer’s film The Great Hack examines the Cambridge Analytica–Facebook scandal.

In the late 80s, neighbors in a San Francisco apartment building recorded the drunken squabbles between Peter and Raymond. Their relationship, and the pop culture phenomenon it spawned, is the subject of the documentary film “Shut Up Little Man.”

Antonio Stradivari created instruments that have given the world their unique and rich sounds for hundreds of years. Author Tony Faber joined us to talk about Stradivari’s enduring work. This episode was picked by KUER’s newsroom managing editor Elaine Clark. 

Few people were watching in August 1981 when MTV debuted on cable television. Filmmakers Patrick Waldrop and Tyler Measom have made a film about the birth and evolution of the television network that revolutionized the culture.