RadioWest

Even people who don’t like jazz know about Miles Davis. Director Stanley Nelson’s latest film profiles the mercurial musician whose relentlessly creative life gave birth to the word “cool.”

Wednesday we’re talking about a Sundance documentary about Satanists. It’s both a political and a religious movement. They don’t believe in a Satan, just the idea that he was the ultimate rebel.

In her film ALWAYS IN SEASON, director Jacqueline Olive investigates a modern-day lynching, and she explores where that story intersects with America’s appalling history of racial violence against African-Americans.

Monday, we begin our Sundance coverage with a documentary about a farm. John and Molly Chester wanted to create a place that followed the way a natural ecosystem works. But getting there, wasn’t easy.

Sociologist Robert Bullard is known as the "father of environmental justice,” and he joins us Friday to talk about how minorities and poor communities have it the worst when it comes pollution.

Historian Joshua Freeman joins us to talk about the history of factories, which is really interesting when you consider the lives of the people who've worked in them and how they've shaped our world.

Wednesday, we’re talking about how the Russians tried to influence the 2016 presidential election. Researcher Renee DiResta joins us to explore the techniques of weaponizing social media and why we take the bait.

Lots of states want to have the legal case that challenges Roe v. Wade in the newly conservative Supreme Court, and a Utah lawmaker has introduced a very strict bill that could be in the mix.

Monday, Howard Berkes joins us to talk about his reporting of an epidemic of black lung disease that is suffocating and killing the country's coal miners. Federal regulators and the mining industry have done little to help.

Historian Joanne Freeman joins us with stories of the routine bullying, fist fights, canings, and duels in Congress before the Civil War. If you think our country is fractured now, you should tune in.

Thursday, we’re talking about the central sticking point in the ongoing federal shutdown: The wall. Hundreds of miles of physical barriers already separate the US and Mexico. Are more walls the answer to the humanitarian crisis at the border?

Nadine Strossen says we should protect hate speech. She's former ACLU president, and she argues that censorship just doesn’t work. The way to resist hate speech, she says, is with more free speech.

Tuesday, we continue our Through the Lens series with director Robert Greene's compelling and original documentary Bisbee 17 . It's about the former mining town of Bisbee, Arizona, and the century-old event that haunts it to this day.

A study shows that after certain conversion therapy efforts, LGBTQ kids are nearly three times more likely to attempt suicide. Monday, we’re talking about it and about efforts to ban conversion therapy for youth in Utah.

Chances are you've never given jellyfish a second thought. The science writer Juli Berwald gets it, but she loves them. She's written a book about how complicated and beautiful they are.