Lecture guests, offstage stories, meaningful songs.
APEX Hour at SUU extends Southern Utah University’s lecture series into a warmer radio setting, where speakers explain the life and work behind their public talks. Conversations move from books, films, activism, science, theater, photography, and history into music that means something to each guest.
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APEX Hour at SUU is the companion radio space around Southern Utah University’s APEX lecture series. It is less formal than a stage talk and more biographical than a standard academic interview. Ryan Paul typically begins with a “how we get to now” question, then lets the guest connect childhood, education, vocation, and public work. That structure gives the show a steady human shape. The subjects change dramatically from episode to episode. Michael Howarth talks through Gothic literature, horror, young adult fiction, and the story of Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Matthew Delmont brings World War II history into sharper focus through Black troops, the Red Ball Express, the Ledo Road, Alaska, and the 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion. LaToya Ruby Frazier connects photography to family collaboration, blue-collar life, environmental crisis, and public health. Bill Heyborne moves from insects and venomous snakes to mentorship, grief, and television memories. Sarah Eagleheart speaks about Pine Ridge, Lakota values, respect, activism, and Lakota Nation versus the United States. Ben Hohman makes theater props feel like engineering, craft, comedy, and practical problem-solving all at once. Joan and Loki Mulholland place civil rights history inside song, memory, marching, and family witness. Lorcan Collins turns Irish revolutionary history into a lively discussion of prisons, organizers, and political consequence. The recurring music choices matter. Songs by Bill Withers, Tony Bennett, The Pogues, the Freedom Singers, Kermit the Frog, Stella Standing Bear, and others become a second route into each guest’s life. The show’s appeal is not polish for its own sake. Its strength is the patient, personable way it lets public thinkers sound local, specific, and fully human.
Made for: For listeners who enjoy university lectures, author talks, arts conversations, public history, and campus radio with an informal pace. It especially suits people who like learning through biography and specific stories rather than abstract summaries.
What sets it apart: The show gives APEX speakers a looser, more personal setting than a lecture hall, then ties each conversation to music chosen for memory or meaning. Its range is unusually broad while staying anchored in Southern Utah University’s visiting-speaker world.
Discussions with speakers at Eccles APEX, the premier lecture series at Southern Utah University.
A self-driving stage table and Kermit the Frog share airtime; your curiosity gets the good seat.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A prop director makes backstage problem-solving feel like its own kind of performance.
Props sit at the point where stage illusion has to become something an actor can actually handle. Apex Hour's conversation with Ben Holman, properties director at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, keeps returning to that practical magic, moving from the line between scenery and…
A grounded conversation about the Black troops whose roads, supply lines, and mail kept World War II moving.
Matthew Delmont's Half American gives the episode its center of gravity: the story of Black Americans who fought World War II at home and abroad, and the work that kept the Allied war effort moving.
Sarah Eagleheart links Pine Ridge, filmmaking, and respect for Indigenous people in a thoughtful, searching conversation.
The Apex Hour's conversation with Sarah Eagleheart works best when it lets personal memory carry public meaning. Her roots on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation frame a discussion of humility, compassion, generosity, and respect, with Ryan Paul giving those values room to breathe.
A dean's path from an escaped garter snake to biodiversity research becomes a warm reflection on family, memory, and loss.
The Apex Hour begins its season with Ryan Paul and producer Lauren Bird welcoming Dean Bill Hayborn into a conversation shaped by curiosity, memory, and the pull of research.
A hometown and a timely gift of books frame the making of a photographic practice.
Braddock sits at the center of this single-episode review, not just as a hometown but as the frame for understanding how a photographic practice begins.
Literary audio with a writer’s ear.
UC Santa Cruz's arts division, one conversation at a time.
Héctor and Beto dissect Mexican grammar, slang, and news in native-speed Spanish conversations.
Small habit changes meet hands-on AI experiments.
Sarah Eagleheart Ogallala-Lacota tells Ryan Paul and Lauren Bird on KSUU Thunder 91.1 how a 57-year homecoming pageant at her high school staged Native stereotypes in public.
On APEX Hour at SUU, Ryan Paul interviews English professor and film-studies scholar Michael Haworth about horror, gothic literature, and the ways fear can reveal personal values.
Ryan Paul interviews Dartmouth historian Matthew Delmont about Half American, a book on black Americans fighting World War II at home and abroad.
["A Hanson Planetarium presenter freezes a racquetball in liquid nitrogen at Kanab Elementary, and the shard that skids near Bill Heyborn becomes his earliest scientific memory.", "Ryan Paul, director of Apex and professor of history, interviews Heyborn with producer Lauren Bird as Heyborn explains how he went from Utah State and SUU to dean of SUU's College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.", "Heyborn traces the path through Oregon State entomology, a University of Northern Colorado PhD in biological education, and years teaching introductory biology in western Oregon's community-college system.", "He also describes rattlesnake fieldwork, bird-specific venom effects, and his view that science matters because it changes when new data change the answer."]
Ben Holman, the properties director at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, explains how his shop builds furniture, set dressing, and every object actors touch, while scenery "builds the house" and props "make it a home." He says most people think festival productions arrive from a truck, but the company actually designs and builds its own shows in-house, with about 60% pulled from stock, 20% bought and modified, and 20% built from scratch.
["Latoya Ruby Frazier tells Ryan Paul that Braddock, Pennsylvania, and her great step grandfather Phillip Sellers, a retired Carnegie steelworker, shaped the way she makes photographs.", "She traces her shift from graphic design to photography to Mark Kirsch's 1999 portrait assignment at Edinburgh University of Pennsylvania, then to Roland Barthes, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks.", "The episode also follows Ruby Virginia Davis Frazier's discipline, a gospel mime troupe at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and a Van Gogh print that later reappeared in a Belgium residency at the Max Museum.", "Frazier argues for collaborative, long-form work like The Notion of Family and Flint is Family in Three Acts, saying a homeless-shelter portrait in Erie taught her that lived experience matters."]
Apex Hour at SUU features Joan Mulholland and Loki Mulholland discussing Joan’s path from witnessing segregated schools in Georgia at age 10 to joining more than 50 civil-rights demonstrations by age 23.
On APEX Hour at SUU, Ryan Paul and Lauren Bird interview Irish author and historian Lorcan Collins about Ireland’s revolutionary history, from the 1798 rebellion through the 1981 hunger strikes.
Michael Schmidt, dean of Southern Utah University's College of Performing and Visual Arts, describes moving from graphic design and tech theater into ceramics after taking one 3D requirement course.
The Apex Hour interviews Dr.
John D'Antonio, artistic director of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, traces his theater career from Pittsburgh and a high-school production of The Princess Bride to Case Western Reserve University, Denver, New York City, Creed Repertory Theater, and Utah.
On The Apex Hour, Jean-Michel discusses how a digital-media project led him from De Rijp in the Netherlands to managing one of the first Dutch Fab Labs.
The Apex Hour’s Ryan Paul interviews Dr.
Dr.
On APEX Hour at SUU, Ward Wilson explains how the Cuban Missile Crisis shaped his work as a historian and nuclear-weapons analyst.
On APEX Hour at SUU, Ryan Paul interviews Southern Utah University primatologist Crystal Riley Koenig about macaques in Singapore and the portrayal of primates in entertainment media.
Sibusiso Vilane recounts growing up in rural South Africa and Eswatini, where poverty and delayed schooling shaped the resilience he later used as a climber.
Carrie Snow, manager of collections care at the Church History Museum, explains how a cultural-anthropology degree and museum-studies training led to more than 20 years managing artifacts.
Apex Hour at SUU host Ryan Paul interviews Southern Utah University primatologist Crystal Koenig about her path from Canton, Ohio, and psychology graduate school to studying wild long-tailed macaques in Singapore.
Apex Hour at SUU host Ryan Paul and producer Cason Graff interview sociologist Rick Scarce about environmental activism, academic ethics, and his preparation to become a licensed Gettysburg battlefield guide.
Drew Robinson describes going from an undersized, non-starting high-school player in Las Vegas to a Texas Rangers draft pick within one calendar year.
On APEX Hour at SUU, Ryan Paul interviews communication professor Kevin Stein about how debate led him to study political messaging, attack rhetoric, and apologies.
Apex Hour at SUU features poet and prose writer Paisley Rekdal, the 2024 Grace A.
On APEX Hour at SUU, Ryan Paul interviews Lauren Markham about her books The Faraway Brothers and A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging.
Camille Dungy tells Ryan Paul and Cason Graff how her 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship project became Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden during the pandemic.
Historian Alfred Runte discusses his work on railroads and national parks, and the centennial of Utah's parks.
A NASA historian discusses his career and the early days of the space race.
An interview with Leon Logothetis about his journey from a depressed broker to a global adventurer spreading kindness.
A poet discusses his journey into poetry and performs readings in an interview format.