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BENJAMIN BOMBARD
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BENJAMIN BOMBARD
About
Portfolio
Chapbook
About
Portfolio
Chapbook
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Infamous: The Truth About Ruby Franke
Jul 4, 2024
Infamous: The Truth About Ruby Franke
Jul 4, 2024

Through a series of religious visions, Jodi and Ruby become convinced that there is a war between good and evil, and that Ruby's children are agents of the devil. They begin to treat the kids with a new level of cruelty. With Ruby’s husband Kevin estranged, who will save them?

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Jul 4, 2024
Imagining the Future of Downtown Salt Lake City
Jun 5, 2024
Imagining the Future of Downtown Salt Lake City
Jun 5, 2024

After Ryan Smith, the billionaire owner of the Utah Jazz, bought an NHL team, he needed a better place for them to play. His vision is for an improved arena surrounded by a robust mixed-use development. So he took a group of local and state elected officials to LA in an effort to sell his vision and hopefully win over a billion dollars in tax subsidies.

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Jun 5, 2024
A Voice Crying in the Desert
Jan 13, 2023
A Voice Crying in the Desert
Jan 13, 2023

When state and federal negotiators met in 1922 to divide up the water in the Colorado River, they did so with a mistaken understanding of how much water there actually was in the river. But at the time there was one man who knew, with a surprising degree of accuracy, how much water the river held. The only problem: Nobody wanted to listen to him.

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Jan 13, 2023
'Wild New World' with Dan Flores
Dec 30, 2022
'Wild New World' with Dan Flores
Dec 30, 2022

When they arrived in North America 13,000 years ago, humans entered an environment teeming with animal life. But their success here had a devastating effect on other creatures.

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Dec 30, 2022
The Huddled Masses
Nov 2, 2022
The Huddled Masses
Nov 2, 2022

Immigration at the southern border has bedeviled Republican and Democratic presidents for decades. Has it reached a crisis point?

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Nov 2, 2022
Lost Boys
Oct 24, 2022
Lost Boys
Oct 24, 2022

The internet is fertile ground for deadly racist ideology. Can parents protect their kids?

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Oct 24, 2022
How to Read a Taco
Sep 22, 2022
How to Read a Taco
Sep 22, 2022

They may not seem like much, but those humble and colorful open-air taco carts you see scattered on roadsides and in parking lots across the country, they have an important story to tell.

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Sep 22, 2022
Could A Modern-Day “Rockefeller” Save Great Salt Lake?
Feb 4, 2022
Could A Modern-Day “Rockefeller” Save Great Salt Lake?
Feb 4, 2022

Gary Evershed has some big ideas to save Great Salt Lake. But will they work?

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Feb 4, 2022
Clinical study of psychedelic drugs for cancer patients could be a ‘game changer’
Jan 27, 2022
Clinical study of psychedelic drugs for cancer patients could be a ‘game changer’
Jan 27, 2022

Clinical study of psychedelic drugs for cancer patients could be a ‘game changer’

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Jan 27, 2022
Extra Utah: Surviving (And Thriving) In Utah’s Hottest Town
Aug 28, 2021
Extra Utah: Surviving (And Thriving) In Utah’s Hottest Town
Aug 28, 2021

This summer, I traveled around Utah looking for places that are … extra. Extreme. In July I visited the hottest place in the state. If you’ve spent any time in Utah, you probably already know where that is.

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Aug 28, 2021
How Megadrought Is Affecting One Third-Generation Farmer
Jul 23, 2021
How Megadrought Is Affecting One Third-Generation Farmer
Jul 23, 2021

Megadrought means that Royce Larsen faces a decision that could spell the end of his lifelong dream of living the cowboy life

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Jul 23, 2021
Extra Utah: A Journey To The Oldest Spot In The State
Jul 1, 2021
Extra Utah: A Journey To The Oldest Spot In The State
Jul 1, 2021

This summer, I traveled around Utah looking for places that are…extra. Extreme. In June I took my family on the road and went looking for the oldest thing in the state, and we found it. It’s a rock formation in northwestern Utah.

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Jul 1, 2021
Extra Utah: A Journey To The Darkest Spot In The State
May 26, 2021
Extra Utah: A Journey To The Darkest Spot In The State
May 26, 2021

This past summer, I traveled around Utah looking for places that are…extra. Extreme. My first mission: to find the darkest place — above ground — in the state. I just might have found it among the redrock spires of Kodachrome State Park.

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May 26, 2021
A Whale, a Roundabout and a Colony of Gnomes
Mar 26, 2021
A Whale, a Roundabout and a Colony of Gnomes
Mar 26, 2021

What does a humpback whale have to do with Salt Lake City? That's the question swirling around a new public art project planned for the 9th & 9th neighborhood.

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Mar 26, 2021
Ex-Mormons and Psychedelics
Feb 26, 2021
Ex-Mormons and Psychedelics
Feb 26, 2021

There’s a community of former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who believe they’ve found healing and discovered a new sense of spirituality in magic mushrooms.

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Feb 26, 2021
Why Are A Growing Number Of Ex-Mormons Using Psychedelics?
Feb 25, 2021
Why Are A Growing Number Of Ex-Mormons Using Psychedelics?
Feb 25, 2021

Over the past several months, I’ve spoken with more than a dozen individuals, all of them once devout, faithful and committed members of the LDS church. For various reasons, they fell away from the faith, and in time, they found psychedelics.

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Feb 25, 2021
Whispers of Wonderful Melodies
Nov 30, 2020
Whispers of Wonderful Melodies
Nov 30, 2020

The door to the former bank vault is slightly ajar. In the adjoining, low-ceilinged room, Sohrab Mafi stands below a pair of light-box pictures of bright blue skies partly clouded, struggling to explain irfan, a nuanced mystical concept.

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Nov 30, 2020
A Journey Through Teddy Roosevelt's Wilderness
Aug 21, 2020
A Journey Through Teddy Roosevelt's Wilderness
Aug 21, 2020

Earlier this summer we saw the removal of a statue of Theodore Roosevelt in front of New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. It put our 26th president back in the spotlight, but then again, he never really left it.

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Aug 21, 2020
A Perfect Storm of Learning
Apr 2, 2020
A Perfect Storm of Learning
Apr 2, 2020

Almost 667,000 students in Utah are stuck at home. More than 36,000 educators are trying to teach those kids remotely. And hundreds of thousands of parents are caught in the middle. Nobody saw this coming. Now everybody is trying to figure out, on the fly, how school happens online.

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Apr 2, 2020
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Social Distancing
Mar 20, 2020
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Social Distancing
Mar 20, 2020

New habits, I’ve found, can be hard to form, even if we now know doing so is in our best interest. Take social distancing, for instance.

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Mar 20, 2020
2020 Utah Legislative Session Wrap-Up
Mar 13, 2020
2020 Utah Legislative Session Wrap-Up
Mar 13, 2020

Lawmakers wrapped the 2020 Utah legislative session at the stroke of midnight on Thursday. Guest host Benjamin Bombard and a panel of journos gather to take stock of what did – and didn’t – happen on Capitol Hill this year.

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Mar 13, 2020
Daddy Should Know Better: Why I’m Taking Twelve Weeks of Paternity Leave
Feb 21, 2020
Daddy Should Know Better: Why I’m Taking Twelve Weeks of Paternity Leave
Feb 21, 2020

I’m taking paternity leave because the health and well-being of my family is priority number one. And I’m using all of it. Not just the 10 days most American dads take, but the full 12 weeks of federally job-protected and unpaid parental leave.

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Feb 21, 2020
The Campground
Dec 1, 2019
The Campground
Dec 1, 2019

“When I show up at her trailer, Nicole’s dogs are in attack mode, barking murderously and threatening to break their chains.”

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Dec 1, 2019
Deer and Loafing on the Hunting Trail
Sep 13, 2019
Deer and Loafing on the Hunting Trail
Sep 13, 2019

The Utah deer and elk archery seasons wrap up across much of the state this Friday. The Division of Wildlife Resources says there are more buck deer in the state than at any time in the last 25 years. KUER’s Benjamin Bombard sends this audio postcard of a recent hunting trip in the Uintas.  

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Sep 13, 2019
Students of Silence
Apr 29, 2019
Students of Silence
Apr 29, 2019

The students didn’t say a word. They sat. They breathed. They felt what they were feeling. “Let go of everything,” Bimstein said. “Every sound. Every thought. Every sense. For one minute: Just be.”

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Apr 29, 2019
Walking to Work
Oct 31, 2018
Walking to Work
Oct 31, 2018

Most mornings, I step out my front door and wonder how the world has changed shape from the day before.

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Oct 31, 2018
Two-Acre Nation
Jun 16, 2017
Two-Acre Nation
Jun 16, 2017

In 2005, an artist in Brooklyn went on eBay, bought two acres of land in a remote part of Utah, and declared it a de facto sovereign nation: Zaqistan.

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Jun 16, 2017
I’ll Be Lucky if I See Tomorrow
Nov 14, 2016
I’ll Be Lucky if I See Tomorrow
Nov 14, 2016

Driving south on a rural road that beamed through the desert, he smoked a joint and he chewed sunflower seeds to stay awake.

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Nov 14, 2016
Psychedelic Microdosing for Health
Oct 1, 2016
Psychedelic Microdosing for Health
Oct 1, 2016

Microdosing mushroom and LSD could be the giant leap in America’s psychedelic future.

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Oct 1, 2016
Hunting with a Purpose
Sep 29, 2015
Hunting with a Purpose
Sep 29, 2015

Hunting is likely one of the oldest rites in human history, and the connections it provides me and many other hunters are profound.

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Sep 29, 2015