Deseret Digest March 2025

THE DIGEST

MARCH 2025 VOL. 3 / NO. 3

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Elder Cook outlines ‘4 loves of missionary work’ in MTC devotional

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What’s next for Rupert Murdoch’s media empire?

What we learned about American families from 10 years of surveys American Family Survey explores where nation is divided and united

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By Doug Wilks

We are pleased to introduce you to The Digest, a sampling of some of the best stories written every day by the dedicated journalists at the Deseret News, Deseret Magazine and Church News. Our hope is that you will make us your trusted news source each day at a time when there is confusion and contention in the nation.

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These drugs have names such as Gabapentin, Lyrica, Cymbalta, and Neurontin, and are primarily antidepressant or anti-seizure drugs. These drugs may cause you to feel uncomfortable and have a variety of harmful side effects.

3) How much treatment will your condition require?

The treatment that is provided at The Scranton Clinic has three main goals: Increase blood flow Stimulate small fiber nerves Decrease brain-based pain

Figure 2: When these very small blood vessels become diseased they begin to shrivel up and the nerves begin to degenerate. they cause you to have balance problems, pain, numbness, tingling, burning, and many additional symptoms.

Figure 1: Notice the very small blood vessels surrounding each nerve.

Peripheral neuropathy is a result of damage to the nerves often causing weakness, pain, numbness, tingling, and the most debilitating balance problems. This damage is commonly caused by a lack of blood flow to the nerves in the hands and feet which causes the nerves to begin to degenerate due to lack of nutrient flow.

As you can see in Figure 2, as the blood vessels that surround the nerves become diseased they shrivel up which causes the nerves to not get the nutrients to continue to survive. When these nerves begin to “die”

The treatment to increase blood flow utilizes a specialized low-level light therapy (not to be confused with laser therapy) using light emitting diode technology. This technology was originally developed by NASA to assist in increasing blood flow.

The low level light therapy is like watering a plant. The light therapy will allow the blood ves-sels to grow back around the peripheral nerves and provide them with the proper nutrients to heal and repair. It’s like adding water to a plant and seeing the roots grow deeper and deeper.

The main problem is that your doctor has told you to just live with the problem or try the drugs which you don’t like taking because they make you feel uncomfortable.

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NOTE: Once you have sustained 85% nerve loss, there is likely nothing that we can do for you.

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Figure 3: The blood vessels will grow back around the nerves much like a plant’s roots grow when watered.

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4 DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025

DESERET NEWS

At Weber State, the cheerleaders spell C-H-A-M-P-I-O-N Under coach Summer Willis, the Wildcats have won seven straight national titles

Weber State cheer coach Summer Willis coaches cheerleaders during practice at Weber State University in Ogden on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025.

By Lee Benson Deseret News

They keep winning national titles like Meryl Streep collects acting awards — seven of them in a row with more expected on the way — and yet, in one of those life ironies you just can’t make up, the winningest athletic team right now in the state of Utah, and one of the most dominating in all of college sports, doesn’t have any cheerleaders cheering them on.

For one simple reason: they are the cheerleaders.

Year after year, the cheer teams at Weber State University keep lugging home championship trophies almost as tall as they are. The fact that the trophies are stashed in the coaches office collecting dust ought to give you some idea of the lack of fanfare and fuss. But the bigger fact is that Weber State has won national championships every year since 2017, including two straight Grand Titles — a new award the National Cheerleaders Association implemented in 2023 that

recognizes the top school in all of its collegiate divisions. A kind of Best of Show.

Weber State is second to none. The Wildcats are the unknown juggernaut.

Unless you are in the world of competitive cheer, that is, in which case you’re as well known as Patrick Mahomes in football circles. *** All this, from a school that didn’t even have competitive cheer until Summer Willis showed up.

Fresh out of college in 1998 with a degree in communications, Summer was hired to a marketing position in the Weber State athletic department. That might have been her career if Weber’s cheer coach hadn’t quit that same year, leaving the Spirit Squad (cheerleading, mascot and dance) in need of a leader.

The department reached out to Summer: “Hey, you cheered in college,” they said (she did, at Utah State University), “would you mind stepping in?”

Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

So that’s how the dynasty began.

Summer quickly discovered two things: 1, she loved coaching a lot more than marketing; 2, she wanted the cheerleaders, who worked as hard at their sport as any other athletes, to be able to show off their skills in competition.

By 2003, she’d developed the cheer program to the point that she dropped marketing and coaching became her fulltime job. She started small, taking the squad to competitive meets in the West, until by 2008 Weber State qualified for the first time to compete at nationals, held every April in Daytona Beach, Florida. The newcomer Wildcats placed third. That was surprising, but not nearly as surprising as the next year, when they returned to Daytona and won the whole thing.

Growing pains set in after that, but a lot of hard work and creative fundraising got Summer’s Wildcats back to Daytona for nationals in 2014. They finished third a couple of times and then, in 2017, broke through to claim a title they haven’t relinquished since.

DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025 “It seems surreal,” says Summer, “we’re a small school, people don’t know who we are or where we’re from, half of them can’t pronounce our name, and now we go places in the nation and they know who we are and it’s pretty unreal.”

(It should be noted here that collegiate cheerleading has two organizations. One is the National Cheerleaders Association. That’s where Weber State competes. The other is the Universal Cheerleaders Association, which holds its national meet every January in Orlando, Florida. So there are in fact two national groups that crown cheer champions every year. The University of Alabama is the reigning UCA champion in Weber State’s category. Another note: competitions are divided into two categories: All Girls (their terminology, not mine), and Coed. Weber competes in both Large Coed — eight girls, 12 guys — and Small Coed — 16 girls, four guys. Its seven consecutive national titles are in Large Coed.)

As Weber State’s star has risen, as people have learned how to pronounce the name, more and more talented cheer athletes are finding their way to Ogden. In the beginning, the program had almost exclusively local talent, now more than half the roster is from out-of-state, and in many cases out-of-the-country. This year’s team includes athletes from Norway, Australia, Venezuela, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, Hong Kong and the U.K. And here’s one more statistic that puts Weber State’s emergence as a cheer power into perspective: On the 2025 U.S. National Coed Team, no less than nine members are Weber State products (three alumni and six current athletes) — that’s more than a quarter of the 32-person squad.

Alabama, the other national champ, has three. *** Trying to make sense of it all, Summer Willis, now in her 26th season as Weber State’s cheer coach, hearkens back to the year she started, in 1998-99, when the Weber basketball

Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

Weber State cheer coach Summer Willis huddles up with cheerleaders after practice at Weber State University in Ogden on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025.

team traveled to a first-round March Madness tournament game in Seattle against highly-favored North Carolina and won. She was an eyewitness.

“We were a teeny No. 14 seed and we came in and beat this huge university,” she remembers, “I was there with the cheer team, we were a part of it, it was on my birthday, March 11, and I’m running onto the court celebrating this

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huge triumph from a university no one would ever imagine winning. I was like, underdogs can do anything. If you work hard enough and believe, you can do it. I honestly think that set a tone for my career, right from year one, because I loved being a part of that. It ignited something that was always in me, I guess, but it was like, yeah, you can be something great if you put in the work and you really believe.”

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DESERET NEWS

What we learned about American families from 10 years of surveys American Family Survey explores where nation is divided and united in 2015.

Consternation over the economy was so great it supplanted the perennial No. 1 choice: How other people teach and discipline their children is for the very first time the No. 2 concern. Inflation is instead top of mind.

“Inflation is clearly worrisome. Our survey is too blunt an instrument to causally prove exactly how this works, but it’s not hard to see the general outline, which is prices of everything go up. Your income doesn’t go up nearly as much, or it’s going to go up and catch up by the year 2028, not now. So you have a difficult time meeting all your obligations, and people are pretty worried about that,” said Jeremy C. Pope, co-author of the survey report with Christopher F. Karpowitz. The two are political science professors at BYU and scholars with both the center and the institute.

Pope said he thinks economic worries worked against Democrats in the last election, but that “economic discontent, if it continues, is going to rebound against Republicans too, because if you have a lot of economic stress, I doubt you’re sort of working out on a blackboard which party should I blame more? You just want it to get better. If you happen to be in an election and you’re voting, you’re probably irritated with whoever is in power.”

What didn’t change much

The Munns family prays before eating dinner at their home in Lehi on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025.

By Lois M. Collins Deseret News

Jaxon Munns sometimes thinks about a quote he heard somewhere that says millennials were born at the best time possible to be a kid and the worst time possible to be an adult.

The Lehi, Utah, business and trademark attorney and his wife, Kristin, and their four sons are living in a rental because it’s a very tough time to buy a house on the Wasatch Front.

“I’m a partner in a law firm,” Munns said. “I have a very good above-average income and we’re still finding it really difficult to get into the kind of home that has the space and the yard and everything that our family needs.”

The Munnses are certainly not alone. The 10th edition of the annual American Family Survey, released Feb. 6 in Washington, D.C., at the American Enterprise Institute, finds that economic challenges top the list of concerns for U.S. families, who rank the cost of having a family as most worrisome.

The survey is a nationally representative study of attitudes about family life in the U.S., asking about views ranging from contentious issues like abortion, social media and gender-affirming care for young people to how families view relationships, personal values, the policies they support and how they spend time together, among others. It was conducted August 22-29, 2024, by YouGov for Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute, the university’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy and Deseret News and included more than 3,000 adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Like the rest of their generation, some things stacked up against them, Jaxon Munns said.

Brice Tucker, Deseret News

Jaxon, 31, and Kristin, 32, met in Alabama, where each was serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Dating didn’t even occur to them until they got home. They married a year to the day from their first date.

They were still college students at the time, and had their first son, Rawley, now 7, right after graduating from BYU, where Jaxon studied history and Kristin studied family life. Rawley now has three little brothers: Remington, 5, McKay, 3, and Stetson, 1. Next, the family moved to Spokane, Washington, so Jaxon could earn a law degree at Gonzaga. But timing is everything, and he passed the bar about the time COVID-19 and public officials shut the world down.

“So I didn’t have this opportunity to establish a career and for us to get into a financial place where we could get into a home at that point and then, really, the opportunity just kind of blew past us in a lot of ways,” Munns said. He wonders, he added, how people with a smaller income manage.

According to the survey, many really struggle.

A new top concern emerges

With a decade’s data, a few trends have emerged, including substantial increase in worries related to money and a decline in cultural concerns.

In 2024, more than 7 in 10 respondents said economic challenges are among the most important concerns families face nationwide, up 20 percentage points from the first survey in 2015.

Half of Americans say the cost of raising a family is one of the top three challenges for families today. Fewer than half of Americans choose cultural challenges such as decline in religious faith or sexual permissiveness as a top concern, down from about 70%

Amid changes over a decade, some findings regarding U.S. family life have been consistent, including attitudes about one’s own family life and that of families in general. Consistently, more respondents than not have given high marks to their families and marriages, but felt families and marriages in general struggle. “For reasons that are still not well understood, Americans maintain a great deal of personal optimism side by side with widespread pessimism about the state of marriage in the U.S. This pattern has held constant over the past 10 years,” says the report.

Among the survey’s other consistencies over time: • The vast majority believe that raising children is one of life’s greatest joys.

• American families value identities as parents and partners more than other identities, whether career, religion, political party or something else.

• What family life looks like has been stable, with little sign of the storied partisan divide. Families tend to eat dinner together at least weekly, do chores and spend time together on activities at home.

• The number of families who worship together weekly hasn’t changed much. In 2015 and in 2024, the number hovers around just over a third.

“Most families are doing OK. On a bunch of different surveys, we find that every family has some problems. They’re not all inundated with problems. They have different problems, and they support each other, and they deal with their problems. Most families are just better than if they didn’t have the family,” Pope said.

The Munnses certainly can’t imagine not having their high-energy boys. Sometimes, when Jaxon comes home tired, he wishes he’d have a few minutes to rest and regroup. But the upside of being what he calls “Frontdoor Famous,” referring to a song, is that his boys are thrilled to see him. He feels that way about them, too.

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8 DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025 For instance, 68% of Republicans were “very worried” about inflation when the survey was conducted last summer, compared to 41% of Democrats. But high numbers of both parties were at least somewhat worried, with just 7% of Republicans and 18% of Democrats saying not at all.

They’re not expecting things to turn around soon. Just over half believed their incomes will fall behind in the next year. The researchers said they found “only weak evidence” that the answers were impacted by marital status or family arrangements.

Income drove responses.

“People continue to worry about inflation, even though rates of inflation have declined considerably over the last couple of years,” Karpowitz said.

Jaxon said he and Kristin want their boys to know that there are always things you can do to take some control of your challenges, including finances. They want them to see that their parents tackle every challenge with optimism and a plan. They share common goals and talk them through. They’re a team.

What worries American families

Brice Tucker, Deseret News

Kristin Munns, center, helps her son Rawley Munns, 7, right, with his homework, while her other son, Remington Munns, left, reads a library book in their home in Lehi on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025.

How families struggle

As many as one-fifth of respondents said they had to borrow money to pay bills or couldn’t pay a full bill in the past year. Slightly more than 1 in 8 said they were hungry but could not afford food or to see a doctor. As many as 1 in 20 struggled with housing costs.

For 3%, the situation was so dire they stayed in a shelter.

In recent years, the survey found aid provided during the pandemic helped lower those numbers, but when it passed, they went up again.

Not unexpectedly, income mattered, with those in households making less than $40,000 “dramatically more likely” to experience an economic challenge, the report found. In 2024, 56% of those with low income had at least one such experience. But so did one-fourth of the high income group, with household earnings above $80,000.

Both marital status and whether families had children at home mattered. Married couples were close to 20 percentage points

less likely to experience a crisis than those who were not married, regardless of whether they had children. Having children increased the likelihood of experiencing a crisis by about 17 percentage points. Those least likely to have a crisis were married Americans without kids at home. Among those who are unmarried and have kids, nearly 6 in 10 said they had a crisis in the last year; the report described their situation as “quite precarious.”

For the lowest-income households with children, marital status made little difference to economic challenges: About twothirds faced at least one. Where marriage makes a difference is in the likelihood one would be in the lowest-income category — 13%, compared to 52% of unmarried parents. Nearly 60% of married couples have household incomes above $80,000.

The survey found partisan differences in economic worries.

The survey asked people to pick three issues they consider most important for families. The 12 choices broadly fit into economics, culture and family structure. For most of the survey’s lifespan, cultural issues outpaced other categories, driven primarily by concerns about how others parent. In 2015, more than 70% put a cultural issue on their top 3 list. This year, no single item from that category was chosen by more than 20%.

Lack of government programs to support families led the results, selected by 50%, up from 25% in 2015. The others, in order, were parents not teaching or disciplining their children sufficiently (40%), costs associated with raising a family (33%), more children growing up in single-parent homes (25%), difficulty finding quality time with family in the digital age (21%), decline in religious faith and church attendance (20%), high work demands and stress on parents (16%), widespread availability and use of drugs and alcohol (15%), crime and other threats to personal safety (also 15%), lack of good jobs (14%), sexual permissiveness in society (13%) and changes in definitions of marriage and family (12%).

In the recent survey, people were also randomly assigned to look at their family or families in general, using a different cu-

DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025 rated list of potential trouble spots. Again, costs associated with raising a family led the list, but within one’s own family just over a third picked it, compared to nearly half of those who considered families in general. More people said mental or physical health struggles are challenging for their families (32%) compared to families in general (23%). Lack of good wages or jobs was roughly equal at around 22%. Those asked about families in general were more likely to say high work demands or stress on parents is a challenge (25%) than were those considering their families (19%).

Other challenges chosen more often by those considering families generally were social media or online-related items (20% vs. 15% in own family), lack of religious faith or church attendance (17% vs. 9%), children growing up without two parents at home (26% vs. 7%), drugs and alcohol (12% vs. 7%), sexual permissiveness and infidelity (15% vs. 4%), parents’ lack of commitment (20% vs. 4%), violence and abuse (14% vs. 3%) and lack of educational opportunities (4% vs. 3%).

Tensions and disagreements were seen more often as a concern in one’s own family than families generally (18% vs. 10%).

The same was true of difficulty finding quality family time, (18% vs. 13%).

“The partisan differences are really interesting,” Karpowitz said. “When we ask people to evaluate the challenges facing their own families, they are very small. Democrats are a little more likely than Republicans to say that they’ve had some health struggles in the past year, or that that’s a challenge for their family.

“When they’re asked about families generally, we see big partisan differences, Democrats being much more worried about economic challenges and Republicans a lot more worried about cultural or structural things like lack of two-parent homes, or lack of religious faith, or declining church attendance. When people are thinking about marriage and family generally, they often view those things through partisan lenses. When they think about their own family, they have a lot of experience to draw from. It turns out those partisan differences just aren’t as big, and there really isn’t a red type of family and blue type of family when it comes to the day-to-day life of Americans in their homes.”

What families do together

Karpowitz said that what people do together has been pretty constant over the decade. High percentages of people — 8 in 10 —report they eat dinner as a family at least weekly, that they

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Brice Tucker, Deseret News

Brothers Remington Munns, 5, left, Rawley Munns, 7, center left, McKay Munns, 1, center right and their father, Jaxon Munns, compete against in each other to make the most baskets while playing together after dinner in their home in Lehi on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025.

work together around the house on a regular basis, that they spend time at home watching TV or playing games together. “It’s hard to find very many things that 8 in 10 Americans can agree on, and that’s true across parties, right?” he said.

In a politically polarized environment, “we actually think it’s worth noting this is a point of common experience for people,” he added.

People care a lot about their identities as parents or as spouses or partners — more than about other identities, including career, religious or party identity. “The fact of the matter is, people value their identities as family members more than these other things. They spend time together. Parents tend to say they love raising their children, that they spend time working on their relationship and those are things we have in common as Americans that I think is important,” said Karpowitz.

Fewer people creating families

Despite lots of consistency, “what is changing is that we’re getting slightly fewer families every year. People are putting forming families off a little more every year,” Pope said. “Millennials and Gen Z are not getting married at the same rate. And I do think in the longer term this will produce some negative effects for people. I don’t really worry about the health of families so much as I worry about getting people into the institution.”

He and Karpowitz have talked a lot recently about what it would take to provide concrete supports for families that would make both marriage and having children more likely.

The U.S. has joined most of the world in declining birth rates, which could portend all kinds of future problems, from not having the workforce needed for economic growth to an inadequate safety net for older people. Births and immigration are how populations grow or at least stay stable. The U.S. is below the 2.1 average births per woman that keeps the population stable.

But while he would like to see more supports for families, Pope said he’s skeptical government can do much to convince couples to have more children.

“The survey data, I think bears that out. There’s only about a quarter of the public that wants government to tell you to have more kids. I think the idea that you can get government to accomplish this and have an effect is pie in the sky. The best you can hope for is to create a situation where people feel comfortable being married and feel like there’s a strong safety net that will help them weather things and help them build extended family connections that will make things okay.”

Abortion, transgender care and social media

Karpowitz said what stood out in the survey in questions on abortion was that extremes on either side are not popular. Only 15% total said there should either be abortion for anyone who wants one or no abortion at all.

Pope agreed. “It’s very clear, no matter how you ask this, when you give options in the middle, the public says things like, we’d like it through about 13 weeks, or we’d like it legal in most cases but not every case. Sometimes they’ll say legal in all cases, but when you give them a specific case, they’ll say, ‘I didn’t mean that case.’”

The upshot, per Pope, is “you do only have about 15% of the public that wants to take a truly doctrinaire position about no abortions or abortions for everybody all the time.”

He said most people have some idea of when they think a woman should be able to get an abortion. “They all define what ‘really needed one’ is or what the time limit should be differently. But I think that’s the way most people think about it.”

Karpowitz noted a “lot of angst about social media as an issue, but not a lot of certainty about exactly what to do. Should we ban it for children or not? There’s a fair amount of support for that, but a lot of uncertainty as well.”

That’s also what the survey found regarding gender-affirming care for young people, he said.

The report, which consists of various fact sheets, is available online at Deseret.com/special-series/American-family-survey.

More survey data will be released in coming weeks.

10 DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025

DESERET MAGAZINE

Control the narrative What’s next for Rupert Murdoch’s media empire?

By Mariya Manzhos Deseret Magazine

On an overcast September morning, Rupert Murdoch emerged from a white SUV and made his way toward the copper dome and looming pillars of the Washoe County Courthouse in downtown Reno. The 93-year-old media giant clutched the hand of Elena Zhukova, a former Russian scientist and his fifth wife, as they climbed the stairs together and disappeared underneath the cavernous doorway. Soon after, his eldest son Lachlan arrived with his wife, a subtle smile on his face as he followed his father into the courthouse. Inside, three of Rupert’s other children — James, Elisabeth and Prudence — waited.

Ahead of the family was a week of high-stakes hearings kept behind closed doors. The legal showdown could determine the fate of Rupert’s sprawling multibillion-dollar empire, consisting of both News Corp and Fox Corporation, which own dozens of outlets, including Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. The family, split into two factions, turned up in Nevada — a state that offers high confidentiality in legal matters of family trust disputes — to answer a very big question: Who will control the family media empire after Rupert’s death?

That question was supposed to be settled after Rupert announced his retirement in 2023 and Lachlan was named CEO of the Fox/News Corp powerhouse. The company’s voting shares controlled by the Murdoch family, roughly 40 percent, were to be distributed equally between the four eldest children after Rupert’s passing. Everything seemed future-proofed.

Until last summer, when The New York Times obtained a court document exposing a new twist in the Murdoch succession saga: Rupert wanted to amend the terms of his irrevocable family trust to grant his full voting share, all 40 percent, solely to Lachlan.

In early December, one year since Rupert first filed his petition, a Nevada probate court commissioner ruled against Rupert’s wishes. The sharp and scathing 96-page opinion, as reported by The New York Times, called Murdoch’s plan “a carefully crafted charade” to secure Lachlan’s leadership “regardless of the impacts” on the family companies or trust beneficiaries, and deemed that Rupert and Lachlan acted in “bad faith” toward the other siblings.

Although the ruling is not a final decision — Lachlan and Rupert reportedly intend to appeal — it presents a significant setback for the media mogul. The trust, once designed to foster peace among the children and preserve the family business, now threatens to drive the already-fractured family further apart.

The ripple effects of the Murdochs’ legal in-fighting are certain to reach beyond the family dynasty. It could reshape Fox News — the most-watched TV station in the nation — altering political discourse, public opinion and even the future of American democracy.

Rupert’s vast empire began with one modest paper in Adelaide, Australia — simply named The News — which he inherited from his father. Rupert expanded the business through a series of strategic acquisitions. In 1969, he bought British tabloids News of the World and The Sun, revamping them and driving their sales to record highs. He ventured into the U.S. market when he bought the New York Post in 1976 and solidified his influence on U.S. media with the launch of Fox News in 1996 and the purchase of The Wall Street Journal in 2007. By slashing costs and wielding his political connections, Rupert built a media conglomerate capable of shaping public opinion in Australia, England, the United States and beyond.

Since the question of succession was first raised decades ago,

Deseret News Staff

Rupert viewed his three children from his second (and longest) marriage to journalist Anna dePeyester — Elisabeth, Lachlan and James — as the lead contenders. All three showed interest in the family business. But he wanted them to prove themselves first.

Elisabeth was regarded by some as most fit to be her father’s successor, combining both charm and corporate aptitude. She served as managing director of the family’s British Sky Broadcasting, later rebranded as Sky, but left the family business in 2000 to launch a new television production company, Shine.

After striking out on her own, she went on the record to say that she has “no ambition for the top job.” That left Lachlan and James. The brothers are two years apart in age and have long vied for their father’s favor and the prospect of becoming the next Murdoch mogul. In the early aughts, Lachlan appeared to be the favorite — Rupert called him “the first among equals”— until he abruptly moved to Australia with his family after a calamitous fallout with his father. In a series of business decisions at Fox, Rupert had sided with his executive team — who believed Lachlan to be too inexperienced — on a measure to prune Lachlan’s powers at News Corp. Lachlan quit, and father and son were left on each side of the rift.

James swiftly emerged as heir apparent. But he squandered his chances when he got caught up in a phone-hacking scandal in 2011, when journalists at the News of the World illegally hacked into the voicemails of public figures — including celebrities, politicians and members of the British royal family. Leading News Corp’s operations in Europe and Asia at the time, James claimed to be unaware of the practices, but he stepped down amid the controversy.

Following James’ resignation, Rupert turned his attention back to Lachlan. After all, Rupert still needed a successor. Lured back by his father, Lachlan arrived back in the United States in 2014.

The back-and-forth of Lachlan and James’ front-runner race sharpened the edge of a family dynamic already laced with corporate viciousness. “Murdoch has sought to figure out who would lead his media empire in a manner that embodies his own drive

and his own model in a sense,” says David Folkenflik, NPR news media correspondent and author of “Murdoch’s World: The Last of the Old Media Empires.” “And in doing that he essentially pitted his two sons against each other.”

The rift between the brothers deepened, fueled by their diverging political ideologies. James began distancing himself from conservative politics and became increasingly critical of News Corp’s coverage of climate change and the January 6 insurrection. Meanwhile, some say Lachlan has become even more conservative than Rupert himself. In 2020, James resigned from the News Corp board, citing “disagreements over certain editorial content.” With James’ departure, Lachlan, who did not respond to our request for comment, rose as the undeniable successor.

In his eldest son, Rupert sees a way forward for his political vision. Reece Peck, associate professor of media culture at the College of Staten Island at CUNY and author of “Fox Populism,” likens Rupert to the early 20th-century media tycoons like Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, who used their newspapers to wage their political crusades. “To see them as only businessmen, we’re missing half of the picture,” he says. “There is a deeper kind of cultural, ideological mission at the heart of News Corp’s and Murdoch’s media empire. And who is the most aligned with that ideological mission? It’s Lachlan.”

But the current legal battle around the family trust has cast Lachlan’s succession — and any family harmony the trust had intended to protect — into the mire. Established in 1999 after Murdoch and Anna dePeyester’s divorce, the trust was created to forestall a costly settlement and preserve control over the assets in the family.

“The structure reflects Anna’s desire to protect her children’s succession,” says Alice Enders, media analyst of Enders Analysis in London, who’s followed the Murdoch family for years.

Under the current terms of the trust, each one of dePeyester’s three children — Elisabeth, Lachlan and James, as well as Prudence from Murdoch’s first marriage — has one vote over the

DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025 company assets. Murdoch has four votes, which, as of now, will be distributed equally between the four children when he dies.

Murdoch’s two youngest daughters, from his third marriage to Wendi Deng, are beneficiaries of the trust but don’t hold any voting rights, despite court records showing that Lachlan and Rupert offered them votes while petitioning to amend the trust. A contest that was once brother versus brother is now Lachlan versus his three eldest siblings.

The odds are not in Lachlan’s favor.

Although James, Elisabeth and Prudence have assured that they were not seeking to challenge Lachlan’s authority before, they certainly could now. The door is open. With equal control, yet different visions for the company, James and his sisters could, in theory, vote against Lachlan on the board and temper Fox’s approach to the news. They could find a way to sell it altogether. Ultimately, those “coulds” are what’s going to prolong this family’s battle, says Folkenflik. “It’s the fight for Fox News, which is the chief economic engine for the Murdoch fortunes right now.”

In rejecting the proposal, Edmund J. Gorman Jr., Nevada’s 2nd Judicial District Court probate commissioner, wrote that Rupert and Lachlan’s efforts were “an attempt to stack the deck in Lachlan Murdoch’s favor after Rupert Murdoch’s passing so that his succession would be immutable. The play might have worked; but an evidentiary hearing, like a showdown in a game of poker, is where gamesmanship collides with the facts and at its conclusion, all the bluffs are called and the cards lie face up. The court, after considering the facts of this case in the light of the law, sees the cards for what they are and concludes this raw deal will not, over the signature of this probate commissioner, prevail.”

Rupert and Lachlan accused James of orchestrating a coup with Prudence and Elisabeth to oust their eldest brother after Rupert’s death and change the political ideology of the Fox Corporation to be more moderate. Lachlan argued that under his leadership, the family’s media holdings would remain conservative, and therefore profitable, which was to the benefit of all trustees. Prudence, Elis-

abeth and James objected and, according to the court records obtained by The New York Times, disavowed “any plan to oust their brother” after their father’s death.

While Gorman’s decision is influential, it’s not the last word.

Rupert plans to appeal. This litigation could extend for years, experts say, and that could mean that the dispute continues beyond Rupert’s death. What seemed to be the empire’s way forward is now being pulled back, and that’s not what investors want to hear when there are billions of dollars on the line.

“Is Fox News fair and balanced?” Henry Blodget, founder of Business Insider, asked Lachlan in an on-stage interview in 2017.

A hushed chuckle spread across the room. Lachlan didn’t flinch.

“Look, I think you gotta look at Fox News. … Is The New York Times fair and balanced?” He went on to underscore the distinction between Fox’s news and opinion sides, emphasizing the channel’s focus on its core conservative audience when it comes to opinion. “There is a gap on the center-right of the market,” he explained. The mainstream media serves the left or center-left audience. “Fox News has found a market to the right, and that’s the strategy.”

That strategy has been undeniably successful, turning Fox News into a powerhouse that has been shaping American political life for 30 years. Initially skeptical of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate in 2016, Rupert came to embrace him, along with the soaring ratings and profits that support for Trump brought to the network. “Rupert decided Trump was the way to go because his audience decided that Trump was the way to go,” says Folkenflik.

Rupert’s — and Lachlan’s — insatiable drive to retain the audience and assert the political influence they’ve grown has dulled any fear of the courtroom. In 2023, Rupert shelled out an eye-watering $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation lawsuit over Fox News’ 2020 election coverage. The company also has weathered other disgraces and upheavals, namely the high-profile sexual harassment scandals involving founder Roger Ailes and commentator Bill O’Reilly, as well as the depar-

11

tures of prominent figures like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.

Yet, despite these issues, the Fox audience has remained steadfast. “Fox News is a kind of survivor,” says Jeffrey McCall, media analyst and professor of communications at DePauw University in Indiana. “For the people who watch Fox and rely on them for news, they don’t have too many other places to go.”

What happens to Fox News if it continues to fall out of Rupert or Lachlan’s grasp is a matter of speculation, experts believe. “If they want to continue to have a financial juggernaut which Fox News Channel is and The Wall Street Journal is, they should probably stay the course with regards to how they want to run those news outlets editorially,” says McCall. “If they want to redirect (Fox News) to a different kind of news vision or news agenda — they would be taking a big risk.” He believes Rupert’s conservative enterprise offers a needed counterbalance to the “traditional leftof-center” news industry in the country. “It provides perspectives that would not be found on ABC or The New York Times. It broadens the news agenda.”

Despite the current legal irrevocability of the trust and the diffusion of power between the Murdoch heirs, Enders thinks a transformation of Fox, the “cash cow” of the entire media conglomerate, is unlikely. “This is less about differences in ideology among the four siblings than about the very substantial financial interests of each,” she says. “And who has eventual control of them.”

After the ruling, legacy media institutions published a flurry of stories. Prudence, Elisabeth and James released a statement welcoming the decision and an opportunity to strengthen and rebuild relationships “among all family members.” The drama continues.

But despite this recent fuel added to the feud, millions of homes across America will have TV screens alit with Fox News tonight.

The network that has defined and energized American conservatism for decades, and the Murdoch dynasty itself, remains. This time, that may be all Rupert Murdoch wants.

This story appears in the January/February 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.

12 DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025

CHURCH NEWS

Elder Cook outlines ‘4 loves of missionary work’ in MTC devotional ‘Act in a consecrated fashion — love God and love others,’ he says, also emphasizing inviting friends to sacrament meeting He spoke of several of his companions from serving as a young missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the British Mission, including President Jeffrey R. Holland, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

“I counsel each of you in this congregation to make an extraordinary effort to learn from and love each of your companions.

Love the people

Elder Cook acknowledged missionaries developing an appreciation and love for the people they are called to serve.

“This love is deep and abiding; it will last your entire life,” he said. “Wherever you serve, you will be concerned about these people and pray for them when there are challenges they face.”

He cautioned against criticizing or making fun of the people, their culture and their living conditions. “Emissaries of the Savior who are trying to develop Christlike attributes do not make fun of other people, put them down or attempt to create humor at their expense.”

Love the mission leaders

Brian Nicholson, for the Deseret News Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles shares a moment with his wife, Sister Mary Cook, before they speak at a devotional at the Provo Missionary Training Center on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, in Provo, Utah.

By Scott Taylor Church News

PROVO, Utah — Speaking to a worldwide audience of full-time missionaries in training, Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles underscored “the four loves of missionary work” that missionaries should develop and magnify.

The four — loving one’s companions, loving the people, loving the mission leaders and loving the Lord — are “four broad relationships that I believe should be of particular importance to you as you are commencing your sacred service as emissaries of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” he said.

After listing the four, Elder Cook added: “To be concise, act in a consecrated fashion — love God and love others.”

Elder Cook and his wife, Sister Mary Cook, spoke at the Tuesday night, Feb. 4, devotional at the Provo Missionary Training Center, where nearly 1,000 missionaries are currently training. The devotional was also broadcast to the Church’s other 10 MTCs worldwide, with some viewing in real time and others watching on a tape-delayed basis.

Elder Cook reminded the missionaries that they were called by President Russell M. Nelson and assigned to a mission by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

“I want you to know that in this sacred responsibility, we often have the impression that we are assigning missionaries to a mission president and his companion/leader/wife.

We have the sense that these mission leaders will bless you during your mission. Their goal will be to assist in your lifelong conversion and guide you in your missionary purpose to preach the gospel and baptize.”

Prior to speaking of the four loves, Elder Cook — who chairs the Church’s Missionary Executive Council — reviewed one of four key points being emphasized to missionaries worldwide: inviting people to attend sacrament meeting.

“Helping friends and new members attend sacrament meeting is essential to fulfilling the missionary purpose and helping others live the doctrine of Christ,” he said, encouraging his listeners to invite people early and often to sacrament meeting, to promise the blessings of attending church and keeping the Sabbath day holy, and to use inviting people to sacrament meeting as a finding approach.

He also used scriptural references and early missionary tracks to underscore the missionaries’ purpose to preach the gospel and to baptize.

Love your companions

Elder Cook began his review of the “four loves of missionary work” with the love for one’s companions, saying “it is essential as an emissary of the Savior to ‘be one’ in unity and harmony with each of your companions.”

Brian Nicholson, for the Deseret News

Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles speaks to the missionaries gathered at a devotional at the Provo Missionary Training Center on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, in Provo, Utah.

DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025

13

Love the Lord

Of loving the Lord, Elder Cook said: “We show our love for the Savior when we magnify our callings, and my testimony to you is that as you labor diligently to magnify your callings, your personal conversion can deepen.”

He listed four ways to labor diligently in order to magnify one’s calling and offered personal anecdotes from his service as a young missionary and subsequent Church leadership as examples: • “Deepen gospel knowledge and understanding principles.”

• “Witness the hand of the Lord in your missions, receive spiritual promptings and feel God working through you.”

• “See the Savior’s Atonement work in other lives.”

• “Act in a consecrated fashion.”

Christlike attributes and hymns

In her brief message, Sister Cook said she likes to associate the Christlike attributes found in chapter 6 of “Preach My Gospel” not only to scriptures but to hymns and Primary songs that apply to the attributes and can remind one of daily repentance and being more like Jesus Christ.

“When we are tempted to do something un-Christlike, the Holy Ghost can bring a hymn into our minds as well as a scripture,” she said. “Gospel music brings the Spirit, teaches the gospel and testifies of the Father and His Son.”

What missionaries were saying

After the devotional, several missionaries training at the Provo MTC spoke of their learnings through the Spirit from Elder and Sister Cook’s messages.

Sister Ann Jenson, from Herriman, Utah, and assigned to the Armenia/Georgia Mission, said she had an increased appreciation of charity from Elder Cook’s address. “He talked about the four points of love that we can have on our missions, and I love that so much, because charity is the pure

Brian Nicholson, for the Deseret News

Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles speaks to the missionaries gathered at a devotional at the Provo Missionary Training Center on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, in Provo, Utah.

love of Christ.”

Sister Karsen Beagley, from Anchorage, Alaska, and also training for the Armenia/Georgia Mission, said she learned “to give my faith away to the Lord and to trust in Him, to know that all of my insecurities don’t matter, and that the only thing that matters is the people who you help and the message you spread.”

Two elders from the same Gilbert, Arizona, ward reconnected after the devotional and spoke of what the Spirit had

taught them.

“The important part of the mission is love — love for everyone, for everyone you meet, and love for the Lord,” said Elder Ethan Bostwick, training for the Florida Fort Lauderdale Mission.

Added Elder Caden Albright, assigned to the Adriatic North Mission: “Just as important as converting other people to the Church is also converting ourselves to the Church and coming home converted ourselves.”

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14 DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025

DESERET MAGAZINE

A frustrated reader visits America’s oldest bookshop Are Americans turning the page on bookstores and books?

By Ethan Bauer Deseret Magazine

Bethlehem appears as something of a surprise among the hills of eastern Pennsylvania, part of the Appalachian range. The old steel town straddling the Lehigh River seems larger than its population of 76,000, part of the Allentown metro area, 50 miles north of Philadelphia. But Main Street is a tree-lined time capsule, flanked by brick buildings with arched windows and ornamental borders, and streetlamps that look like they could hold a candle. The only building past four stories high is the 100-year-old Hotel Bethlehem, where bellhops bustle past analog elevator dials while someone plays a grand piano. Across the street, through a series of two-story windows, the destination of my pilgrimage stands in unassuming contrast: America’s oldest bookstore.

“Moravian Book Shop, Est. 1745,” the sign reads. Like the city, it was founded by members of the Moravian Church, a small Christian denomination based in what is now the Czech Republic, as an outpost for its missionary efforts in North America.

Today, nearby storefronts feature a bustling array of Spanish, Dominican and Mexican restaurants, specialty stores with intricate Christmas-themed window displays and scattered plaques memorializing pilgrims and proselytizers. The shop occupies two connected brick buildings painted in blue, gray and white.

The newer building serves as campus bookstore for Moravian University — also one of the country’s oldest — but that’s not what I’m here for.

I came to find out what’s wrong with me. I’m not the sort to seek out bookstores when I travel, but this is the kind of place my mom would visit. She is a book person. When I was a kid, she’d visit the library every weekend to drop off a stack of seven or eight titles and pick up a new stack she’d reserved in advance.

You can still find her cradling her Kindle with her eyes buried in a mystery novel. See, there are book people, and there’s everyone else — and I, to her lasting disappointment, am not a book person. But books seemed important to the people who settled this town when there was nothing around it, so maybe it can help me to figure out why I have failed in this regard. And why so many folks my age seem to be failing, too.

I’d like to be a book person. And Mama tried. When I was little, she and my father would read to me at night, stories like “Goodnight Moon” by Margaret Wise Brown, “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak, or a kid-friendly Bible story like David and Goliath. I grew up thinking book people were the norm, for all they hassled me. But like so many things we teach our kids, that turned out to be more aspiration than reality.

When I muddled my way through “Death of a Salesman,” “Brave New World” and “Othello” in high school — half-heartedly, I’ll admit — I didn’t know I was already reading more seriously than many American adults. I still do, though I’m more likely to read a magazine article than a whole book. So why can’t I bring myself to sit down and read a book?

I read constantly, if you count social media, sports columns and magazine stories, but that doesn’t make me a reader. As a writer, I’m plagued by guilt for not reading enough books. I’m happy when I’ve read one — but only after the fact. Reading itself has always been a chore, not something fun. Not with a

James Steinberg for the Deseret News

working television right there. I had a hard time reading even half of what was assigned in English class. Other things seemed more important, like finishing my homework early so I could watch cartoons. My reading habits have evolved, but that basic impulse remains, and even when I enjoy a book, reading still feels like soldiering through. I don’t understand why, but I’m not alone.

Like me, most Americans ingest a steady stream of “content,” the kind of short-form texts delivered on phones and tablets that have overwhelmed our minds, slashed our attention spans and reshaped our lifestyles. But a recent YouGov poll found that nearly half of us have not read a single book in the past year.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences found significant declines in minutes spent reading between 2003 and 2018. That fall was especially pronounced among older Americans, although those over 55 were still more likely to read. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual Time Use Survey, Americans spend 16 minutes reading for pleasure each day — down from 23 minutes in 2004. Across the Atlantic, a survey by a London-based charity found that only 35 percent of British children between 8 and 18 enjoy reading as leisure — down from roughly 2 in 3 as recently as 2016.

Even more alarming is the crisis of literacy itself. More than 90 percent of Americans have been able to read and write since the 1950s, but that number has now dropped to 79 percent of

adults, as reported by the National Literacy Institute. More than half read below a sixth grade level, which makes it hard to parse the label on a bottle of ibuprofen. Illiteracy correlates with poverty, unemployment and prison stays, and costs the U.S. economy about $2.2 trillion per year. On a more human scale, the report points out, 130 million adults can’t read their kids a bedtime story.

I can’t fathom how this is happening under our collective radar, but I can’t say I’m entirely disconnected from it, either.

Inside the shop’s main entrance, white light glares across racks and stacks of Moravian University merch. Blue-and-gray sweaters, polos, hoodies, tank tops and T-shirts — go Greyhounds! Behind them, I find some dusty shelves waiting for the next semester’s textbooks. It’s disappointing. I didn’t expect a living history museum or a venerable old establishment like Shakespeare and Company in Paris. But it feels like any campus bookstore that is now managed by Barnes & Noble — which happens to be the case.

Bookstores are changing everywhere. All that remains of “Book Row” in Manhattan, once home to over three dozen bookstores, is The Strand — although there’s a Barnes & Noble across Union Square. Sam Weller’s Zion Bookstore was a downtown landmark in Salt Lake City for most of the 20th century before moving into a mall and rebranding itself as something modern. Nearby, Ken Sanders Rare Books has moved from its

DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025 iconic warehouse into the gift shop at a local museum. Many still travel to Powell’s in Portland, a storied bookseller that has become a local chain, with three branches and an airport location.

The original settlement of Bethlehem was like a commune, base camp for a Protestant movement that predated Martin Luther. Here, they built a water works, a tannery and the Moravian Book Shop. It sold religious texts and secular books, and doubled as a general store, offering stationery, cloth and other supplies needed on the frontier. By 1924, it started selling Moravian stars; the many-pointed glass Christmas ornaments are now a symbol of a town that calls itself “Christmas City USA.” Eventually, it evolved into a corporation that subsidized Moravian ministerial pensions.

Business was steady until the Great Recession in 2008, but the store “never operated at a profit of any consequence,” says Rick Santee, former president of the board of directors. Around that time, big-box retailers like Barnes & Noble moved into the local economy, even as Amazon presented a growing threat online. The store itself was in need of renovations, but Moravian was struggling just to keep up with the competition. “We tried.

People would come in, take pictures of the merchandise and then try to find it online. It was very difficult.” When the university offered to buy the store in 2017, the board decided to “keep it in the family.”

It’s hard to fight economics. I duck into a small hallway, hoping it will lead me somewhere more illuminating. The passage to the next building is stacked with an impressive assortment of ornaments, including a towering display of those stained-glass Moravian stars. They’re beautiful and unique. But I still haven’t seen any books.

Down three wooden steps, I find myself in a room for children. Racks are stocked with colorful baby onesies, board games and stuffed animals. And yes, books. I scan the shelves, comforted to find “Goodnight Moon” and “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle, another childhood memory. I worry about my

own infant son growing up in a world where books like these feel like rare treasures hidden in a corporate archive, while digital devices clamor for his attention. I know reading is important.

It’s just not so easy to focus anymore.

Unless something reaches out and grabs you.

When the store’s sale was announced in 2018, blowback was immediate and intense. Most notably, former employee Leo Atkinson launched a Change.org petition that garnered more than 90,000 signatures opposing the transaction. Now 35, the former English major has switched careers, pursuing computer science instead. But he’s still a book person, and like Santee, he loved the old Moravian Book Shop, where his mother also worked. “It was my favorite job I’ve ever had,” he says. “I love books, love bookstores, love reading.” What he didn’t love was the abruptness of the sale. Many, it turned out, felt the same way. The petition was “overwhelming,” he says. “There was a narrative there that people connected to.”

In the next room, I find what I’ve been looking for. A broad space lined with stacks under purple signs advertising sections: Fiction, Religion, Cookbooks. This part of the store feels older, like something out of Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley, where one could just as easily buy a magic wand or flying broomstick. Under Classics, I find a copy of the same printing of “The Catcher in the Rye” that I pretended to read in high school, J.D. Salinger’s coming-of-age novel about a teenage boy so artistically sensitive, socially ostracized and self-absorbed that everything he sees seems “phony.” So I’m told. It’s next to George Orwell’s “1984” — a work of dystopian fiction about a government that manipulates language, history and storytelling to control its populace by deciding what is true.

It’s not the kind of uniquely curated selection that would entice a book person to drive 90 miles to visit, but it’s not bad, either.

Still, it’s not exactly packed. I can’t help noticing the irony behind that petition, and neither can Santee. As it turns out, lots of people had strong opinions about the end of an era for the nation’s oldest bookstore while they looked on from home via the screens of their smartphones. “Everyone talks about how good it used to be,” he says, “but they weren’t coming.” He jokes that locals here just miss the Dec. 10, 2024 old days, but it doesn’t feel unique to me. My life is full Mar. 15, 2025 of people who like the idea of something timeless, like reading, much more than they like doing it.

A clearance shelf hawks titles for 50 percent off. I flip through “America Fantastica,” a minor novel by Tim O’Brien, author of “The

15

Things They Carried,” a definitive short story collection inspired by his military service in Vietnam. In that book, he recounts the death of one man through the lives of each member of his platoon, tracing the objects they hauled in their rucks.

There’s a rare magic in finding a new way to tell a story, so I decide to take the novel home. It’s the story of a reporter turned online troll who resorts to robbing a bank. We all have our baggage.

I’ve been looking for theories to explain why we don’t read like we used to.

Some say we’re just too busy and mentally exhausted.

Some say we’re spoiled by passive entertainment, which didn’t exist before radio and television, video games and smartphone apps. Modern media don’t ask us to exercise our imaginations, but their worlds are potent substitutes for the real one, as well as our mind’s eye. All they ask is that we keep clicking.

And if we step away for too long, they let us know.

Or maybe we read more than ever, we just waste our daily allotment of words on Instagram captions, memes and an endless scroll of horrifying headlines. Snacking adds up, and our brains lose something when we don’t give them enough of the right kind of work.

What if it runs deeper than our habits? For thousands of years, books have been an anchor and a guide for all humanity, from papyrus scrolls to the Gutenberg Bible. But life has never moved so fast. Even the internet struggles to keep up. What if it’s all too much for books to handle? That would be unthinkable, even for a person who doesn’t like to read.

I hoped the Moravian Book Shop would give me an answer, a miracle cure to remake myself in my mother’s image. But even novels tell us there are no easy solutions. My little pilgrimage didn’t reveal why I’m not a book person. But it did deepen my resolve to become one.

Reading a good book feels cleansing compared to social media, which has never felt more toxic and isolating. A lengthy narrative tickles my brain in ways that no dopamine rush can touch.

It’s a pleasant feeling. Reading makes me a more thoughtful, deliberate and compassionate person. I know it’s worth it. It’s just not optimized for my convenience, or even my addiction. Maybe the only way for me to become a book person is to commit.

Back home, I open the O’Brien book on the patio and start reading. Sipping from a mug of hot tea, I soldier through 30 pages that feel like less of a forced march with each flick of my thumb. When it gets too cold, I head inside, sit at the kitchen table and keep reading. I wish I could stop my story there, triumphant. But the truth is, weeks go by before I pick up the novel again.

Still, there’s hope. I also brought home a couple of books to read to my son. I don’t know how much he understands, but I’ve read them to him many times already. And that feels right. It feels important. And at this rate, he might be a book person yet.

This story appears in the January/February 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.

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Everyone you know is sick And you probably will be, too

Zoë Petersen, Deseret News

By Meg Walter Deseret News

I know I say, and probably write, this every year, but this January felt long. Really long. Not to be dramatic but maybe unbearably long? Longer than every other really long January.

It could be the constant onslaught of anxiety inducing national headlines that have made these last few weeks feel eternal. It could be the frigid temperatures here in Utah — I slipped on ice no fewer than 17 times in January.

But I think if I really had to put my finger on it, the thing that has made this first month of 2025 feel a thousand years long is the sickness(es) lurking around every corner.

Everyone I know is either sick, has been sick in the last couple of weeks, or will be sick soon.

As my illustrious colleague Lois M. Collins reported last week, the United States may be experiencing a quademic — influenza, COVID-19, RSV and norovirus are running rampant through the population. And, as Collins points out in her article, it’s cold season on top of everything else.

Anecdotally I can attest that this flu and respiratory illness season is especially bad. Every day I get a text from someone canceling plans because they’ve come down with one of the four quademic ailments. Either I’m a terrible person to spend time with or people are getting ill at unprecedented rates. I’m choosing to believe the latter. And these people, who again, I’m pretty sure are not lying to me, are not just mildly ill. They’re

can’t-get-out-of-bed-for-a-week ill.

But somehow, so far, for reasons I do not understand, I have not been hit. And I’m starting to feel like one of the main characters in a zombie apocalypse movie.

Maybe THE main character because truly, I should have gotten sick by now. All of my friends have. Everyone in my family has. I’ve had to get up close and personal with children’s vomit in the last few weeks far more than I would like. I have my kids’ school’s attendance line number memorized and I’ve had to order children’s Motrin in bulk.

And somehow, I’ve remained unscathed.

January is barely finished, and just like in a zombie movie, things are getting scarier. The disease-adjacent jump scares are popping up all over the place. I’ll think I’m safe in my own home, and then, when the soundtrack cuts out and things are eerily quiet, I’ll look in the mirror, and BAM, a kid with a runny nose will suddenly pop up behind my reflection. I’ll be minding my own business in the grocery store cereal aisle, then turn a corner into the baking supply section and BAM, I’ve walked right into a sneeze. Nowhere is safe from communicable disease droplets.

I hate to use two metaphors in one article (not really) but those of us who haven’t been brought down by one of the four ailments yet are playing proverbial Frogger to get through January unscathed. Just when we’ve dodged a stomach bug, a sore throat comes barreling down the road toward us. And if we manage to hop one lane past that, body aches await.

The chances of making it through February without a fever are about the same as the chances of beating Frogger. But even if we make it through February, more physiological horrors may await.

According to NBC News, the rate of flu infections is still rising, and may actually spike in February. So those of us who think we’re special — the star of our own zombie apocalypse films — are about to learn we’re the lovable sidekicks at best.

It’s only a matter of time before we succumb to the illnesses.

Maybe all of them.

The reality is If you, like me, haven’t been brought down by a terrible cough or bout of nausea yet, you likely will be by the time the next month ends.

You can sanitize your shopping cart handles. You can take vitamin C religiously. You can drink lots of water and get plenty of sleep. You should do all those things, probably, if you want a fighting chance to get through this winter healthy. But the reality is, they probably won’t save you from the quademic without a good deal of luck. Nothing will. It’s coming for us all.

So if you have plans this week, no you don’t. Because you’re going to get sick or the person with whom you have plans is going to get sick or both of you and all of your collective children are going to get sick.

And it’s best to just accept that now before you’re taken by surprise that is both the zombie horror flick and all-too real Frogger game that is this winter. You can’t beat it and you’re not the star of the film. So stock up on the Motrin now.

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Teachers give failing grades to ‘bruh,’ ‘delulu’ and other 2024 slang terms Educators nominate popular slang they hope is expelled from classrooms in 2025

By Jason Swensen Deseret News

School teachers in Utah and across the country are formally trained educators in history, math, biology, chemistry and a host of other academic subjects.

They’re also America’s front-line squad of amateur linguistic anthropologists.

So if you’re a bit confused hearing the kids at the family holiday party saying “skibidi” or “delulu” and feel you need a translator — just find a school teacher.

They are likely fluent in Slang2024.

But slang fluency doesn’t mean teachers are always fans of whatever words or phrases are trending.

Yes, Henry David Thoreau may be attributed with saying “It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.”

But did Thoreau’s readers ever call him “bruh”?

Education Week recently asked educators across the country to share slang terms they wished their students would trash. They gleaned hundreds of teacher responses and compiled a “Slang that Teachers are Sick of Hearing” top-10 list.

A caveat before sharing the list: Not all teachers are slangaverse. School psychologist Jill Davidson noted in a LinkedIn comment that slang can “enrich our language, (and) encourage creativity. It’s important to know what they mean and how they’re used.”

Now, on to Education Week’s “Top-10 list — Slang that Teachers are Sick of Hearing.”

Sigma The slang term for “the best” can be used to describe, somewhat curiously, someone who is an “alpha.”

That’s a slang word to describe a slang word.

Rizz A contracted form of the word “charisma.” Can be used as a noun or verb — and it’s high praise for someone’s charm, style and vibe.

Rizz is what kids in 2020 would have called “game.”

Drip Refers to a “really cool outfit” or clothing items or accessories with statement-making style and, well, maximum rizz.

Ate Looks and sounds just like the verb you have used forever after finishing a meal — but now with no food context.

Instead, “ate” is used to “praise someone for doing something well” or having good style.

Example: “Wow, that’s amazing! You really ate that performance.”

Bruh The evolved version of “bro.”

Used mostly as a friendly greeting or when referring, typically, to a male friend.

A flexible slang, “bruh” can also be used to express surprise (Bruh!!!) or disagreement (Bruh …).

Skibidi A nonsense word defined by context. It can mean “cool”

Zoë Petersen, Deseret News

or “dumb” or “bad”— or just about anything else.

It’s filler fodder. And it’s little surprise “skibidi” would make the teacher’s top-10 slang trash list Delulu It sounds like “delusional” for a reason. It’s a shortened version of the word, by four letters.

Delulu is also a humorous way to describe someone rejecting reality in favor of a more appealing interpretation.

Example: “Mike’s delulu about the Packers’ chances of winning the Super Bowl.”

Low-key A familiar but stylized version of “low key” that describes someone’s actions or emotions that don’t draw too much attention.

“Low-key”, according to USA Today, can be used, ironically, as high praise. Saying someone is “low-key” means “they are calm, don’t cause drama and usually keep to themselves.”

Bet You probably still say, “You bet.” Your parents or grandparents surely said, “You bet.”

Your kids: just “bet.”

Like its earlier iteration, “bet” is typically used as a sub-

stitute for “OK.” Me: “Want to grab some lunch?”

You: “Bet.” Crash out A fairly recent slang that gained traction following people’s social media reactions to the 2024 presidential election results.

Loosely, “crash out” means to “become hysterical or do something reckless, or to pass out from exhaustion.”

Looking ahead: Classroom slang in 2025

Of course, once a slang term is widely adopted it’s already being replaced by fresh slang. That’s the rule.

So what slang can teachers expect to hear — and probably hate — in 2025? Education First has already identified the slang “you need to know in 2025”: Yap: Gossiping excessively.

Chat: A group of people.

Brain rot: Feeling mentally drained from social media overload.

Yassified: Glamorized and overdone.

Lore: Something’s backstory or context.

And, finally, “That’s tea” = That’s the truth.

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PRIVATE & CHARTER SCHOOLS

Wanted: More young men enrolling in college National collaboratives and local higher ed leaders respond to declining numbers of males on college campuses

Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

University of Utah sophomores Marcos Van Dalen and AJ Chanthamixay walk through the campus in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025.

By Jason Swensen Deseret News

It’s easy to make a quick list of challenges facing universities and colleges in Utah and beyond: Student debt. Campus culture wars. Budget cuts and reallocations. Tuition hikes. Workplace readiness.

But another challenge that has impacted campuses for decades is often buried underneath the stack of higher education headlines and debates: More and more, males are sidestepping college.

A few facts shared by the recently organized Higher Education Male Achievement Collaborative (HEMAC): • Men now account for just two out of five college degrees earned in the United States, fewer than the share women received in 1972.

• Less than half of men who enroll complete a four-year degree within the expected time frame.

• Increasing numbers of male students arrive at college with significant mental health needs and associated challenges.

• Men from rural communities have the lowest enrollment rates.

The predominance of women in college headcounts is happening in every state — including Utah.

As the Deseret News reported in December, 53% of the

students enrolled in the Beehive State’s degree-granting institutions were female.

A larger number of females are enrolled at each of the state’s eight public degree-granting colleges and universities with one exception — the University of Utah, where males hold the majority by a tiny margin.

Meanwhile, just over half of students enrolled at Brigham Young University — a private institution sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — are female.

Reversing the ‘disappearing male’ campus trend

Last October, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM) launched HEMAC — a joint initiative of diverse voices committed to addressing declining male achievement rates in higher education.

AIMB’s founding president Richard Reeves is a prominent advocate for solutions to the male/higher education challenge. His book, “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It,” was recently featured on President Barack Obama’s Summer Reading List.

The alarm bells regarding male enrollment declines are tolling louder these days as overall college head counts diminish, Reeves told the Deseret News.

More people are taking notice of fewer males on campus —

along with its attendant economic and social consequences.

There are several viable reasons for male enrollment declines, said Reeves. They vary by institution and by states.

So it’s difficult to generalize.

“But I think it’s a sign that the K-12 system is not boy-friendly enough,” he said. “What’s happening in colleges is largely a reflection of what happens in K-12.”

The K-12 system, Reeves continued, is not “geared to boys as it is to girls — and that’s why two-thirds of the top 10% of high schoolers, by GPA, are girls.”

Mike Kofoed partners with HEMAC as an assistant professor of economics at the University of Tennessee and he keeps his finger on the pulse of college enrollment and education economic trends.

He points to research suggesting that primary school-age boys perform at the same rate as their female classmates on standardized tests — but often receive lower classroom grades. That could be caused by differences between boys and girls in non-cognitive skill development.

Simply put, boys are not always a good fit for the K-12 classroom — and that could influence their educational trajectory and attitudes towards school.

Simultaneously, Kofoed added, the American economy has witnessed wage compression. Paychecks have risen in traditionally lower-income trade jobs, prompting many men to decide that higher education is unnecessary.

But the career longevity and wage-growth of such trades often can’t match those jobs filled by workers with college degrees.

Both Reeves and Kofoed agree that fewer men in the college classroom also exacts a social-economic toll. While it seems socially acceptable for a man to marry a woman with less formal education, the reverse is not always true.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult for women with a college degree to find dating and marriage partners,” said Kofoed.

Reeves also suspects that declining male college enrollment numbers is also an identity issue. Many men simply don’t feel comfortable on campus.

“I’m increasingly worried that more and more men — especially if they are men from, say, a working-class background — just don’t see college as being a place for them,” he said.

Kofoed and Reeves believe schools at all levels can do more to make schools a more male-friendly place — including hiring more male K-12 teachers.

“Children can then see (a male teacher) who has gone to college and been successful. They can learn that it’s not unmasculine to want to pursue a higher education,” said Kofoed.

Efforts to increase male participation in higher education need not come at the expense of females, emphasized Reeves. It’s not a zero-sum game. ”We can be passionate about women’s rights — and compassionate towards the struggles of boys and men,” he said.

Collaborating to address males and higher education

Since launching about three months ago, HEMAC has partnered with nearly two-dozen inaugural partners — in-

DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025 cluding two- and four-year educational institutions, academic leaders and other mission-aligned non-profits from across the country.

“Over the past few months, we’ve been speaking with our individual schools, seeing what programs they have in place to support male students,” said HEMAC program manager Melinda Brock.

HEMAC partners are also participating in a shared online learning community and monthly community webinars. The organization’s first annual conference is in the works for later this year.

HEMAC is looking to expand its partnerships with organizations interested in better achievement outcomes for males in higher education.

country in male college enrollment, he added. “But it’s still there … and it’s a worrying trend.”

The benefits of earning an advanced certificate or degree, he added, are indisputable. “So our view is that we’ve got to get everybody in some sort of post-secondary degree or certificate program because it’s just better for them. It’s better for the state.”

Landward said it’s fair to consider perception issues regarding colleges and universities.

21

“If you look at Gallup polls, the level of trust in higher education and its perceived value just continues to go down.

As long as that’s the case, we’re going to see trends like this — and it may be disproportionately impacting young men for reasons that we’re still trying to better understand.”

It’s incumbent upon higher education leaders, he added, to counter such perceptions “by being more thoughtful and making sure we’re presenting diverse viewpoints and diverse programs.”

Utah higher education leaders respond

When asked about declines in male enrollment, Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) President Greg Peterson references research indicating that the country’s K-12 system “isn’t necessarily built in a way that provides the optimal experience for male students.”

As a result, many male high school graduates don’t see themselves as “college material.”

Peterson points to SLCC’s Salt Lake Technical College as an example of a post-secondary education option that offers students clear and relevant pathways — particularly for male students.

Higher education leaders, he added, need to consider their male students when asking “how do we make sure that what we’re providing is relevant, that it feels meaningful, that it’s practical and that students can see why they are learning, what they are learning and how it applies to a specific outcome?”

Male college enrollment declines “is a perplexing issue,” said Geoffrey Landward, Utah’s commissioner of higher education.

The Beehive State performs better than most areas of the

Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

University of Utah freshman Christopher Turner walks through the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025.

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PRIVATE & CHARTER SCHOOLS

Not welcome: Many academics say conservative professors don’t fit on campus The survey involved over 6,000 faculty members from 55 schools, including BYU and Utah

By Jason Swensen Deseret News

Free speech is considered elemental to college campuses — that time-honored academic privilege to express diverse opinions in pursuit of truth and knowledge without fear of retribution.

But a recent report that surveyed over 6,000 faculty members from 55 four-year colleges and universities across the United States — including over 200 faculty members from Brigham Young University and the University of Utah — reveals that fear and self-censorship are campus realities for many academics.

Campus “free speech chill,” according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression survey, appears to be felt most deeply by conservative faculty members.

Nearly half of “conservative faculty” (47%) who responded to the survey report feeling unable to voice their opinions because of how others might react.

Only a fifth of “liberal faculty” (19%) reported similar fears.

Conservative faculty were much more likely than their liberal and moderate peers to report self-censoring. More than half — 55% — say they at least occasionally hide their political views in order to keep their jobs, compared to only 17% of liberal faculty.

Meanwhile, when asked how well a “conservative individual” would fit in their department, less than a quarter (20%) responded “very/somewhat” well.

Just over 70% responded that a “liberal individual” would be a positive fit in their respective department.

“There are very few conservative faculty,” said Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s manager of polling and analytics Nathan Honeycutt in response to the findings . “If they’re not expressing their views, then students are even less exposed to conservative perspectives than one might expect based on the numbers.”

Among other findings from the foundation’s survey: • 87% of faculty reported finding it difficult to have an open and honest conversation on campus about at least one hot button political topic.

• About 1 in 7 faculty members (14%) reported being disciplined or threatened with discipline for their teaching, research, academic discussions, or off-campus speech.

• 35% reported toning down their written work to avoid controversy.

FIRE is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization “dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought,” according to its website.

Over 112,00 potential faculty participants were contacted for the FIRE survey. The final sample reflects a 5.57% response rate.

The survey included 148 and 89 faculty responses from BYU and the University of Utah, respectively, according to the foundation.

Tenure: No immunity to self-censorship

Many faculty survey respondents report difficulties having “open and honest” conversations with several issues of the day — including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, racial inequality, transgender rights, affirmative action and the recent presidential election.

Students on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City on Monday, Jan. 8, 2024.

While tenured faculty were less likely to report campus self-censoring than their non-tenured colleagues, the difference was not substantially large, according to the survey.

Between tenured and non-tenured faculty, there was only a 9-percentage-point difference for hiding their political views, and a 5-percentage-point difference for likelihood of self-censoring in emails or during classroom discussions.

Two-thirds of surveyed faculty also said colleges and universities “should practice institutional neutrality by not taking positions on political and social issues,” according to a FIRE report.

Meanwhile, majorities from all three classification of faculty respondents — conservative, moderate and liberal — voiced opposition to universities and colleges issuing political statements.

Conservative faculty, according to the survey, were also strongly opposed to mandatory DEI pledges (85%), as were a majority of moderate faculty (59%).

Liberal faculty were split, with a little under half in favor (47%) of diversity, equity and inclusion pledges, but a third opposed (35%).

The Foundation for Individual Rights and ExpressionI report also suggested that faculty are “preemptively silencing themselves in their own research and writing. One in five or more faculty reported self-censoring in professional contexts such as academic publications, classroom lectures and discussion and outside talks.

The likelihood of such self-censorship, according to the report, is more prevalent among conservative faculty.

Self-censoring, the report added, also sometimes stretched into conversations with administrators, other faculty and their students.

Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

Cited in the report was this comment from a Texas A&M professor: “I am starting (for the first time in my career) to censor myself out of a desire for self-preservation. I say nothing at all in faculty meetings now, if I attend at all.”

University of Utah: Academic freedom a ‘bedrock principle’ The University of Utah has called academic freedom “the bedrock principle of our scholarly enterprise.”

Last August, the University of Utah posted an online Q&A regarding free speech and academic freedom on campus.

“The University of Utah is committed to open, free and robust discussion, debate, and exchange of ideas as an indispensable part of its educational mission — especially when the ideas expressed are controversial and unpopular,” the post noted.

“The university supports creative, thoughtful, and respectful discourse where conflicting perspectives are vigorously debated and thoroughly discussed.”

Regarding “freedom of expression” in the classroom, the university’s report emphasized discussion and expression of all views relevant to the subject matter of a class “are recognized as necessary to the educational process.”

University of Utah employees, meanwhile, “are welcome to weigh in on any issues of public concern” — although they must make it clear they are not speaking on behalf of the university.

“Academic freedom is of the utmost importance for faculty at the university. It is recognized as a right of all members of the faculty, whether with or without tenure or continuing appointment, of all administrative officers, and of all students.”

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Karl Maeser Preparatory Academy Empower and inspire students to think critically, learn continually, and communicate effectively through use of the Socratic method to better themselves and their community.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” This quote

by Plutarch captures the essence of a classical education, and it’s the philosophy that drives Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy. We invite you to discover a transformative educational experience, one that prepares students not just for college, but for a life of purpose, meaning, and contribution.

Maeser, a top-ranked public charter school in Lindon serving grades 7-12, has been recognized by Niche and U.S. News & World Report for academic excellence. This recognition stems from our unwavering commitment to truth, honor, and virtue, the cornerstones of a classical, liberal arts education. We believe in fostering critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, and a

lifelong love of learning.

What does this mean in practice? A classical education at Maeser emphasizes engaging with enduring ideas.

We immerse students in the great works of literature, philosophy, and history, not as dry texts, but as vibrant conversations across time. Imagine a 10th-grade World History class studying the French Revolution not just from a textbook, but through Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. This approach allows students to explore the human condition, grapple with complex moral dilemmas, and develop a deeper understanding of principles like justice, mercy, courage, and loyalty. These are not just abstract concepts; they are the building blocks of character, and they are more relevant today than ever.

As Viktor Frankl said, “What man ac-

CLASSICAL, LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION COLLEGE PREPARATORY U T A H ' S

T O P

R A N K E D

H I G H

S C H O O L

Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy empowers and inspires students to think critically, learn continually, and communicate effectively through Socratic methods to better themselves and their communities.

T R U T H ,

H O N O R ,

V I R T U E

tually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” Maeser provides the tools and the inspiration for students to discover their worthwhile goals. Our rigorous curriculum, combined with a rich student experience, empowers them to become principled leaders, committed to bettering themselves and their communities. From high ACT scores and National Merit recognition to state and national accolades in athletics, performing arts, and visual arts, our students demonstrate the power of a well-rounded education.

Our unique Winterim program offers immersive learning experiences, allowing students to explore specialized subjects and develop hands-on skills beyond the traditional class-

room. It’s just one example of how Maeser goes beyond simply filling pails with information; we strive to light a fire within each student, igniting a passion for learning that will burn brightly throughout their lives.

In a world that increasingly demands not just smart individuals, but moral ones, Maeser prepares young people to be both. We equip them with the intellectual and ethical foundation they need to thrive in college, contribute meaningfully to society, and live lives of purpose.

Join the Maeser community and experience the difference. We are a tuition-free, public charter school.

Visit our website or email registrar@ maeserprep.org to schedule a tour and discover how a classical education can transform your child’s future.

DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025

25

CHALLENGER SCHOOL 6 Wasatch Front Campuses • ChallengerSchool.com

Education Entrepreneur

In 1960, while teaching in a public school, Challenger School founder and CEO Barbara Baker became alarmed that her first grade students had received no academics in kindergarten and that their best years for establishing a foundation for learning were being wasted.

Barbara decided to leave the comfort of the public schools to start her own preschool where she could teach phonics to children before they went to public school. “I figured that if they learned phonics in preschool, no one could take that away from them.”

In Barbara’s first class, there were only six paying students. Two years later, as fascinated parents witnessed their children singing songs and bubbling with excitement about learning, the tiny preschool

had grown to 100 half-day preschool students with another 100 students waiting for admission. Today, Challenger School educates more than 10,000 students annually.

Challenging Curriculum

Challenger teaches reading, composition, math, history, and logic as essential bedrock subjects upon which literature, science, and other subjects naturally depend. From preschool on, Challenger students regularly speak and perform before their peers, teachers, and parents.

These repeated experiences help them gain the confidence necessary for effective public speaking.

Challenger graduates point to these experiences as the basis for success in college and the workplace.

Challenger’s curriculum and philosophy lead students to respect

and protect the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness expressed so brilliantly by our Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

Proven Methods

Students learn to identify and establish connections between ideas. This linked structure of ideas, this understanding of an idwea connected to other supporting ideas, gives students a deep and lasting understanding of the subject.

Our emphasis on independent reasoning results in Challenger students’ extraordinary academic performance and their unique ability to essentialize what they learn and integrate and connect it with what they know.

Breathtaking Results

Challenger’s proven curriculum and teaching methods help students develop the skills needed to succeed in whatever they decide to pursue. As students learn foundational concepts and apply reasoning skills, the results are spectacular.

On the 2024 Iowa Assessments, Challenger students achieved average scores well above the 90th percentile. The average percentile rank for Challenger kindergartners was 98.

Challenger School’s educational philosophy and methods set it apart from other schools. Challenger School, which offers preschool through eighth grade, operates 27 campuses, including six along the Wasatch Front. Learn more at ChallengerSchool. com.

Challenger School offers uniquely fun and academic classes for preschool to eighth grade students. Our students learn to think for themselves and to value independence.

Farmington (PS–G7) (801) 451-6565 1089 Shepard Creek Parkway

Sandy (PS–G8) (801) 572-6686 10670 South 700 East

Holladay (PS–K) (801) 278-4797 4555 South 2300 East

Lehi (PS–G8) (801) 407-8777 3920 N. Traverse Mountain Blvd.

Salt Lake (PS–G8) (801) 487-4402 1325 South Main Street

West Jordan (PS–G1) (801) 565-1058 2247 West 8660 South

An independent private school offering preschool through eighth grade © 2025, Challenger Schools Challenger School admits students of any race, color, and national or ethnic origin.

Unmatched Academic Results Come tour a campus and see for yourself!

26 DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025

© 2025

41, No. 13

How Hippos Keep Their Cool

To stay cool in the African heat, hippos spend most of their day in rivers and lakes. Their eyes, nose and ears are located on the top of their head, which means they can see and breathe while the rest of their bodies are under water.

Danger!

Don’t let their gentle appearance fool you. The hippopotamus is considered the world’s deadliest large land mammal. These giants kill an estimated 500 people per year in Africa.

some grass to munch!

Hippos are found in these regions of Africa.

Hippos leave the water at night to look for food.

They like to eat grasses— lots of grass. They eat 80 lbs (35 kg) of vegetation each night.

The Hippo Code Use the code to discover some facts about hippos.

= CALF = RIVER

= BULL = HORSE

Sweaty, Sweaty Hippos?

Hippos have an oily red liquid that oozes out of their skin. It isn’t sweat. Sweat evaporates and cools a body. This liquid looks red in sunlight and it stays on the skin and protects it from drying out—and acts as a sunblock, too! noticed this reddish liquid on the hippos they observed, they gave it a name.

Circle every other letter to see what they called it.

DBKLTOWOYDJSAWPEDAVT

= COW = TUSK

Q: What does the word hippopotamus mean?

A: Q: What is a baby hippo called?

A: Q: What is a female hippo called?

A: Q: What is a male hippo called?

A:

DEADLIEST INCISORS SUNBLOCK BREATHE GRASSES AFRICA HIPPOS RIVERS THREAT OOZES TUSKS SWEAT COOL SLOW JAW

Find the words by looking up, down, backwards, forwards, sideways and diagonally.

K C O L B N U S R D S B R E A T H E I E

E T H R E A T N V A S W J A T H C E E D S T A F R I C A R L

A U W L S P R S S I

R S M O A P L M M E

G K R O O O Z E S S

A S L C W S W E A T Standards Link: Letter sequencing. Recognize identical words. Skim and scan reading. Recall spelling patterns.

How many hippos can

DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025

27

EVENTS Dawn of Ouroboros

March 13 Time: 7pm Location: 5 East 400 - South Salt Lake 24tix.com/events/uvinuuphbffwfhocqw5n26pjwq

Toronto Raptors at Utah Jazz

Chamber Orchestra Ogden: Spring Concert March 22 Time: 7:30pm-9pm Location: 2415 Washington Boulevard - Ogden ogdenpet.com/events/2024/chamber-orchestra-ogdenconcerts24-25

Arts Fishing Club

March 30 7pm Location: 741 Kilby Court - SLC 24tix.com/events/pqdsfnnwerb4bhrsepc7k26erq

Spring Joint Lacrosse Tailgate

March 14 Time: 7:30pm Location: 301 W South Temple - SLC seatgeek.com/utah-jazz-tickets/3-14-2025-salt-lake-cityutah-delta-center-1/nba/6481614?aid=605

Miss Bluffdale 2025 Pageant

March 22 Time: 6pm-9pm Location: 15410 S Harmon Day Dr - Bluffdale bluffdale.gov/calendar.aspx?EID=3420

March 30 - 5 Time: 1:30pm-3:30pm Location: 155 Central Campus Dr - SLC westminsteru.edu/calendar.html#event-details/f73ea5199d5d-4f4b -8d39-c7effecd24b7

Comedy Rumble Showcase

BYU Winterfest: International Folk Dance Ensemble

BYU Cougars Mens Volleyball vs. Stanford Cardinal Mens Volleyball

March 15 Time: 9pm Location: 190 400 W - SLC nowplayingutah.com/event/comedy-rumble-showcase/

St. Patrick's Day Parade and Festival

March 15 Time: 11am-5pm Location: 400 W 200 S, - SLC atthegateway.com/calendars/st-patricks-day-parade-andfestival-25/

Lehi Arts in the Park 2024

March 16 - 6 Time: 7pm-9pm Location: 500 North Center Street - Lehi lehi-ut.gov/event/51332/2025-03-16/

St. Patrick's Day Concert

March 17 Time: 7pm-8pm Location: 550 N University Ave. - Provo provolibrary.org/events

LA Clippers at Utah Jazz

March 19 Time: 7pm Location: 301 W South Temple - SLC seatgeek.com/utah-jazz-tickets/3-19-2025-salt-lake-cityutah-delta-center-1/nba/6481628?aid=605

Swing into Spring with Hobble Creek Barn Boutique

March 19 - 22 Time: 10am-8pm Location: 475 S Main Street - Spanish Fork nowplayingutah.com/event/swing-into-spring-withhobble-creek-barn-boutique-2/

Winter Bluebird Cafe Concert Series 2025 March 21 - 22 Time: 8pm Location: 8841 N. Alpine Loop Road - Sundance nowplayingutah.com/event/winter-bluebird-cafe-concertseries-2025-2/

2025 Sowing Spring Crops

March 22 Time: 10am-12pm Location: 824 S 400 W # 127 - SLC nowplayingutah.com/event/2025-sowing-spring-crops/

March 25 - 26 Time: 7pm Location: 2525 Taylorsville Blvd - Taylorsville nowplayingutah.com/event/byu-winterfest-internationalfolk-dance-ensemble/

Improv Salt Lake Sketch Comedy Revue March 26 Time: 8pm-10pm Location: 602 E 500 S, Suite E101 - SLC nowplayingutah.com/event/improv-salt-lake-sketchcomedy-revue/

Lifehouse Fireside 2025

March 26 - 27 Time: 7:30pm-9:30pm Location: 425 West Center Street - Provo coveycenter.csstix.com/event-details.php?e=2299

The Price is Right LIVE

March 26 Time: 7:30pm Location: 131 Main Street - SLC live-at-the-eccles.com/events/priceisrightlive

Dancing With The Stars

March 27 - 28 Time: 7:30pm Location: Location: 131 Main St - SLC fpc-live.com/concerts/

Saint Motel - The Symphony in the Sky Tour

April 3 Location: Brigham Young University - Provo

Park City Spring Wine Festival 2025

April 3 - 5 12pm Location: Main Street - Park City nowplayingutah.com/event/park-city-spring-winefestival-2025/

2025 Provo Art Stroll

April 4 Time: 6pm-9pm Location: Provo nowplayingutah.com/event/2025-provo-art-stroll/

2025 WATIF International Film Festival April 4 Time: 5pm Location: 3934 Washington Blvd. - South Ogden nowplayingutah.com/event/2025-watif-internationalfilm-festival/

Gem Faire

April 4 - 6 Time: 12pm-6pm Location: 9575 S. State Street - Sandy festivalnet.com/3407/Sandy-Utah/Gem-Jewelry-BeadShows/Gem-Faire

2025 Spring Spectacular

March 28 Time: 7pm Location: 400 W South Temple - SLC

April 5 Time: 9am-11am Location: 11000 South Redwood Road - South Jordan nowplayingutah.com/event/2025-spring-spectacular/

Utah Grizzlies vs. Allen Americans

Real Salt Lake vs. Los Angeles Galaxy

March 28 7:10pm Location: 3200 S. Decker Lake Dr. - West Valley City maverikcenter.com/events-tickets/upcoming-events/ details/?event_id=10490

2025 Holi, Festival of Colors

March 29 - 30 Time: 10am-5pm Location: 8628 South Main Street - Spanish Fork festivalnet.com/76189/Spanish-Fork-Utah/Festivals/ Festival-of-Colors

April 5 Location: America First Field: 9256 South State Street - Sandy

Utah Hockey Club vs. Winnipeg Jets April 5 Location: 301 W South Temple - SLC

Thanksgiving Point Tulip Festival 2025 April 9 Time: 9am Location: 3003 N. Thanksgiving Way - Lehi nowplayingutah.com/event/thanksgiving-point-tulipfestival-2025/

*Events and details are subject to change. Please visit the event websites for the most up to date and correct information.

28 DESERET NEWS | MARCH 2025

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