Frank Stasio

Voters in Wake County's District 3 have one more school board vote to cast. Democrat Kevin Hill and Republican Heather Losurdo will face off in a runoff election on Tuesday. The result will decide which party will rule when the new school board takes office in December. It's been a long campaign season, and the Wake schools debate continues to attract national attention. Host Frank Stasio talks with WUNC reporter Dave DeWitt about the election and the new student assignment plan at the heart of the controversy.

On Christmas Day of 1926, after torrential rains, the Mississippi River broke its levee system in 145 places. Whole towns were swamped or washed away and 246 people were killed in seven states. Then in April of 1927, fifteen inches of rain fell on New Orleans in 18 hours and that city's levees broke. By May of that year, 25,000 people had been displaced by the floods and the Mississippi River south of Memphis measured 60 miles across. Many of the people fleeing the rising water were Delta blues musicians. They headed north and settled in Chicago where they established a new genre of windy city blues. Filmmaker Bill Morrison has been fascinated by those musicians and their journey for decades. Known for his experimental films that pair atmospheric footage with music, he has teamed up with jazz legend Bill Frisell on a new project called "The Great Flood." The film combines found footage with Frisell's original composition. Morrison and Frisell join host Frank Stasio to discuss the project, which screens with live music this weekend at Duke University.

When singer-songwriter Kim Arrington delivers a tune, you can’t help but wonder if she’s in love. Although amore is a common theme in many of her lyrics, the emotion in Arrington’s music comes from the sincere passion she has for singing. Her forthcoming CD is called “Getting II Yes” and to raise money for its production, Arrington is performing a series of living room concerts to get the word out about her music one community at a time. She joins host Frank Stasio to talk about her new album and play live in the studio.

Journalist Angie Newsome saw a need for more investigative reporting in the western part of North Carolina, so she founded the Carolina Public Press. It’s a non-profit, online publication that reports on the 17 westernmost counties in the state. The project is funded through the generosity of foundations, donors, businesses and other organizations. Host Frank Stasio talks to Newsome about the Carolina Public Press and some of the news it's covering.

Swiss brothers Jens and Uwe Kruger have played music together since they were very young, but their band never seemed quite complete – until they met New Yorker Joel Landsberg. Landsberg shared their love of musical creativity and everything started coming together. The trio began playing for Swiss audiences, eventually making their American debut in 1997. The band is now based in North Carolina, a place they credit for inspiring their early sound. The Kruger Brothers perform tonight in Raleigh, but first they join host Frank Stasio in the studio to talk about their alliance and their music.

When last we left superhero Herald M.F. Jones, he was saving the people of Jade City from the controlling clutches of corrupt, charismatic villains. That was in “Jade City Chronicles,” a stage production that ran at Man Bites Dog Theater in Durham last summer. Since then, playwright Howard Craft has written even more spectacular adventures for Herald, an African-American vigilante with a unique past and supernatural abilities. The new chapters of Herald’s life will be heard on the radio in a new series called “The Jade City Pharaoh,” which is in development to premiere on WUNC’s “The State of Things” in December. Craft joins host Frank Stasio to talk about creating a modern-day hero that’s perfect for the stage, the comic strip and the airwaves.

SPECIAL EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: The Jade City Pharaoh is coming to "The State of Things" on WUNC! Join host Frank Stasio at the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, NC on Friday, November 4th at 8 p.m. for a benefit to support a new radio drama series starring Herald MF Jones, the bad ass black superhero of "Jade City Chronicles." It's an evening of live music, visual art, spoken word and audience participation with playwright Howard Craft, Shirlette Ammons & the Dynamite Brothers, Poetic Portraits of a Revolution, Franco, Kim Arrington and more. Tickets start at just $25! For more information, click here.

On Tuesday, Bank of America ditched its plans to begin charging customers a monthly fee to use their debit cards. The decision to abandon the fee comes in response to consumer complaints to the proposal. Among those complaints is a movement called Bank Transfer Day, which urges consumers to move their money from banks to credit unions. Host Frank Stasio talks with experts in personal finance and banking about the role of big banks, small banks and credit unions in our lives and in the emerging economy.

In the pre-colonial era, vast forests of long leaf pines stretched along the eastern seaboard from what is today upstate New York as far south and west as east Texas. By the time Helen Boyd Dull came south to visit the North Carolina Sandhills in the early 1900s, millions of acres of long leafs had fallen to logging or been gutted to make tar and turpentine. At her urging, Helen Boyd Dull's father preserved a stand of these old trees that became known as Weymouth Woods in Southern Pines, NC. Historian and artist Ray Owen has created an homage to Helen Boyd Dull and the trees she saved in a new performance piece called "Bleeding Pines of Turpentine." Owen and choirmaster Rod Brower of the Together-N-Unity Choir join host Frank Stasio to talk about the story of the long leaf pine and telling it through music, dance and spoken word.

Cookbooks are a lone shining light in all of publishing at the moment. Last year, more than 60 million of them were sold, but many of the bestselling titles were written by celebrities. What are we getting from our cookbooks? Do we read cookbooks to actually learn something or to live a vicarious life? Cookbook author Michael Ruhlman and food writer Kelly Alexander join host Frank Stasio to ponder those questions and talk about how America eats. Ruhlman, a writer and cook, recently released “Ruhlman’s Twenty” (Chronicle Books/2011) and Alexander contributed the introduction to “The Great American Cookbook” (Rizzoli/2011), a reissue of Clementine Paddleford’s classic cookbook from 1960.

This November marks the 25th anniversary of the North Carolina Latin American Film Festival, which celebrates and examines Latino culture in cinema. This year, the focus of the festival is on narcotic drug trafficking, and the violence and corruption that goes with it. Host Frank Stasio talks about that theme with North Carolina filmmakers Rodrigo Dorfman and Elva Bishop and with festival Director Miguel Rojas-Sotelo.