The State of Things

Rucho resigned his co-chairmanship of the finance committee in protest of Berger's plan, which passed the Senate Thursday.

Regardless of what ultimately passes, Jessica Jones, WUNC Capitol Bureau Chief, said on the State of Things that the implications could be far reaching.

Jeanne Jolly visited our studio a year ago in the early stages of working on her album, “Angels.” Now, she is back in the midst of a national tour promoting her album.

  Forty years ago, the controversial supreme court decision Roe Versus Wade ushered in a new era of reproductive rights and touched off a culture war that has waged ever since.

South Carolina lawyer Jon Buchan is fond of saying that all journalists and attorneys have at least one good novel in them. He's been mulling his for years, but he's finally finished and published it. "Code of the Forest" tells the story of a scrappy newspaper, trying to survive an onslaught by a senator determined to silence it. It examines the subtle underpinnings of corruption.

Buchan says that corruption, as he portrays it in his book, is a much more subtle form of influence. One that might infect a politician before they realize it's too late.

At one time, Eric Rudolph was one of the most wanted men in the country. He was responsible for a series of bombings in Georgia and Alabama, including at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

In her new book, "Big Brother," Lionel Shriver takes on the struggle of obesity through Edison. He is a formerly good looking, charismatic jazz musician who has become hugely obese and down on his luck. His sister takes him on as a project, threatening her marriage and her sanity.

Benjamin Franklin famously said, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."  But in the North Carolina legislature, three competing plans seek to reform the tax code, and the future of these plans is all but certain.  Two bills are waiting in the Senate Finance Committee. One bill passed the House yesterday and will move to the Senate.

Will Willimon has served at Duke University in a variety of roles for decades, but he always left to continue his calling as a Methodist minister.

He knew from an early age that he had a special connection to God.

"I think I always had an extraordinary sense of the divine," he said.

Though, he said that his fundamentalist upbringing in rural South Carolina scared him off from faith for a while.  

"I sort of decided that Christianity was for people who weren't very good at thinking things through," he said.

When he went off to Wofford College, he was exposed to a religous studies professor who helped him see a different view of Christianity.