The State of Things

Host Frank Stasio will speak with North Carolina reporters and Senator Josh Stein about the budget and how it will impact the Triangle, Western and Coastal North Carolina. Jessica Jones is WUNC's Capitol Bureau Chief; Democratic Senator Josh Stein represents Wake County; Kirk Ross is a contributing reporter for Carolina Public Press and a policy adviser to the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Hope talks about her efforts with host Frank Stasio, and performs some of her original songs, along with Mary Johnson Rockers and Will Ridenour.

Federal regulators are investigating the Shearon Harris nuclear plant near Raleigh. They want to know how a flaw in the reactor vessel went undetected or unreported for over a year. News & Observer reporter John Murawski fills in host Frank Stasio on the latest.

We’re all familiar with the brave soldiers who fought and died during World War II, but the story of a group of medics and nurses, stranded in Nazi-occupied Albania, remained untold until now.

Writer Cate Lineberry chronicles the tale in her new book, “The Secret Rescue: An Untold Story of American Medics and Nurses Behind Nazi Lines” (LBC/2013). Host Frank Stasio talks to writer Cate Lineberry about her new book.

If you've gone to the legislature these past four Mondays, you likely encountered a group of demonstrators singing, chanting, holding hands and raising signs. And a lot of them are getting arrested. Since April 29th, 153 people have been arrested at what the NAACP and other organizers are calling "Moral Mondays."

A group of community members and scholars joined host Frank Stasio on WUNC's The State of Things to talk about the recent arrests, as well as the theory and history behind civil disobedience on a global scale.

Daniel Wallace is best known for his debut novel “Big Fish,” which became a Hollywood movie.  which became a Hollywood movie and is soon debuting as a musical. But he's written four more novels since then. His latest is called "The Kings and Queens of Roam," and it follows two sisters as they grow up in an imaginary former textile town.

  Tanya Olson will tell you that being an eight-year-old child in the world allows you a lot of room to be whoever and whatever you want. You can be a whale, a man, a spaceship, and few will tell you otherwise. After that age though, the feeling doesn't necessarily go away. She explores that desire to transform in her first book of poems, "Boyishly" (YesYes Books, 2013). Tanya Olson is a poet and an English professor at Vance-Granville Community College.

Patricia McAnany had a moment of clarity when a young girl of Maya descent asked her why all the Maya people had to die. McAnany knew that the ancient Maya civilization collapsed in the 8th and 9th centuries, but she also knew that the Maya people continued to exist right up until the modern day.

Claudia Horwitz was a young political activist who worked to raise awareness around hunger and homelessness.  She found a high burn-out rate among activists she worked with it. Through her career, Claudia saw people drop out of political organizing for a variety of reasons, such as exhaustion, lack of progress, illness and addiction.