Many of us have heard that playing Mozart for a baby in utero can help with brain development. We’ve heard that plants do better when classical music is played vs. hard rock.

It’s the time of year when municipalities and counties are putting the finishing touches on their budgets for the next fiscal year.

Earlier this week, more than 30 people, including North Carolina NAACP President Reverend William Barber, were arrested at the State Capitol for demanding that the Republican-led legislature expand Medicaid. As lawmakers in Washington wrangle over exactly when and how to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something else, state-level officials are scrambling to anticipate the fallout. At the same time, auto insurers in the state are seeking a nearly 14% hike in rates from the

A quick sweep of news headlines about guns in North Carolina shows stacks of stories about illegally-obtained weapons. Two men made national news earlier this month by breaking into two gun shops in North Carolina and stealing more than 100 weapons. They were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. But after multiple versions of that story, the gun legislation headlines begin to emerge: “House Bill Could Recognize Gun Permits From 16 More States” (that’s in South

Our guest on this edition of CoastLine holds the title of Special Correspondent at NPR. But if you’re an All Things Considered listener, you will probably recognize her voice as the one paired with Robert Siegel – for more than a decade -- from 2003 to 2015.

David Gessner’s life is about the wild – and wildness. You may know him first as a nature writer from the books All The Wild That Remains or My Green Manifesto or The Tarball Chronicles or Return of the Osprey (there are five others books on the natural world) . You may have seen him host the TV show "Call of the Wild" for National Geographic, or you may simply know him as a Professor and Chair of the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington . His body of work

More than 90 percent of people think it is important to talk about end-of-life care. Fewer than 30 percent actually do it. That’s according to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement , a Massachusetts-based independent nonprofit.

The business of publishing news is radically changing. That’s present-tense. We all know the old hometown local paper has undergone what could fairly be called profound transformation – but it’s still going on and what the Executive Editor of the StarNews in Wilmington calls “a period of disruption” continues. That's why we’ve invited Pam Sander to explore with us how the the newspaper business and journalism has transformed over the years, what the current struggles are, and why engaging with

May 11 and 14, 2017: This one is our Road Trip! show. In this hour, we’ll talk about some favorite as well as lesser-known places to see in the Carolinas, either South or North. Our guests are Michael Graff, editor of Charlotte Magazine , and Philip Gerard of UNCW, author of Down the Wild Cape Fear .

The North Carolina Fisheries Reform Act will be 20 years old this August . As we learned last week, that policy came to be after extended and heated debate from stakeholders on all sides of the issue. Most of those involved at the time describe it as better than nothing – but most definitely a compromise.