On Second Thought

The Red Bull Music Academy comes to Atlanta this week with a series of workshops and live performances. The Academy has been broadcasting live from Patchwerk Recording Studios, an iconic studio that has served as a hip-hop home base for more than 20 years. We re-visit our tour and conversation with owner Curtis Daniel about the role the studio has played in Atlanta’s music scene.

A class-action lawsuit filed last week alleges 13 cities in St. Louis County, Missouri put people behind bars because they couldn't afford to pay court fines. The fines included tickets for minor offenses like traffic violations. The Arch City Defenders is the nonprofit law firm behind the suit. The group compares the situation in Missouri to a modern day "debtors' prison." It is illegal to jail people because they can't pay court costs, but it continues to happen across the country, including

We're three months away until the Presidential election, and Georgia is a key battleground state for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Clinton with a slight edge over Trump. But there could be problems with voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. It says most states rely on electronic voting machines that are at least a decade old and prone to failures and crashes. We talk about this with Merle King, the

We're three months away until the Presidential election, and Georgia is seen as a key battleground state for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. But there could be problems with voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. It says most states rely on electronic voting machines that are at least a decade old and prone to failures and crashes. We talk about this with Merle King, the executive director at Kennesaw State University's Center for Election Systems.

There’s a special jam session that happens in Fayetteville, Georgia every Wednesday afternoon. The musicians are cancer patients who come together at Piedmont Fayette Hospital. They form a drum circle. The rhythms they make together helps relieve stress and create community. Producer Linda Chen dropped in on a recent drum circle session and brings us a head-bobbing audio postcard.

Brain tumors once thought to be inoperable can now be removed without a single incision through Gamma Knife radiosurgery. The procedure delivers small, highly precise doses of radiation to a specific area without damaging the rest of the brain. We speak with Dr. Shannon Kahn, radiation oncologist at Emory St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta, and cancer survivor Lynn Wyatt about the benefits of Gamma Knife surgery.

August marks two years since a police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Inequalities in our criminal justice system have dominated headlines since then. But Marc Lamont Hill says the injustice goes beyond police policies and prison sentences. He says there is a war on the powerless in this country. Marc Lamont Hill is a Distinguished Professor of African American Studies at Morehouse College and author of the new book, “Nobody: Casualties of America’s War

Each year, over fifty thousand college students struggle to attend classes while coping with homelessness. Last week, Kennesaw State University unveiled a first-of-its-kind housing facility for its homeless students. We speak with Marcy Stidum, director of the university’s CARE Center, about the facility and the growing issue of homelessness in higher education.

Kennesaw State University unveiled a first-of-its-kind housing facility for its homeless students last week. We speak with Marcy Stidum, director of the university’s CARE center, about the facility and the growing issue of homelessness in higher education. Then, August marks two years since a police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The protests that followed changed the way we talk about race and policing. But it also revealed a larger and more troubling

Gwinnett County is the most diverse county in the Southeast, but the area is represented almost entirely by white officials. And now, a lawsuit by a coalition of voting rights groups alleges that minority votes are being weakened by unfair district lines. We speak with a trio of local experts about how much political representation and race matter in multicultural communities.