In the last decade, the craft industry’s boom has steadily spread across Southern states. There are now thousands of breweries in the region (400 in North Carolina alone). But what exactly is a Southern beer?

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Links:

• Check out Owen Racer's Gulf Coast beer reporting at Good Beer Hunting.

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At the turn of the 20th century, the epicenter of America’s Black middle class was in a midsize city in central North Carolina. Durham was home to NC Mutual, an insurance company that provided a foundation for Black wealth in the South amidst Jim Crow segregation. Recently though, NC Mutual closed its doors, marking the end to more than a hundred years of business.

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• You can find a transcript of the episode here.

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NASCAR is the most popular motorsport series across America, but its roots run deep as a regional sport in the South, especially in our home state of North Carolina. That history has heavily influenced the growth of motorsports in the US, which has produced a disproportionate amount of Southern drivers — and fans. But in recent years, a surprising new trend has begun to level that playing field: the explosion in popularity of esports.

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Links:

• You can find a transcript of the episode here.

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Any kind of environmental crisis – whether it's caused by an act of God or big industry – can upend a community. That's especially true for the smaller, more rural towns that dot the landscape of the South. In the past century, natural and man-made environmental changes have transformed and even erased some of these places.

What happens to small towns when they meet BIG opponents and who fights for these communities to be preserved — or at least, remembered – when the dust settles?

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Donate: The Broadside is made possible by contributions from listeners like you. Support WUNC-North Carolina Public Radio and this podcast by making a donation.

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Stanton, Tennessee -- population 400 -- is getting ready to welcome a Ford auto-manufacturing campus that will employ 6,000 people. And with it, prosperity and some serious growing pains. This one small town is a microcosm of the powerful new economics at play in states throughout the American South.

Featuring:

• Nora Eckert, Auto Industry Reporter at The Wall Street Journal

Links:

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This year marks the 120th anniversary of Orville and Wilbur Wright's powered airplane flight at Kill Devil Hills in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But the Wright Brothers aren’t the only icons of aviation with ties to the South. This week, we tell the unlikely story of a woman named Tiny Broadwick. Born into extreme poverty, Broadwick went on to become a trailblazer in the male-dominated world of parachute jumping, saving thousands of lives along the way.

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Donate: The Broadside is made possible by contributions from listeners like you. Support WUNC-North Carolina Public Radio and this podcast by making a donation.

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This week we're highlighting a recent episode of the award-winning podcast Embodied (which is also produced at WUNC). We hear a lot about toxic fandoms in our culture — but there's also a lot to share about the brighter side. Guest host Anisa Khalifa first became a fan in high school. She gets an explanation from a psychologist about how being in fandoms benefits mental health, and a journalist describes what role the internet has played in shaping fan culture. Plus, Anisa invites the co-hosts of her K-drama podcast to reflect on how fandom brought them together — and what it means to be a fan.

Meet the guests:

- Lynn Zubernis, a psychologist and professor at West Chester University, talks about what poises some people to become superfans more than others, and how being in a fandom can be mentally beneficial

- Candice Lim, co-host of ICYMI, Slate's podcast about internet culture, talks about how different internet platforms shape fan communities, and the increasing ways that fandom and regular life are overlapping

- Paroma Chakravarty and Saya, Anisa's co-hosts on the podcast Dramas over Flowers, share how the K-drama fandom bonded them together, and what responsibilities fans hold in their communities

Dig Deeper:

Lynn's research and writing on fan psychology

The ICYMI episode on this summer's hacking of AO3

Read the transcript | Review the podcast

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NPR's annual Student Podcast Challenge is kind of a big deal. In 2023 alone, they received over 3,300 entries. This week on the Broadside, we highlight the work of one of the finalists who uncovered the history of her neighborhood -- Oberlin Village in Raleigh, NC -- and fought to bring it into the light and preserve it for future generations. 

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Donate: The Broadside is made possible by contributions from listeners like you. Support WUNC-North Carolina Public Radio and this podcast by making a donation.

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We now know an incredible amount about the COVID-19 virus. But long Covid symptoms and treatment options remain a blind spot. This week, we check in on a group of patients and doctors from the Carolinas who we’ve been following for over a year in order to see how we’re adapting to this second silent pandemic.

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Donate: The Broadside is made possible by contributions from listeners like you. Support WUNC-North Carolina Public Radio and this podcast by making a donation.

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The water supply for millions of people across the South has serious problems. Many of these folks live in majority Black cities like Jackson, Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee. Billions in federal funds were recently allocated to help fix cities' poor water quality, but will it be enough? Join us as we tap into the water across the region and learn what it’ll take to clean it up.

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Donate: The Broadside is made possible by contributions from listeners like you. Support WUNC-North Carolina Public Radio and this podcast by making a donation.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.