The State of Things on WUNC

Robert Mueller is part of a long line of special prosecutors in American history. Scholars point to the Ulysses S. Grant administration as the first to recognize that the U.S. Department of Justice might not be the most reliable entity to investigate a sitting president.

As the great R&B artists of the 1960s and ‘70s traveled between Atlanta and Washington, D.C., they often made a stop in Greensboro, North Carolina. That stop meant talented, young musicians from across the state had a chance to rub elbows with — or even play alongside— famed musicians of the time, people like Little Richard and Otis Redding.

Barefoot Modern recently walked away with the Best Alternative Indie Award for their musical submission at the Richmond International Film Festival . They beat out more than 2,000 bands to earn that spot and have since set their sights on garnering even more national attention with their roster of original tracks.

While much of the country was suffering during the Great Depression, Nathan Garrett’s family found a safe haven in Durham, North Carolina. At the time the city was fertile ground for the African American entrepreneur, and the Garrett family ran the local pharmacy . Nathan learned the ropes of running a business, and he fondly remembers a community that was proud and self-sustaining. He eventually left Durham to attend Yale University, where he was part of the largest influx of African American

As Durham celebrates its sesquicentennial , host Frank Stasio invites a panel of community leaders, business owners and activists to look back at the history of the Bull City and trace how its economy, politics and culture have shifted in the past 150 years. They home in on Black Wall Street: a four-block district on Parrish Street that was once a mecca for black-owned businesses.

The idea of quilting may conjure an image of sorting through old scraps of material and patching them together to make a blanket. But in pre-Civil War America, quilting was a hobby primarily reserved for the wealthy. Only families of means could afford fabric and spare the leisure time. The woman of the house often had slaves or servants to assist with her quilting, and those quilts were a sign of social status.

In a sweet tea-colored swamp in Bladen County, North Carolina there is a group of trees that has intrigued researchers for decades. Scientists knew the bald cypress trees that sprouted up from the Black River were old, and a new study reveals a number of the trees date back millennia. One tree is at least 2,624 years old. The bald cypress' remarkable age reveal information about climate history in the region, including whether the people who lived in the area experienced significant droughts.

Soccer is a source of national pride in many Latin American countries. The greats like Brazil's Pelé or Argentina's Diego Maradona are legends on and off the pitch. But women have also been an integral part of soccer in Latin America since its advent, and their stories are often pushed to the side. In the new book " Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America ” (University of Texas Press/2019), authors Joshua Nadel and Brenda Elsey examine the rich legacy of women in soccer. They

Lawmakers in the North Carolina House and Senate are negotiating the state budget. The primary differences in the spending plans approved by each chamber include the amounts allocated for teacher and state employee raises, cost of living adjustments for state retirees and education.

20 years ago, two students at Columbine High School in Colorado killed 12 of their classmates and one teacher in what was the deadliest school massacre in the nation’s history at the time. Cary-resident Kacey Ruesgegger Johnson was a junior at the time and was sitting in the library reading a gossip magazine when gunfire erupted. The events that followed led to lifelong physical and mental scars and a declaration that she would never go into a library again.