The State of Things on WUNC

Paula Vogel’s play “How I Learned to Drive” tells the story of Li’l Bit, a 35-year-old woman looking back at painful and humorous moments of her far-too-early sexual awakening at the deft and exploitative hands of her Uncle Peck. When it first hit the stage in 1997, it stealthily took audiences along for the ride as it revealed tightly-sealed truths about sexual abuse. Today’s #MeToo-era audiences will find the work just as searing as it adds to the conversations about sexual trauma and its long

Women in North Carolina are likely aware that they make, on average, less than men do. New analysis from the National Partnership for Women & Families shows just how much and to what effect. Their new report reveals that women in North Carolina could afford nearly nine additional months of rent, close to a full year of child care, or more than five months of health insurance premiums if the gender wage gap was closed.

In 1948, a plane deporting 28 migrant farmworkers crashed in Fresno County, California killing 32 people. In some of the press coverage, reporters omitted only the names of the migrants, while naming the flight crew and security.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal had dreams of becoming an artist, not a doctor. But he followed his father’s urging and went to medical school, later earning a Nobel prize for the way he furthered understanding of how messages are transmitted to, from and through the brain and nervous system. Cajal managed to merge science and art all along, however, through the meticulous and imaginative way he illustrated brain cells.

Poetry has always been at the center of the friendship between Alan Shapiro and Jonathan Farmer . They met when Farmer took a poetry class from Shapiro at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and in the early days they often argued about poetry. Today they agree more often but still have a lot to discuss with one another in their regular meetups.

Ruth Reichl ’s first experience with Gourmet magazine was in a dusty bookstore when she was 8 years old. She found an old issue that captivated her and inspired her to try cooking at home. Those early experiences with food later inspired a career.

Tony Brown grew up in Walkertown, North Carolina in a home with no indoor plumbing and no television. His parents boiled water in a kettle to use for their baths, and the kids were not allowed to attend sporting events or movies.

The plan to establish a Durham-Orange Light Rail line is over. The GoTriangle board of trustees voted Wednesday to discontinue planning for the 18-mile line that would have connected the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Hospitals with Duke University and Duke Hospital and end at North Carolina Central University.

The Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble may be a group of teenagers but they pack a serious musical punch. For the fourth year in a row, the ensemble made the cut to compete on stage at New York’s Lincoln Center as part of the Essentially Ellington Competition . More than 100 bands tried out for the competition with only the top 15 earning a spot.

In 1971, C.P. Ellis and Ann Atwater were asked to sit down together to solve the problem of school desegregation in Durham, and at the time no signs pointed to that being a good idea. Ellis was a Ku Klux Klan leader, Atwater was a black community organizer, and the two were enemies.