The State of Things on WUNC

The Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first drug specifically designed to treat postpartum depression. Marketed as Zulresso, it is administered intravenously and reports results within 48 hours.

Lin Zhao was a poet and journalist who was arrested as a political dissident during the Mao Zedong regime in China. She stands as the only known Chinese citizen to have openly and steadily opposed Mao’s communism, an opposition rooted in her Christian faith. After her arrest, she dedicated her time in prison to writing letters and poems, sometimes in her own blood, in opposition of the regime. The first non-fiction retelling of her story is captured in Duke professor Xi Lian’s book: “Blood

There was a time when lynchings were treated like a parade through town or a big community event. Some were even commemorated on picture postcards and mailed to friends and family around the country.

The U.S. Supreme Court listened to oral arguments Tuesday morning in a North Carolina gerrymandering case that dates back to the 2016 election. The case, Common Cause v. Rucho, is a major test for the court’s position on political gerrymandering. In North Carolina, the 2016 congressional maps helped Republicans win 10 of 13 seats . Plaintiffs in the case say they have “smoking gun” evidence that Republicans drew congressional lines to gain partisan advantage. Last August a three-judge panel

Author Philip Gerard has spent years unearthing the lesser-known stories of the Civil War. In order to better document the history beyond the grand military strategies and exalted generals, Gerard dug deep into the archives, reading first-person testimonies, searching through hand-written letters, and speaking with a range of experts, from historians to longtime civil war reenactors. In his new book, “ The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina ,” (UNC Press/ 2019) Gerard

For even the most popular kids, surviving puberty is filled with awkward and memorable moments. But for a biracial kid growing up in a multi-religious family in the South, there are some added challenges. Religious scholar and comedian Andrew Aghapour has vivid memories and scars from his childhood in the not-so-progressive town of Charleston, South Carolina in the 1980s with an Iranian Muslim father and a white, British Protestant mother.

Jaki Shelton Green spent her childhood with her nose in a book knowing there was a great big world that awaited her. A native of Orange County, North Carolina, Green was a fidgety child and her grandmother’s solution was to give her a writing pad. This simple gesture meant to keep her still in church, blossomed into a lifelong journey.

There were an estimated 2,200 evictions in Buncombe County last year, according to reporting from The Asheville Citizen-Times. This statistic has many wondering: With Asheville’s booming economy and the historically low unemployment rate, why are its residents struggling to pay rent?

Chef Vishwesh Bhatt remembers spending countless hours in the kitchen helping his mom prepare meals when he was a little boy in India. Much of the produce they cooked with was not much different from that found in many Southern kitchens: black-eyed peas, sweet potatoes, greens, rice, and okra.

Pianist Ernest Turner’ s latest album is an ode to black American music. “My Americana” came out earlier this month, and it features jazz compositions by Stevie Wonder, Fats Waller, Kenny Kirkland and other African-American artists. Instead of playing classic jazz standards, Turner chose to highlight black composers.