The State of Things on WUNC

Iris Yang grew up in China with two parents who were high-achieving educators. They wanted her to be a good student and successful woman, and their passion was biology. She aimed to please them and followed their suggested path. Yang was one of a few students accepted to the China-United States Biochemistry Examination and Application program, and at 23, she was sent to America with a borrowed $500 and poor English. She went on to study molecular biology and worked with researchers at the

Can humans and black bears coexist? This question has become increasingly relevant in North Carolina as both the human and bear populations continue to grow. Black bears now live on about 60 percent of the state’s land and are very adaptable to different climates, which has led to an increase in human run-ins with black bears over the past two decades.

Ben Phan remembers living in a van with his ex-girlfriend, bumming around the country and searching for a place to clean up his act and reinvent himself.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more than 200 people around North Carolina in early February. And according to new reporting, this action had a noticeable impact on local commerce in western North Carolina.

This winter, waves of journalists across the country lost their jobs as major media organizations made significant cut backs. Among them, media giant Gannett cut an estimated 400 people, and The McClatchy Company offered voluntary buyouts to about 450 people. The mass layoffs follow years of staff cuts at newspapers and media outlets across the country.

The latest edition of Movies on the Radio is all about gangster, mob and mafia movies. Listeners share their favorite movies focused on the world of crime, from the family business in “Married To The Mob” to the crooked cops in “Training Day.”

Parents across America have long told their children that the surest path to a well-paying job is through education. At one time that meant earning a high school diploma, but today more and more jobs in this country require something more than a high school degree. According to a new report from Carolina Demography, by next year, 67 percent of jobs in North Carolina will require some post-secondary education. Today, less than half of North Carolinians have such qualifications.

Female artists have stood in the shadows of their male colleagues for much of art history, and that disparity is still evident in many art museums today. A survey of 18 prominent institutions in the United States found that close to 90 percent of artists whose work is on view are both male and white. The North Carolina Museum of Art says they hope to correct that imbalance.

Jacob Tobia grew up a gender non-conforming child in the Triangle. And while many narratives of LGBTQ life in the South are saddled with stories of bullying and strife, Tobia had a different experience.

Cash Michaels is known for sharing the African-American perspective on news stories around North Carolina. He has been a newspaper journalist since the 1980s and writes for six African-American papers around the state.