The State of Things

Makeba Wilbourn has been immersed in the subtleties of language since she was a child. As the daughter of a northern white mother and southern black father, she constantly changed the way she spoke to her own family. And as she grew older, she realized she had to be an expert at code-switching in order to succeed as a biracial woman. Today, Makeba studies how children develop those differences in language, and how that might contribute to our racial biases. Host Frank Stasio talks with Wilbourn,

President Donald Trump traveled to Texas this week in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. He met with a number of government officials and rescue workers but received criticism for not meeting with flood victims.

Seventy-five years ago the U.S. government relocated more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans into internment camps following the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Parents were separated from their children, and many individuals were forced to give up their property.

Classically-trained violinist and fiddler Pattie Hopkins Kinlaw and bluegrass banjo player Hank Smith might seem like an unlikely duo. But Hank Smith grew up testing the limits of his instrument and bending the conventional genre in unexpected ways.

Millennials have a reputation for being overeducated and undermotivated when it comes to working and saving money. But a forthcoming report from the left-leaning North Carolina Justice Center explains that millennials face pressures previous generations were not subject to, and that state and national policies compound their difficulties in building wealth and finding good jobs.

The balance of people and machines in the workplace is shifting.

There is no doubt that Charles Darwin’s trip to the Galapagos Islands in the 1830s changed his life’s work. It put him on the path to develop his game-changing theory of evolution. But Darwin’s observations were not isolated to one exploration. For years after his pivotal excursion, Darwin conducted unorthodox and innovative experiments to test his speculations, and he often did so in his own backyard.

Up to one in five women suffer from a postpartum mood disorder like depression. But a new study finds that 20 percent of them do not report their symptoms to a healthcare provider, even when they are asked directly.

Dinosaurs have graced the silver screen since the early 20th century. But depictions of the pre-historic creatures in movies are often comically inaccurate.

Holly Goddard Jones was in between projects when she sat down to write a little horror story about killer ticks. But literary questions kept sneaking into her thoughts, and as she probed the backstories and motivations of her characters, her short thriller grew into a novel.