The State of Things

What is a hero, and who gets to be one? A Durham-based spoken word, theater and poetry company tackles these questions in its upcoming production. “Definition of a Hero” started as a piece focused on men’s relationships with their fathers but broadened out to look at the many manifestations of heroism in people’s lives.

Many North Carolina families spent Thursday circled around a big table and probably a big turkey. Some of these turkeys likely came from Butterball , the largest turkey processing plant in the world located in Mount Olive, North Carolina. The town struggled to get back on track after the recession until an influx of Haitian immigrants moved to the area in 2010 attracted by work at Butterball.

Today marks ‘Giving Tuesday,’ a day that encourages Americans to stop the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping and instead donate money or time to their community. But where exactly does this money go? And does philanthropy mostly serve the wealthy and the white? Author and grant investment director Edgar Villanueva argues that many philanthropic foundations or corporate giving programs may do more harm than good.

The public face of Bluegrass in North Carolina has long been male and white, but the genre is now undergoing a transformation. The star-power of Rhiannon Giddens has drawn new attention to the music and the history behind it. And legacy organizations like the International Bluegrass Music Awards have started to pay more attention to women’s contributions.

The public face of Bluegrass in North Carolina has long been male and white, but the genre is now undergoing a transformation. The star-power of Rhiannon Giddens has drawn new attention to the music and the history behind it. And legacy organizations like the International Bluegrass Music Awards have started to pay more attention to women’s contributions.

Susan Ladd grew up in a conservative, white family who taught her that black people were dangerous and should be feared. In the early 1970s, her parents chose not to send her to the recently desegregated Little River School near her home, but instead to a makeshift “pop up” school which was quickly erected and hastily staffed so that white children could avoid attending a black school. But despite her parents’ intentions, Ladd developed an intolerance toward racism and sexism and became a

Note: This segment is a rebroadcast from September 5, 2018. A team of researchers led by Duke University sociologist Christopher Bail ran an experiment to expose a group of Twitter users to political views that were in opposition to their own. The study was aimed at gauging whether stepping out of a social media silo and reading about political perspectives from a broader ideological spectrum helped shift people’s own political leanings. The results found that Democrats who were exposed to

Note: This segment is a rebroadcast from February 23, 2018. Nobody knows exactly how flamenco, a unique type of performance art, got its name. It emerged from Andalucia, Spain but has cultural ties to many ethnic groups including Indian gypsies, Arabs and Sephardic Jews. Although much of flamenco’s history is shrouded in mystery, one thing is certain: there is nothing quite like it.

Personality tests have become a common feature in the professional world. They are meant to tell candidates or employees who they are and how they fit into a group. But personality tests have their own character flaw: they can be faked. The test-taker can manipulate the questionnaire to deliver answers they think their employer wants to hear.

When people gathered for the women’s marches of 2017 and 2018, they were joining a tradition that dates back more than a century. In 1913, thousands of women marched on Washington wearing purple and gold sashes instead of pink hats, and Rebecca Roberts says they were a lot more radical than today’s activists.