The State of Things

Historian Malinda Maynor Lowery grew up hearing two distinct histories. One was American history taught in the classroom, and the other was the history of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, taught around the dinner table.

Heather McEntire is best known as the lead singer and songwriter for the group Mount Moriah . After 10 years with the band, with three albums under their belt, the group took a hiatus, and McEntire tried her hand at a solo album.

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.

Carolina Performing Arts launches its new season with an event that challenges society’s narrow view of citizenship. The collaborative piece asks: what if citizenship was defined by how someone contributes instead of where someone was born?

Historically underrepresented, overlooked, and excluded artists are the focus of the latest exhibition at The Nasher Museum in Durham. The museum has been collecting art centered on diversity and inclusion since it opened its doors in 2005.

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 Republican content tended to veer further left (though not by a

Healthcare reform has been a hotly-debated topic for decades. The United States spends about twice as much on healthcare than any other wealthy country in the world, but American health outcomes are worse.

Tens of thousands of North Carolina teachers flooded Raleigh in May to demand higher pay. But many of the teachers who marched also voiced a desire for more public school funding. WUNC education policy reporter Liz Schlemmer took a deep dive into how funds are distributed in school systems around the state. She heard from public school administrators in Vance and Rowan County who would like to see more flexibility in how they can spend money on student and classroom needs. Host Frank Stasio

What if the United States built walls along its borders with Mexico and Canada? That is the premise of a new, young adult dystopian novel that imagines what an isolationist United States would look like in the year 2090.

The responsibilities of a godparent can range from showering a child with gifts to stepping in as a surrogate in a moment of crisis.