Us & Them

The Us & Them team has tracked the case of James Means — a 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed in Charleston, WV by William Pulliam back in November 2016. The case got national attention partly because Pulliam is white and Means was black. It was one of a number of shootings that focused on questions about

Last spring, we put out an episode called “Farm Wars.” It was about Arkansas farmers' never-ending battles with “pigweed” or as some call it “Satan’s Weed.” It’s incredibly hard to get rid of. There’s a controversy in that state over a herbicide called “dicamba” that’s used to keep the weeds at bay, but has divided the farming community. For more than a year and a half, Us & Them host Trey Kay and his colleague Loretta Williams have tracked the Arkansas dicamba saga. In their last report, they told us that farmers and the state government had set some rules they hoped everyone could live by. Now, Trey checks in with Loretta and Arkansas Public Media’s Dan Breen to see how this year's growing season is going.

Spoiler Alert: There are a lot of “cupped” leaves on trees surrounding Arkansas soybean fields

For nearly three years, the Us & Them team has tracked the case of James Means - a 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed in Charleston, WV, by William Pulliam, who was 62 years old at the time. The case got national attention partly because Pulliam is white and Means was black. It was one of a number of shootings that focused on questions about racial injustice in our legal system. A week ago, it seemed like there was conclusion to the protracted prosecution, when Pulliam agreed to plead guilty to second degree murder. This week, he wrote to the judge and asked to revoke his plea.

MAD Magazine, once the touchstone of American satire and snark, is winding down its publication after 67 years. Trey says, as a kid, MAD’s adolescent-focused, subversive content helped him connect with his inner “wise ass.” It made him feel smarter and stupider at the same time. And now he’s trying to reconcile an Us & Them world without MAD firing its arrows toward the sacred cows of our culture.

For nearly three years, the Us & Them team has followed the James Means’ case - a 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed  in Charleston, WV, by William Pulliam, who was 62 years old at the time. The case got national attention partly because Pulliam is white and Means was black. It was one of a number of shootings that focused on questions about racial injustice in our legal system. Pulliam’s trial was scheduled to begin  late this summer, but instead there’s been a surprise outcome.

Two men, one a British citizen of Pakistani heritage, and the other a former housing

U.S. immigration policies are very much in the spotlight recently with reports on conditions at some of the southern border detention camps and fresh concerns about children being held apart from their parents. Recently, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called these facilities “concentration camps” and was swiftly rebuked by people on the right and left. To be clear, the U.S. government holds immigrants -- who have entered the country illegally -- while they’re being processed. The question is: what do we call these places?  Are they Detention centers -- as the government refers to them? Detainment camps? Is Ocasio-Cortez misinformed and perhaps, hyperbolic when she injects a loaded term like “concentration camp” into the discussion? To get a better perspective on this, Trey thought it’d be a good time to check in with author Andrea Pitzer about her book, One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps.

June is Gay Pride month across the U.S. and around the world. It’s a celebration of increased social acceptance and expanded legal rights. But as Trey has learned, despite that, there are still attitudes and even words that continue to cause pain. An Us & Them episode we called “Revisiting the Grand Palace” stirred up just such a reaction from Mark Yozie, a self-described proud, gay man living in the Mountain State. He was incensed at our story, and in this episode, he and Trey meet to talk things out. And we offer a tribute to “Maw Maw,” a gay man who was sent to a West Virginia mental institution in the 1960s for violating sodomy laws.  

Two college freshman spend a night together. There’s inexperience, miscommunication and things go wrong -- really wrong. One of them calls what happened sexual assault, the other calls it rape. But together, they’ve found a remarkable way to recover, heal and learn.  For this episode, Trey speaks with Stephanie Lepp, the producer of the podcast “Reckonings” about the story of Anwen and Sameer and one night that has changed their lives.

It’s a tough time to be a soybean farmer in the U.S.  Soybeans are a $40 billion business in America, but crop prices plummeted last year because of  the trade war between the U.S. and China. That has many farmers taking steps to boost their crop yields and effective weed prevention is one approach.   For years, farmers kept even the stubborn “pigweed” at bay with herbicides like Monsanto’s Round-up. But over time, weeds become resistant to the chemical. Monsanto and other companies have  another product that relies on a chemical called “dicamba,” which effectively keeps the weeds at bay. But, there’s a problem: dicamba can evaporate and drift from where its sprayed and harm other sensitive plants. In  2017, the drifting chemical damaged some three and half million acres of valuable crops. In this episode, Trey Kay and Loretta Williams travel to Arkansas to report on a simmering battle -- more like a civil war -- that pits farmer against farmer and forces them to consider the line between doing what’s good for their business and doing what’s good for their neighbor.