Alex Granados

Princeville, North Carolina is the first town created by African Americans in the United States. It was almost wiped out by Hurricane Floyd but survived. Now, it’s facing another threat.

Audits revealed that top-town officials may have been inappropriately using town dollars, and the state has taken over control of Princeville. Host Frank Stasio talks about the situation with Gurnal Scott, assistant news director at WUNC; and Rudolph Knight, a history columnist for The Daily Southerner in Tarboro.

Turn on any news program and you’ll eventually hear about the dangers of obesity. It’s commonly accepted that being heavy is bad, and being skinny is good. Rachel Herrick is challenging that idea with her Obeast project.

TEDx is the community offshoot of TED, a nonprofit dedicated to "Ideas Worth Spreading." Greensboro is the site of a spring conference, featuring such speakers as Daniel Herr, a neuroscientist giving the talk, "The Language of Nature: what's the big deal about nano"; and Katie Marshall, a corporate communicator at Volvo Financial Services, talking about her passion for Greensboro, and the intersection between college and professional life.

The Louder Than a Bomb Poetry Slam competition started in Chicago in 2001. Inspired by the competition and a documentary about it, local group Poet.she Female Performing Arts & Spoken Word decided to bring the competition to Greensboro.

Jim Minz’s childhood in small-town West Bend, Wisconsin prepared him for two things: game shows and science fiction.

West Bend was home to the West Bend Company – the maker of small appliances which were regularly featured as consolation prize on game shows.

During Superstorm Sandy, the HMS Bounty - a 180 foot, three-masted, wooden ship - was tossed about helplessly in the middle of a raging storm. Two members of the ship's crew died, and the remaining 14 members had to be dramatically rescued by the Coast Guard. A member of the Coast Guard snapped this photograph on his phone from a helicopter that day:

  At least 14 million people in the United States have an eating disorder, but they may not look the way you think. Popular culture characterizes young white girls as the main sufferers, but research shows that eating disorders are much more widespread than popularly thought. 

When Dorothy Johnson-Speight’s son Khaaliq was killed in 2001, she thought her life was over. He wasn’t the first child she lost – her 3-year-old daughter had died almost 15 years to the day before
Khaaliq’s murder -- but he was the first child lost to violence, and his death shook her.

When we talk about human rights, we’re usually solidly in the expertise of political scientists. But professors of English and philosophy may have a role to play, too. That’s the goal of The Second Annual Conference on Human Rights and the Humanities. It’s being held by the National Humanities Center, and it brings together a variety of experts to discuss human rights.