Shawn Wen

The city of Charlotte has opened up its arms to the Democratic National Convention, allowing the DNC to take over the uptown. An estimated 35 thousand people are attending the convention, and Charlotte is extending itself to accommodate them all. But many of the city workers are feeling stretched thin. And they are making demands for better working conditions. Host Frank Stasio will be joined by Dante Strobino, Field Organizer for UE 150North Carolina Public Sector Workers Union, and Chris Miller, a reporter for WBT who has been covering this story.

Many voters are looking forward to the Presidential debates this election year, but competitive debaters might say that the civil discourse of our times has given up on formal argumentation. True debate depends on a certain openness and on the possibility that minds can change on the strength of a well-crafted argument. Wake Forest University has an award-winning debate team and their members are already preparing for the upcoming season.

Since January, activists, journalists, non-profit workers and others have traveled around North Carolina to meet the state’s impoverished families. The idea behind the “Truth and Hope Putting a Face on Poverty in North Carolina Tour” is to understand those who live below the poverty line as people, rather than as statistics, and to hear their stories. The tour traveled 2000 miles and visited 27 different communities.

John Coltrane’s music blossomed during his time in Philadelphia and New York, but his roots are in High Point, NC where he played music at church and in the high school band.

Today, Duke University’s athletics program is world famous for basketball, but back in 1955 when Al Buehler came to Duke to coach the cross country team, football was the school’s big sport. The teams were all men and all white.

Our justice system is sometimes referred to as “retributive justice,” meaning when someone commits a crime, the response is to punish them. Now imagine a system where the focus is on healing, rather than punishment, one that allows the victim of a crime to experience a legal process that is interactive and engaging. That is the mission of restorative justice.

Musician Riley Baugus has devoted his life's work to playing, making, and studying the banjo. Baugus’ new CD is called “Long Steel Rail.” He regales host Frank Stasio with old-time songs and stories from North Carolina.

Minority communities have always been aware of the problem of racial profiling, but by the late 1990s, it was at the forefront of public consciousness. By 1999, the New York Times was writing an average of three articles on racial profiling a week. The state of North Carolina took note, passing a law requiring police officers to fill out a form including information on the motorist's race at each traffic stop. More than ten years and 13 million traffic stops later, experts have analyzed the data.

The Old Ceremony is well-known to music lovers in the Triangle. 

The band has been playing together for eight years and now their new album “Fairytales and Other Forms of Suicide” will receive an international release. Host Frank Stasio will be joined by the Old Ceremony as they talk about the evolution of their music over the years.

In 2010, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art had to return 16 silver cups and bowls to a little town in Sicily called Morgantina.