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The Origins of Obesity

Female ''obeastus mortuus'' from the fictional Museum of Obeast Conservation Studies

More than 190 million people in the United States are overweight. That’s two-thirds of the American population and almost half of that number are obese. Research into the causes of obesity is showing that much more than willpower is needed to tackle it. Obesity has ties to addiction and depression and a person's environment may play a bigger role than once thought.

Host Frank Stasio talks about the origins of obesity and the social stigmas tied to being overweight with Dr. Sarah Armstrong, a general pediatrician at the Duke Children’s Healthy Lifestyles Program; Bernard Fuemmeler, assistant professor of Community and Family Medicine at Duke University; Justin Trogdon, a research economist at RTI International; and North Carolina artist Rachel Herrick, who has created a satirical museum exhibit that challenges mainstream ideas about obese people.

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Alex Granados joined The State of Things in July 2010. He got his start in radio as an intern for the show in 2005 and loved it so much that after trying his hand as a government reporter, reader liaison, features, copy and editorial page editor at a small newspaper in Manassas, Virginia, he returned to WUNC. Born in Baltimore but raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Alex moved to Raleigh in time to do third grade twice and adjust to public school after having spent years in the sheltered confines of a Christian elementary education. Alex received a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also has a minor in philosophy, which basically means that he used to think he was really smart but realized he wasn’t in time to switch majors. Fishing, reading science fiction, watching crazy movies, writing bad short stories, and shooting pool are some of his favorite things to do. Alex still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, but he is holding out for astronaut.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.