Grant Holub-Moorman

The Raleigh Police Department released body camera footage on Wednesday evening of an officer’s non-fatal shooting of Javier Torres. A judge authorized the release of the body and dash camera footage of the incident earlier on Wednesday.

In an effort to contain the coronavirus outbreak, North Carolina is now in a state of emergency. Gov. Roy Cooper issued the declaration Tuesday, as increased testing better accounts for the rising number of confirmed cases in the state.

What if the winning coach of this year’s NCAA basketball tournament chose the height of the hoop and the distance of the three-point line for the next year? Here in North Carolina, winning the majority in the state legislature lets lawmakers do something similar with the state’s electoral maps.

Radio Haiti-Inter was the first independent radio station on the Caribbean island. Founded by activist and journalist Jean Dominique, it broke the mold and achieved mass popularity by standing up to government corruption and media suppression in the language of the people, Haitian Creole.

Growing up in Ohio, Melody Moezzi resented her father’s obsession with Rumi’s poetry. While his run-on couplets reminded her father of the Iran he loved and had to flee from, for her, his mysticism was contrary to the tenets of American identity she received in school.

North Carolina's first case of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)  was confirmed today. Yet the state's manufacturing and agriculture industries were struggling to cope with disturbances in their supply chain weeks ago.

North Carolina’s resistance to pandemic is not uniform. The Triangle and Charlotte each host an international airport and research hospitals; March Madness brings crowds to Greensboro; Wilmington receives cargo and personnel from overseas; and Asheville entertains tourists from around the world. Socioeconomic vulnerability also contributes to the spread. 

Charly Lowry raises the hand-drum, strikes a heartbeat and begins reciting a song she wrote after leaving the comfort of her native community for college — “An existence so beautiful, so colorful/ deep rooted in originality/ eye-candy of shallow minds/ that was her reality, still/ she walks around with a smile/ for the whole wide world to see/ Inside’s ascreamin’/ Free yourself from strains of society.”

The McClatchy Company — which owns The News & Observer, The Herald-Sun and The Charlotte Observer — declared bankruptcy this month.While North Carolina’s printing presses will continue rolling, the papers’ offices will likely reorganize under a private equity firm’s management.

As algorithms replace our news diet of local papers with each person’s favorite flavor of digital fervor, what happens to our political system? Online finger-pointing and illegitimate journalism are the product of a fractured American identity.

Childbearing in the United States is more deadly than in any other developed nation. Despite medical advances over the last few decades, the number of reported pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. continues to steadily increase.

Is it easier to turn the other cheek while packing heat? Like the Vedas, Torah and Quran, the New Testament’s verdict on violence and self-defense is a moving target.

2.5 billion people around the world play video games. From Words With Friends to League of Legends, games are revolutionizing how we relate to one another. In many ways, gaming has become its own culture. But it might not be exactly what you'd expect. Most gamers play on their cellphones and nearly half are women. Most people playing video games are doing it with other people. And in response to hate-speech online and IRL, marginalized gamers are creating sanctuaries. On this edition of our Embodied series, host Anita Rao explores what gamers can teach us about socializing. 

Who really owns Silent Sam? Archaic property law and a 1913 speech underpin the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ claim to the contentious monument torn down in Chapel Hill in 2018.

Keenan Jenkins excelled in school, leaving his hometown of Rocky Mount in high school to attend the highly-selective North Carolina School of Science and Math. But music pulled him away from his studies, and midway through completing his doctorate, he came to the conclusion that his creative pursuits needed his full attention.

Earlier this week, Earth Fare suddenly announced Chapter 11 bankruptcy, surprising its 3,000 employees who are still awaiting the details of their severance packages. The closure was unexpected even for founder Roger Derrough, who sold the company in 2007.

Hold your groans! Wordplay can be inventive, poignant and, at its finest, a shared discovery.

The Wuhan coronavirus epidemic is officially a global public health emergency. The World Health Organization’s declaration frees up resources for nations to contain the virus’ spread outside its origin in central China.

More than thirty years after his death, James Baldwin is recapturing the American imagination in politics and popular culture. Black Lives Matter, “Moonlight,” “Between the World and Me,” and Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary “I Am Not Your Negro” all resurrect Baldwin’s voice. The major themes of his writing are also evident throughout today’s headlines: police malfeasance, expansive sexuality, class struggle, and the marginalization of black Americans. Baldwin drew on his struggle of overlapping marginalization in his writing — in one interview he described being born poor, black, and gay as “hitting the jackpot” for sourcing material. But his intersectional politics made it hard for the author to find a home with the political movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Baldwin was an exile who remained intensely realistic, patient and hopeful about his country’s transformation.

M. Randal O’Wain’s memoir features standard ingredients of a classic country song: beat-up trucks, cigarette smoke, and a nostalgic father-son relationship. Yet at the same time, it manages to pull the rug out from under stereotypes of working class life in the South.

Violence soaks the pages of “Meander Belt: Family, Loss, and Coming of Age in the Working-Class South” (University of Nebraska Press/2019), not in gory detail, rather as a wry aftertaste.

The nominations for the 2020 Academy Awards came out last week and the usual uproar followed. For this edition of Movies on the Radio, we asked listeners, staff, and film experts Laura Boyes and Marsha Gordon which Oscar nods they agree or disagree with.

What does it mean for a black journalist to remain neutral when writing about police brutality? Can young reporters be objective in their coverage of climate change?  Soon after the 2016 election, while working at American Public Media’s Marketplace, Lewis Raven Wallace wrote a blogpost saying: “We must change what we are doing to adapt to a government that believes in ‘alternative facts’ and thrives on lies.”

Are wood pellets a renewable energy? In 2009, the European Union declared wood pellets a “carbon-neutral choice,” and in 2018 the EPA followed suit. Yet pellets are less efficient than fossil fuels. To make the same amount of energy, wood pellets release more carbon than both coal and natural gas.

Even before the Civil War, the North Carolina General Assembly was reckoning with prohibition. Women led the charge against drinking mostly through church organizations and behind-the-scenes political advocacy.

Southeast Asian refugees first arrived in Greensboro after the Vietnam War. Now, more than 40 years later, the city continues to welcome families fleeing violence.

Semen is a potent substance, both literally and symbolically. It was described by Chinese proverb as “equal to ten drops of blood”; by Sumerians as “a divine substance,” given to humanity by the god of water; and by Aristotle as “the most perfect component of our food.”

Iranian airstrikes on two U.S. military bases in Iraq yesterday marked a response to the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. In the past week, thousands of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg rapidly deployed to the Middle East and Marines from Camp Lejeune are now also on their way to reinforce U.S. military presence.