Between 1976 and 1983 close to 30,000 Argentineans were kidnapped, tortured and murdered by their own government. The military dictatorship rounded up everyone with any possible connection to the left wing. Their plight came to international attention through the weekly demonstrations of a group of women known as “the mothers of the disappeared”. Charlie Tuggle is a professor of broadcast journalism at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been traveling to Argentina to teach every summer for many years, and in 2009 his two daughters, Brynne and Bethany, joined him there. Together the Tuggles decided to tell the story of the grandmothers of the disappeared and the children who have been found. Their documentary is called “Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo and the Search for Identity”.
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.