American Ninja

By Alex Granados,

Published July 12, 2012 at 10:14 AM EDT

Stephen Hayes was a kid when he first read about ninjas in a James Bond novel. When Hayes got older, he devoted himself to martial arts and eventually decided to seek out the origins of the ninja in Japan. There, he learned the martial art of ninjitsu from ninja masters and brought what he learned back to the United States. Hayes is the founder of the SKH Quest Center for Martial Arts in Dayton, Ohio and will be in Blowing Rock, NC to lead a martial arts retreat this weekend. He joins host Frank Stasio to talk about the mysterious ways of ninjas.

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Alex Granados

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.

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Frank Stasio

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.

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