Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

"It Happened on the Way to War"

Rye Barcott
ithappenedonthewaytowar.com

When most college students were probably enjoying summer vacation, Rye Barcott was hanging out in a Kenyan slum. In the summer of 2000, while still a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rye went to Kibera. The slum is small, about the size of Central Park in New York City. But within it more than a million people live in squalid, desperate conditions.

Rye decided he had to do something about it, but first he had to fulfill his commitment to the Marines. After graduation, he served in the Marines for five years while also working on a non-profit called Carolina for Kibera. He’s written a memoir about his experience called “It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine’s Path to Peace” (Bloomsbury/2011).

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.
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.
Stories From This Author