The United Nations estimates that 9,000 people have died in Syria since the revolution began in March of 2011 and the conflict spilled into Lebanon this week. Consider that it took a month for Tunisia to depose its ruler and only 18 days for Egypt to get rid of Hosni Mubarak, yet Syria’s President, Bashar Assad, shows no signs of stepping down. As the humanitarian crisis on the ground in Syria grows more desperate, host Frank Stasio is joined by three guests with unique insight into the situation in Syria and how other Arab countries are moving forward into new political eras: Audrey Anne Lavallee-Berlanger, a rising senior at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who spent this past school year at Damascus University and working in refugee camps on Syria’s borders; Miriam Cook, a professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University and author of several books about the Middle East including, “Dissident Syria" (Duke University Press/2007); and Samia Serageldin, an Egyptian-born, Chapel Hill-based novelist.
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.
