Rachel Keith

To the relief of many, 2020 has drawn to a close. It was a chaotic and often confusing year, one that challenged people to make sense of rapidly evolving stories and difficult issues. WHQR managing editor Ben Schachtman has a retrospective, with archival audio managed by Rachel Keith.

On November 10, 1898, an angry white mob led by prominent Wilmingtonians like Alfred Moore Waddell, Hugh MacRae, George Rountree, and J. Allen Taylor, murdered anywhere from a dozen to 300 people. These white supremacists forcefully removed black politicians from power, and hundreds of black business owners and residents fled in the aftermath. This feature includes video interviews with local leaders.

Lauren Collins has investigated the precise number of roses that go into a bottle of Chanel No. 5.  More recently, she covered the gender pay discrepancy scandal that has rocked the BBC and spurred new questions around salary secrecy and reporting requirements in the UK, Iceland, and other parts of the world. 

It was the early 1990s when an American creative writing professor set about publishing his second novel.  The pivotal event in his book:  a 19th century bloody failure of democracy.  

A rezoning request to add commercial development to a residential community generated controversy at the Tuesday, Jan. 7 Wilmington City Council meeting. The request was tabled, and was granted a 120-day extension. 

That gap between what happens in the brain and what comes out as behavior is the field of clinical neuropsychology.  Its application can range from diagnosing and treating military personnel to people suffering from Multiple Sclerosis or dementia. 

If you’re a person of color or ethnic minority, LGBTQ, a veteran, or a person with a disability, you might face a more dire cancer prognosis or struggle more with chronic disease than someone not in these groups.

Sonny Liston, heavyweight boxing champion in the early 1960s,  died near the beginning of 1971.  The reason listed on the death certificate:  natural causes.  But nearly 50 years later, the question of whether he was murdered is an open one for some.  It’s a question Shaun Assael set out to answer with his book, The Murder of Sonny Liston:   Las Vegas, Heroin, and Heavyweights. 

Frank Stasio has hosted The State of Things, WUNC’s public affairs program, since 2006.   

Whales are the largest mammals on earth.  They’ve also been around a long time.  According to the University of California, Berkeley’s Evolutionary Biology website,  the first whales evolved over 50 million years ago from a terrestrial ancestor. 

Consider the human – thought to have first appeared in Africa about 300-thousand years ago.  Although whales and humans have shared the planet since humans popped up, it’s striking how little we understand about these marine creatures.

Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and contributes to the second most cancer-related deaths in men in the United States – and in North Carolina.  That’s according to the Centers for Disease Control.  But in 2015, the cancer that killed the most North Carolinians:  lung cancer.

One carbon, one oxygen.  Carbon monoxide is sometimes called "the silent killer" because the gas is odorless, colorless, and fatal to humans at high levels.  But scientists are beginning to discover that used in moderation, there could be health benefits.  

  This edition first aired February 21, 2019.

Coastal communities on barrier islands will not exist as they are in 30 to 150 years from now.  

Halibut and yellowtail flounder fish populations are at all-time lows in the Atlantic.  That’s according to Seafood Watch of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  Cod, once prolific in the North Atlantic, is struggling.  Closer to home, catfish from the Cape Fear River and blue crab and mullet from the Brunswick River have high enough levels of mercury that officials recommend avoiding them.  

North Carolina has some of the highest childhood obesity rates in the country, according to the Centers For Disease Control.  That’s despite the fact that we know more about nutrition and healthy habits than ever.

Heather Heyer died in Charlottesville in 2017 while protesting white supremacy.   That was fifty years after civil rights leader and attorney Alan McSurely helped the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior shape the Poor Peoples’ Campaign – to help disenfranchised people of all races gain basic human rights.   

People socialize, research, shop, and entertain themselves online.  They read online.  So if the trend towards digital activity continues, are public libraries an endangered species? 

A dozen or so people, diverse in age, ethnicity, and political leanings, have agreed to be part of a year-long experiment in civil discourse.  Each month, we bring you a conversation with some members of the group.  Our aim:  to observe whether the tone and quality of the conversation changes as they get to know one another over the course of the year. 

[SOUND OF BABY CRY AND MICHAEL TITTERTON'S INTRODUCTION].

Those are the first sounds and the first voice heard on WHQR when it came to life on 91.3 FM 35 years ago.

Geneticists say human DNA is 99.9% the same.  Identical.  

Hari Kondabolu is on at least a double mission – although they are connected.  

[Hari's voice from a Tumblr post:]  "Hari Kondabolu.  Hari... Kondabolu."

He calls this The Galifianakis.  On this edition, we find out why.  But he says his big goal is making people laugh...

[intro to Netflix comedy special, Warn Your Relatives]

A dozen or so people, diverse in age, ethnicity, and political leanings, have agreed to be part of a year-long experiment in civil discourse.  Each month, we bring you a conversation with members of the group. Our aim:  to observe whether the tone and quality of the conversation changes as they get to know one another over the course of the year. 

And because it is a grand experiment, today will be a little different.  Instead of talking with them in small groups of three – we’re in a round table setting of sorts with all six. 

Project Grace.  Some hear that term and imagine an exciting evolution of Wilmington’s downtown area – bringing together cultural attractions – such as the Cape Fear Museum, shopping, the library, affordable housing in a market that desperately needs it.  Done properly, it could turn downtown into a more of a destination for locals and tourists.

The film production landscape in North Carolina in first quarter of 2019 consists of Swamp Thing, Uncle Frank, and the pilot, Reprisal -- the latter two in pre-production.  

“Sins, like chickens, come home to roost.  The South paid a fearful price for the wrong of negro slavery; in some form or other it will doubtless reap the fruits of this later iniquity…” 

Keeping trees in your yard could actually protect your home rather than threaten it during tropical storms and hurricanes.  That goes against much of the conventional wisdom in the region about trees on one’s property during hurricane season.  On this edition of CoastLine, we find out why.

The honey bee population declined slightly in the United States from 2016 to 2017.    That’s according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  The most-often reported colony stressor:  varroa mites. 

As the best chefs around the world recognize the importance of cooking with diverse ingredients and sustainably grown food, one local chef is unpacking why, and he's teaching simple but solid cooking techniques.  

It's the second edition of our year-long civil discourse experiment.