Radio Interviews
NC Child’s Erica Palmer Smith on the looming crisis facing North Carolina’s childcare industry
Finding affordable childcare: it’s a huge challenge in North Carolina. While our state has one of the nation’s highest rates of working parents with young children, 44% of the state’s families live in a “childcare desert” where there are more than three times as many children as licensed childcare slots. What’s more, things could get […]
Reproductive rights reporter Sofia Resnick on the next big case before the U.S. Supreme Court
It’s been almost two years now since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a half century of precedent by overturning the Roe v. Wade decision and ending the constitutional right to abortion care. And as had been expected, the ruling has produced a convoluted patchwork of laws that’s left women in many states – particularly women […]
Documentary producer Cristin Severance on “UnSafe: North Carolina kids dying from gun violence”
Firearms are the leading cause of death when it comes to kids. And a brand-new WRAL documentary looks at why kids are dying from guns in North Carolina. It’s called “Unsafe: North Carolina kids dying from gun violence” and WRAL-TV investigative documentary reporter Cristin Severance produced and hosts the doc. The documentary highlights the tragic […]
UNC System President Peter Hans on the state of higher education
In Part One of our recent extended conversation with the University of North Carolina System president Peter Hans, we discussed some of the successes UNC campuses have had in keeping tuition and fees relatively affordable, while also dealing with some of the tough realities posed by shifting demographics that have lowered the number of college […]
Dr. Michelle Malkin, director of ECU’s new Gambling Research and Policy Initiative
Legalized sports gambling arrived in North Carolina this past week, just in time for college basketball’s March Madness. And while many are treating this news as a ho-hum development, there are a lot of observers and experts who have some profound concerns. Michelle L. Malkin is an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at […]
Education policy Kris Nordstrom discusses a damaging new report about NC public schools
A new report from national experts at the Network for Public Education paints a sobering picture of the policy choices North Carolina state legislators have made for our public schools in recent years. The report is called “The Best and the Worst Statehouses for Supporting Public Schools and their Students,” and sadly, it gives […]
WCU political scientist Prof. Chris Cooper discusses Super Tuesday election results
The 2024 North Carolina Super Tuesday primary election has finally come and gone and now it’s full speed ahead for the next eight months to the November election. And for better or worse, voters should have very little trouble distinguishing the major party candidates. According to Western Carolina University political scientist, Prof. Chris Cooper, […]
Catawba College Political Science professor Michael Bitzer previews Super Tuesday
Super Tuesday is upon us and that means it’s primary election week in North Carolina and several other states as voters go to the polls to choose major party nominees for president and a host of other important offices. And while the primary season has been rather subdued here, with few of the top contests […]
Matt Ellinwood discusses the latest state Supreme Court review of the Leandro school funding case
In late February, the North Carolina Supreme Court took the extraordinary (and what many see as the deeply worrisome) step of revisiting the landmark Leandro school funding case – a case that has long guaranteed all of the state’s schoolchildren a constitutional right to a sound basic education. At issue is whether state lawmakers can […]
Dr. Lauren Fox of the Public School Forum on rebuilding North Carolina’s educator pipeline
A top challenge facing public schools in North Carolina right now is a chronic teacher shortage – a shortage attributable to pitifully low salaries and several other shortsighted policies. Fortunately, there are some obvious and doable actions that state leaders can take to address this problem – actions detailed in a recent report from experts […]
Chair of the Governor’s Council on Hispanic/Latino Affairs pushes back on anti-immigrant fervor
If you’re paying any attention to the national political debate these days, you know that the political right has made immigration and a campaign to demonize immigrants its top talking point for the 2024 election cycle. Republicans in the U.S. House have even sought to condition passage of a critical foreign aid package for Ukraine, […]
Noel Nickle of the NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty on the Racial Justice Act
This week in Johnston County, the death penalty – a punishment our state has not inflicted in close to two decades – will, effectively, go on trial, when one of more than a hundred pending challenges to the racially discriminatory way North Carolina long sentenced people to death is heard in the case of a […]