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On the night of Sept. 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene dropped a historic wall of rain on the southern Appalachian mountains. Some 31 inches of water fell in three days. The Swannanoa River rose 27 feet. Roads, bridges, and entire communities – very little was left in the storm’s aftermath.   More than 250 people died across the Southeast. More than a hundred of them in North Carolina alone. It was the...

If you have a favorite wellness podcaster or influencer, you’ve probably heard about peptides. These injectable compounds are comprised of a string of amino acids and promise effects like weight loss, better sleep, muscle growth and more. Given the potential benefits, it comes as no surprise that interest has exploded. The market is ready to provide. It’s already valued around $140 billion and by...

When was the last time you went to the doctor? Not necessarily for something big, not for a broken finger or the flu. Just a checkup. A regular annual visit to make sure everything is ok with your health. For about a third of Americans, it’s probably been too long. In 2024, more than 100 million people did not have a regular primary doctor at all, according to the National Association of Community...

Donald Trump is adding billions of dollars to his personal fortune while he serves as president. In 2024, the president made about $600 million. In his first year of his second term in office, that number jumped to more than $2.2 billion. The latest White House disclosures show most of those earnings came from cryptocurrency and crypto-related businesses. He also continues to make millions from re...

Haitians that used to have Temporary Protected Status are facing a new reality in the United States. Immigration operations targeting members of this community are currently underway at the direction of the Department of Homeland Security. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced this week she would be leaving her post within the Trump administration. And new reporting indicates that...

When Head Start was founded, the idea was simple: give low-income kids a running start before kindergarten — not just with preschool classes and childcare, but with health screenings and support for their families. Some 60 years later, it serves more than 750,000 children — and their families — every year. But the Trump administration thinks the program is too costly and inefficient. Last week, it...

Nationwide, students, teachers, and parents are gearing up for the school year. And measles is spreading. The U.S. has already logged more cases this year than in all of 2025. It’s the highest count in 35 years. That’s in large part because measles vaccination rates have slipped below 95 percent – the threshold public health experts say is needed to stop community spread.   Last week on CNN, Healt...

Journalists often say, “Follow the money.” But what if we said, “Follow billions of dollars to understand who controls this country’s political policy, technology and culture” instead? Tesla CEO, Elon Musk dropped $200 million on the 2024 election and later headed up the now defunct Department of Government Efficiency. Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos’s company paid $48 million to license and distribute...

From school board officials and city council members, to decisions over roads and disaster relief budgets, local elections make a direct impact on your day-to-day life. But state and local elections get less attention, less media coverage, and lower voter turnout. In November’s municipal elections in Dallas, Texas, some 14 council seats were up for the vote but turnout was just 8 percent. And aver...

Progressive Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed won his Michigan primary this week, sending a strong message to the Democratic party establishment that backed his opponent. Dr. Anthony Fauci was found in contempt of Congress on Thursday. The vote by the Senate Homeland Security Committee came after Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right over 100 times during a recent hearing. And reports indicate the...

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how we work, live, and engage with the world. Whether that’s using ChatGPT to do our taxes or spending hours sifting through AI generated images on social media.  It’s also reshaping our education system. Roughly half of U.S. students said they used AI in some way for school, according to a 2025 survey from the Rand Corporation. But some students aren’t...

Affording groceries is becoming a struggle for many Americans. Food prices are up 33 percent since 2019. That’s according to federal data analyzed by the Associated Press. It’s led some people to change their diets or where they shop. Others are taking more drastic measures by dipping into their savings or going into credit card debt. A 2025 survey from the Urban Institute found that one in four p...

Data centers. They’ve been all over the news. Last month, protesters showed up in 125 cities across the country on a single Saturday to demonstrate against these structures, either proposed or completed. But are the politicians listening? We sit down for the second part of our data center deep dive. This time, we talk politics. Why have data centers become a political flashpoint so quickly? And wh...

Should judges be elected? That’s the question Kansas voters are answering on the ballot this month. A constitutional amendment aims to change how judges are chosen in the state – abandoning the 68-year-old system of appointing judges. Proponents of the change say elections put the choice back in voters’ hands. And their arguments aren’t new: Republicans in Kansas have long argued for judicial elec...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington this week for his first visit to the White House since the war in Iran began. Former CDC head Anthony Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment rights as he sat in before Congress during a hearing led by Sen. Rand Paul concerning the doctor’s COVID diaries. And Temporary Protected Status lapsed for hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in the...

If you’ve been on the internet lately, you’ve probably been fooled by AI at least once. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. One poll by the data security company, All About Cookies, found that 77 percent of Americans have been duped by artificial intelligence at some point. Sometimes it can seem harmless – like that viral TikTok video of bunnies jumping on a trampoline, which raked in over 25 million l...

Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard died today in a motorcycle crash in Ireland at the age of 56. We sat down with him in April to talk about his storied career and his final album, "Don+t Settle – Transmissions East and West." Here's what we wrote about that conversation at the time. – The song “Falling Slowly” first debuted in the 2007 indie romance film “Once” starring Irish singer-songwriter...

Navigating a challenging moment in a friendship. Weighing a new job or changing your career. Seeing news about instability in our politics. A confusing diagnosis at the doctor’s office. Tending to a loved one in the hospital or in hospice. Uncertainty strikes us in every part of our lives, big and small. And about three quarters of the world’s more than 8 billion people turn to faith. In this edit...

At least 18 American service members have been killed and hundreds more wounded since the start of the Iran war. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump spoke little of the troops who’d recently been killed before giving updates on the war: We feel very badly, but you know those great people, those great patriots who are out there fighting that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Iran has been very, ver...

Nearly 100 U.S. service members have been injured since the resumption of hostilities between Iran and the U.S. The American death toll now stands at 18. In Maine, Democrats have chosen their replacement candidate to challenge Sen. Susan Collins. Troy Jackson is a former state lawmaker and is stepping in to fill the void left by Graham Platner. Platner stepped aside after allegations of sexual ass...

Extreme heat isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s a growing public health threat. More than 40 million people across the U.S. have remained under heat alerts this month. Heat remains the deadliest extreme weather event in the United States. At least 44 people have died as a result of July heatwaves. And in Europe, heatwaves killed more than 10,000 people in June, according to health data published th...

How did you celebrate July 4 this year? What did the country’s landmark 250th anniversary, in honor of the founding of the United States, mean to you? The next 50 years likely hold a lot of change for our country where democracy, economic uncertainty, technology, and our social fabric are concerned. What do we want that change to look like? We opened the phones so that you, our listeners, can tell...

You may have heard of a parasite that’s causing some gastrointestinal distress. Cyclospora has sickened thousands of people across 34 states this summer – more than six times the number reported at this point last year. The CDC has linked a major cluster to shredded iceberg lettuce at Taco Bell in some states. And Taylor Farms de Mexico has now pulled all of its iceberg lettuce from the U.S. marke...

One of the most critical parts of a democracy is the right to dissent. But if democratic norms weaken, that right can become harder to exercise. And when authoritarianism creeps into a government, dissent can get dangerous. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison for resisting Apartheid before becoming South Africa’s first Black president. Before becoming president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel...

As ICE ramps up its operations in and around American communities, its agents were involved in the deaths of three men in the last week. Trump Director of National Intelligence nominee Jay Clayton refused to answer Georgia Sen. John Ossoff’s question about the results of the 2020 presidential election during a confirmation hearing. After weeks of silence, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell confirmed on...