Introducing....the PBS Public Media Economy Feed

To help you access important information about the economy, we are bringing all of the great coverage on UNC-TV to one place with the PBS Public Media Economy Feed Widget. The widget is a powerful tool that allows you to select video from a playlist and watch it right inside the widget’s window. You can watch high-quality streaming video from all your favorite UNC-TV shows including FRONTLINE, The NewsHour, Bill Moyers Journal, NOW on PBS, American Experience, Tavis Smiley, Nightly Business Report and many more.



Click here to learn more.

Chapel Hill Author Kate Betterton Shares Her Book, Where the Lake Becomes the River, on UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, November 22, at 5 PM

Growing up amidst Mississippi’s racial tensions, Where the Lake Becomes the River protagonist Parrish McCullough is shadowed by secrets and haunted by spirits. She wrestles with “The Truth About Life After Death,” after her father dies and she sees his ghost sitting beside his casket.

Parrish is a gifted artist who desperately hopes to attend college, but there’s no money. She fears her mother will lapse into madness if she goes, and she keeps getting distracted by the wrong kind of man. When Civil Rights workers arrive in Mississippi, Parrish takes a chance that sends her onto the razor’s edge between living and dying, learns of the soul’s survival—and finds an unexpected romance.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Sunday, November 22, at 5 PM, author Kate Betterton shares her lush, vivid, and wildly entertaining new book, Where the Lake Becomes the River, bringing to life an unforgettable extended Southern family, along with its dreams, its disappointments—and, yes, even its beloved ghosts.

After years of living in the north, Kate Betterton answered the siren song of the South, and now lives with her family in Chapel Hill, NC-- where, it’s claimed with admirable exaggeration, “You can’t throw a tomato without hitting a writer.” Her work has been published in The Sun, The Southerner, and local publications. She is the recipient of a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation of the Bronx, NY, was awarded an Emerging Artist Grant by the Durham, NC Arts Council, and won the 2008 Novello Literary Award for Where the Lake Becomes the River. She’s a member of the Chapel Hill Writers’ Group, and the Durham Writers' Meetup Group.

Don’t miss D.G. Martin’s all-new interview with Kate Betterton on North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, November 22, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

Click here to learn more about this season of North Carolina Bookwatch.

UNC-TV's Public Media Economy Widget

To help you access important information about the economy, we are bringing all of the great coverage on UNC-TV to one place with the UNC-TV Economy Feed Widget. The widget is a powerful tool that allows you to select video from a playlist and watch it right inside the widget’s window. You can watch high-quality streaming video from all your favorite UNC-TV shows including FRONTLINE, The NewsHour, Bill Moyers Journal, NOW on PBS, American Experience, Tavis Smiley, Nightly Business Report and many more.



Click here for more information.

Erica Eisdorfer Shares Her Book, The Wet Nurse’s Tale on UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, November 15, at 5 PM

Susan Rose isn’t your average protagonist: she’s scheming, promiscuous, plump, and she is also smart, funny, tender, and entirely lovable. Like many lower-class women of Victorian England, she was born into a world that offered very few opportunities for the poor and unlovely. But Susan is the kind of plucky heroine who seeks her fortune, and finds it . . . with some help from, well, her breasts. Susan, you see, is a professional wet nurse; she breast-feeds the children of wealthy women who can’t or won’t nurse their own babies.

But when her own child is sold by her father and sent to a London lady who had recently lost a baby, Susan manages to convince his new foster mother, Mrs. Norbert, to hire her as a wet nurse. Once reunited with her son, Susan discovers the Norbert home to be a much more sinister place than she’d ever expected. Dark and full of secrets, its master is in India, and the first baby who died there did so under very mysterious circumstances. Susan embarks on a terrifying journey to rescue her son before he meets the same fate.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Sunday, November 8, at 5 PM, Erica Eisdorfer shares her debut The Wet Nurse’s Tale, featuring this sharp-tongued, adventurous heroine who offers a candid and often funny look at the business of nursing babies in Victorian England.

Erica Eisdorfer, born in Durham, North Carolina, was the first of the three children born to her parents, who had moved down south from the great city of New York and lived for some years in culture shock. The family rented a wonderful house edged by forest and she and her two younger brothers spent a great deal of time playing in the trees where she, due to her birth order and general bossiness, was constantly the admiral of the ship, the mayor of the town, the principal of the school. This sort of innocent play lasted only until her brothers, in what must have been a co-epiphany, realized that they didn’t have to take it anymore and went off by themselves to play with their trucks, leaving her alone forever. This is when she discovered reading.

After graduating from Duke University, she considered, then rejected, the idea of further schooling and went to work at the Bull’s Head Bookshop, where she has found gainful employment for the last thirty years as buyer and manager.

Don’t miss D.G. Martin’s all-new interview with Erica Eisdorfer on North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, November 15, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

North Carolina Giving: Philanthropy Across Cultures & Communities

Monday, November 9, at 10 PM, the inspiring and empowering documentary North Carolina Giving: Philanthropy Across Cultures & Communities premieres on UNC-TV. This documentary, with an introduction from William C. Friday and narrated by Ambassador James A. Joseph, travels across North Carolina uncovering stories of ordinary people changing lives in extraordinary ways.

Philanthropy is a word traditionally applied to people and organizations of great wealth, those who support good works through donations of money. Philanthropy can also be used to describe contributions made by volunteers who give generously of their time and talent for the improvement of their communities.

This hour-long documentary explores a diverse range of organizations, cultural groups, and individuals across North Carolina who volunteer their time, talents, and treasure to meet community needs. These stories offer glimpses into the cultural, historical, social, and religious influences that inform giving among the many peoples and traditions that are represented in North Carolina.

Watch as people from all walks of life—people like your neighbors and viewers like you—live Margaret Mead's famous quote: "Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world."

This special broadcast features 13 stories from a variety of North Carolina communities, from the Mountains, through the Piedmont and down to the Sandhills and Coastal Plains.

"These stories of giving are representative of how North Carolinians are generous in their support of each other, through both the good times and the bad times," said Donna Chavis, NCGives' executive director. "And though we actually began this project before the economic downturn, these stories may now resonate with North Carolinians even more."

Click here to visit the official North Carolina Giving website.

UNC's Barry Popkin Shares His Book, "The World is Fat", on UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, November 8, at 5 PM

Today, the planet's 1.3 billion overweight people by far outnumber the 700 million who are undernourished. This figure would have seemed ludicrous just fifty years ago, when hunger was the world's most pressing nutritional problem.

In The World Is Fat, Barry Popkin argues that the fattening of the human race is not simply about that next cheeseburger; rather, it is a result of an unprecedented collision of human biology with trends in technology, globalization, government policy, and the food industry that are changing how we eat and how we live.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Sunday, November 1, at 5 PM, Barry Popkin discusses his timely and eye-opening look at the obesity epidemic.

Popkin, whose expertise in both nutrition and economics makes him uniquely qualified to write this book, compares our lifestyles today with those of half a century ago through the stories of five families living in the United States, Mexico, and India. He shows how increasing access to media and exposure to advertising, a powerful food industry, the rise of Wal-Mart like shopping centers, and a dramatic decline in physical activity are clashing with millions of years of human evolution, creating a world of overweight people with debilitating health problems such as diabetes. Ultimately, Popkin contends that widespread obesity is less a result of poor individual dietary choices than about a hi-tech, interconnected world in which governments and multinational corporations have extraordinary power to shape our everyday lives.

Barry Popkin is the Carla Smith Chamblee Distinguished Professor of Global Nutrition at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and director of the UNC Interdisciplinary Obesity Center. His U.S. research program focuses on understanding dietary and physical activity behaviors, the factors that cause them to change over time, and their health consequences. His global work includes a series of long-term studies in China, Russia, the Philippines, Brazil, and several other countries. Popkin’s research has been featured in hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Economist, Time, and Scientific American.

Don’t miss D.G. Martin’s all-new interview with Barry Popkin on North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, November 8, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

All-New This Old House From Raleigh, NC!

This Old House, airing Saturday, October 17, at 5 PM, features "Not So Big" architect & author Sarah Susanka in Raleigh, NC.

In the episode, entitled, Newton Centre Project, Part 2 of 16, master carpenter Norm Abram and general contractor Tom Silva remove the old vinyl siding from the exterior of the house, exposing not only the original wood clapboards underneath but also lots of repair work that needs to be done. Inside, architect Paul Rovinelli takes host Kevin O’Connor and homeowner Gillian Pierce through the plan for the new kitchen, which calls for a modest expansion, building as Gillian puts it, “just what we need,” and nothing more. One early proponent of that style of thinking was architect and author Sarah Susanka, so Kevin travels to her own “Not So Big” home in Raleigh, North Carolina, to see some smart ideas for restrained remodels that won’t break the bank. Back in Newton Centre, landscape contractor Roger Cook breaks up the old porch slab to make way for the foundation for the new addition.

Click here to learn more about This Old House.