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Georgia Today
Weapons check at schools; New pharmaceutical plant; Homelessness prevention program
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A
Welcome to the Georgia TODAY Podcast. Here we bring you the latest reports from the GPB newsroom. On today's episode, Georgia students may soon be checked for weapons as they arrive at school each day. A Belgian pharmaceutical company is planning to build a $2 billion manufacturing plant in Gwinnett county. And state lawmakers are advancing a bill that would create a homelessness prevention program.
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I'm a man of solutions, so I think doing it on the front side is a lot cheaper than than doing it on the backside. Getting people off the streets three times more expensive than trying to keep them off the streets.
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A
Today is Wednesday, March 25th. I'm Peter Biello, and this is Georgia Today. Georgia lawmakers may require that every public school student be checked for weapons each day. A Senate committee advanced a bill earlier this week pushing it closer to final passage. The legislation says students can be checked by, quote, electronic, analytical, visual, olfactory or other means. The proposal follows a 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder that killed four. Supporters say detectors will help spot guns and knives. There are also concerns, though, about how much the systems may cost, how to guard against false alarms and whether detectors are really needed in elementary schools. Some opponents say the state should limit kids access to guns instead. Pharmaceutical maker UCB says it will build a $2 billion drug manufacturing plant in metro Atlanta's Gwinnett County. GPB's Sophie Gratis has more.
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The company said on Tuesday it plans to employ 330 workers at the facility when it's complete in six to seven years. Gwinnett County Chairwoman Nicole Hendrickson says local incentives to the company top $174 million, including tax abatements and infrastructure improvements.
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It was a significant investment and we're proud that we're seeing a return on that investment. And we have a company like ucb, which is the largest in the history of the county.
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UCB is a fast growing Belgian company focused on drugs that treat neurological and autoimmune diseases. It's the first tenant in a long planned research park called Rowan that backers are modeling on North Carolina's Research Triangle. For GPB news, I'm Sophie Gradas.
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A
State lawmakers are advancing a bill that would create a homelessness prevention program. The measure would distribute federal, state and private funds to local organizations that provide legal services, low income housing and other homelessness prevention measures. Dalton Republican state Representative Casey Carpenter sponsored the bill.
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B
I'm a man of solutions, so I think doing it on the front side is a lot cheaper than doing it on the backside, getting people off the streets three times more expensive than trying to keep them off the streets.
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A
The State House passed the bill in February and it cleared a panel of state senators yesterday. It still would need a vote from the full Senate. The U.S. supreme Court today sided with Internet service provider Cox Communications in its legal battle with record labels over illegal music downloads. The justices ruled unanimously that Atlanta based Cox bears no liability for its customers copyright violations, reversing a jury verdict and lower court rulings. University of Georgia law professor Thomas Codrey told GPB in December, there's no doubt people are using ISPs, including Cox, to engage in copyright infringement.
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But the potential ripple effects for the average user of the Internet and how imposing liability on the ISPs could lead the ISPs to block people's access to the Internet, I think that's really driving a lot of the interest in this case.
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A
Record labels led by Sony Music Entertainment argued that Cox didn't do enough to deter the illegal activity. The international governing body for track and field is giving the US a one time exemption to allow three athletes to compete in the 2026 World Athletics Road Running Championships in Denmar Mark this September. It's an attempt to make things right after a vehicle led three runners off course during a qualifying half marathon in Atlanta earlier this month. USA Track and Field Today announced the decision by World Athletics World Athletics allowing runners Jessica McLean, Emma Grace Hurley and Edna Kurgat to compete in the world Championship. They finished outside the top 10, but later were named to an honorary podium, awarded circuit points by USA Track and Field and received top three prize money from race organizer the Atlanta Track Club. Every year during turtle nesting season, researchers get their best chance to study female turtles as they come ashore. Now a University of Georgia researcher has a solution for tracking the often difficult to find males.
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GPB's Chase McGee has more nesting season begins in May. It's an ideal time for researchers to track female turtles coming on shore to lay their eggs, but it's still a challenge to track males. UGA Associate research scientist Brian Shamb says a new method of isolating genetic material for male turtles can help using a single egg rather than damaging multiple eggs or relying on satellite imagery to track them.
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It makes it possible to take that egg the morning after it was laid rather than having to be present and interfere with the nesting female. And then we now can forego handling those hatchlings at all in most cases so that we don't have to worry about potential impacts to their survival.
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Shamblin hopes to use the method on at risk species like the loggerhead turtle, which lay fewer eggs so more hatchlings make it to the sea. For GPB news, I'm Chase McGee.
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The Mercedes Benz logo will stay atop Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta while the venue is temporarily called Atlanta Stadium during the FIFA World Cup. The Athletic today is reporting a deal that allows the hard to hide rooftop logo to remain visible even while FIFA protects tournament sponsors with strict branding rules. The stadium will have to remove thousands of other logos before the World cup begins in June. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra announced its programming for the 20262027 season this morning. GPB's Amanda Andrews reports this year's performances will focus on the works of JOHANNES BRAHMS.
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The 82nd season of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra includes 24 shows and two world premiere performances. The symphony will also welcome Berlin based pianist Anna Ganushina to Atlanta as artist in residence. Ashley Marakian with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra says one of the premier works will be a tribute by composer Jasmine Barnes to honor an Atlanta human rights legend.
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We performed one of Jasmine's works on our concert that we had at Ebenezer Baptist Church for the King Celebration, and so we have invited her to write a piece in honor of Coretta Scott King's 100th birthday.
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The first show of the upcoming season takes place September 16th. For GPB news, I'm Amanda Andrews.
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The Savannah Music Festival kicks off today, bringing world class musicians to the hostess city for 11 days of music. The annual festival, now in its 37th year, focuses on classical, jazz, American roots and international music. Opening night includes Southern rockers Larkin Poe and jazz vibraphonist Stephon Harris, both Grammy nominees. Concert violinist Sinisha Siric has led the festival since last June.
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I do understand as a musician what is the connection that we need to make with the audience as performers and how sincere and how deep we have to go to connect to people. And I know that people will recognize that down the road that we are approaching this with such passion.
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The festival is one of Savannah's major economic drivers, creating about $7 million in direct spending in 2024. In Tayari Jones latest novel, Kin, two young women who grew up together in rural Louisiana try their best to stay connected to each other across the divide of time, geography and class. Much has been made of this novel, which has been selected for Oprah's Book Club, the second of her novels to be an Oprah pick. Recently, GPB's Pamela Kirkland spoke with Jones about her novel. You can find their conversation@gpb.org news. When I spoke with Jones, we spoke about the craft of writing. And I asked her about a workshop she taught in 2006, which was when we first met.
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K
I would be shocked if you remembered this, but almost 20 years ago, I took one of your workshops.
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L
Where?
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K
In Tomales Bay, California.
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L
Oh, I do remember that.
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K
You remember the workshop. Please say you don't remember me.
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L
No, but Dorothy Allison was there. Remember that?
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K
I don't remember Thor at the.
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Allison.
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Yeah, because Pam Houston.
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Pam Houston was there. T.C. boyle was there. Really wonderful workshop.
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I doubt that T.C. boyle remembers me.
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K
He's such a cool guy. Anyway, part of this workshop, you gave a few pearls of wisdom, and I want to spit some back to you because they've been rattling around in my head for almost two decades now. One is about the first few pages of whatever fiction you happen to be writing. And you referred to those pages as valuable real estate. I don't know if you still refer to them.
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L
I still do. I still do.
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Just what you put on that page or those first two pages means more to your story than almost anything else.
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Every detail in the first few pages of a novel the reader thinks is very important and pays really close attention. And it's like you're ringing a bell. And so you have to decide in those first pages how to set the tone for the rest. And many times you'll end up rewriting the first few pages when you're finished the book, because you now know what's important in a way you didn't know when you started. But you have to come back and just pack it. Pack that first page. There should not be anything on that first page that is not going to come back. So when I wrote the first chapter of Ken, Annie wasn't in it. And I had to go back and put her there, because this is a story of Nisi and Annie. But when I first started writing it, I thought it was only the story of Missy. So then once I found out, I had to look at that and say, well, where would Annie be during this story, during this scene? And I put her in there. I said, come on, Annie. Right here.
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K
Yeah, super important. It seems another piece of advice you gave in that workshop was treat everybody in your book like they are an actor that you have to pay and you have a limited budget.
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L
I believe that so strongly. I believe there are a lot of things that create. Every story has a budget and things cost. Every character costs. You have to hire that character. So you need to look at the characters you have and see if you can use them. Like, if you have two brothers, you may only need one brother in this story because you don't need to pay that second brother. Another thing. Every time you change scenery, that costs money. Are you sure this really needs to move? Point of view, the most expensive thing. If you switch point of view, that costs more than anything. Only do it if it's entirely necessary. If a story is over budget, it's too busy and you can't follow it, and you don't know what matters. If a story is under budget, it's boring. It's not enough going on. Coincidences also cost.
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K
I don't know if I recall any coincidences in Kin that tripped me up.
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L
Yeah, you got to be careful with those coincidences. The example I like to use about the budget to make it very clear, though, fewer people know this reference because I think I'm getting old. But do you remember the movie E. T?
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K
I have not seen it in decades.
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L
Well, well, you know, these kids, they have this alien living in the closet. Everything else in that story is very bland. The setting is like in a suburb. The characters are not all that distinct because the alien was so expensive. Expensive? There was no money left over. You cannot have ET Set like in a war zone because it's too expensive to have an alien and international conflict in the same story. Like, they use all their money on the alien.
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K
It's like if in Franz Kafka's the Metamorphosis, the only thing they had budget for was changing that guy into a cockroach.
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L
That was so expensive.
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K
Everything else is like, you just got to be an ordinary house with an ordinary family.
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L
Yes, because there was no more. There's nothing else. Somebody in the story turns into a roach. That's. That's your whole budget. You can't even have, like a sex scene. You spent everything on the roach.
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K
So it seems like the whorehouse in Mississippi here was a good investment in part because it served a lot of purposes.
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L
Right.
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K
There was the ghost of a mother.
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L
That was expensive, but worth it. Yes, ghosts are expensive because you're once
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K
again finding a different way to examine the idea of motherhood. And it's also a plot device. The connections that Lula Bell at this whorehouse has come into play later in the novel.
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L
I invested so much in that sharecropping whorehouse that I had to use it as much. I had to get the most out of it that I could.
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K
How much deliberation did you put into it before you're like, no, this is a good investment. To make.
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L
Oh, it was almost like when you shop and you decide you're going to buy this expensive dress and you justify it once you get home. You know, once I met Lula Belle and she was living in that Jim Walter home, those homes you, you buy out of the catalog. And when she said to them, this here is a whorehouse, I was, I was sold. And I knew that this was just going to be a kind of a shiny object in the book and I just would have to budget for it as I went along. I don't think there are any other outrageous spaces in the book.
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K
The last thing I wanted to remind you of from that workshop almost 20 years ago, I can't believe it was almost 20 years ago, is that you said to a room full of 20 something year old aspiring writers who hadn't been published yet, that writing a book, publishing a book doesn't change your life. And we all looked at you like, no, of course it does. It's gotta. I don't know if that's true. I haven't published a book. But you've published a few. And this was before American Marriage and before American Marriage took off. Do you stand by that? Does it, does it change your life or does it have to reach a certain level of success to change your life?
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A
What do you think?
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L
I think it can change your life, but it does not change your life as much as you think it will change your life. In that every problem you had before you published the book, you will still have. And all of the relationships and things in your life that matter that you love, you will still have. There is, of course, a satisfaction that comes from having reached your goal. I think having a successful book like An American Marriage, when it was chosen by Oprah, I was able to feel legible to other people because when you write a novel, you have a lot of milestones that your average person has never heard of. You say to the average person, oh, my goodness, I'm long listed for, for an award from Penn. And they say you got a long pen. Like what? Huh? They don't know. But OP is something that people know what that is, and it is, it is legible and people will stop treating you like a hobbyist.
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K
Well, Tiari Jones, thank you so much for talking to me about Kin and your writing life. I really do appreciate you coming in.
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L
Thank you. I had a good time talking to you. You have to have me back.
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A
Love to Tayari Jones, the author of the novel Kin is featured on the latest edition of narrative edge. GPB's podcast about books with Georgia connections. Find Narrative edge wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That is a wrap on GEORGIA Today. Thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you'll come back tomorrow. Make sure you subscribe to this podcast and check out gpb.org news for any updates to the stories you heard today, as well as new headlines. Our reporters are always posting new work there. If you've got feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Send it to us by email. The address is Georgia today. At gpb.org I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We will see you tomorrow.