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Why you should watch ‘Sinners’

Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” is an American horror film set in 1932 in the Mississippi Delta. The film stars Michael B. Jordan in dual roles as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who return to their hometown in the Jim Crow South to escape their violent past as Chicago mob enforcers and establish a new life by…

Categories: Arts & Culture, Experts


Why the 16-Oscar nominee ‘Sinners’ is a radical act of industry resistance

The success of Ryan Coogler’s "Sinners" isn't just a win for the box office; it’s a radical act of resistance against the current "streaming-first" Hollywood model. Media Studies Professor Phillip Cunningham is available to provide analysis on the groundbreaking business mechanics behind the film. He notes that Coogler’s deal with Warner Bros.—which allows him to regain ownership…

Categories: Arts & Culture, Experts


Belonging is key to a college degree

In the social media era, you can look at a university’s Instagram feed and get the impression that every day rates a 10/10 and everyone belongs. But Shannon Brady, a Wake Forest University psychology professor who studies the implications of social belonging, cautions you to look deeper. Smiles on faces and free hoodies emblazoned with…

GDP forecasts, penny shortages, and Super Bowl prediction market betting

As 2026 begins, Wake Forest economics professors are available to decode the partisan bias in GDP data, discuss the rounding reality of a pennyless economy, and explain how prediction markets are transforming Super Bowl betting.  Economic forecasts are dominating the headlines. New research from Wake Forest University suggests these "objective" numbers might be less neutral…

Categories: Experts


Tropical trees are fighting an uphill battle with climate change. And they’re losing.

When William Farfan-Rios hikes through the remote forests of the Peruvian Amazon and Andes, he’s doing much more than feeding his appreciation for the natural world. He’s trying to identify the trees that can survive a warming climate—and, ultimately, save one of the world’s largest carbon sinks from collapse. As a biodiversity fellow in forest…

Multi-agent AI could change everything – if researchers can figure out the risks

You might have seen headlines sounding the alarm about the safety of an emerging technology called agentic AI. That’s where Sarra Alqahtani comes in. An associate professor of computer science at Wake Forest University, she studies the safety of AI agents through the new field of multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). Alqahtani received a National Science…

Don’t call it exercise

Jason Fanning has spent a lot of time talking to older adults about leading healthy, active lifestyles. And he knows that the minute he utters the word “exercise,” he loses many of them. Instead, he talks to them about movement across the day, a key component of his current research study, A Mobile Health Intervention…

Rhino rescue: Economist is changing the conservation conversation

According to the International Rhino Foundation, on average, one rhino is killed by poachers every 15 hours. Despite aggressive anti-poaching measures, the global rhino population has continued to decline. Wake Forest economist Fred Chen’s decades-long research on rhino horn poaching examines the outcomes of defensive anti-trafficking efforts (such as rhino relocation, anti-poaching patrols, GPS trackers,…

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