Outsourcing all but destroyed the textile industry in the South over the last two decades, which went from employing more than a million workers in the late 1940s. As Georgia and other Southern states try to lure manufacturers back with tax incentives, an Atlanta company has developed a possible breakthrough: a robotic sewing machine. We speak with Barry Clark, vice president of research and development at SoftWear Automation, and Courtney Hammonds, academic director of the fashion department at the Art Institute of Atlanta, about how new technology is changing the garment industry.

Then, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations confirmed there are nearly 3,500 untested rape kits in Georgia. This comes as a new state law requires all rape kits to be tested by the end of the month. The political satire TV show “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” recently looked at the backlog of untested rape kits. We talk with the show’s executive producer Jo Miller, who’s originally from Atlanta. Plus, we hear the story of Atlanta artist Jessica Caldas, who attempted to get beyond the statistics concerning sexual abuse. She spent every day in April marking an “X” on the ground in chalk every 107 seconds. That’s how often someone is sexually abused in the U.S., according to federal data. We spoke with her about the message she hopes people will take away from her art. 

And we close the show with a look at school punishment. The Huffington Post recently tracked media reports of K-12 students who were shot with a stun gun by a school police officer. In the last five years, there were at least 84 incidents, including a few in Georgia. We talk about the investigation with Rebecca Klein, the education editor for The Huffington Post. We also turn to David Osher of the American Institutes for Research and Zian Tseng of the University of California, San Francisco about the physical and psychological effects of using a Taser on a child. 

Tags: OST Full Show  Atlanta  Georgia