Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Life
Graphic
Listen

Featured story: Mandela’s Election: 30 Years Later

Mandela was a lawyer, freedom fighter, leader of the African National Congress, and finally, president.

Graphic
Listen

Featured story: Working, Then and Now

We present a special, one hour episode of our series The Working Tapes of Studs Terkel.

Graphic
Listen

Featured story: My Iron Lung (Revisited)

Paul Alexander, one of two people in the United States relying on an iron lung, died recently at 78 years …

History
Graphic
History
Graphic
History
Graphic

Diaries We give people tape recorders and help them document their own lives in their own words

Graphic

Josh: 16 Years Later

In high school, Josh documented his life with Tourette’s Syndrome. 16 years later, Josh records a new diary about trying to live a normal adult life with a brain that often betrays him.

Listen
Graphic

Going Home: Cristel’s Diary

At 15, Cristel attacked a classmate with a razor blade. After 3 years of incarceration, she’s being released.

Listen

Portraits Extraordinary stories from ordinary places

Graphic

Walter Backerman, Seltzer Man

Once there were thousands of seltzer men in New York City. Today, Walter Backerman is one of the last.

Listen
Graphic

The Last Man on the Mountain

In the 1990s, Arch Coal began mining Pigeonroost Hollow. Now Jimmy Weekley is the last person left there.

Listen

Histories Exploring the past to tell the History of Now.

Graphic

West Side Story: Michael Farmer and the Murder that Shocked New York

More than fifty years ago, Puerto Rican and black gang members in New York City fatally stabbed Michael Farmer, a white teenager.

Listen
Graphic

Soweto 1976

On June 16th, 1976, in South Africa, a group of school children in the black township of Soweto held a protest and changed the course of a nation.

Listen
css.php