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Featured story: Meet Miss Subways
Beauty pageants promote the fantasy of the ideal woman. But for 35 years, the Miss Subways contest in New York City celebrated the everyday working girl.
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Featured story: The Gospel Ranger
Outside the Appalachian mountains, his name was barely known. But Claude Ely influenced some of the pioneers of rock & roll.
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Featured story: Mandela’s Election: 30 Years Later
Mandela was a lawyer, freedom fighter, leader of the African National Congress, and finally, president.
History
History
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Diaries We give people tape recorders and help them document their own lives in their own words
Melissa: 16 Years Later
As an 18 year old raised in the foster care system, Melissa took NPR listeners along when she gave birth to her son Issaiah. Sixteen years later she chronicles her life as a working single mother.
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Frankie: 16 Years Later
As a teenager, Frankie recorded his life as a high school football star. 16 years later and with a baby on the way, he shares his struggle with drug addiction.
ListenPortraits Extraordinary stories from ordinary places
Lockdown in Lockup
Moe Monsuri shares his experience of the pandemic from behind bars at Sing Sing prison. Part of our new series Hunker Down Diaries.
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Centenarians in Lockdown
Winner of the 2020 Third Coast Festival Award! Joe Newman is 107 years old. He recorded himself and his fiancé, Anita Sampson on her 100th birthday.
ListenHistories Exploring the past to tell the History of Now.
A Guitar, A Cello, and The Day That Changed Music
November 23, 1936, was a very good day for recorded music.
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The Chamizal: A Town Between Borders
When the U.S. and Mexico chose the Rio Grande as an international border, they didn’t expect the river to move.
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