Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Life
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Featured story: Working, Then and Now

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

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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 …

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Featured story: My So-Called Lungs (Revisited)

Laura Rothenberg tried to live a normal life, with lungs that betrayed her and the awareness that she might not live to see her 30th birthday.

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

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Majd’s Diary: Two Years in the Life of a Saudi Girl

Majd wants to be a scientist. Her family wants to arrange her marriage.

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Amanda’s Diary: Girlfriend

Amanda is gay. Amanda’s family is Catholic. And she’s having a hard time convincing her parents that this is not “just a phase.”

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Portraits Extraordinary stories from ordinary places

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The Last Man on the Mountain

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

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Selma Koch, Bra Saleswoman

94-year old Selma Koch runs the Town Shop, one of New York’s last old-style bra fitting shops.

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Histories Exploring the past to tell the History of Now.

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The Almost Astronaut

In an attempt to beat the Soviet Union in the space race, the Kennedy administration enlisted Air Force captain Ed Dwight to enter the astronaut training program as its first Black trainee.

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Last Witness: The Kerner Commission

Former Senator Oklahoma Fred Harris is the last surviving member of the Kerner Commission, a group appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the root causes of the violence and civil unrest that swept the nation in the late ’60s.

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