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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.
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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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Diaries We give people tape recorders and help them document their own lives in their own words
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.
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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.
ListenPortraits Extraordinary stories from ordinary places
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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Walter Backerman, Seltzer Man
Once there were thousands of seltzer men in New York City. Today, Walter Backerman is one of the last.
ListenHistories Exploring the past to tell the History of Now.
The End of Smallpox
Rahima Banu holds a remarkable place in history, as the last known person in the world to be infected with smallpox. This week on the RadioDiaries podcast, the story behind a global effort to eradicate the deadly virus.
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Ballad for Americans
How a ten minute operatic folk cantata managed to unite Democrats, Republicans and Communists.
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