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.
ListenMelissa’s Diaries: Teen Mom
Melissa never meant to get pregnant. But now, after 12 years of living in the foster care system, she’s trying to build the family she never had.
ListenPortraits Extraordinary stories from ordinary places
The Last Man on the Mountain
In the 1990s, Arch Coal began mining Pigeonroost Hollow. Now Jimmy Weekley is the last person left there.
ListenLove at First Quarantine
Gali and Joshua made the surprising decision to quarantine together, after their very first date. Part of our series Hunker Down Diaries.
ListenHistories Exploring the past to tell the History of Now.
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.
ListenMeet 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.
Listen