Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Life
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 …

Graphic
Listen

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
Graphic
History
Graphic
Diary
Graphic

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

Graphic

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.

Listen
Graphic

Matthew and the Judge: Juvenile Court Diary

Through their diaries, Matthew and Judge Jeremiah tell the same story from two different sides of the bench.

Listen

Portraits Extraordinary stories from ordinary places

Graphic

Love 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.

Listen
Graphic

Selma Koch, Bra Saleswoman

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

Listen

Histories Exploring the past to tell the History of Now.

Graphic

Becoming Nelson Mandela

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

Listen
Graphic

Prisoners Of War

During the war in Vietnam, there was a notorious American prison on the outskirts of Saigon…a prison for American soldiers.

Listen
css.php