Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Life
Graphic
Listen

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.

Graphic
Listen

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.

Graphic
Listen

Featured story: Mandela’s Election: 30 Years Later

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

History
Graphic
History
Graphic
History
Graphic

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

Graphic

Thembi’s AIDS Diary

Thembi Ngubane was willing to stand up and speak out at a time when few South Africans were willing to say, “I have AIDS.”

Listen
Graphic

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.

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

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.

Listen
Graphic

The Pygmy in the Zoo

On September 8th, 1906, New York’s Bronx Zoo unveiled a new exhibit that would attract thousands of visitors. Inside a cage, in the monkey house, was a man.

Listen
css.php