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.
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.
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
History
History
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.
Listen
Melissa’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
Living with Dying
On Valentine’s Day 2020, Peter Fodera’s heart broke. He nearly died. Peter sat down with his daughter who knows a thing or two about death.
Listen
Lockdown in Lockup
Moe Monsuri shares his experience of the pandemic from behind bars at Sing Sing prison. Part of our new series Hunker Down Diaries.
ListenHistories Exploring the past to tell the History of Now.
The Chamizal: A Town Between Borders
When the U.S. and Mexico chose the Rio Grande as an international border, they didn’t expect the river to move.
Listen
Ballad for Americans
How a ten minute operatic folk cantata managed to unite Democrats, Republicans and Communists.
Listen
