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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.
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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.
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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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Diaries We give people tape recorders and help them document their own lives in their own words
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.
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Juan: 16 Years Later
16 years ago, Juan reported on his life as a recent Mexican immigrant living in poverty in Texas. In his new diary, Juan takes us on a tour of the life he has built since he first crossed the Rio Grande. It looks a lot like the typical American dream: a house, 2 cars, 3 kids—except for the fact he’s still living illegally in the U.S.
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.
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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.
ListenHistories Exploring the past to tell the History of Now.
The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records
The story of the first major black-owned record label and the mystery behind the man who created it.
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Prisoners Of War
During the war in Vietnam, there was a notorious American prison on the outskirts of Saigon…a prison for American soldiers.
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