Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Life
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.

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 …

History
Graphic
History
Graphic
History
Graphic

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

Graphic

Majd’s Diary: Two Years in the Life of a Saudi Girl

Majd wants to be a scientist. Her family wants to arrange her marriage.

Listen
Graphic

Frankie: 16 Years Later

As a teenager, Frankie recorded his life as a high school football star. 16 years later and with a baby on the way, he shares his struggle with drug addiction.

Listen

Portraits Extraordinary stories from ordinary places

Graphic

The Final Frontline

Fourth generation funeral directors reflect on their experience of the coronavirus pandemic and prepare for a second wave.

Listen
Graphic

Home is Where You Park Your Mini Van

As the pandemic hit, Naida Lavon found herself without a home and without a job. Part of our Hunker Down Diaries series.

Listen

Histories Exploring the past to tell the History of Now.

Graphic

Ballad for Americans

How a ten minute operatic folk cantata managed to unite Democrats, Republicans and Communists.

Listen
Graphic

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.

Listen
css.php