Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Life
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Featured story: Last Witness: The General Slocum

In 1904, a steamship on its way to a church picnic sank in the East River. More than 1,000 people, many of them women and children, died in the disaster.

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Featured story: Strange Fruit, Revisited

James Cameron is the only known person to have survived a lynching in America.

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Featured story: Crime Pays

A program in Richmond, CA that is trying a controversial method of reducing gun violence in their city: paying criminals to not commit crimes. Sounds crazy, but the even crazier part is…it works. 

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

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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.

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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.

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Portraits Extraordinary stories from ordinary places

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Selma Koch, Bra Saleswoman

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

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Walter Backerman, Seltzer Man

Once there were thousands of seltzer men in New York City. Today, Walter Backerman is one of the last.

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Histories Exploring the past to tell the History of Now.

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The Man on the President’s Limo

Today marks 60 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. There are many photos from that day in …

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The Dropped Wrench

Sometimes we make mistakes. They just don’t always happen in a nuclear missile silo. This story was produced in collaboration with This American Life.

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