Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Life
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Featured story: Sealab: A Home on the Ocean Floor

While NASA was making headlines for its quest to send a man to the moon, Captain Bond was quietly building homes for “aquanauts” on the ocean floor.

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Featured story: Teen Contender

At 16, Claressa Shields was the youngest woman to compete for a spot on the first-ever women’s Olympic boxing team.

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Featured story: A Guitar, A Cello and the Day that Changed Music

November 23, 1936 was a good day for recorded music. Two men – an ocean apart – sat before a …

History
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Diary
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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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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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Matthew and the Judge: Juvenile Court Diary

Through their diaries, Matthew and Judge Jeremiah tell the same story from two different sides of the bench.

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Portraits Extraordinary stories from ordinary places

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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.

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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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Histories Exploring the past to tell the History of Now.

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The Forgotten Story of Clinton Melton

Emmett Till’s murder is considered the spark that ignited a burgeoning Civil Rights movement. But there was another brazen murder of a Black man that happened just three months later, in a neighboring town in the Delta.

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The WASPs: Women Pilots of WWII

In the early 1940s, the government launched an experimental program to train women pilots. They were known as the WASPs, the Women Airforce Service Pilots.

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