StoryCorps provides Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.
Since Dave Isay founded StoryCorps in 2003, the organization has provided more than 100,000 Americans with access to a quiet booth and platform to record and share interviews about their lives. These Conversations are archived at the U.S. Library of Congress.
At the heart of StoryCorps is a simple, timeless idea: provide two friends or loved ones with a quiet space and 40 minutes of uninterrupted time for a meaningful face-to-face conversation that will be preserved for generations to come. StoryCorps seeks out the stories of people most often excluded from the historical record and preserves them so that the experience and wisdom contained within them may be passed from one generation to the next.
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As a kid, Robert Logan lived right down the street from a fire station. He would watch the fire engine pass by his house, and dream of riding that truck one day. Now, he is a decorated firefighter and he talks with a friend and colleague about what it took to make his childhood dream come true, as a Black firefighter.
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Hear a conversation recorded inside a Brooklyn funeral home. It's owned by Doris Amen. She and a fellow funeral director friend tell StoryCorps why they've been in the business for so long.
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Joe Maslanka moved to Collegeville, Penn., in 1971, bought a local bar, kicked out the biker gang that hung out there and moved in upstairs. His family visited StoryCorps for a remembrance.
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As part of our StoryCorps' Military Voices Initiative, we hear from Specialist Henry Smithers who was among the millions of American servicemen and women deployed to Vietnam during the conflict.
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Chris Heiser, 74, is a career paramedic. His daughter Danielle, 32, is a nurse. They were both first responders when COVID hit five years ago, and they shared their experience with StoryCorps.
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As Black History Month comes to a close, StoryCorps takes a look back at 19-year-old Alton Yates. His role as a volunteer on the effects of high speeds on the human body helped send humans into space.
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Lillian Gregory, the widow of comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, remembers her husband who died in 2017. The interview is part of the StoryCorps "Brightness in Black" project.
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In this Valentine's Day edition of StoryCorps, hear about Bud and Jackie Jones, career taxidermists who met in the 1950s and owned a taxidermy shop in Tallapoosa, Georgia.
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Daniel May Jr.'s parent divorced when he was 5. Weekdays were hard for him, but he found relief on the weekends when he visited his grandmother in the suburbs outside Cleveland, Ohio.
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Nearly 30 years after carrying her out of a burning building, Los Angeles County firefighter Derek Bart tells the woman he saved, Myeshia Oates, "You've carried me through tough times."