12.24.99
A special Christmas edition of our show, with stories about Santa Claus—the many many different versions of Santa Claus. It was in America...
12.17.99
Oh faithless and perverse generation? How long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?—Matthew 17.
12.10.99
Stories of nature creeping into man-made environments. Of nature sneaking in places where its very presence is a rebuke to the notion that...
11.26.99
For Thanksgiving, the time of year when poultry consumption is highest, it's our annual program about turkeys, chickens, fowl of all types...
11.5.99
One reason we tell stories is to explain things to ourselves that cannot, in the end, always be explained. When someone we're close to dies...
10.22.99
We've all heard occasional news stories about how some of the drug laws enacted in the last 15 years may have gone too far. First time...
10.15.99
We hear the story of one African-American single mother. Barbara Clinkscales recorded her family's life over the course of seven months for...
10.1.99
Stories of people who are trying to make invisible worlds visible, and what happens when you make them visible.
9.23.99
Stories of family businesses, and what happens when the tension of family dynamics collides with the pressure of capitalist market forces.
9.3.99
Stories of political idealists, stories designed to provide some small sense of hope about American politics. Most of these were first...
8.27.99
Stories of people drawn to some idea, some picture, some "thing" that they just want to be. How some people imitate this "thing" innocently...
8.20.99
Stories of people who believe a book changed their life. It's a romantic notion, and one reason we believe it is because we want to believe...
8.6.99
Three stories, three people, and three sets of maps. Stories of people trying to figure out where they are in the world in the most literal...
7.23.99
We think of crime as a kind of monolithic, menacing presence. But there are many kinds of crimes and many kinds of criminals. Through our...
7.12.99
Stories about what happens when we don't do something. It turns out that not falling in love, not doing our jobs, not spending time with...
6.25.99
Consider for a moment all the art forms that began in America: jazz, the blues, musical theater, rock n' roll, phonograph recordings,...
6.18.99
For Father's Day, stories about fathers going out of their way to protect their kids, and kids going out of their way to protect their...
6.4.99
Stories in which young people take matters into their own hands: Students who become political activists, students who pull pranks, violent...
5.14.99
A program taped before live audiences in Seattle (thanks to public radio station KUOW) and at HBO's U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. A...
4.30.99
There's a tourist monument called Four Corners, where Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet. In this episode, we try to tell the...
4.16.99
This entire show is devoted to just one story. A former pimp tells how he and three childhood friends became pimps in the 1970s in Oakland...
4.9.99
Stories of people trying to do good: Why they often fail and why they occasionally succeed.
4.2.99
Stories of the end of the world. More people believe it's more imminent than you probably realize.
3.19.99
Stories of people moving to this country: what they see and hear about America that those of us who were born here don't necessarily see.
2.26.99
Stories of people who choose not to live every moment to the fullest or smell the roses, and instead choose to withdraw from life, to make...
1.29.99
One thing that makes our country different from most others is this idea that you can re-create yourself as someone you'd prefer...
1.22.99
Three stories of people pretending to be something they're not, and what happens to them.
1.8.99
With the number of prisoners in the United States rising rapidly, we present stories of their lives and the lives of their families and...
