As NPR fans know, each Friday the radio network broadcasts a special two-minute segment. For that brief interlude, news in the conventional sense is set aside, and listeners are treated to a bite-sized oral history — snippets of a conversation between two "average" folks. What you'll learn if you catch a StoryCorps segment on the air — or listen to the archive at npr.org — is that their stories are hardly average. (Indeed the premise of the program seems to be that no one's story is.)
Take a few of this past fall's highlights: dialogues between a mother and her 31-year-old daughter, whose genetic disorder accelerates the aging process of her body; between two brothers, one of whom dared to appear on a right-wing radio call-in show as the token gay guest; or between a married couple who met on a blind date after the end of World War II. Hardly the stuff of headlines, their stories are more than informative — listening to them is often a rousing emotional experience that elevates the morning news by inserting a reminder of our common humanity.
When the StoryCorps mobile recording booth rolls into a town or city, as it has into Ybor City recently, local residents clamor to tell their stories. But along with would-be storytellers eager to get in front of the mic, the appearance of StoryCorps' glimmering Airstream trailer — like the circus or gypsy caravan of yore — triggers a sort of mania among people of a certain demographic who yearn to be part of the action behind the scenes. To find out what it's like to crisscross the country recording the reminiscences of everyday Americans (or U.S. residents), I sat down with Whitney Henry-Lester, 26, and Nina Porzucki, 29, inside the trailer. As we chatted, their colleague Anna Walters facilitated a recording with a trio of Tampa residents inside the trailer's soundproof recording booth (no reporters allowed).
Contrary to popular belief, the women don't actually live in the Airstream trailer — and though they do get to zig-zag around the United States under the aegis of StoryCorps, their lifestyle is less reminiscent of a constant road trip than a series of month-long sojourns in towns and cities of various size. After Tampa, Henry-Lester flies to Los Angeles to join the West Coast booth, and Porzucki heads back to the organization's New York base for a stint in the office; the Airstream, with a new staff, departs for Savannah.
The trailer itself houses the recording studio, where the staffers take turns facilitating 40-minute conversations between visitors (another common misconception: StoryCorps doesn't conduct interviews — you do, Henry-Lester says), and a snug office area where one of them sits to archive information about each set of visitors.
The product of each interview session — typically a 40-minute recording, though sessions can be shorter — goes in three directions: to StoryCorps headquarters, to the Library of Congress and to the visitor, in the form of a CD promptly burned after the session. (Check out storycorps.net for more information about what happens to the recordings and why.) Mobile staffers like Porzucki and Henry-Lester have little to do with the editing process unless they're logging hours in the New York office, in which case they might work with a producer to help winnow the recording down into one of the two-minute segments furnished to NPR. Don't take it personally if yours isn't chosen — only about 1 percent of recordings get picked up by the network, and it takes a producer about 40 hours to finely hone each interview into a dramatic, miniature biography. "One pause can make a huge difference," Henry-Lester says.
By coincidence, both women came to StoryCorps with backgrounds in film production; after hearing about the program on NPR or through friends, they first joined as interns. Now about halfway through yearlong assignments as mobile staffers, neither is sure exactly what her next long-term goal is. Part of the problem, they agree, is hearing stories about so many fascinating and significant lives on a daily basis — indecision about their own futures has been an unanticipated side effect.
In the meantime, they're collecting stories in more ways than one. For Porzucki, a creative writer at heart, that means an excursion to swim with the manatees during down time in Tampa; for Henry-Lester, it's visiting Tampa Theater or finding some great running trails. For all three, it might spell scoring some invitations to dinner at local homes — their hands-down favorite part of traveling from place to place — or discovering a great breakfast joint (for the record, Tampa Bay isn't scoring too highly on that one). And though they sometimes wish they were a little closer to home, they'll always have the company of an endless stream of visitors to the StoryCorps Airstream — like the guy who came in for three minutes to read a poem he'd written about a Hank Williams song or the 12-year-old girl who reminisced with her mom about her first steps.
If you want the real lowdown, you'll just have to invite the ladies of StoryCorps over for dinner.
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2009.