Featured Work

Our vast — and ever-growing — collection contains thousands of carefully curated audio stories from all over the world.


The Big Night

Producer Jonathan Goldstein made every girl he ever dated watch the home movie of his family's Rosh Hashanah dinner he made when he was 17.

New Orleans' Hurricane Risk

In September, 2002, three years before Katrina devastated America's gulf coast, veteran NPR reporter Daniel Zwerdling investigated what would happen to New Orleans if it fell in the path of a Category 5 hurricane.

Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again (INC)

Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto, otherwise known as the Books, incorporate an array of sound fragments and miniature stories into their music. The results are part songs, part "documentary vignettes" -- an original approach to making both documentary audio and music.

Ali Farka Toure: Country Gentleman (INC)

Mali's acclaimed guitarist Ali Farka Toure announced during his summer 2000 tour of America that he was retiring back to a farm in Niafunke, his home village in the Saharan desert. This is the portrait of a successful musician embracing a new direction in his life.

Our Day Will Come

Our Day Will Come explores the impact of R&B on America's civil rights movement, as well as the influence of the movement on popular music.

Mind, Body, Soul

An interview with a performance artist, whose "art" consists of consuming entire copies of the Oxford English Dictionary, Gray's Anatomy, and the King James Bible.

Ice Music

What if sounds could be frozen into ice cubes, then released upon their melting? Everyday movements and actions might become rich musical performances...

A Voice of Warning

A heroin overdose left Jade Bell blind, mute and unable to care for himself. Now Bell tours high schools in British Columbia, where his computerized "voice" speaks a loud warning to thousands of students.

Peggy Lee Appreciation

A huge Peggy Lee fan, producer Karen Michel has produced five features about this singer, songwriter, and arranger.

Ruth Ellis

Ruth Ellis lived to be over 100 years old. She realized in her teens that she was gay but she didn't talk much about it then.

Hollister

Hollister is an investigation into what really happened on July 4, 1947, when 2,000 bikers roared into a small California town and left a media explosion in their wake.

Mei Mei, A Daughter's Song

Dmae Roberts tell two interwoven stories in this personal documentary: the frustration she feels not living up to her mother's ideal of a perfect Taiwanese daughter and the compassion she has for a mother who as a child suffered abuse, starvation, and the horrors of World War Two.

Steve the Baker

"Without bread we are all orphans," says the sign that greets customers as they walk into Steve's Bread Shop in Portland, Maine. Meet Steve, who bakes bread in the most traditional way possible: by hand.

Hard-Hearted Hannah

Eighteen-year-old Hannah Hoose describes growing up as a part of her family's folk band, with all its healthy snacks, archetypal psychodramas, and oddly compelling songs.

Electronic Samples Cut-Up

A few years ago, Mark Vernon bought a pile of old reel-to-reel audio tapes at a boot sale (think yard sale, but in the trunks of cars) near his hometown of Derby, England.