If you listen to NPR, you might be familiar with the National Oral History Project, also known as Storycorps. Basically, NPR set up two recording booths in Grand Central Station, New York and asked regular people to tell stories. The local and national branches of NPR then play some of the best ones on-air. Anyways, the recording booths are now in Washington, DC, and they'll soon be touring the country. So, if you want to check out the schedule, click here, and scroll down to the bottom of the page. The National Oral History Project will arrive in San Francisco on November 10th for two weeks.

StoryCorps is a project of Sound Portraits, which has a terrific library of oral histories from a variety of Americans. A quick search found stories from a civil war general, two children growing up in a ghetto, and the oldest male stripper.

All of these things are descendents from the WPA's Federal Writer's Program in the 1930's.