What was it like to live through the Great Depression?

The Great Depression was an international depression felt far beyond the US

Many countries suffered through a depression in the 1930s that the First World War, the US stock market crash, and an economic downturn in Germany turned into an international crisis.

Hear firsthand stories from Americans who lived through the 1918 flu pandemic

This video shares personal accounts from survivors of the 1918 influenza epidemic, capturing memories of sickness, loss, and resilience. Their voices offer a glimpse into how ordinary people experienced one of history’s deadliest pandemics.

Communism grew in appeal during the Great Depression

With at least a quarter of the country out of work, some Americans disenchanted with capitalism began looking at alternatives. Watch this five-minute video to learn about communism's growing allure during the Great Depression.

How the Great Depression still shapes the way Americans eat

From fortified foods to nutrition labels, the legacy of an early financial crisis lives on in kitchens across the United States. Ethnic foods with their (supposedly) hunger-triggering spices were vilified and considered “stimulants” along the lines of caffeine and so, in their stead came prune puddings, canned-meat stews, and dairy-heavy vegetable casseroles featuring America’s first fortified foods. Read more here.

Hear Roosevelt's first 'Fireside Chat'

The president's casual radio addresses ditched the language of sloganeering and politiciking, intentionally framing the broadcasts as conversational explanations of current events and politics. The inaugural episode was broadcast in 1933, during the Great Depression, and outlined his plans to restore faith in the banking system.

Between 2007 and 2009, the housing market saw its most significant downturn since the Great Depression: the Great Recession

The early 2000s were a prosperous period for the housing market, until some lending practices eventually destabilized it, leading to banks collapsing and people losing their homes.

Stand-up became more popular during the Great Depression

The stock market crash of 1929 caused vaudeville theaters to shutter. Audiences were looking for lighthearted distractions from the country’s financial problems, though, and stand-up became more popular, albeit in very different venues.

See what it was like to live in the United States during World War II

In America, life was transformed by total war: sixteen million service members left civilian life, while massive industrial production demanded labor. Women, minorities, and teens filled factories, fueling boomtown growth and breaking social barriers. Simultaneously, rationing, recycling drives, Victory Gardens, ration stamps, blackout drills, and war bond campaigns permeated daily routines.

What was life like as a slave in the US?

Over 2,500 former slaves were interviewed by writers and journalists in the late 1930s as part of the US Federal Writer's Project. The collection recorded images and firsthand verbal accounts of life as a slave, eight of which are highlighted in this article at the Library of Congress. See the humanity in each of these individuals with their firsthand accounts.

Can your family farm survive the Great Depression?

Find out in this free simulation game where you play a pair of twins trying to weather the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. Your choices determine the ending, so choose your moves wisely!

‘The Giant Pool of Money’ remains one of the most acclaimed accounts of the 2008 housing bubble

This Peabody Award–winning "This American Life" episode traces how cheap global money, subprime lending, and Wall Street engineering inflated the housing bubble. Through vivid reporting and real voices, it became one of the defining works of 2000s financial journalism.

Interviews from the Manhattan Project

This is an archive of interviews with people who worked on and were impacted by the Manhattan Project, the World War II-era effort that resulted in the atomic bomb. Listen to the "father of the atomic bomb," Julius Robert Oppenheimer, describe his daily routine during the project, which he reports officially started Dec. 6, 1941. This archive also includes interviews with survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Hear firsthand stories of prison life from those living it

"Ear Hustle"—produced inside San Quentin Rehabilitation Center (formerly known as San Quentin State Prison)—shares personal and often surprising stories of incarceration and reentry—providing listeners with an unfiltered human perspective on the US justice system.

Experience what it was like to live during Watergate's unfolding scandal

Slate's "Slow Burn," hosted by Leon Neyfakh, revisits Watergate through archival audio and interviews, spotlighting overlooked figures, vividly depicting the scandal's slow escalation, and drawing parallels to today's political climate.

A riveting retelling of the 1846 Donner Party, the doomed western pioneers

Eighty-one people went with the Donner Party into the Sierra Nevada mountains in the winter of 1846 via what they thought would be a shortcut to the West. Only 41 came out. The infamous episode of Western travel is captured in narrative detail in this four-part podcast series. This first episode reveals the motivations that pushed the party on this specific route.

Embargoes and economic mismanagement have pushed Cuba into its worst crisis in decades

For more than 60 years, Cuba has been pressured by two forces—the US economic embargo and its own government's repression and mismanagement. NPR's Throughline podcast explains how both contributed to today's blackouts, food shortages, and mass exodus.

A first-person account of receiving an Alzheimer's diagnosis

Having Alzheimer's is a bit like having a part of your brain sliced away each day, according to author Greg O'Brien. This 34-minute podcast episode introduces O'Brien and his co-host, author David Shenk, as the two embark on a multi-season conversation on Alzheimer's disease and O'Brien's diagnosis.

Listen to what it was like living as a medieval leper

This podcast uses paleopathological and anthropological findings to reconstruct what it was like for people diagnosed with leprosy in medieval times on the Eurasian continent. If a town lacked a leprosarium—an isolated leper asylum or colony—or the suspected leper was a foreigner or a Jew, which would make them ineligible for leprosarium admission, they'd be expelled.

Listen to an interview with a gig economy expert

In this podcast episode, the hosts sit down with NerdWallet Senior News Editor Rick VanderKnyff, a gig economy expert who explains why the sector grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, what defines a gig worker, how gig workers handle their finances, and more.

The nonfiction book that kick-started Orwell's career

1935's "The Road to Wigan Pier" was a piece of investigative journalism that explored how the impoverished were handling the Great Depression, known in England as "the Slump." Orwell divided the book into two parts: One that described the living conditions of the working poor, and the other that criticized middle-class socialists' ineffectiveness at helping them.

Key tips for helping the depressed—including listening without judgment

Major depressive disorder is a clinical diagnosis and is not a lifestyle choice. Those who struggle with depression can express persistent feelings that are difficult to process and make sense of for friends and family. This guide walks through some counterintuitive perspectives, including resisting the urge to force a depressed person to do the things that would make them feel better.

Author John Green explains the Gilded Age

The Gilded Age was a time period that stretched from the 1870s until the turn of the 20th century that was colored by rapid industrialization, economic change, and widespread financial inequality. It was named as such because the widespread poverty during this era is often overshadowed by the fact that it was also a golden age for wealthy individuals.

Find decades of Hanukkah stories to listen to

For over 30 years, National Public Radio has broadcast its Hanukkah Lights series, a collection of original fiction that relates to the holiday. Here, you’ll find a repository of listeners’ favorite past tales, going back decades.

How did China go from an empire to a republic?

In the 1800s, as China's economy was in flux, foreign imperialist powers began appearing on the horizon, leading China to lose land and influence in the region. This 48-minute podcast episode explores how this destabilization set the stage for the...

Economists define deflation as a sustained decline in prices across an economy

Deflationary periods are characterized by broad, significant price declines. The Federal Reserve can monitor deflation by tracking prices through price indexes, such as the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which characterizes the average costs for consumers each month.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

See how Ebola tore through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in 2014-2016.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

Fear or disgust related to clusters of holes and cracks, called trypophobia, may stem from evolutionary processes to help us avoid pathogens.