Apm: The Story

In The Story’s final show, we check in with guests who came on the program at moments when their lives were in transition, we revisit one of the first times we saw a story doesn’t have to be dramatic to be memorable, and Dick gives his final thoughts on eight years of hosting the program.

All this week, more of our most popular episodes from our eight year history. Mohammed El Kurd grew up in the East Jerusalem house where his family has lived for more than 50 years. In 2009, a group of Israeli settlers moved into a building on the property, claiming it as their own. Also: A trumpet was what got Jack Tueller through childhood, through World War II and was the reason he met his wife.

When Michael Humphrey was growing up, he would sometimes hear his father telling strangers a story about how the Beatles stole the composition for “Lady Madonna” from him. Eventually, he looked into the story himself. ALSO TODAY: Jim Sadwith had written the script for his high school play based on J.D. Salinger’s classic “The Catcher and the Rye,” when he decided to look for the reclusive author to get permission to do the play; and Mark Hagerty tells host Dick Gordon how New York City shaped his father and about their special meeting place under Grand Central Station’s clock tower.

Nate Kalichman was 90 and Paula Givan was 67 when they got married. They share their stories of finding love late in life and making plans. Also: Tending Monet’s Garden, and Judy Garland’s flight attendant on a cross-country flight.

Growing up, Yafinceio Harris and Michael Wilder were members of rival crews and came close to armed confrontation. They eventually had a meeting neither expected – in the classroom of a community college. Also in this show: A dreamy trip to Brazil, Argentina and France through the music of Dom la Nena.

Dana James and Patricia Coleman were newlyweds traveling across Asia on a tight budget when they met a friendly man who wanted to give them a generous present.  Also: Jacques Vroom used to have a pass to fly anywhere in the world aboard first class. And: A U.S. Air Force serviceman tells the story of dating a Japanese woman whose family distrusted Americans.

We continue listening back to some of the most memorable stories we’ve aired. Today, Producer Phoebe Judge visits the Ganges River, one of the holiest yet most polluted places in India, and meets people who want to clean it up. Also in this show: Arun Gandhi was 10 years old when he was beaten up and bullied because of the color of his skin. He wanted revenge, so his parents sent him to spend time with his grandfather Mahatma Gandhi; and for more than 25 years, few people have been allowed to enter the 1,600-square-mile Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Writer Henry Shukman tells the story of a family who returned there.

For years, Emma Pender and Rita Perry faced harsh conditions and physical injuries working at a chicken processing plant in North Carolina. But the money was too good to pass up living in a town where the jobs were few. Also in this show: When Jenny Brown was laid off from her job in Oregon, she was offered a job as a captain of a river ferry even though she had no experience in boats at all. And while she was happy she found the job, it wasn’t what she was looking for.

Joe Williams was a 20-year-old looking for adventure at Montana’s Glacier National Park when he ran into a grizzly bear and it mauled him. Also in this show: On the weekend when the hurricane hit the shore, Mike Petro was in his home in Gulfport, Miss. He survived the storm by riding on the roofs of houses that were swept away by the storm surge; and when Miriam Novogrodsky was 8, her father decided to take the family on the only vacation it ever had: a three-week hitchhiking trip.

Luci Baines Johnson was 16 when her father Lyndon Johnson was thrust into the presidency. When her family moved to the White House, she was fully aware of the tragic reason for their move. ALSO: Buddy Edgerton, a neighbor of the illustrator Norman Rockwell, tells the story of how Rockwell painted people in their small town into what became the most famous portraits of Americana; and John Hope Franklin, who as a young black man in Oklahoma was turned away from and the military, became one of the most respected chroniclers of African-American history.

Photographer Annie Leibovitz on the project that saved her. She calls it “Pilgrimage.” Also in this show: Robert MacFarlane talks about walking the world's ancient paths; and organizer Laurie Jo Reynolds offered prison inmates in solitary cells to take photos and send them to them. The requests she got were remarkable.

Assaad Chaftari had served as an intelligence official during the Lebanese Civil War. It was years later, when heard his son saying disparaging things about Muslims, that he decided to repent publicly for his actions during war. Also in this show: For more than 50 years, Wally Boot has been working for the Steinway piano company, helping to make the pianos that are shipped to the grandest concert halls in the world; and newly discovered recordings from  musicians Don McLean, Jerry Jeff Walker, Pete Seeger  and others at the tiny coffee house Caffe Lena.

When Sheila Hutton was a seven-year-old girl growing up in England before the war, her parents shipped her away to the U.S. Six years later, when the war had ended and she’d become a teenager, she returned and had only a navy blue head scarf to recognize her mother. Also in this show: When Becky Cullinan’s husband was deployed to war for a third time, she wrote a list of things to not say to the spouse of a soldier; and when the U.S. led an invasion on the island of Grenada in 1983, an American medical student used his ham radio to send dispatches of the conflict to family and reporters.

For years, the writer Wilton Barnhardt avoided living in his home state of North Carolina or writing about it. But in his newest novel, he dives into the ups and downs of a prominent family from Charlotte, N.C. Also in this show: The song writer and banjo player Old Man Luedeke talks about the inspiration he draws from old country and Canada’s northwestern reaches of Yukon province.

Over the last 20 years the rate of students dropping out before graduation has steadily declined. But a stark figure remains: On average, about one million leave every year before graduation. Host Dick Gordon speaks with students and educators about traditional and new ways to help young people succeed. 

Ina May Gaskin, the midwifery pioneer, on natural birth in America. Also in this show: Three daughters and one son tell the stories of growing up with their mothers’ kitchens in this story by the Kitchen Sisters producers, Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson.

When Leo Igwe was a child in Nigeria, he saw his father get beaten for being accused of witchcraft. Igwe has made it his life’s work to help people accused of being witches and visits camps where they take refuge. Also in this show: For the last five years, photographer Murray Ballard has followed the practice of cryogenics and the people who choose to freeze themselves after death in the hopes that technology will allow them to come back to life.

Eight years ago, Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler moved to a brick farmhouse in rural Ohio. Their band Over the Rhine’s latest album is a love letter and an ode to the joys of home. Also in this show: Allen Dorough was cleaning out a barn when he found boxes full of illustrations by a black architect who’d been ahead of his time.

As a young man, Bert Stratton resisted joining his family property rental company. Now that he has two grown sons of his own, he’s trying to convince them that it’s not so bad. Also in this show: Bob Stewart, whose arcade on the Jersey Shore was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy last fall, had just re-opened his business when a massive fire tore through the board walk, burning everything he had rebuilt; and after her parents died, Anya Yurchyshyn cleaned her mother’s house, and what she found completely changed her view of her father, her mother, and their relationship.

Paul Corby is a 23-year old Pennsylvania man in need of a new heart, but he has not been placed on a transplant list. Paul is autistic and doctors have deemed him ineligible for the transplant list. Also in this show: Al Golub, a freelance photographer based near Yosemite National Park, has been photographing the nearby Rim Fire, even as it edges toward his own home; lobster wholesaler Joe Ciaramitaro on a monster lobster and one his workers dubbed the “Phantom of the Lobster;” and Jerry Howland, one of the founding teachers of the live homework help TV show “Extra Help,” on one caller he’ll never forget.