On today’s show, we’re talking about One Small Step — a project run by StoryCorps that WHQR participated in along with a small number of other public media stations.
For those who don’t know, StoryCorps was founded in 2003. By 2005, they were traveling across the United States in their iconic silver Airstream trailer and recording intimate conversations to be archived in the Library of Congress.
A few years ago, StoryCorps launched a new program called One Small Step. Here’s the elevator pitch: the project brings together two people, total strangers, from very different political backgrounds for an hour-long conversation — not a debate, but a chance to get past the political divisiveness and hear each other as people.
For several months, WHQR recruited potential participants, screening nearly two hundred people and ultimately arranging 25 conversations where we served as what’s called facilitators. We weren’t interviewing people, we were just there to help steer the conversation along — although, to our surprise, a lot of the time once people started talking, they needed no help from us.
On today’s show, we’ll be joined by WHQR reporter Rachel Keith and development director Mary Bradley, who made up the core team for WHQR's One Small Step project, to dig into what we learned as observers from these conversations. And just a quick note here, throughout the show we’ll be playing clips from our One Small Step conversations and referring to the participants by their first names. And, yes, you might recognize a few public figures — or maybe your own friends or neighbors!
