Every neighborhood has one—that house where people gather, where stories unfold, where the past comes alive through the voices of those who lived it. This is that porch. Pull up a chair.
Front Porch Stories preserves the voices, memories, and lived experiences of eras that risk disappearing into silence. We believe that history isn’t just written in textbooks by distant authorities—it’s carried in the memories of ordinary people who witnessed extraordinary times, who survived forgotten struggles, who built communities that shaped the world we inherited.
This is oral history as it was meant to be: intimate, unfiltered, and deeply human.
What We Do
We sit down with people whose stories deserve to be heard. The factory worker who remembers when entire towns revolved around a single industry. The activist who fought battles that never made headlines. The immigrant who rebuilt a life in a new land. The artist who created in the margins. The elder who watched their neighborhood transform beyond recognition.
These conversations aren’t interviews—they’re acts of witness. We create space for people to speak their truth, share their memories, and pass their wisdom forward before time takes these stories with them.
Why It Matters
Every generation believes the present moment is the only one that counts. But we are shaped by what came before us, whether we know those stories or not. The labor movements of the 1930s. The migrations of the 1950s. The cultural revolutions of the 1970s. The technological disruptions of the 1990s. These aren’t abstract history—they’re the foundation we stand on.
When we lose these voices, we lose context. We lose perspective. We lose the knowledge that people have survived hard things before, that change is constant, that resilience is real.
Front Porch Stories is an archive against forgetting.
How to Listen
We’re launching as a podcast, with new episodes featuring long-form conversations with people whose lived experience illuminates forgotten or overlooked eras of recent history. Eventually, we’ll expand into a digital magazine format, offering transcripts, photographs, and supplementary historical context.
This isn’t entertainment. This is preservation. This is memory made tangible.
Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and join us on the front porch.
About the Project
Front Porch Stories was originally created for public radio and is now being revived as an independent oral history initiative. Our mission is simple: capture voices before they’re gone, honor stories before they’re forgotten, and build an archive that future generations can learn from.
If you have a story to share—or know someone who does—we want to hear from you.
FRONT PORCH STORIES 