The Telling Takes Us Home - A Celebration of American Family Stories

The Telling Takes Us Home - A Celebration of American Family Stories

Master storyteller, fiddler, and public radio journalist/producer Joe McHugh has been on a quest to record people from all walks of life telling their family stories—the kind of stories that get passed down from one generation to the next that tell us who we are and where we come from with an authenticity and passion often lacking in books.

Episodes

June 29, 2024 48 mins

Episode 8 begins with host Joe McHugh explaining how fate played a role in deciding which stories would be featured in each episode of The Telling Takes Us Home and ends with a lively recitation by an Irish poet of the classic poem The Wreck of the Hesperus by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In between there are stories about learning a life lesson from a brother thanks to a boxing match, a mother's ESP, a father saved by an enemy sold...

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Episode 7 of the Telling Takes Us Home begins with a visit to Omaha, Nebraska, and a story told by a former organizer for the Meat Packers Union. A superior court judge from California then provides a portrait of a tough grandfather and his conflict with organized labor in Chicago. Next come stories about how a prayer resulted in a miracle cure, an ill-fated baptism in the hill country of eastern Kentucky, an Irish mother's special...

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June 14, 2024 41 mins

Episode 6 of The Telling Takes Us Home begins with a story about a dentist who is called upon to perform surgery following the shoot-out at Wounded Knee in 1973. This is followed by stories about the early days of aviation, the Buck Rogers comic strip and subsequent popular radio show, author Lee Smith talking about her eccentric uncle who was a gifted musician with a drinking problem, a fire-and-brimstone preacher who puts his lif...

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June 9, 2024 44 mins

Episode 5 begins with a story about a miraculous airplane accident. It is followed by memories of a storytelling grandmother, how a young girl found the courage to face a mean neighbor to save her flock of pet turkeys, an Irish conman who decides to sell his circus and go into the Christian revival business, a recollection of how a mother received a special gift, a pair of stories about the early days of radio, and a noted Scottish...

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June 2, 2024 41 mins

Episode 4 brings us a story about a wartime courtship close to the front lines, how a book and the manager of movie theaters in Utah got rid of a restriction based on racism, how a songwriter was inspired to write a song about a near-death experience, an Depression-era farmer with far too many chickens, memories of how a family reacted to a news broadcast on December 7, 1941, a judge who went out of his way to help the poor, and tw...

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May 26, 2024 46 mins

This episode features stories about a young boy saved by his grandfather from a sinking boat, how a bunch of campers discovered a trio of secret lakes teeming with trout, a young mother winning a trunk full of books and a young girl finding a bookcase full of books, a practical joke played on a father working at a car dealership, the man who invented the snowmobile and fell in love inside a rollerskating rink, a mother who won't ta...

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Episode 2 of The Telling Takes Us Home podcast series features stories about a fortune teller and the wife of a bronco rider, how fate protected a mother and child traveling from Russia to America, how a fire changed a man's racial attitudes, a hairdresser who served as a therapist, how a woman saved the family horse during the Civil War, how a WWII pilot refused to miss his own wedding, how a brother thought he killed his sister, ...

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This first episode of our new podcast series celebrating family stories features stories about a prank pulled on a grandfather in Ireland, a husband's efforts to save his wife's life while interned in a camp for Japanese-Americans during WWII, an Italian-American woman marvels at photos in her granddaughter's college yearbook, men and women who pitch in to help in the aftermath of the Johnstown Flood, opera day and a cleaning woman...

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