The Story

Derrick Durr was laid off as one of Chicago’s violence interrupters earlier this year. He continues to do the work, without a paycheck. Recently, he coordinated a dinner for sixty young men in his neighborhood, many of them rivals.

When Jacques Vroom heard late in the 1980s that American Airlines was selling life-time passes for unlimited first-class travel, he bought one for his company.  What began was 20 years of constant travel around the world.

The recession has not been kind to American children. Recent census figures say that one of every seven Americans is living in poverty, and that children are feeling the worst of that, particularly African American and other minority kids living in cities. Ten-year-old Diane Burley has been living in a hotel room for the past four months. It’s a single room and she’s there with her mother Melissa and her siblings Elijah, Natasha, Jaylin and Davion. Melissa says she can get the family back on their feet. All she needs is a job. Also: a listener's scary story of finding a man living in her attic.

Monica Downer is a rower. She thought she was headed to the Olympics at Beijing. But just as she would get close to reaching her goal, her body seemed to give out on her. After years of misdiagnoses, she was finally informed that she had Lyme disease