Accessibility links
Interviews NPR interviews famous and everyday individuals, including world leaders and political figures, artists, writers, musicians, and unique people in your community.

Interviews

Lost & Found Sound

Lost and Found Sound Finale

Quest For Sound Curator Jay Allison brings down the curtain on our year-long series, Lost and Found Sound, by playing examples of some of the listener calls that came in this year answering our plea for hidden audio artifacts. He laments that we never heard the talking seal, but then plays a short example. Allison takes us on a walk through the various kinds of sounds we learned about: ancestors passing messages to their descendants, voices of youth returning on record in old age, and many more. And, we hear the sound that initiated the series: a mysterious record made to a World War Two solider by his lover or wife back home.

Lost and Found Sound Finale

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Lost & Found Sound

Obsessed With TV Sound

Our year-long series visits a man obsessed with the sound of TV. Phil Gries started recording audio from his television set in the 1950s. He still has over 10-thousand items, and has turned his hobby into a business -- supplying audio from old TV shows to other collectors and museums. He says he was motivated by the ethereal nature of live TV to preserve broadcasts of all sorts.

Obsessed With TV Sound

Audio will be available later today.

Lost & Found Sound

Lost & Found Sound: The Man Who Loves Sound

Eighty-five-year-old Don Hunter plays us a few of his acoustic "trophies" from a lifetime of recording the sounds of his Pacific Northwest. The Eugene, Oregon man has been making stereo recordings of his region since the late 1950s -- and has been interested in sound since he was a boy. We hear a "planer," fog horns and a Douglas Fir being cut down.

Lost & Found Sound: The Man Who Loves Sound

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Lost & Found Sound

Lost And Found Sound: Restoration

In another installment of our year-long series, "Lost and Found Sound," Quest for Sound Curator Jay Allison takes us behind the scenes, to hear old recordings sent to us by listeners. We learn of the difficulties of finding equipment to play some rare audio formats, and how an expert, Steve Smolian, takes a defective item and tries to extract sounds from it. We hear some home recordings by relatives of listeners who have since passed away. Smolian warns laypeople against trying to listen to old formatted items themselves, for fear the original will be destroyed.

Lost And Found Sound: Restoration

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Veterans Day

Vet Recalls Christmas During Battle of the Bulge

Tom Chapman was in the trenches with the 101st Airborne Division, in the midst of the Battle of the Bulge. He says the Germans had captured the U.S. supply trucks, so he and his fellow soldiers had no coats, no gloves, no blankets, just their regular uniforms.

Vet Recalls Christmas During Battle of the Bulge

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/5009485/5009486" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">