WASHINGTON, D.C. — Four new public radio stations are now participating in the “One Small Step” initiative from StoryCorps, thanks to a fresh grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
StoryCorps believes its One Small Step project “helps bridge partisan divides through civil conversations.” Now included in the mix of participants are KGNU in Boulder, Colo.; Tri States Public Radio in Macomb, Ill.; WKU in Bowling Green, Ky.; and Dayton-area NPR Member station WYSO-FM in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The four educational noncommercial radio operations will receive training, production support, and professional recording equipment from StoryCorps, enabling them to facilitate and share One Small Step conversations within their communities.
“One Small Step is designed to bring two people with different political beliefs together for a respectful conversation,” said CPB President/CEO Patricia Harrison. “StoryCorps has won the trust of the American people through this inclusive, balanced, and transparent approach.”
Founded in 2003 with support for CPB, StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit “dedicated to helping us believe in each others by illuminating the humanity and possibility in us all, one story at a time.”
Since 2018, CPB’s support has enabled 33 public media stations to participate in StoryCorps’ One Small Step. Piloted in 2017 and nationally launched in 2024, One Small Step “is an effort to remind the country of the humanity in all of us, even those with whom we disagree.”
The initiative brings strangers with different political views together to record a 50-minute conversation—not to debate politics, but to learn who we are as people.
Audio recordings of each interview are archived at the Library of Congress and by StoryCorps.
