Long Haul: Public Radio Documentaries to Go!

Community Anthology_Voices of Three Oaks by Long Haul Productions

GOC Prime Time INTRO_CREDITS_9_8 by Long Haul Productions

Katie Michelle Edwards longish by Long Haul Productions

Emily Christensen long 5_22 by Long Haul Productions

Scotty Tribute Excerpt 2 by Long Haul Productions

Scotty Tribute Excerpt 3 by Long Haul Productions

Poo Poo in the Potty by Long Haul Productions

The story you’re about to hear is, at its heart, is a love story — between two artists, and a whole lot of dogs. It’s also the story of what it means to follow a dream — and the difficulties that can bring. Producers Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister have the story of Vermont artists Stephen and Gwen Huneck, and their life’s work: a place called Dog Mountain. As you listen, tour Dog Mountain in a...

A young Marine comes home after his first tour of duty in Afghanistan. His parents tell his story.

The Ivory Billed Woodpecker was thought to be extinct – until recently, when a bird was allegedly spotted near the small town of Brinkley, Arkansas. The sightings were big news in a community depressed by recession and population loss. Our story weaves the locals' reaction with an original song written and performed by musician Sufjan Stevens. Winner of the Sigma Delta Chi award for best national...

For the past 60 years, people in northwest Tennessee have tuned each weekday at noon to a radio program on WENK/WTPR called The Swap Shop. For twenty minutes, listeners call or write offering to buy, sell or trade an item or a service in a radio version of the classified ads, things which range from a piece of used plywood, to a green cloth Berkline recliner, to a ten-acre farm. Long Haul sent Nas...

It's been 71 years since the "strike heard round the world" - when autoworkers in Flint, Michigan, occupied a General Motors plant and and jumpstarted the union movement in the United States. But in recent years, as the power of unions in the US has wained, sit-down strikes have been more common in Latin America, Europe, and even Canada. Things finally changed last December when immigrant Latino,...

Since the 1930s, delighted throngs have gathered just outside Linesville, Pennsylvania, to toss bread to a writhing stew of carp and ducks at the Linesville Spillway. The carp are so thick that mallard ducks literally hop, skip and jump on the fishes' backs to compete for a slice of bread. Famous worldwide as the place “where ducks walk on the fish,” the Spillway draws as many as a half-million to...

The small town of Baudette, Minnesota, sits on the U.S./Canadian border, about as far north in the contiguous U.S. as you can get. Famous for snowy winters and a giant concrete walleye that sits downtown, it's also home to a now-decommissioned Coast Guard navigational beacon, a LORAN tower built to guide people across and around the Great Lakes. The Tower is a Baudette landmark, rising hundreds of...

Faulkner County, Arkansas, has a whole lotta shakin' going on these days. Some of it is from the cash infusion brought on by the gold-rush like influx of natural gas fracking in the community, with over 3,000 new wells drilled in the area since the mid 2000s. But even more is due a mysterious wave of thousands of small earthquakes that have rattled the towns of Guy and Greenbrier since September,...

Written and performed by Bonnie "Prince" Billy in 2011 for "The Natural State," a Long Haul Song+Story.

A week in the life of a woman trying to leave her physically-abusive husband. The documentary begins three days after Anna's estranged husband has threatened to kill her and their baby at gunpoint. Anna keeps an audio journal of her attempt to have her husband, who she says beat her repeatedly before they separated, arrested. She tells of her frustration with the police and legal system and of her...

The story of two chronically mentally ill, homeless repeat offenders as they attempt to break the cycle that, for years, has spun them from jail to psychiatric hospitals to the streets and back to jail again. The documentary is a follow-up to "A Danger to Self or Others," which profiles the mental health division at Chicago's Cook County Jail. "Life on the Outside" tells the story of Colbert, begi...

In November 1995, journalist Rebecca Perl was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. She learned had a tumor in her chest, six months after giving birth to a baby boy. Months of chemotherapy and radiation proved unsuccessful, leaving only one treatment possibility: a lethal dose of chemotherapy followed by a life-saving bone marrow transplant. This award-winning documentary follows her through the...

"A Danger to Self or Others" portrays everyday life inside Cook County Jail's Mental Health Division - the largest provider of mental health services in the United States. On any given day, there are 10,000 men and women held inside the Chicago jail, the largest of its kind in the United States. An estimated 10%, or 1,000, are suffering from some form of mental illness. In many cases, it's the fir...

"Learning to Live: James' Story" is the story of an ex-felon's transition from prison to the free world. James, who narrates, is 38 and has been in and out of prison all his adult life. After completing a seven-year prison term for burglary, James comes to live at St. Leonard's halfway house for ex-offenders on Chicago's west side. Over three months, James goes through a rigorous education process...

"When All Else Fails" is a first-person account of a man undergoing electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), formerly known as electroshock. Rob MacGruder tells of his lifelong battle with bipolar disorder and how ECT has repeatedly saved his life. The story follows MacGruder for almost a year as he falls into a severe depression, undergoes a series of ECT treatments and gradually recovers. During that ti...

The House of Pain was the gang name for a ten-story high-rise at Stateway Gardens, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) development that once sat across from U.S. Cellular Field (a.k.a. Comiskey Park) on Chicago's South Side. The building was demolished as part of an ambitious initiative to replace Chicago's notorious public housing high rises with mixed-income communities. Here, in the first of a...

In the fall of 2002, Catherine Means was living on the tenth floor of what she describes as "hell" -- Chicago's Stateway Gardens high-rise housing project. In September, she finally got out from under the "bricks" at Stateway and into her first private-market apartment. Her move was one that thousands of public housing residents are making, as the Chicago Housing Authority systematically demolishe...

Right now in Chicago, thousands of public housing residents are being forced to move as the Chicago Housing Authority systematically demolishes their notorious high-rise apartment buildings and plans to replace them with mixed-income developments. Since the redeveloped housing won't be available in most cases for several years, many families find themselves looking for an apartment in the private...