1500 Stories

1500 Stories take a break from the gloom and doom of class and economic inequality in the U.S. to share the stories of people who are twins, in this sweet and entertaining bonus episode written and edited entirely by interns for the project.

This episode is the second of a two-parter about the housing crisis in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area.  It focuses on stories at both end of the housing crisis--home owners and the unhoused.

This episode is the first of a two-parter about the housing crisis in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area.  It explores stories of how expensive it is to live here, how overcrowded housing gets a result, and how the high cost of living makes it difficult to get ahead.

Agrarian realities today look a lot more like industrial realities, thanks to the rise and dominance of commercial agriculture. And like all industrial realities, farmwork is shaped by the indignities of racism and poverty in the U.S.

Those first two episodes in this mini-series about farm work and the agrarian myth asked us to move beyond our images of red barns and silos to understand with more nuance the challenging realities of contemporary farm work, even for Wisconsinites who grew up on family farms.  These next two episodes explore what it means to farm while black or brown, or more precisely what it means to do farm work while black and brown.  Because the stories of Black and Latinx 1500 Stories respondents who grew up doing farm work aren’t stories about family farms.  They are stories about laboring in the fields for commercial agriculture.

This episode looks behind Americans imaginings and stereotypes about rural life--what scholars call the agrarian myth--to see the realities underneath.  The realities of rural life turn out to be a lot more complex than our stereotypes. 

In the first of a four episode mini-series exploring the myths and realities of farm work in the U.S., we go beneath the surface of what social scientists refer to as the agrarian myth to share the more complex experiences of people who spent their formative years working on farms.  

In this third and final episode of a mini-series about middle-classness in the U.S., we explore the curious contradiction that while many Americans prefer to identify as middle class, many also question whether the middle class even exists anymore.  Many view the class system as one in which the middle class has largely disappeared.

In the second episode of a three part mini-series exploring the appeal of “middle-classness” as a label, we hear from ordinary Americans about what middle-classness means to them.  Middle-classness isn’t just a matter of not being poor or not being rich financially; it is about being seen as a certain type of person.

Not Rich Not Poor is the first of a three episode mini-series exploring the appeal of “middle-classness” as a label.  No matter how much money Americans have, many still insist on the label of middle-class.  In the mini-series, we hear from ordinary Americans about what middle-classness means to them.  This episode focuses on the economic reasons why people prefer to see themselves as middle class.

The 1500 Stories podcast cracks open the uncomfortable subjects of money and economic class.  1500 Stories is an art and digital storytelling project about economic inequality in the United States and its host, Jen Myhre, is an artist and sociologist.  Since she founded the project back in 2015, over 700 Americans, people living in very different economic situations, have opened up to the project about their lives.    In each episode, we’ll hear people share openly about things Americans avoid talking about--things like money, and debt, their economic struggles, their worries and their hopes for the future.  AND something Americans DEFINITELY don’t like to talk or think about--economic class.  If you want a peek inside the kinds of experiences people usually don’t share in polite conversation, listen to 1500 Stories. No matter where we fall on the economic ladder, everyone has a story.