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Interviews, 50 cents

This has nothing to do with a rapper or the decline of Western journalism. It's the name of the latest project from NPR's Alex Chadwick. The tagline is: "Interviews come along all the time. All you have to do is wait."

Alex has been traveling the country, setting up a little booth with a sign that says "Interviews, 50 cents." It's kind of like Lucy's 5 cent psychiatric service for Charlie Brown, but Alex isn't charging, he's paying people two quarters to tell a story. I stumbled across the website the other day and started watching one or two. Soon, I couldn't stop. I love to hear people's stories.

You can find all the stories on Slate (there are 46 so far) but here are a couple of the most recent ones...

An Algerian man sits down at Alex's table in Venice Beach, California and tells Alex he just walked to Venice Beach... from New York. He started the trip with $217 and a backpack:

In Telluride, Colorado, Alex talks to a real Pinball Wizard. He told me something I didn't know. There's only pinball company left, Stern Pinball in Illinois:

This episode is a "guy walks into a bar" story. It's a pretty good one:

About the author

David Spalding's picture
David Spalding - Jul 13, 2009

Okay, so here's my story. Slate's Flash Player plugin (here and on their site) plays a 3 second preroll showing "Slate video, ooh, neat-o, here it comes," then abruptly STOPS on Firefox for Linux. Tried with 5 video stories.

Fail. "Cash value 1/20th of 1 cent," as they say.

Oh, well, guess I'll stick with NPR and PBS sites.

nyet's picture
nyet - Jul 10, 2009

Thank you very much for letting me know abt Chadwick (ex NPR D2D) - I am a big fan.

Alex Chadwick's picture
Alex Chadwick - Jul 17, 2009

Scott - Thanks for the review. We have more to come, and maybe I can get you to sit down for a story one day.
I miss you on the radio, but am glad to find you here on the net.
- Alex