Mr. Isay canât hear or see them, though, because heâs inside the organizationâs soundproof recording studio in the middle of the square, where thousands of everyday people have talked about their hopes, fears, regrets, triumphs. In here, the lights are low and the temperature is turned up, as if the studio is primed for sharing.  Q. Oral history â thatâs what this is, in a nutshell, right? A. Well, oral historians might not agree, some of them. And to me, it doesnât really matter what you call it. Itâs really an opportunity for two people to have a conversation, like weâre doing now, sitting here in this booth with the help of a trained facilitator, and use the microphone to have a conversation you donât normally get to have. The microphone kind of gives you the license to ask questions you donât normally get to ask.  Out of this simple premise have come about 50,000 stories about love, loss and other fundamentals, creating what Mr. Isay said might be the âlargest single collection of human voices ever gathered.â Some of the stories make it onto NPRâs âMorning Edition,â where the weekly segment has a reputation for making listeners cry.  Somewhat paradoxically, the groupâs own story hasnât often been told, and Mr. Isay and I have come to the booth to do just that, with 40 minutes for questions and answers, as typical participants have.  NPR listeners might be surprised to hear that the nonprofit StoryCorps, now 10 years old, has 100 staff members and an annual budget of almost $10 million. Mr. Isay, 46, once a public-radio documentary producer, is a full-time fund-raiser.  And StoryCorps is increasingly a media outlet of its own, turning othersâ stories into content for its Web site and other mediums. (The group just released its fourth book, âTies That Bind.â) Detractors say the stories are emotionally manipulative, but supporters seem to be far more numerous. One thingâs for sure: Thereâs nothing quite like this in the American media. Itâs an antidote of sorts to an oft-bemoaned media climate that rewards celebrity excess, political extremism and bad behavior. It celebrates normalcy.  While its NPR airtime has given StoryCorps considerable exposure, the recordings are primarily for the participants and the people they wish to share them with, reflecting the notion that the project is, as Mr. Isay puts it, âmore about listening than it is about storytelling.â The act of listening âreminds people that they matter,â he said, somehow managing not to sound trite or overly sentimental.  Q. You must learn a lot from the facilitators?A. Iâve asked, occasionally, âDo any of the interviews not go well?â The ones, the few that donât go well sometimes are politicians.  Q. Involving politicians or about politics?A. No, involving politicians. Because I think theyâre just doing a script. And a script doesnât work.  Among Mr. Isayâs inspirations for StoryCorps were the oral histories collected by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and the work of Studs Terkel, who was present at the projectâs inception and died in 2008. At the ribbon-cutting for the booth in Grand Central Terminal, Mr. Isay recalled Terkelâs saying: âWe know who the architect of Grand Central was. Who laid these floors? Who built these walls?â Terkel told him those were kind of stories he should tell. âWeâve fought like hell in the intervening time to, you know, live up to what he asked us to do,â Mr. Isay added.  Most StoryCorps conversations are between two people who know each other intimately â a grandmother and grandson, say, or a newlywed and her husband in the Army. (Thatâs why some academics question whether StoryCorps is oral history, which traditionally involves interviews by an expert.) These days, there are daunting waiting lists for a 40-minute turn.  The Grand Central booth closed in 2008, the same year the Foley Square one opened. Now there are studios in Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco and a mobile booth that traverses the country. But the Foley Square booth has been mostly shuttered since 2011 due to what StoryCorps calls âfunding challenges.â (The staff unlocked the doors for our conversation.)  StoryCorpsâs principal source of financing has been the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the group that disperses federal money to PBS, NPR and other public media entities. âItâs an initiative that smashes stereotypes,â said Patricia de Stacy Harrison, the corporationâs chief executive.  Other sources of financing include foundations like the MacArthur Foundation, individuals and what StoryCorps calls âcustom services,â which lend staff members and equipment to businesses, libraries and other groups. Those help pay for the harder-to-reach stories, those recorded with prisoners, homeless youths and others on the fringes of society.  While the recordings are archived at the Library of Congress, StoryCorps would like to have them all be accessible online someday, too. Mr. Isay said the organization is focused on âcreating more content and making sure that that content gets out farther.â To that end, the PBS program âPOVâ has broadcast some animated shorts based on the recordings and has a 30-minute special in the works for Thanksgiving, giving the organization a presence on television. But Mr. Isay said he would never allow video cameras in the booths. Audio, he said, is the best medium for capturing emotional moments.  Q. Iâm struck by the fact that you say StoryCorps is still in its beginning stages.A. I think weâre just getting started. I thought of this, first of all, as a 10-year project. So right now weâd be winding it down. And it was about a year into this thing when I began to, I think, fully understand the power of this, like, very, very simple idea and decided to devote the rest of my life to building it into something that I hope eventually in this country kind of moves the needle on getting people to listen to one another.
The founder of StoryCorps, which has recorded more than 50,000 stories by ordinary people, recounts the tale of his organization.