New Year

Stories that reflect back on 1995. Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks about recently released archival television interviews with the Beatles, who suddenly seem a little less magic — and a lot more pedestrian (4 minutes). Act One: Eighteen-year-old Claudia Perez takes Ira on a tour of her Chicago neighborhood and looks at what 1995 was like for her community. (18 minutes) Act Two: Ira talks with Karen Hutt, Director of Religious Education for the First Unitarian Church of Chicago, who one Sunday gave a sermon at the church about her experience as the first black child to integrate the Philadelphia public school system. The sermon inspired a project: Hutt, along with Laura Finnegan, collected an oral history of the experiences of African American members of the congregation about their own experiences as the "first" integrators of their neighborhoods or organizations. (31 minutes) Act Three: Claudia Perez returns to talk about her year from a more personal perspective. (7 minutes)