Talking Documentary Podcast

<p>Morgan Elliott is a documentary filmmaker and long-time resident of New York’s “North Country.” Going back to his childhood, Elliott had heard the story of Potsdam’s famous toilet garden, a self-styled protest by a...

<p>The Book Keepers tells the story of Phil Wall’s mother, Carol, a gifted writer who dreamed of becoming a published author and who finally achieved her goal … just as her long battle with breast cancer took a turn for...

<p>Some 20 years ago, New York filmmaker Zachary Levy went looking for a story that would become his first documentary feature film. He wound up finding the personality of a lifetime in Stanley Pleskun, a New Jersey...

<p>Ten years ago, Shaleece Haas stumbled upon a musician whose lyrics captured her attention ... and then her imagination. Turns out the musician, Bennett Wallace, had a story to go along with his music. It was a story...

<p>Robert Greene is an award-winning filmmaker who directed the highly regarded Netflix documentary, "Procession." But at the dawn of the 2010s, Greene was only beginning to refine his voice and vision as a filmmaker...

<p>Drew Xanthopolous was a young, unestablished filmmaker when he came across a New York Times photo essay that would launch his career—as well as change the next five years of his life. The essay documented the lives...

<p>In the United States, stray dogs are not allowed to live on the street. They are whisked away to live in concrete cells. The approach is very different in some cities in Europe and Asia, where stray dogs are allowed...

Justin Schein is a veteran filmmaker who has worked with scores of documentary subjects, but nothing could prepare him for an aging yippee named Mayer Vishner. Schein thought he was making a documentary about Vishner’s...

Joe Brandmeier was an average married guy who accepted the ups and downs of being coupled. But then a particularly tough patch in his marriage prompted him to think more deeply about the institution. Brandmeier became...

Hollywood photographer Pamela Littky was overtaken by a nagging curiosity ... what happens, she wondered, to the thousands of kids named Most Likely to Succeed in high schools all across America? Littky embarked on her...

Jesse Alk's father, Howard, was a documentarian who died when Jesse was a child. Decades later, Jesse wound up retracing his father's footsteps to Kolkata, India, where Howard had documented West Bengali musicians in...

Dani Connor Wild was volunteering for a wildlife photographer in northern Sweden when the Covid pandemic descended and locked her in place. For the next six months she lived alone in a town of 20 mostly elderly...

<p>In 1996, Michael Lucid was a senior at the Crossroads school in Santa Monica, California. He noticed a social phenomenon that had the school buzzing and wanted to know more. So he grabbed a camcorder and began...

<p>In 1982, three young men from Allentown, Pa., climbed aboard a billboard in a competition to win an $18,000 mobile home. Times were tough, owning a home was an inaccessible dream, and the three competitors were...

<p>The internet is awash in what are known as "Bill Murray stories." Murray crashing a bachelor party. Bill Murray joining a random kickball game. Bill Murray washing a stranger's dishes. Tommy Avallone traveled to two...