One Year

On May 16, 1986, a man with a bomb held an entire elementary school hostage in the tiny town of Cokeville, Wyoming. Instead of becoming victims of unimaginable tragedy, all of the hostages in this pre...

22 Sep 20221h 2min

In Seattle, a pack of voracious sea lions decimates the local fish population. When fireworks and an underwater air horn don’t scare away the whisker-y mammals, bureaucrats and scientists are faced wi...

15 Sep 202246min

Black residents of Indianola, Mississippi, were fed up with decades of separate-and-unequal classrooms. When a white outsider got hired as school superintendent, they decided to take a stand. This wee...

8 Sep 202254min

Rumors about the legendary gangster Al Capone’s buried treasure transform an abandoned Chicago hotel into the center of the entertainment universe. Will Geraldo Rivera’s excavation on live TV turn up ...

1 Sep 202258min

This week, Evan Chung tells the story of the American teachers who competed for an unprecedented prize: a spot on the January 1986 launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Three of the finalists descri...

25 Aug 202255min

Basketball star Isiah Thomas had an audacious plan to transform Detroit: asking criminals to stay on the good side of the law for 24 hours. Would “No Crime Day” set the city on a new path, or was it a...

18 Aug 202251min

Coming Thursday, August 18th: The new season of One Year covers 1986, a year of swaggering excess on Wall Street and in cineplexes, but also hardship and deprivation in cities all over the U.S. You’ll...

11 Aug 20222min

This is a reprise of the first episode of our season on 1977.Miami, 1977: Pop singer and orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant takes a stand against a local ordinance—and becomes the leader of a natio...

16 Apr 20221h 1min