The Great Thanksgiving Listen

What Is The Great Thanksgiving Listen?

The Great Thanksgiving Listen is a national movement that empowers young people—and people of all ages—to create an oral history of the contemporary United States by recording an interview with an elder, mentor, friend, or someone they admire using the free StoryCorps App.

Interviews become part of the StoryCorps Archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Since 2015, The Great Thanksgiving Listen has grown from an experimental challenge issued by our founder, Dave Isay, into a vital intergenerational movement. To date, thousands of high schools from all 50 states have participated and preserved more than 100,000 interviews, providing families with a priceless piece of personal history.

Raise Your Hand and Participate

Download the Free StoryCorps App

Before starting a new class, students and teachers make sure they have the right notebooks and pencils. The same is true for anyone who wants to be a part of The Great Listen. You will need access to a smartphone (iPhone or Android) or Kindle tablet and to download the free StoryCorps App to participate.

   

For Teachers & Educators

Each fall, StoryCorps provides a Teacher Toolkit with multimedia resources, lesson plans, and an app guide to support you in bringing this assignment to classrooms, after-school programs, or any context where young people are learning. We hope these multimedia pages and downloadable materials will provide you with an educational framework to support young people as they learn to interview, record, and listen to the stories of their elders.

 
Connect directly with other educators and StoryCorps staff in our StoryCorps in the Classroom Facebook group, and find answers to your technical support questions in our Help Center.

For Individuals

The Great Thanksgiving Listen was developed for high school students to interview an elder and contribute their voices to the Library of Congress, but anyone with a smartphone and an interest in storytelling can participate. We actively encourage people of all ages to download the free StoryCorps App, use it to create your own unique oral history with an elder or loved one in your life, and help transform the holidays into a time of intergenerational sharing.