This week: stories from people who dare to do things and go places few others would – from people who helped pave the way to outer space, to divers exploring ocean depths.
Leave us a voicemail at 702-706-TALK, or email us at [email protected].
Released August 12, 2025.
MJ: Hey, folks— This is Max Jungreis, from the StoryCorps Podcast.
Just wanna remind you that you can tell us your personal stories by calling our voicemail at 702 – 706- TALK. This week, we want you to tell us about a time you dared to do something no one else would? That’s 702 – 706- T-A-L-K.]
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JM: It’s the StoryCorps Podcast from NPR… I’m Jasmyn Morris.
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Voice 1: I actually never met your dad, my grandfather. What was he like?
Voice 2: Tell me a little bit about your children…
Voice 3: (Laughs)
Voice 4: What was your first impression when you came to America?
Every episode, we’re drawing on our archive – the largest collection of human voices ever recorded… to find the big moments hidden in ordinary lives.
And today….we’re bringing you the voices of adventurers and explorers… people who dared to go where few others would…
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Up first… Alton Yates.
His first job wasn’t bagging groceries, or delivering pizzas… he helped send humans into space.
In the mid-1950s, Alton was part of a small group of volunteers in the Air Force who tested the effects of high speeds on the body. They were strapped to rocket-propelled sleds that shot down a track at more than 600 miles-per-hour. These experiments helped prove that space travel was safe for humans.
At StoryCorps, Alton told his daughter Toni how it all started for him in high school… shortly after his mother died.
Alton Yates (AY): My dad was trying to raise the seven of us by himself. And I knew that as soon as I finished high school I was going to have to help with taking care of the family.
Toni Yates (TY): How did you know he needed your help?
AY: Well he came home from work, he had a little machine that he used to roll cigarettes, and he roasted peanuts and he put them in little bags. And then he left home immediately to sell those products. And I just couldn’t stand to see him continue to do that.
There weren’t any good paying jobs just out of high school so I decided to join the Air Force. And the call had gone out for volunteers to determine the effects of space travel on the human body. So I became one of the human guinea pigs who rode high speed rocket sleds.
TY: How old were you when you did the first test?
AY: I was 19. When the sled took off, it was almost as if everything in your body was being forced out through your back. And then when it stopped, it was like driving an automobile at a hundred miles an hour and running into a stone wall.
TY: But yet you did that 65 times?
AY: I did it more than 65 times. And let me tell you, there was something about the group of volunteers. I remember one, when they took him off the sled he was like a dishrag. The rest of us saw what happened to him but we were anxious to get strapped in to that seat to conduct the next experiment.
Uh, we went up to Johnsville, Pennsylvania. They had a huge centrifuge up there. We rode that thing at high speeds. And, you had your hand on a little trigger, and the minute you started to black out, your hand would come off the trigger and that would stop the centrifuge.
TY: Did your dad know what you were doing? (Laughs)
AY: He didn’t know initially, but Ebony magazine published an article that showed pictures of some of these rocket sleds that I had been riding. When my dad got a copy of that magazine, he took that thing everywhere he went. And I think to make my father proud of me was something that I’ve always wanted to do. And I was able to do that before he passed away.
TY: The day that man went into space, what was that like for you?
AY: I felt a warmth that came over my body when I heard the countdown. And even to this day, every time there’s a liftoff, I think a little piece of me lifts off with each of those missions.
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JM: That’s Alton Yates with his daughter, Toni, in Jacksonville, Florida.
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Next up…. another conversation from someone who’s helped us venture into space…
Loay Elbasyouni is a Palestinian American who grew up in Gaza…
He’s an engineer… who is part of the team that designed NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter – the first aircraft to fly on another planet.
In 2021, he recorded a StoryCorps Virtual interview with his brother Heissam to remember their childhood… and the day the helicopter first took flight…
TRT: 1:24
Loay Elbasyouni (LO): I was at home watching the live feed on the NASA TV. And then they said, “Lift off, three feet. Five feet.” It worked. It flew. We made history.
I feel like I’m part of the Wright Brother team, like, who flew the first time on Earth. Maybe I always was an engineer. You remember our uncle, he’d be like, “Oh I think you should study engineering.” Cause I fixed his radio. Do you remember, like, we created our own TV?
Heissam Elbasyouni (HO): Yeah, yeah right.
LE: I plug in the Atari into the antenna backwards and then start broadcasting the Atari game over channel three. And then everybody in the neighborhood started watching us playing Atari. [Laughs] Trial and error gets you a long way.
HE: What was the hardest thing to get used to when, uh, you moved to the United States?
LE: Hmmm, not seeing family. It was really difficult, you know? To be all separated. I guess we never predicted that we cannot go back. But then the situation got really bad back home. Hell, I mean, it’s been 21 years now.
It’s easier to go to Mars than go to Gaza. ‘Cause going to Mars you can calculate everything. It’s all based on science and knowledge. Where going to Gaza, like, the border is always closed, you couldn’t get out. And sometimes I don’t understand why things are the way they are. Why would it be so hard?
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JM: That reality came to a head in 2023 when their elderly parents, who lived in Gaza City, were trapped by the war. But one year later…. Loay was able to arrange their evacuation out of the country.
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After the break…
Two women come to StoryCorps to talk about diving… not for treasure… but for trash…
Susan Baur (SB): We’d found a toilet and that thing was just stuck in the mud. But you brute-force lifted that sucker off the pond floor.
Marci Johnson (MJ): [laughs]
JM: Stay with us…
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JM: Our next conversation comes from Marci Johnson and Susan Baur who live on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
In 2022 Marci was at a low point. She was in her early 70s… and felt like she’d kinda lost her purpose in life.
Susan leads a group called Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage. They dive into Cape Cod’s cold waters to clean them up by hand.
When Marci heard the group was holding tryouts… she dove straight in.
MJ: I had tried other volunteer things: stuffing envelopes and planting trees, picking up trash on the side of the road… None of them gave me that sense of adventure.
So that day, I was so nervous, I didn’t want to be late, make a good impression.
SB: You got out of the car and in your arms was the biggest Tupperware thing of cookies I had ever seen.
MJ: Outright bribery [laughs].
SB: I loved it. And I thought, even if I have to tow this woman for half a mile, she is going to make it.
What I really was responding to was your absolutely quiet determination. And, that came through on the toilet dive.
We had found a toilet and that thing was just stuck in the mud.
But you brute-force lifted that sucker off the pond floor.
MJ: [laughs]
SB: And that was it.
MJ: One of my first swims, you beckoned me over, and this turtle comes out of nowhere and landed on your hand. It was so magical to see that.
It’s a feeling of actually belonging.
SB: Yeah. It’s as if you’re a leaf who suddenly discovers that you’re part of a mighty tree.
MJ: Yeah. Also, to have the people around me meant a huge amount. My life was a little chaotic back then, I had just lost my husband. And a year later developed breast cancer.
When grief happens and you lose someone, I was under that misconception you get over it.
SB: Yeah, no.
MJ: And you don’t. So you have to just find something else and get back into life.
SB: Yeah.
MJ: Which this group, and you as a friend, helped me do.
SB: Good.
MJ: You know, as I aged, I’ve had the feeling of being invisible.
And that’s a hard concept for someone who’s younger than we are to understand.
SB: Oh, amen.
MJ: When you get to be in your 60s, 70s, 80s, you just kind of fade into the background. [chuckle] But with the work that we’re doing — I’m not in the background anymore [laughs].
SB: Right, right, right. I’m not fading into the sunset, I’m actually growing stronger.
MJ: Absolutely.
SB: What are your hopes for the future? And you need to say that we’re gonna be friends forever because that better be one of your hopes. Just saying.
MJ: That’s definitely one of my plans, definitely.
SB: Good.
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JM: Susan Baur and Marci Johnson in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Together they’ve been on over 30 dives… and retrieved hundreds of pounds of garbage.
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So it says something about how big the StoryCorps archive is that we’ve actually got another story for you about divers…
Albert José Jones was in college when he founded the first Black scuba diving club in the country. That was in 1959… and since then the club has trained thousands of people.
Albert’s in his 90s now, and he’s dived all over the world.
He came to StoryCorps with his fellow diver and friend Jay Haigler [HAY-gluhr]…
Albert Jones (AJ): The last thing I wanted to do was start a club and be responsible for a whole lot of people going diving. Once people found out what we were doing, they thought we were crazy. But I almost had to do it. All the rest of the aspiring Black divers out there, how are they going to learn?
Jay Haigler (JH): Now Dr. Jones, I remember my first dive. I looked around the boat on the horizon and I did not see one piece of land. I thought, oh my God, we are in the middle of the ocean. And I am about to step out of a perfectly good boat. And when we got near the bottom, I saw all this marine life. Turtles, blacktip reef sharks, barracudas.
Right at that moment, I just knew that there was a higher being. And I do remember that when I got back up, I could not wait to get back down.
AJ: Divers are always looking for another place to go diving. No matter, no matter how many places they’ve been, they want to go someplace else. I’ve made over 6,000 dives in 50 something countries.
But of all the dives I’ve been on, if I had to pick the hardest one, it would be diving the slave ship, … As soon as we hit the bottom, we found shackles, muskets, swords, you name it.
JH: How did you feel when you went down there?
AJ: You feel like you’re touching the souls of your ancestors.
You feel like they’re down there with you. Every diver on that boat could have had somebody on that ship.
JH: Mobile Bay, Alabama. I happened to be one of two African Americans to dive on this slave ship. Clotilda…the only slave ship that is intact.
But the cargo hold, the area where the 110 enslaved Africans were, was less than 500 square feet. And diving in that cargo hold of ancestors, that still resonates in my heart and in my soul.
AJ: And we always make sure that we honor those people. It’s not just swimming around looking at fish. You’re swimming around looking at history.
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JM: Albert Jones and Jay Haigler for StoryCorps in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Albert’s diving club has trained more than 3,000 divers… and celebrated its 65th anniversary just this past year.
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JM: That’s all for this episode.
Don’t forget to give us a call and leave us your story on our voicemail line. Our question for this week is: Tell us about a time you dared to do something no one else would….
Give us that story in a voicemail at 702-706-TALK. That’s 702-706-T-A-L-K.
This week’s stories were produced by Jud Esty-Kendall, Michael Garofalo, Jey Born, Kayla Lattimore, and Jo Corona.
They were edited by Amy Drozdowska, Von Diaz, and Annie Russell. Fact checking by Trinity Jackson, Rachel Goldman and Sajina Shrestha.
This podcast is produced by Max Jungreis. Jud Esty-Kendall is our Senior Producer. Our Technical Director is Jarrett Floyd. And our Executive Producer is Amy Drozdowska. The art for this episode is created by Liz McCarty.
I’m Jasmyn Morris. Thanks for listening…
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As a college student, Sean Carter was in a car crash and sustained a traumatic brain injury. His mother, Jenny, became his full-time caregiver. In three recordings over ten years, Sean— with his mother and his twin brother, Todd— reflected on making peace with the sudden turn in their lives, and the prospect of an uncertain future.
