This is just about the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. Newsweek reports on a new initiative spearheaded by David Isay of Sound Portraits called StoryCorps. The plan is to put up "StoryBooths" in public places, where participants work with facilitators to record their oral histories. When they're done, the participants get a copy on CD, and so does StoryCorps. Ultimately they also plan to distribute StoryKits for home recording. In the end they hope to build a giant audio archive of American stories.