What It’s Like to Be…a Correctional Officer
Grinding through 16-hour shifts, standing behind inmates (never in front), and trying to stay human in an inhuman environment with Bill Farrell, a correctional officer in Massachusetts.
What It's Like to Be...
Latest Stories
What It’s Like to Be…a Custom Harvester
Harvesting five million bushels of wheat and corn from Texas to Montana, outrunning hailstorms that decimate a year’s income in 20 minutes, and running a multimillion-dollar convoy of equipment down the highway with Josh Beckley, a third-generation custom harvester from Kansas.
What It’s Like to Be…a Funeral Director
Guiding grieving families through arrangement meetings, orchestrating meaningful memorial services within days, and preparing bodies for viewing with Heather Hill, a funeral director in North Carolina.
Older Stories
What It’s Like to Be…an Aerospace Engineer
Landing the Perseverance rover on Mars, working in clean rooms to minimize the microbial bug count, and slogging through hundreds of engineering trade-offs with Swati Mohan, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
What It’s Like to Be…a Diplomat
Defusing a crisis after an ambassador hinted at a preemptive strike on Russia, delivering demarches in multiple languages, and surviving the frantic evacuation of the Kabul embassy with John Johnson, a retired diplomat who spent more than twenty years in the US Foreign Service.
What It’s Like to Be…a Lineman
Wiring a neighborhood back to life after a tornado, coveting the work of helicopter linemen in Faraday suits, and surviving the collapse of a rotten utility pole with Elden Rivas, a journeyman lineman in Houston, Texas.
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