Hi, I'm Dave Ice, founder of StoryCorps.

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My name is David Ned. I never thought in a million years I would be doing what I'm doing right now sitting here with you.

I'm Darius Clark Monroe. I'm talking to this man who was going at gunpoint, and the robbery I was involved in down in Texas.

That robbery happened back in 1997 in Houston.

David was cashing his paycheck when Darius and two of his friends

walked in with a shotgun. It is pretty astonishing that David would sit down and talk to Darius at all, let alone in front of a microphone.

But we've actually heard a number of these seemingly impossible conversations at StoryCorps.

And it's stories like these that inspired our new season.

We're calling it stepping up,

and it features people who made a choice

to confront the conflicts in their own lives head on.

And of course we're all navigating this incredibly divisive election cycle right now.

But no matter what happens, the question remains, how are we going to move forward together?

So in sharing stories from the bravest among us,

maybe we can take their lead and find some hope for the rest of us.

I'm Michael Garofalo.

And I'm Jasmine Morris. It's the StoryCorps Podcast from NPR. When Darius walked into the bank that morning, he was a high school honor student who had never been in serious trouble before.

In fact, he went straight to the bank from his third period algebra 2 class.

...