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Radio Diaries

202 episodes - English - Latest episode: 7 days ago - ★★★★★ - 1.2K ratings

First-person diaries, sound portraits, and hidden chapters of history from Peabody Award-winning producer Joe Richman and the Radio Diaries team. From teenagers to octogenarians, prisoners to prison guards, bra saleswomen to lighthouse keepers. The extraordinary stories of ordinary life. Radio Diaries is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm

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Episodes

My Iron Lung (Revisited)

March 21, 2024 19:50 - 16 minutes - 33.1 MB

Paul Alexander, one of two people in the U.S. still relying on an iron lung to survive, died on March 11, 2024 at the age of 78. Paul contracted polio in 1952 at six years old, and has had to rely on an iron lung — a big metal ventilator that encases the body from the neck to toes — since then. We spoke to Paul a few years ago about his life and the lessons he’s learned from living under uncommon circumstances. So, this week on the podcast, we’re sharing some of that conversation, a...

My So-Called Lungs (Revisited)

March 07, 2024 18:18 - 30 minutes - 63.7 MB

We’re revisiting one of our favorite stories from years ago — with a new twist. Laura Rothenberg spent most of her life knowing she would die young. She had cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs. She documented her life in an audio diary, showing her attempt to live the normal life of a nineteen year old college student. Laura died in 2003 — but her audio diary wasn’t all she left behind. You can find Laura Rothenberg’s book of poetry, When Poetry Visits, at ht...

Guest Spotlight: Parakeet Panic

February 01, 2024 15:00 - 42 minutes - 91.9 MB

This week, we’re featuring an episode of a podcast we’re big fans of: The Last Archive! The Last Archive tells little known histories and how they affect our modern lives. Today’s story, “Parakeet Panic,” explores when invasive parakeets began to spread in New York City in the 1970s — and the government decided that the solution was to kill them all. If you liked this episode, you can listen to more of The Last Archive at thelastarchive.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. Foll...

The Drum Also Waltzes

January 10, 2024 16:58 - 21 minutes - 42.5 MB

At the age of 16, he played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. He went on to make landmark recordings with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. He’s considered one of the most important drummers in history — and he would’ve turned 100 years old this week. Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes is a new film about the musician by award-winning filmmakers Sam Pollard and (our very own!) Ben Shapiro. Today on the podcast, we sat down with them to discuss the life and music o...

The Unmarked Graveyard: Live at WNYC

December 19, 2023 14:04 - 1 hour - 135 MB

We bring you a lot of stories each year, but we don’t often get to share the work behind them. We recently held an event at WNYC’s The Greene Space in New York City, where our subjects and producers reflected on the challenges, and joys, of telling these untold stories. For the last podcast of the year, we’re bringing you that live show: a behind the scenes look at The Unmarked Graveyard. We want to bring you as many stories next year as we did this year — and we can’t do that with...

The Man on the President's Limo

November 22, 2023 10:00 - 12 minutes - 22 MB

Today marks 60 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. There are many photos from that day in 1963, but one image in particular caught people’s attention, spreading in newspapers across the country: a photo of a Secret Service agent jumping onto the back of the presidential limousine during the shooting. Today on the podcast, the story of the man in that photo: Clint Hill. Note: This episode contains a description of violence. Tell a friend or share your though...

The Unmarked Graveyard: LaMont Dottin

November 21, 2023 17:08 - 15 minutes - 29.3 MB

Back in 1995, LaMont Dottin was 21 years old and a freshman at Queens College when, one evening, he didn’t come home. His mother went to the local police precinct to try to report him missing, and his name was added to a list of thousands of cases that the NYPD’s Missing Persons Squad was supposed to be investigating. Then his case fell through the cracks. This is the final episode of The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island. Listen to all 8 stories in our podcast feed, te...

The Unmarked Graveyard: Hisako Hasegawa

November 09, 2023 09:53 - 12 minutes - 9.39 MB

The Belvedere Hotel is in the heart of New York City’s theater district. Many of its guests come to see the sights, take in a show. But there are a few dozen people who call the Belvedere home. Decades ago, they came to New York and rented rooms there. As the hotel changed hands over the years, they never left. One of them was Hisako Hasegawa. This is episode seven of our series The Unmarked Graveyard, next week will be our final episode. You can listen to the entire series in th...

The Unmarked Graveyard: Cesar Irizarry

November 02, 2023 13:59 - 15 minutes - 30.6 MB

Angel Irizarry spent years working as a detective, and in 2021 he set out on a personal investigation to track down an uncle who’d been estranged from his family for decades. But early in his search he made a disappointing discovery: his uncle Cesar had died. So Angel embarked on a new quest, to learn what had become of Cesar during his long absence. This is episode six of our series The Unmarked Graveyard, untangling mysteries from America’s largest public cemetery. This story ...

The Unmarked Graveyard: Dawn Powell

October 26, 2023 14:29 - 16 minutes - 33 MB

Dawn Powell wrote novels about people like herself: outsiders who’d come to New York City in the early twentieth century to make a name for themselves. For a few years, those novels put her at the center of the city’s literary scene. Ernest Hemingway even called her his favorite living writer. When she died of colon cancer in 1965, Powell donated her body to science. But then her books disappeared from shelves, and, unbeknownst to her family, her body went missing too. This is ep...

The Unmarked Graveyard: Documenting an Invisible Island

October 19, 2023 18:16 - 20 minutes - 42 MB

For more than a century, it was almost impossible to find out much about people buried on Hart Island. But in 2008, that all changed — thanks in large part to a woman named Melinda Hunt. Melinda is a visual artist who has spent more than 30 years documenting America’s largest public cemetery, and advocating for families with loved ones buried there. She is the founder of The Hart Island Project, a searchable database of more than 75,000 burial records. This week, producer Alissa ...

The Unmarked Graveyard: Angel Garcia

October 12, 2023 14:08 - 20 minutes - 16.6 MB

When Annette Vega was in elementary school, she found out the man she called “dad” wasn’t her biological father. But all she knew was that her mom had had a teenage romance with a guy named Angel Garcia. Annette has searched for Angel for more than 30 years, a search that is finally coming to the end. This is episode three in our series The Unmarked Graveyard, untangling mysteries from America’s largest public cemetery. New episodes drop every Thursday.

The Unmarked Graveyard: Noah Creshevsky

October 05, 2023 11:00 - 13 minutes - 25.5 MB

When Noah Creshevsky learned he was dying of bladder cancer two years ago, he decided to decline medical treatment. Soon, he and his husband David were faced with another decision: what would become of his body after he died? This is episode two in our new series The Unmarked Graveyard, untangling mysteries from America’s largest public cemetery. Each week, we’re bringing you stories of how people ended up on Hart Island, the lives they lived and the people they left behind.

The Unmarked Graveyard: Neil Harris Jr.

September 28, 2023 12:22 - 26 minutes - 53.8 MB

A few years ago, a young man who called himself Stephen became a fixture in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Locals started noticing him sitting on the same park bench day after day. He said little and asked for nothing. When Stephen’s body was found in 2017, the police were unable to identify him, and he was buried on Hart Island. Then, one day, a woman who knew him from the park stumbled upon his true identity, and his backstory came to light. This is the first episode in our new ser...

TRAILER: The Unmarked Graveyard

September 21, 2023 11:00 - 4 minutes - 5.61 MB

On September 28th, we’re launching a new series: The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island. Hart Island is America’s largest public cemetery—sometimes known as a “potter’s field.” The island has no headstones or plaques, just numbered markers. More than a million people are buried on Hart Island and many are shrouded in anonymity. Explanations for how they ended up there can be hard to find. Over the next seven weeks, we’ll untangle mysteries about the lives they lived and ...

The Longest Game

August 25, 2023 19:14 - 44 minutes - 95.4 MB

In the spring of 1981, the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings met for a minor league baseball game of little importance. But over the course of 33 innings – 8 hours and 25 minutes – the game made history. It was the longest professional baseball game ever played. This story was produced in collaboration with ESPN's 30 for 30.

The Girls of the Leesburg Stockade

July 19, 2023 13:04 - 16 minutes - 12.6 MB

On July 19, 1963, at least 15 Black girls were arrested while marching to protest segregation in Americus, Georgia. After spending a night in jail, they were transferred to the one-room Leesburg Stockade and imprisoned for the next 45 days. Only twenty miles away, the girls’ parents had no knowledge of their location. A month into their confinement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) heard rumors of the girls’ detention and sent photographer Danny Lyon, who took p...

Guest Spotlight: Buffalo Extreme

May 12, 2023 21:15 - 43 minutes - 94.3 MB

This week we’re featuring a story from NPR’s Embedded podcast. It’s the first episode in a new series called Buffalo Extreme, which follows a cheer team from Buffalo, New York, during the year after a racist mass shooting in their neighborhood. On May 14, 2022, the world changed for residents of Buffalo when a white man approached the Jefferson Street Tops supermarket and started shooting. He murdered ten and injured three people, almost all Black. That day, teenagers and children ...

Meet Miss Subways

March 30, 2023 14:45 - 10 minutes - 19.3 MB

Beauty pageants promote the fantasy of the ideal woman. But for 35 years, one contest in New York City celebrated the everyday working girl. Each month starting in 1941, a young woman was elected “Miss Subways,” and her face gazed down on transit riders as they rode through the city. Her photo was accompanied by a short bio describing her hopes, dreams and aspirations. The public got to choose the winners – so Miss Subway represented the perfect New York miss. She was also a barome...

Sofia's Choice: A Ukrainian Diary, One Year Later

March 06, 2023 23:05 - 12 minutes - 9.53 MB

Sofia Bretl has lived in New York City for the last decade. But she was born and raised in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, about 25 miles from the Russian border. The city has received some of the worst shelling so far in the war. That’s where her mother lived when war broke out. As conditions in Kharkiv worsened, they faced a difficult choice. Music in today’s episode includes the Ukrainian band Dakha Brakha — playing at San Francisco Jazz Center on March 14th. Proceeds and donati...

The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records

February 03, 2023 15:18 - 23 minutes - 48.8 MB

In 1921, a man named Harry Pace started the first major Black-owned record company in the United States. He called it Black Swan Records. In an era when few Black musicians were recorded, the company was revolutionary. It launched the careers of Ethel Waters, Fletcher Henderson, William Grant Still, Alberta Hunter, and other influential artists who transformed American music. But Black Swan’s success would be short-lived. Just a couple years after Pace founded the company, larger...

The Real Refugees of Casablanca

January 23, 2023 18:16 - 12 minutes - 23.7 MB

It’s been 80 years since the release of the Hollywood classic, Casablanca. When the film opened in 1943—just a year after the U.S. joined World War II—audiences were thrilled by its love story. Humphrey Bogart stars as the cynical owner of Rick’s Café, a nightclub in Morocco. Ingrid Bergman plays his old flame Ilsa, who’s married to a dashing Resistance leader hunted by the Nazis. Many of the characters at Rick’s Café are European refugees trying to make their way to America. What ...

The History Of Now

December 16, 2022 20:03 - 31 minutes - 65.6 MB

One of the questions we often ask ourselves is: How can we produce stories about history that can air alongside the news of today? In 2022, answering that question was easy. In this year-end episode, we’re taking a look back at some of our favorite stories from the past year.

A Guitar, A Cello and the Day that Changed Music

November 23, 2022 16:08 - 17 minutes - 33.7 MB

November 23, 1936 was a good day for recorded music. Two men, an ocean apart, sat before a microphone and began to play. One, Pablo Casals, was a cello prodigy who had performed for the Queen of Spain. The other, Robert Johnson, played guitar and was a regular in the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta. These recordings would change music history. This episode originally aired on NPR in 2011.

Banging on the Door: The Election of 1872

November 04, 2022 18:11 - 13 minutes - 24.4 MB

Voting rights was just as hot an issue in 1872 as it is today. In 1872, Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women went to cast a ballot in the election - and Anthony ended up arrested and tried. But another woman named Victoria Woodhull took things even further. That same year, she ran for president of the United States - the first woman in American history known to do so.

The Massacre at Tlatelolco

October 06, 2022 22:38 - 25 minutes - 52.2 MB

In October 1968, Mexico City was preparing to host the Olympics - the first Latin American country to do so. It was an opportunity to showcase the new, modern Mexico. However, at the same time, student protests were erupting throughout the city. On October 2, just days before the Olympics were supposed to begin, the Mexican army fired on a peaceful student protest in the Tlatelolco neighborhood. The official announcement was that four students were dead, but eyewitnesses said they s...

Guest Spotlight: Ear Hustle

September 23, 2022 19:38 - 32 minutes - 67.7 MB

This week we’re featuring an episode from our fellow Radiotopia show, Ear Hustle. Ear Hustle is produced inside San Quentin State Prison, in California. The show tells stories about what life is really like in prison, and after you get out. This episode is the first in Ear Hustle’s new season. It’s a beautiful, funny, and surprising story about the ways being incarcerated can mess with your sense of smell, and touch, and just about everything else. Episode artwork is by Richard Ph...

Working, Then And Now

September 09, 2022 18:51 - 15 minutes - 28.9 MB

In the early 1970s, radio host and oral historian Studs Terkel went around the country, tape recorder in hand, interviewing people about their jobs. The interviews were compiled into a 1974 book called “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do,” which became a bestseller. This week, we’re revisiting two of those conversations. The first is with Gary Bryner, an auto worker and union leader. The second is with Renault Robinson, a police off...

The Longest Game

August 23, 2022 18:06 - 19 minutes - 37.9 MB

In the spring of 1981, the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings met for a minor league game of little importance. But over the course of 33 innings – 8 hours and 25 minutes – the game made history. It was the longest professional baseball game ever played. This is an excerpt of a story in collaboration with ESPN's 30 for 30.

Rumble Strip: Finn and the Bell

July 14, 2022 16:49 - 36 minutes - 77.8 MB

This week we’re bringing you a story from independent producer Erica Heilman, who makes the Rumble Strip podcast. The story is about a teenager named Finn Rooney who loved to fish and play baseball. It’s also about what happened in Finn’s community in Vermont after he took his life in January 2020. (A warning that this story discusses suicide) The story, “Finn and the Bell,” recently won a Peabody award. Special thanks to Finn’s mother, Tara Reese, and to the people of Hardwick, ...

The Almost Astronaut

June 29, 2022 21:57 - 21 minutes - 44.2 MB

In the 1960s, the U.S. was in a tense space race with the Soviet Union - and was losing. The Soviets had sent the first satellite and the first man into space. So, President Kennedy pledged to do something no country had done: send a man to the moon. This mission excited many white Americans, but many Black Americans thought the space program wasted money that could’ve helped Black communities. So, the U.S. embarked on a plan that could beat the Soviets and appease Black Americans:...

The General Slocum

June 03, 2022 20:05 - 13 minutes - 25.7 MB

On June 15, 1904, a steamship called the General Slocum left the pier on East Third Street in New York City just after 9 AM. The boat was filled with more than 1,300 residents of the Lower East Side. Many of the passengers were recent German immigrants who were headed up the East River for a church outing, a boat cruise and picnic on Long Island. They would never make it. We interviewed the last survivor of the General Slocum, Adella Wotherspoon, when she was 100 years old. Today, ...

The End of Smallpox

May 19, 2022 17:11 - 22 minutes - 46.3 MB

Only one human disease has ever been completely eradicated: Smallpox. Smallpox was around for more than 3,000 years and killed at least 300 million people in the 20th century. Then, by 1980, it was gone. Rahima Banu was the last person in the world to have the deadliest form of smallpox. In 1975, Banu was a toddler growing up in a remote village in Bangladesh when she developed the telltale bumpy rash. Soon, public health workers from around the world showed up at her home to try t...

The Greatest Songwriter You've Never Heard Of

April 19, 2022 17:48 - 17 minutes - 34.5 MB

You probably don’t know her name, but you definitely know her songs. Rose Marie McCoy would’ve turned 100 years old today. On this episode of the Radio Diaries Podcast, we’re remembering the woman behind smash hits by Tina Turner, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross and many others.

Sofia's Choice: A Ukrainian Diary

March 30, 2022 00:36 - 12 minutes - 13.5 MB

Sofia Bretl has lived in New York City for the last decade. But she was born and raised in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, about 25 miles from the Russian border. The city has received some of the worst shelling so far in the war. That’s where her mother lives. As conditions in Kharkiv worsened, they faced a difficult choice. ** If you’d like to show your support during this crisis, one organization that is helping settle refugees is HIAS. Find them at hias.org.

Claudette Colvin: Making Trouble Then and Now

February 24, 2022 19:22 - 16 minutes - 19.9 MB

Nine months before Rosa Parks, a 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, AL. 66 years later, Colvin’s fighting to get her record wiped clean. This episode is part of the 2022 Radiotopia Fundraiser! We are a proud member of this amazing network of independent, artist-owned, listener-supported shows. This week, we are all releasing episodes on a theme “Making Trouble.” Please show your support for our network by...

Diary of a Saudi Girl: Then & Now

January 21, 2022 21:56 - 38 minutes - 82.7 MB

When we first met Majd Abdulghani, she was a teenager living in Saudi Arabia, one of the most restrictive countries for women in the world. She wanted to be a scientist, her family wanted to arrange her marriage. Majd recorded her life over two years, she was one of our most prolific documentarians. With her microphone, Majd brought us inside a society where the voices of women were rarely heard. Majd is 27 now. A lot has changed in her life. Today, we bring you a brand new conver...

A Museum of Sound

December 22, 2021 14:00 - 33 minutes - 70.2 MB

A journey back to the very beginning of recorded sound and the strange, random, beautiful things people captured more than a century ago. We recommend listening with headphones. On January 1st, 2022 all audio recorded before 1923 is entering the public domain because of a new law, the Music Modernization Act. Archivists around the country have been digitizing thousands of old records, tinfoil, and wax cylinders that few people have ever heard. We hear one of the first recordings...

A Real Life West Side Story

December 08, 2021 22:46 - 16 minutes - 19.1 MB

A new movie version of West Side Story is hitting theaters this week. The musical, which tells a story of romance and rivalry between white and Puerto Rican gangs in New York City, first opened on Broadway in 1957. The story of warring youth gangs turned out to be prophetic. Just a month before the musical opened, the city was stunned by the brutal murder of a teenager from Washington Heights named Michael Farmer. Today on the podcast, a real life West Side Story. This story orig...

A Wrench in the Works

November 04, 2021 18:52 - 40 minutes - 87.8 MB

Every day, we go about our lives doing thousands of routine, mundane tasks. And sometimes, we make mistakes. Human error. It happens all the time. It just doesn’t always happen in a nuclear missile silo. On September 18, 1980, a technician was working in a Titan ll missile silo in Damascus, Arkansa, when he dropped a wrench. The tool fell and pierced a hole in the side of the missile which happened to be carrying a nuclear warhead. This is a story of an accident that nearly caused ...

My Iron Lung

October 22, 2021 17:02 - 15 minutes - 5.91 MB

In the first half of the 20th century, the disease known as poliomyelitis panicked Americans. Just like COVID today, polio stopped ordinary life in its tracks. Tens of thousands were paralyzed when the virus attacked their nervous systems. Many were left unable to walk. In the worst cases, people’s breathing muscles stopped working, and they were placed in an iron lung, a large machine that fit their entire bodies from the neck down. Vaccines brought an end to the epidemic in the 1...

Last Witness: The Kerner Commission

August 26, 2021 20:55 - 12 minutes - 9.03 MB

Decades before our current debate over critical race theory, the 1968 Kerner Report pointed the finger at structural racism for creating the conditions that had triggered a series of protests in Black communities across the United States in the summer of 1967. Former Senator Fred Harris is the last surviving member of the Kerner Commission, a group appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the protests and author the report. This story is a part of our Last Witness s...

The Gospel Ranger

July 15, 2021 22:03 - 21 minutes - 17.8 MB

This is the story of a song, “Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down.” It was written by a 12-year-old boy on what was supposed to be his deathbed. But the boy didn’t die. Instead, he went on to become a Pentecostal preacher, and later helped inspire the birth of Rock & Roll. The boy’s name was Brother Claude Ely, and he was known as The Gospel Ranger. Also, we remember Joe Newman from our Hunker Down Diaries series, who passed away this week at 108 years old. *** This episode h...

From the Archive: Josh's Diary

June 10, 2021 20:08 - 17 minutes - 13.6 MB

Twenty-five years ago, Josh Cutler was a 16-year old living with Tourette’s Syndrome, a brain disorder that often causes physical and verbal tics. For several months, he recorded cassette tapes of everything from conversations with his parents and classmates, to prank calls. This is his diary, which chronicles his attempts to live a normal teenage life with a brain that often betrays him. Josh’s diary first aired as part of the Teenage Diaries series on NPR in 1996. **** Radio Di...

The Tulsa Race Massacre, 100 Years Later

May 27, 2021 17:32 - 17 minutes - 13.9 MB

On May 31, 1921, white mobs attacked a prosperous Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as “Black Wall Street.” As many as three hundred people were killed, and more than a thousand homes and businesses were destroyed. Olivia Hooker was six years old at the time. She remembers watching white men with torches come through her family’s backyard, and hiding under a table with her siblings. Radio Diaries interviewed Olivia Hooker about the massacre in 2018. Six months later, sh...

Juan, 25 Years Later

May 13, 2021 17:33 - 34 minutes - 44.3 MB

This week we continue celebrating Radio Diaries’ 25th anniversary by catching up with Juan from the Teenage Diaries series, which first aired on NPR in 1996. Juan was 17 when we first gave him a tape recorder and asked him to record his life for a few months. He and his family had recently come to the U.S. from Mexico, and they were living in a trailer home just half a block from the Rio Grande in Texas. Now, 25 years later, Juan lives in Colorado, where he owns his own company an...

25 Years of Radio Diaries

April 30, 2021 11:00 - 26 minutes - 33 MB

This week marks a very special anniversary for Radio Diaries. It’s been 25 years since we first started giving people tape recorders to report on their own lives. To celebrate, we recently checked in with our very first diarist, Amanda. Amanda was 17 when we first gave her a clunky cassette recorder and asked her to record her life for a few months. Her story about coming out of the closet as gay and clashing with her Catholic parents was part of a series called Teenage Diaries tha...

Busman's Holiday

April 15, 2021 18:26 - 20 minutes - 24.9 MB

One day in 1947, NYC bus driver William Cimillo showed up to his daily bus route, but instead of turning left, he turned right. Over the next week, he traveled 1,300 miles in his municipal bus, ending up in Hollywood, Florida. The bus had broken down, he’d run out of money, and had no way of getting home. Plus, he was now the most wanted bus driver in the country. This story originally aired on This American Life. Go to www.radiodiaries.org to find more stories and sign up for our...

The Last Place: Diary of a Retirement Home

April 01, 2021 20:47 - 31 minutes - 40.3 MB

For the past year, most nursing homes and assisted living facilities have been in lockdown. Residents have been kept apart—not just from their families, but from each other. They ate meals alone in their rooms, met new grandchildren on Zoom, and some were alone when they died. Today many retirement homes are starting to open up again. But the fact is, many people grow more isolated as they age. Even in normal times. Friends and partners pass away, family members and kids get distra...

Burma '88: Buried History

March 04, 2021 23:09 - 16 minutes - 19.7 MB

On August 8, 1988 — a date chosen for its numerological power — university students in Burma sparked an uprising against the military dictatorship. They’d been living under military rule their entires lives. And they had had enough. The uprising ultimately failed, but it planted the seeds of democracy. It was the moment Aung San Suu Kyi first appeared on the political scene, and became the icon of the democracy movement. Today on the podcast: we take you back to the summer of  1988,...

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