Radio Diaries
204 episodes - English - Latest episode: 9 days ago - ★★★★★ - 1.2K ratingsFirst-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
The Last Place: Diary of a Retirement Home
April 01, 2021 20:47 - 31 minutes - 40.3 MBFor 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 MBOn 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,...
Living with Dying
February 14, 2021 07:02 - 14 minutes - 15.9 MBOne year ago, on Valentine’s Day 2020, Peter Fodera’s heart broke. It stopped working. He collapsed in the middle of teaching a dance class. Someone performed CPR, someone called an ambulance. EMT’s showed up and he lay motionless. He technically died that day. But later at the hospital, Peter’s heart started beating again. On the anniversary of Peter’s brief death, he sat down with his daughter Juliana who has Noonan Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. While Peter’s experience of dy...
Teen Contender: Then & Now
February 05, 2021 14:00 - 31 minutes - 39.4 MBIn 2012, Claressa Shields was a 16-year-old boxer in Flint, Michigan. She had an audacious dream: to be the Muhammad Ali of womens boxing. We gave her tape recorder to keep an audio diary as she fought to make it onto the first ever women’s Olympic boxing team. Claressa is now 25 and fights professionally. With two gold medals and four world championships, she’s achieved her boxing dreams. But with boxing shut down during COVID, she has turned her attention to a different kind of d...
America Vs. America
January 16, 2021 00:07 - 25 minutes - 31.9 MBAfter the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, we've all been trying to grapple with an event that feels so different from anything we’ve experienced before in this country. But this attack wasn’t the first time the Capitol has been violently breached. History books mention 1814 — when the British army set fire to the Capitol. Less well known is what happened on March 1st, 1954. That’s when four young Puerto Rican New Yorkers launched an attack in the chamber of the House of R...
Love from Six Feet Apart (Revisited)
December 17, 2020 20:18 - 24 minutes - 30.4 MBRobert and Wendy Jackson have been socially distancing under the same roof for 8 months. Robert is 71 and had a kidney transplant four years ago. His immune system is severely compromised. His wife, Wendy, is a pediatric emergency room doctor. When the pandemic hit in March, the couple made the difficult decision to live together…six feet apart. We also revisit the audio diary of 11-year-old Francesca Montanaro, who was going to school at her dad’s pizza shop in the Bronx. Music fr...
Love at First Quarantine, The Sequel
December 04, 2020 16:48 - 28 minutes - 35.2 MBWhen the pandemic hit back in March, Gali Beeri and Joshua Boliver decided to quarantine together, after their very first date. Today on the show, we check back in with them — eight months later — to see how a new relationship weathers a pandemic. Their story is part of our series Hunker Down Diaries, stories of people in unexpected situations during the pandemic. You can listen to the whole series on past episodes of the Radio Diaries Podcast. Music from Blue Dot Sessions, Yo La T...
Centenarians (Still) in Lockdown
November 20, 2020 17:16 - 15 minutes - 18.4 MBIt’s been 9 months since Joe Newman (107) and Anita Sampson (100) recorded their story about surviving the 1918 pandemic, getting older, and staying in love during lockdown. We’re thrilled to announce they just won a Third Coast Award! We share their story and check in with them in Sarasota, Florida where COVID cases are surging. **** Support this week from AcornTV and their new series “A Suitable Boy” from the BBC.
How to Lose an Election: A History
November 02, 2020 21:14 - 19 minutes - 22.7 MBPresidential campaigns are essentially dramas, and we’re in the final act of this one. The curtain is about to come down.For the past century, the moment of closure has come in the form of one simple act: the public concession. From William Jennings Bryan to Adlai Stevenson to John McCain to Al Gore and Hillary Clinton…. A History of How To Lose An Election. **** We have support from Imagined Life, a podcast from Wondery. https://wondery.com/shows/imagined-life/ And Source Mate...
The Forgotten Story of Clinton Melton
August 27, 2020 21:27 - 16 minutes - 19 MBThis summer, videos of Black people killed by police officers have sparked outrage and protests across the country. 65 years ago, it was a photograph that shocked the nation. The image of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Till had traveled from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta to visit family, when he was kidnapped, horribly beaten and killed by white men after allegedly flirting with a white woman. His body was later found in the Tallahatchie river. Today, Emmett Till’s death is considered...
The Infamous Words of George Wallace
August 06, 2020 04:00 - 12 minutes - 14.4 MBA law and order politician who rails against anarchists protesting in the streets and the lying mainstream media? It may sound familiar, but we’re actually going back more than five decades on the show today, when Alabama Governor and four time presidential candidate George Wallace was perfecting the politics of resentment and race baiting. A lot of people have commented on the similarities between that time and now. Congressman John Lewis was one of them.
The Final Frontline
July 13, 2020 18:04 - 10 minutes - 11.3 MBThe Kearns family funeral business was founded in New York City in the year 1900. Over 120 years, the family has seen a lot of history. Patrick Kearns and Paul Kearns-Stanley are the owners. After 4 months, they finally had a chance to reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, and how it's looked from their corner of New York. They sat down together on a recent evening — at the end of a long work day — in their funeral home in Queens. This is our final installment of Hunker Down Diaries, a...
Quarantined in the Pizzeria
July 03, 2020 00:05 - 10 minutes - 11 MBCOVID-19 has forced many families to improvise childcare. For some, it's been like a four month long 'bring your child to work' day. Paul Montanaro runs a pizza shop in the Bronx. That's where his 11-year-old daughter Francesca has been spending her days since her school shut down in March. Both of Francesca's parents are essential workers - her mom is an ICU nurse at a hospital in Manhattan. For our Hunker Down Diaries series, we asked Francesca to keep an audio diary as she finis...
Lockdown in Lockup
June 25, 2020 19:54 - 9 minutes - 9.92 MBCoronavirus cases are on the rise across the country and the five largest clusters of the virus are in correctional institutions. This isn’t a surprise. Prisons are often overcrowded, social distancing is difficult, bathrooms and public spaces are shared by hundreds of inmates. Guards are constantly going in and out. In a pandemic, prison is probably the worst place a person could be. Robbie Pollock spent 8 years in New York state prisons. Recently, he spoke with his friend Moe Mon...
Home is Where You Park Your Mini Van
June 16, 2020 20:07 - 12 minutes - 14.4 MBBack in March, as the pandemic hit, many people across the country found themselves without a safety net. Naida Lavon was one of them. Naida is 67 and a former school bus driver. She was recently furloughed from her part time job at a rental car company. For the past few months, Naida’s been living in her car on the streets of Portland, Oregon. As part of our Hunker Down Diaries series, we bring you her story. Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions and “Home Again” by Michael Kiwan...
The Words of Renault Robinson, Then and Now
June 04, 2020 03:41 - 10 minutes - 7.24 MBRenault Robinson was one of Chicago's few black police officers in the 1970s. He was a founder of the Afro-American Patrolmen's League. We first learned about Robinson from Studs Terkel's book Working. Studs went around the country in the 1970s interviewing people about their jobs. Robinson's interview is one of the most powerful parts of the book. He is incredibly honest and blunt about what it was like to be a black police officer, and about the tensions between the police and th...
Love at First Quarantine
May 15, 2020 11:00 - 20 minutes - 24.8 MBGali Beeri and Joshua Boliver both live in New York City and they were both single back in March when the city was preparing to lock down. Then they decided to quarantine together, after their very first date. Their story is part of our series Hunker Down Diaries, a collaboration with NPR, bringing you stories of people in unexpected situations during the pandemic. If you have an idea for the series, write to [email protected] or find us on Facebook and Twitter. Music thi...
Love from Six Feet Apart
April 24, 2020 16:33 - 20 minutes - 24.9 MBMost of the country is social distancing in public, but some people are doing it under the same roof. Robert Jackson is 71 and had a kidney transplant four years ago. His immune system is severely compromised. His wife, Wendy Jackson, is a pediatric emergency room physician. She runs the risk of being exposed to the coronavirus at work. So the couple made the difficult decision to live together... six feet apart. Their story is part of our series Hunker Down Diaries, a collaboration...
Centenarians in Lockdown
April 10, 2020 21:53 - 13 minutes - 14.9 MBJoe Newman is 107 years old. He was 5 during the flu pandemic of 1918. Today, he lives in a senior apartment complex in Sarasota, Florida with his fiancé, Anita Sampson. The complex is on lockdown, so we sent them a recorder and they interviewed each other on Anita's 100th birthday. This story is the first in a new series called Hunker Down Diaries, surprising stories from people thrown together by the pandemic. Produced in collaboration with NPR. In the coming weeks we’ll be bring...
Soul Sister
March 11, 2020 19:12 - 35 minutes - 39.6 MBThere’s a long history in America of white people imagining black people’s lives - in novels, in movies, and sometimes in journalism. In 1969, Grace Halsell, a white journalist, published a book called Soul Sister. It was her account of living as a “black woman” in the United States. Lyndon Johnson provided a blurb for the book, and it sold over a million copies. Halsell was inspired by John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me, which came out in 1961. That was inspired by an even earl...
The Long Haul: Busman's Holiday
March 05, 2020 20:21 - 22 minutes - 23.9 MBBusman’s Holiday: When William Cimillo, a NYC bus driver went on a 1,300 mile detour to Florida. This story originally aired on This American Life. Our episode is part of a network-wide project to welcome Over the Road, Radiotopia’s newest show, into the family. *** This episode is sponsored by LightStream. To get a discount on a credit card consolidation loan, go to lightstream.com/diaries.
History Had Me Glued to the Seat
February 20, 2020 17:09 - 11 minutes - 10.7 MBYou know the story of Rosa Parks. But have you heard of Claudette Colvin? Claudette grew up in the segregated city of Montgomery, Alabama. On March 2, 1955, when she was 15 years old, she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Nine months later, Rosa Parks did the exact same thing. Parks, of course, became a powerful symbol of the civil rights movement. But Claudette Colvin has largely been left out of the history books. In 1956, about a year after Colvin refu...
Voicemail Valentine
February 06, 2020 20:39 - 14 minutes - 14 MBNowadays we’re very accustomed to recording and hearing the sound of our own voices. But in the 1930s many people were doing it for the first time. And a surprising trend began. People started sending their voices to each other, through the postal service. It was literally: voice-mail. We combed through a large collection of early voicemail at the Phono Post Archive, and we discovered that many of these audio letters have the same subject matter: love. You can see photographs of t...
My So-Called Lungs
January 16, 2020 16:50 - 31 minutes - 33.8 MBLaura Rothenberg spent most of her life knowing she was going to die young. She had cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs. When she was born, the life expectancy for people with CF was around 18 years. (It's more than double that now.) Laura liked to say she went through her mid-life crisis when she was a teenager. Joe met Laura when she was 19 and gave her a tape recorder. And for two years, she kept an audio diary of her battle with cystic fibrosis and her a...
The Teenage Diaries Revisited Hour
December 19, 2019 14:16 - 59 minutes - 65.3 MBBack in the 1990s, Joe Richman gave tape recorders to a bunch of teenagers and asked them to report on their own lives. These stories became the series “Teenage Diaries.” 16 years later, in “Teenage Diaries Revisited,” we check back in with this group to see what’s happened in their lives. **** Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today. #RadiotopiaForever
The Teenage Diaries Revisited Hour Special
December 19, 2019 14:16 - 59 minutes - 65.3 MBBack in the 1990s, Joe Richman gave tape recorders to a bunch of teenagers and asked them to report on their own lives. These stories became the series “Teenage Diaries.” 16 years later, in “Teenage Diaries Revisited,” we check back in with this group to see what’s happened in their lives. **** Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today. #RadiotopiaForever
Thembi's Diary, Revisited
December 05, 2019 21:49 - 32 minutes - 34.8 MBWe first met Thembi when she was 19 and living in one of the largest townships in South Africa. We were struck by her candor, sense of humor and her courage. She was willing to speak out about having AIDS at a time when very few South Africans did. Thembi carried a tape recorder from 2004 to 2005 to document her life. In this episode, we revisit Thembi’s diary, and we introduce listeners to Thembi’s daughter, Onwabo. **** Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today. #Rad...
The Last Witness
November 29, 2019 05:00 - 10 minutes - 9.36 MBFor this episode, Radiotopia gave all of us in the network a prompt: if we were to create another show, any show, what would it be? Well, we’d make an obituary show. Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today. #RadiotopiaForever
The Press is the Enemy
November 13, 2019 18:02 - 16 minutes - 15.9 MBFifty years ago, on November 13, 1969, Spiro Agnew delivered the most famous speech ever given by a vice president. His message: the media is biased. President Nixon was getting beaten up by the press, and in response, his administration had been trying to undercut the credibility of the media, especially television news. The war between politicians and the media has a long history. Today on the podcast, the story of Agnew’s speech. Also, the story of Adlai Stevenson, a presidenti...
The View from the 79th Floor
October 17, 2019 19:37 - 16 minutes - 16.3 MBOn July 28, 1945 an Army bomber pilot on a routine ferry mission found himself lost in the fog over Manhattan. A dictation machine in a nearby office happened to capture the sound of the plane as it hit the Empire State Building at the 79th floor. Fourteen people were killed. Debris from the plane severed the cables of an elevator, which fell 79 stories with a young woman inside. She survived. The crash prompted new legislation that – for the first time – gave citizens the right to...
Prisoners of War
September 19, 2019 15:14 - 20 minutes - 32.4 MBDuring the war in Vietnam, there was a notorious American military prison on the outskirts of Saigon, called Long Binh Jail. But LBJ wasn’t for captured enemy fighters, it was for American soldiers. These were men who had broken military law. And there were a lot of them. As the unpopular war dragged on, discipline frayed and soldiers started to rebel. By the summer of 1968, over half the men in Long Binh Jail were locked up on AWOL charges. Some were there for more serious crimes...
The Working Tapes of Studs Terkel
September 05, 2019 20:02 - 59 minutes - 78.8 MBIn 1974, oral historian Studs Terkel published a book with an unwieldy title: "Working: People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do." This collective portrait of America was based on more than a hundred interviews Studs did around the country. Studs recorded all of his interviews on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, but after the book came out the tapes were packed away in boxes and forgotten for decades. A couple years ago, Radio Diaries and the organiz...
Stories from a Vanishing New York
August 22, 2019 22:12 - 24 minutes - 30.2 MBToday on the podcast, we pay a visit to Walter the Seltzer Man, and also remember Selma Koch, the iconic bra fitter in the Upper West Side's Town Shop.
Shirley Chisholm: Unbought and Unbossed
July 25, 2019 23:30 - 16 minutes - 20 MBToday…there’s “The Squad.” But 50 years ago, there was only one woman of color in the U.S. Congress, and she was the first. Shirley Chisholm, of New York City, was elected to Congress in a historic victory in 1968. And like the squad...Chisholm made her voice heard. In 1972, Chisholm launched a spirited campaign for the Democratic nomination. She was the first woman and first African American to run. Declaring herself “unbought and unbossed,” she took on the political establishmen...
The Square Deal
June 20, 2019 22:23 - 17 minutes - 21.3 MB100 years ago, George F. Johnson ran the biggest shoe factory in the world. The Endicott-Johnson Corporation in upstate New York produced 52 million pairs of shoes a year. But Johnson wasn’t only known for his shoes. Johnson had an unusual theory at the time, about how workers should be treated. Some people called it “Welfare Capitalism.” He called it “The Square Deal.”
The Square Deal
June 20, 2019 22:23 - 17 minutes - 21.3 MB100 years ago, George F. Johnson ran the biggest shoe factory in the world. The Endicott-Johnson Corporation in upstate New York produced 52 million pairs of shoes a year. But Johnson wasn’t only known for his shoes. Johnson had an unusual theory at the time, about how workers should be treated. Some people called it “Welfare Capitalism.” He called it “The Square Deal.”
Amanda's Diary: Revisited
June 06, 2019 18:08 - 21 minutes - 26.8 MBThis month marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, a turning point in the gay rights movement. The anniversary is a reminder of how much has changed since 1969, when "homosexual acts" were illegal in all states but one - Illinois. Today, gay marriage is legal across the nation. Here at Radio Diaries we have our own small time capsule of how much has changed. The very first audio diary I ever did, with Amanda Brand. Amanda's story was about being a gay teenager, with p...
Last Witness: Surviving the Tulsa Race Riot
May 20, 2019 20:45 - 9 minutes - 10.8 MBOn May 31, 1921, six-year-old Olivia Hooker was home with her family when a group of white men launched an attack on the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In less than 24 hours, the mobs destroyed more than 1000 homes and businesses. It’s estimated as many as 300 people were killed. The Tulsa Race Riot is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. Olivia Hooker was the last surviving witness to the events of that day. Know someone who’d make a...
Juan's Diaries: Undocumented, Then and Now
May 02, 2019 20:11 - 34 minutes - 44.5 MBBack in the 1990s, Juan crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, and settled with his family next to the Rio Grande river in Texas. We gave him a cassette recorder to document his life there for NPR. Almost two decades later, we gave Juan another recorder to report on his life as an adult. In many ways, Juan has achieved the American Dream - he has a house, a good job, and three American kids. But...he's still undocumented.
The Bonus Army
April 18, 2019 17:41 - 16 minutes - 9.85 MBIn 1932, 20,000 WWI veterans set up a tent city in Washington. They called themselves the Bonus Army. See photos of the Bonus Army here: http://www.radiodiaries.org/march-of-the-bonus-army/
The Working Tapes
April 04, 2019 10:00 - 25 minutes - 32.3 MBIn the early 1970’s, author Studs Terkel went around the country with a reel-to-reel tape recorder interviewing people about their jobs. He turned these interviews into a book called, “Working.” After the book was released in 1974, the tapes were packed away in Studs home office. A few years ago, we at Radio Diaries, along with our collaborator Jane Saks of Project&, were offered the chance to make a radio and podcast series out of the recordings. In today’s episode, we bring you so...
The Story of Jane
March 21, 2019 17:34 - 14 minutes - 16.9 MBBefore the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe vs. Wade, abortions were illegal in most of the United States. But that didn't mean women didn't have them. Hundreds of women were dying every year in botched abortions. In 1965, an underground network formed in Chicago to help women who wanted to have abortions, in a medically safe way. At first, they connected women with doctors willing to break the law to perform the procedure. Eventually, women in the collective trained to perfor...
The Ski Troops of WWII
March 07, 2019 19:06 - 25 minutes - 32.4 MBThe men of the 10th Mountain Division led a series of daring assaults against the Nazis in the mountains of Italy during WWII. After returning home, many of these soldiers helped to create the modern ski industry.
When Nazis Took Manhattan
February 20, 2019 15:43 - 21 minutes - 26 MBOn February 20th, 1939, 20,000 people streamed into Madison Square Garden in New York City. Outside, the marquee was lit up with the evening's main event: a "Pro-American rally." Inside, on the stage, there was a 30-foot tall banner of George Washington, sandwiched between American flags...and two huge swastikas. Today’s episode is a special collaboration with The Memory Palace. *** This episode is sponsored by Care/Of, a monthly subscription vitamin service. For 50% off your fir...
A Voicemail Valentine
February 11, 2019 18:15 - 14 minutes - 15.9 MBNowadays we’re very accustomed to recording and hearing the sound of our own voices. But in the 1930s many people were doing it for the first time. And a surprising trend began. People started sending their voices to each other, through the postal service. It was literally: voice-mail. We recently combed through a large collection of early voicemail at the Phono Post Archive, and we discovered that many of these audio letters are about the same thing: Love.
The Border Wall
January 16, 2019 18:12 - 18 minutes - 24.1 MBStories about walls and borders, and what happens when – instead of people crossing the border – the border crosses the people. Act 1: Wrong Side of the Fence Pamela Taylor technically lives in the U.S. But somehow, her house is on the Mexican side of the border wall. Act 2: The Chamizal Ever since Texas became a state, the Rio Grande has been the official border between the US and Mexico. The problem is, rivers can move – and that’s exactly what happened in 1864. Torrential rai...
Thembi's Diary
December 19, 2018 17:13 - 33 minutes - 43 MBWe first met Thembi when she was 19 and living in one of the largest townships in South Africa. We were struck by her candor, sense of humor and her courage. She was willing to speak out about having AIDS at a time when very few South Africans were willing to. Thembi carried a tape recorder from 2004 to 2005 to document her life. In this episode, we revisit Thembi’s diary.
Bonus Episode: Hear the World Differently
December 10, 2018 07:30 - 5 minutes - 2.1 MBThere’s an old saying that “sound is like touch from a distance.” We think it’s a perfect metaphor for what we at Radio Diaries — and all the shows at Radiotopia — try to do. We want to help you hear the world differently. We’re in the middle of our annual fundraiser where we ask you, our listeners, to support the network that makes this show possible. Our goal is to reach 25,000 donors. Every donation counts, no matter the size. So give what you can and help us get one step close...
A Guitar, A Cello, and the Day that Changed Music
November 15, 2018 17:01 - 17 minutes - 10.3 MBNovember 23, 1936 was a good day for recorded music. Two men – an ocean apart – sat before a microphone and began to play. One was a cello prodigy who had performed for the Queen of Spain; the other played guitar and was a regular in the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta. But on this day 75 years ago, Pablo Casals and Robert Johnson both made recordings that would change music history.
The Song That Crossed Party Lines
November 01, 2018 16:30 - 13 minutes - 15.7 MBOur country is so politically polarized these days, it’s hard to remember a time when Republicans and Democrats could agree on anything at all. In today’s episode, we’re going back almost 80 years, to another extremely polarized moment in American history. It was 1940, and the U.S. was deeply divided about engaging in World War II. Franklin Roosevelt was running for his third term, facing a Republican challenger, Wendell Wilkie. But that election season, the Republican Party, The D...