Radio Diaries
Episodes
Guest Spotlight: William Parker's War on Slave Catchers
02 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're bringing you a story from our friends at History This Week, a podcast from the History Channel.April 3, 1951. A man who escaped slaver...
Detained: A Homecoming
27 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, Leqaa Kordia, young Palestinian woman from Paterson, New Jersey, walked out of an ICE detention center in Texas. Kordia had been held for m...
The Real Refugees of Casablanca
19 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When the Hollywood classic, Casablanca, was released in 1943, moviegoers were thrilled by the love story. Humphrey Bogart stars as the cynical owner o...
Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier 3: The Trial
26 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is the final episode of our series about Isaac Woodard, a Black soldier who was beaten and blinded by a white police officer in 1946. In the last...
Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier 2: Officer X
19 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, we shared the story of Isaac Woodard, a Black soldier who was brutally beaten by a white police officer in South Carolina. No one knew the ...
Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier 1: The Bus Ride
12 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On February 12, 1946, a Black soldier was heading home from WWII when he was brutally beaten by a white police officer in South Carolina. No one knew ...
TRAILER: Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On February 12, 1946, an African American soldier heading home from WWII was attacked by a white police officer somewhere in South Carolina. The soldi...
Remembering Claudette Colvin
14 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A little over a decade ago, we went to interview a woman at her small one-bedroom apartment in a sprawling complex in the Bronx. She was living a quie...
The First Computer Dating Service: Operation Match
18 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Looking for love is an art, not a science. People have been trying to crack the code, with mixed success, for a long time. This week we're going back...
This Short Life
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today on the show, we sit down with photographer Andrew Lichtenstein to discuss his new book, THIS SHORT LIFE, which combines photo essays with audio ...
Detained: The Last Columbia Protester
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In April 2024, over 100 students were arrested during protests outside Columbia University, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Leqaa Kordia, a young Pal...
Identical Strangers
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein were both born in New York City and adopted as infants. When they were 35 years old, they met and found they were “...
The Gospel Ranger
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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. Bu...
The Working Tapes, Revisited
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1970s, author Studs Terkel interviewed the owners of Duke & Lee's Auto Repair in Geneva, Illinois, for his bestselling book, Working....
The Last Place
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When you spend so much of your life moving around, getting to the next chapter, what's it like to find yourself in the last place?This week, we revisi...
The View from the 79th Floor
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eighty years ago, on July 28, 1945, an Army bomber pilot on a routine ferry mission found himself lost in the fog over Manhattan. A dictation machine ...
Two Years in the Life of a Saudi Girl, Revisited
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When we first met Majd Abdulghani, she was 19 years old, living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We gave her a recorder to keep an audio diary about her life....
The End of Smallpox
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Vaccines have been in the news recently. Over the last few weeks, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has changed vaccination recommendations and g...
The Detainees of Crystal City
13 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
To justify mass deportations, President Trump has invoked an old wartime law: the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The Alien Enemies Act was last used a...
Prisoners of War
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's been 50 years since the end of the Vietnam war. In honor of the anniversary, we're revisiting a story about a notorious American military prison ...
March of the Bonus Army
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Author James Baldwin once wrote, "I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criti...
The Girls of the Leesburg Stockade
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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, th...
Guest Spotlight: Signal Hill
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're featuring a story from a brand new audio magazine we've been listening to called Signal Hill."Pie Down Here" features oral history int...
Making Waves: The Woman Who Warned The World
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1939, Time Magazine called Dorothy Thompson a woman who “thinks, talks and sleeps world problems — and scares men half to death.” They were...
Making Waves: The Original Angry Talker
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
These days, we’re used to media that thrives on conflict and amplifies the most outrageous voices in the room. It's something we often trace back to...
Making Waves: The Happy-Am-I Preacher
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1934, the Washington Post called Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux, the “best known colored man in America.” He was known as the Happy-Am-I Preac...
Sealab: A Home on the Ocean Floor
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From ancient myths of sea monsters lurking below to Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the ocean has long been both a source of fe...
Guest Spotlight: The Memory Palace with Nate DiMeo
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Happy 2025! We have a slate of new stories coming soon, but we want to start the year by shouting out fellow podcaster (and friend of the show) Nate D...
Teen Contender
23 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you follow boxing, you've heard of Claressa Shields. At the 2012 Olympics, she became the first American woman to win gold in boxing. She repeated ...
Last Witness: The Kerner Commission
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Former Oklahoma senator Fred Harris died recently, at 94 years old. In 1967, Fred Harris and 10 senators came together and released the Kerner Report,...
A Guitar, A Cello and the Day that Changed Music
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 cell...
The John Birch Society
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s political climate, conspiracy theories are commonplace. But they’re nothing new. In fact, back in the 1960s, there was one organization...
American Migrant
10 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, millions of desperate Americans abandoned their homes, farms and businesses. It was one of the largest migrations i...
The Longest Game
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 cours...
When Borders Move
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since Texas became a state, the Rio Grande has been the border between the U.S. and Mexico. But rivers can move — and that's exactly what happe...
Guest Spotlight: The Phantom of the World's Fair
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're featuring a story we loved from the StoryCorps podcast. In 1964, a 12-year-old paperboy from suburban Long Island spent nearly two we...
HOUR SPECIAL: Stories from the Unmarked Graveyard
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hart Island is America’s largest public cemetery—sometimes known as a “potter’s field.” The island has no headstones or plaques, just number...
The Almost Astronaut (Revisited)
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to the space race, we all know names like Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gagarin. But in most moments in history, there are a few names that fa...
The End of Smallpox
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Humanity isn't great at eradicating diseases. But there is one disease that humanity has managed to eradicate: smallpox.Smallpox was around for more t...
Meet Miss Subways
16 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Most beauty pageants promote the fantasy of the ideal woman. But for 35 years, one contest in New York City celebrated the everyday working girl: Miss...
The Gospel Ranger
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This year marks 90 years since Claude Ely wrote "Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down." The song was written as Ely was supposed to be on his death ...
Mandela's Election: 30 Years Later
18 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This month marks 30 years since Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first democratically elected president. However, the story of Mandela's rise to t...
Working, Then and Now
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
50 years ago, radio broadcaster Studs Terkel published a book called WORKING: People Talk About What They Do All Day, and How They Feel About What The...
My Iron Lung (Revisited)
21 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
My So-Called Lungs (Revisited)
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 youn...
The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records
15 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 w...
Guest Spotlight: Parakeet Panic
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Drum Also Waltzes
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 Theloni...
The Unmarked Graveyard: Live at WNYC
19 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 Spac...
The Man on the President's Limo
22 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ca...
The Unmarked Graveyard: LaMont Dottin
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Unmarked Graveyard: Hisako Hasegawa
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Unmarked Graveyard: Cesar Irizarry
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 fr...
The Unmarked Graveyard: Dawn Powell
26 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 themselv...
The Unmarked Graveyard: Documenting an Invisible Island
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 lar...
The Unmarked Graveyard: Angel Garcia
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 m...
The Unmarked Graveyard: Noah Creshevsky
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 wer...
The Unmarked Graveyard: Neil Harris Jr.
28 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 s...
TRAILER: The Unmarked Graveyard
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On September 28th, we’re launching a new series: The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island. Hart Island is America’s largest public cemete...
The Longest Game
25 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 cours...
The Girls of the Leesburg Stockade
19 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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, th...
Busman's Holiday
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One day in 1947, NYC bus driver William Cimillo showed up to his daily bus route, but instead of turning right, he turned left. Over the next week, he...
Guest Spotlight: Buffalo Extreme
12 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ch...
The Gospel Ranger
25 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 deathb...
The Longest Game
17 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 cours...
Meet Miss Subways
30 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 mon...
The Ski Troops of WWII
16 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week we’re bringing you a story about the 10th Mountain Division, a World War II military experiment to train skiers and climbers to fight in t...
Sofia's Choice: A Ukrainian Diary, One Year Later
06 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 Russ...
Living with Dying
13 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 C...
The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records
03 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Real Refugees of Casablanca
23 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 Wa...
The History Of Now
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
A Guitar, A Cello and the Day that Changed Music
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 cell...
Banging on the Door: The Election of 1872
04 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 - an...
The Square Deal
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
100 years ago, George F. Johnson ran the biggest shoe factory in the world. The Endicott-Johnson Corporation in upstate New York produced 52 million p...
The Massacre at Tlatelolco
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Guest Spotlight: Ear Hustle
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week we’re featuring an episode from our fellow Radiotopia show, Ear Hustle. Ear Hustle is produced inside San Quentin State Prison, in Califor...
Working, Then And Now
09 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1970s, radio host and oral historian Studs Terkel went around the country, tape recorder in hand, interviewing people about their jobs. T...
The Longest Game
23 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 i...
Rumble Strip: Finn and the Bell
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 nam...
The Almost Astronaut
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 in...
The General Slocum
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The End of Smallpox
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 pe...
The Story of Jane
05 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Before the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, abortion was illegal throughout most of the country. But that doesn't mean women didn't get them. ...
The Greatest Songwriter You've Never Heard Of
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Identical Strangers
07 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein were both born in New York City and adopted as infants. When they were 35 years old, they met and found they were “...
Sofia's Choice: A Ukrainian Diary
30 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 Russ...
The Forgotten Story of Clinton Melton
10 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week, the Senate unanimously passed legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime. It was a historic moment. Congress has tried and f...
Claudette Colvin: Making Trouble Then and Now
24 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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. ...
A Voicemail Valentine
10 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nowadays 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. ...
Diary of a Saudi Girl: Then & Now
21 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
A Museum of Sound
22 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
A Real Life West Side Story
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
A Guitar, A Cello, and the Day that Changed Music
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
November 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 h...
A Wrench in the Works
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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. I...
My Iron Lung
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the first half of the 20th century, the disease known as poliomyelitis panicked Americans. Just like COVID today, polio stopped ordinary life in it...
When Borders Move
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since Texas became a state, the Rio Grande has been the border between the U.S. and Mexico. But rivers can move — and that’s exactly what hap...
The Two Lives of Asa Carter
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Asa Carter and Forrest Carter couldn’t have been more different. But they shared a secret. The Education of Little Tree, by Forrest Carter, is an i...
When Ground Zero was Radio Row
10 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On the 20th anniversary of September 11th, 2001, we’re bringing you a story about the World Trade Center. But it isn’t about the attacks, or about...
Last Witness: The Kerner Commission
26 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Decades before our current debate over critical race theory, the 1968 Kerner Report pointed the finger at structural racism for creating the condition...