Radio Diaries
Episodes
Prisoners of War
12 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During 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 capt...
The Gospel Ranger
15 Jul 2021
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 Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records
25 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One hundred years ago, in 1921, a man named Harry Pace started the first major Black-owned record company in the United States. He called it Black Swa...
From the Archive: Josh's Diary
10 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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. F...
The Tulsa Race Massacre, 100 Years Later
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On May 31, 1921, white mobs attacked a prosperous Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as “Black Wall Street.” As many as three hundred pe...
Juan, 25 Years Later
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we continue celebrating Radio Diaries’ 25th anniversary by catching up with Juan from the Teenage Diaries series, which first aired on NPR...
25 Years of Radio Diaries
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 th...
Busman's Holiday
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Last Place: Diary of a Retirement Home
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For the past year, most nursing homes and assisted living facilities have been in lockdown. Residents have been kept apart—not just from their famil...
Fly Girls
18 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Soon after he entered office, President Biden issued an executive order allowing transgender people to serve in the military. It was the latest in a l...
Burma '88: Buried History
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On August 8, 1988 — a date chosen for its numerological power — university students in Burma sparked an uprising against the military dictatorship...
Living with Dying
14 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One 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. Someo...
Teen Contender: Then & Now
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 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...
America Vs. America
16 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After 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 expe...
Love from Six Feet Apart (Revisited)
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Robert 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 ...
Love at First Quarantine, The Sequel
04 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When 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...
Centenarians (Still) in Lockdown
20 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been 9 months since Joe Newman (107) and Anita Sampson (100) recorded their story about surviving the 1918 pandemic, getting older, and staying...
How to Lose an Election: A History
02 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Presidential 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 ...
When Nazis Took Manhattan
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In an election season when the words "Will you condemn white supremacy" are considered a gotcha question at a presidential debate, it seems like a goo...
March of the Bonus Army
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1932, a group of World War I veterans in Portland, Oregon hopped a freight train and started riding the rails to Washington DC. They ...
The Forgotten Story of Clinton Melton
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This summer, videos of Black people killed by police officers have sparked outrage and protests across the country. 65 years ago, it was a photograph ...
The Infamous Words of George Wallace
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A law and order politician who rails against anarchists protesting in the streets and the lying mainstream media? It may sound familiar, but we’re ...
The Final Frontline
13 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 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...
Quarantined in the Pizzeria
03 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
COVID-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 ru...
Lockdown in Lockup
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Coronavirus cases are on the rise across the country and the five largest clusters of the virus are in correctional institutions. This isn’t a surpr...
Home is Where You Park Your Mini Van
16 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Back 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 a...
The Words of Renault Robinson, Then and Now
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Renault 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 lear...
Love at First Quarantine
15 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Gali 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 th...
Love from Six Feet Apart
24 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Most 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...
Centenarians in Lockdown
10 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Joe 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 fia...
Soul Sister
11 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a long history in America of white people imagining black people’s lives - in novels, in movies, and sometimes in journalism. In 1969, G...
The Long Haul: Busman's Holiday
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Busman’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....
History Had Me Glued to the Seat
20 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
You 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...
Voicemail Valentine
06 Feb 2020
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. ...
My So-Called Lungs
16 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Laura 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 ...
The Teenage Diaries Revisited Hour Special
19 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Back 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 serie...
Thembi's Diary, Revisited
05 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We 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 c...
The Last Witness
29 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For 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 ...
The Press is the Enemy
13 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Fifty 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....
The View from the 79th Floor
17 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On 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 ...
The Dropped Wrench
03 Oct 2019
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. ...
Prisoners of War
19 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
During 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 capt...
The Working Tapes of Studs Terkel
05 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 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...
Stories from a Vanishing New York
22 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today 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
25 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today…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, ...
The Square Deal
20 Jun 2019
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...
Amanda's Diary: Revisited
06 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This 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...
Last Witness: Surviving the Tulsa Race Riot
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On 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, O...
Juan's Diaries: Undocumented, Then and Now
02 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Back 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 ca...
The Bonus Army
18 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 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.r...
The Working Tapes
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 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 t...
The Story of Jane
21 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Before 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 ...
The Ski Troops of WWII
07 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The 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, m...
When Nazis Took Manhattan
20 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On 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 ev...
A Voicemail Valentine
11 Feb 2019
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. ...
The Border Wall
16 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Stories about walls and borders, and what happens when – instead of people crossing the border – the border crosses the people. Act 1: Wrong Side...
Thembi's Diary
19 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We 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 c...
Bonus Episode: Hear the World Differently
10 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
There’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 th...
A Guitar, A Cello, and the Day that Changed Music
15 Nov 2018
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...
The Song That Crossed Party Lines
01 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Our 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...
Campaigning While Female
18 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A record-breaking number of women are running for Congress in the midterm elections this November. There are 257, dwarfing all previous years. And in ...
Serving Time 9-5: Diaries from Prison Guards
04 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sergeant Furman Camel spent 27 years in a North Carolina Prison. That's as many years as Nelson Mandela spent behind bars. But Camel did his time, as ...
Matthew and the Judge
20 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We gave Judge Jeremiah, a Rhode Island juvenile court judge, and Matthew, a 16-year-old repeat offender, tape recorders. Through their audio diaries,...
Prisoners of War
29 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
During 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 capt...
Last Witness: Mission to Hiroshima
06 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. It was the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in wa...
Nelson Mandela at 100
17 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Nelson Mandela would have been 100 years old this week. And we’re marking the anniversary by bringing you our documentary, Mandela: An Audio History...
Busman’s Holiday
21 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The story of William Cimillo, a New York City bus driver who snapped one day in 1947 and went on a 1,300 mile detour with his bus… to Florida. ****...
Last Witness: The General Slocum
14 Jun 2018
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 ...
Last Witness: Surviving the Tulsa Race Riot
31 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On 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, O...
Fly Girls
03 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1940s, the U.S. Air Force faced a dilemma. Thousands of new airplanes were coming off assembly lines and needed to be delivered to milita...
Strange Fruit, Revisited
19 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past few years, there’s been a movement to tear down the Confederate monuments dotted all over the south. At the same time, there are some ...
Crime Pays
06 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a program in Richmond, CA that has a controversial method of reducing gun violence in their city: paying criminals to not commit crimes. Sou...
The Green Book
22 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The 1950s were the golden age of the American road trip. But of course freedom of movement didn’t apply to all Americans. Jim Crow was the law in th...
Deported: Weasel’s Diary
08 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At 26-years-old, Jose William Huezo Soriano—a.k.a. Weasel—was deported back to his parents’ home country, El Salvador, a country he hadn’t see...
Nine Months Before Rosa Parks
28 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
You’ve heard of Rosa Parks, but do you know about Claudette Colvin? On March 2, 1955, when Claudette was 15 years old, she refused to give up her s...
A Voicemail Valentine
14 Feb 2018
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. ...
The Story of Jane
19 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Abortion is one of the most divisive issues in American life and politics. 45 years after Roe vs. Wade – our country is still split. It’s easy to...
The Dropped Wrench
23 Dec 2017
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. ...
Majd’s Diary: Two Years in the Life of a Saudi Girl
21 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Majd Abdulghani is a teenager living in Saudi Arabia, one of the most restrictive countries for women in the world. She wants to be a scientist. Her f...
Under the Radar
02 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
16 years after recording his teenage diary, Juan now lives in Colorado. He has a house, a good job, and three American kids. But…he’s still undocu...
Juan’s Story, Live at the Moth
23 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Juan crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally as a teen, and settled with his family in Texas. In 1996, he recorded an audio diary for our Teenage Dia...
The Two Lives of Asa Carter
05 Oct 2017
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...
The Last Place
21 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When you spend so much of your life getting to the next stage, thinking about the next move, what is it like to find yourself in…the Last Place? In ...
The Working Tapes of Studs Terkel (Hour Special)
03 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For Labor Day, we’re bringing you a special, one hour episode of our series The Working Tapes of Studs Terkel. In 1974, oral historian Studs Terkel...
Willie McGee and The Traveling Electric Chair
17 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1945, Willie McGee was accused of raping a white woman. The all-white jury took less than three minutes to find him guilty and McGee was sentenced ...
Miss Subways
27 Jul 2017
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. Eac...
Mexico ’68 and the Tlatelolco Massacre
27 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1968, Mexico City was preparing to host the Olympics. It was the first time that a Latin American country would host the Games, and the government ...
The Rubber Room
02 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The New York City public school system is huge. More than a million students, all being taught by 75,000 teachers. Except, a few hundred of those teac...
The Oddest Town in America
19 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This month, the big tent is finally coming down. After 146 years, Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey are closing the ‘Greatest Show on Earth.’...
Radio Diaries Live at the Moth
04 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When our friends at the storytelling show, The Moth, heard Melissa Rodriguez’s audio diary, they invited her to tell a story live on stage, in a spe...
The Gospel Ranger
13 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This is the story of a song, “Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down,” written by a 12-year-old boy on his deathbed. A boy who – instead of dy...
Remembering Robben Island
31 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Nelson Mandela famously spent 27 years in prison for fighting against apartheid in South Africa. He was sentenced to life in 1964 for treason, along ...
The Vietnam Tapes of Michael A. Baronowski
16 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1966, a young Marine took a reel-to-reel tape recorder with him into the Vietnam War. For two months, Michael A. Baronowski made tapes of his frien...
Weasel’s Diary, Revisited
02 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States. Over the past month, the Trump Administration has unveiled plans to arrest ...
The Last Civil War Widows
13 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Daisy Anderson and Alberta Martin lived what seemed like parallel lives. Both had grown up poor, children of sharecroppers in the South. Daisy in Tenn...
The Border Wall (Updated)
02 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
One week into his Presidency, Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump says it will be, “...
Strange Fruit (Updated)
19 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Finding artists willing to perform at Donald Trump’s inauguration proved harder than expected. Elton John, Celine Dion, Garth Brooks, Ice-T, and Ki...
Busman’s Holiday
20 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The story of William Cimillo, a New York City bus driver who snapped one day in 1947, left his regular route in the Bronx, and drove his municipal bus...
The Working Tapes – Part 4
06 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A new story from our series The Working Tapes. In the early 1970’s, author Studs Terkel interviewed the owners of Duke & Lee’s Auto Repair in...
March of the Bonus Army
22 Nov 2016
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 cri...