Radio Diaries
Episodes
The Song that Crossed Party Lines
04 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This election season, our country seems more politically divided than ever. The race has been so ugly that it’s hard to even imagine a time when Rep...
The Working Tapes – Part 3
25 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A private eye, a jockey, a hotel piano player….voices from The Working Tapes. In the early 1970’s, author Studs Terkel went around the country wi...
The Working Tapes – Part 2
12 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A Chicago police officer, a female advertising executive, a gravedigger……voices from The Working Tapes. In the early 1970’s, author Studs Terke...
The Working Tapes – Part 1
30 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
An auto union worker, a switchboard telephone operator, a press agent… In the early 1970’s, author Studs Terkel went around the country with a re...
The Working Tapes – A Preview
24 Sep 2016
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. The result...
From Flint to Rio
27 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
2012 marked the first year that women boxers were allowed to compete in the Summer Olympics. Our audio diary followed Claressa Shields, a 17-year-old ...
Contenders: The Veep
14 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Harry S. Truman once wrote that the President of the United States is a “glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and ...
Contenders: Say it Like You Mean it
07 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout American history, one of the most important job qualifications for the office of President has been knowing how to talk. You have to be abl...
Contenders: Women Who Fought for the White House
24 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
If Hillary Clinton wins in November, she will become the first female President in American history. But she is not the first woman to seek this offic...
Majd’s Diary: Two Years in the Life of a Saudi Girl
01 Jun 2016
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...
A Mother, Then and Now
28 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In celebration of Mother’s Day and Radio Diaries’ 20th anniversary this month, we’re revisiting Melissa’s story. As an 18 year old, Melissa re...
Radio Diaries Turns 20!
08 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
20 years ago, NPR’s All Things Considered began running our occasional series, Teenage Diaries… which then grew up to become Radio Diaries. Today ...
The Man in the Zoo
25 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 1906, New York’s Bronx Zoo was the largest zoo in the world. That year, the zoo introduced a new exhibit that would quickly became its most popul...
Claudette Colvin: “A Teenage Rosa Parks”
02 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Nine months before Rosa Parks, a 15-year-old girl refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, AL. Learn about...
Identical Strangers
18 Feb 2016
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 “...
Frankie’s Second Chance (Updated)
05 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
As a teenager, Frankie was a high school football star whose picture was in his hometown newspaper every week. Years after graduating, Frankie was bac...
Friday Night Lights
22 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“In the seventh grade, I was real little, probably weighed 75 pounds. Everybody used to pick on me all the time. They picked on me and beat the crap...
The Ski Troops of WWII
07 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The 10th Mountain Division fought in World War II for only four months, but it had one of the highest casualty rates of the war. The division started ...
From Prison to President
24 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Four years after Nelson Mandela was released from prison, he became president of South Africa. And yet, those 4 years were among the bloodiest and mos...
The Last Place
03 Dec 2015
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 at…the Last Place? On ...
A Guitar, A Cello, And The Day That Changed Music
19 Nov 2015
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 Story of ‘Ballad for Americans’
05 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How a ten minute operatic folk cantata managed to unite Democrats, Republicans and Communists. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choic...
Serving 9-5: Diaries from Prison Guards
22 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Polk Youth Institution in Butner, North Carolina is a prison for young men between the ages of 19-25. For our series Prison Diaries, I gave tape recor...
The Man Who Put the ‘P’ in NPR
08 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
One of the best mission statements we’ve ever read is the original NPR mission, which was written in 1969 by Bill Siemering. Bill is an amazing guy ...
Crime Pays
11 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
This month’s podcast is about what it takes to get people to change. We focus on a group of people that might be the hardest to change – or at lea...
Strange Fruit
06 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
“Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck, for the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, for the sun to rot, for a tree to drop. Here is a strange and...
Mandela’s Prison Years
09 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
While Mandela and other political leaders languished in prison, the government cracked down. It seemed that resistance to apartheid had been crushed. ...
A Visit to the Memory Palace
18 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Big, happy announcement: The Memory Palace is the newest member of Radiotopia! To celebrate, we bring you an episode from The Memory Palace, by Nate ...
Matthew and the Judge
05 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
We gave both Judge Jeremiah, a Rhode Island juvenile court judge, and Matthew, a 16-year-old repeat offender, tape recorders. Judge Jeremiah released ...
Seeing the Forrest Through the Little Trees
22 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The Education of Little Tree is an iconic best-selling book, with a message about living in harmony with nature, and compassion for people of all kind...
The Traveling Electric Chair
07 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Bridgette McGee grew up knowing nothing about her grandfather, Willie McGee. Now she is on a quest to unearth everything she can about his life – an...
From Bullets to Balance Sheets
25 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
As a teenager, Kamari Ridgle was a drug dealer and drive-by shooter until a near-death experience led him to his true love…accounting. Let us know ...
The Square Deal
02 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
When George F. Johnson died, the nation witnessed one of the largest funerals in U.S. history. What did Johnson do? He made shoes. Lots of them. 100 y...
Fly Girls
19 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1940s, the US Airforce faced a dilemma. Thousands of new airplanes were coming off assembly lines and needed to be delivered to military ...
Claudette Colvin – A “Teenage Rosa Parks”
05 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What makes a hero? Why do we remember some stories and not others? Consider Claudette Colvin. She was a 15-year-old girl in the segregated city of Mo...
First Kiss
12 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Josh Cutler has Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes uncontrollable tics and involuntary verbal outbursts. In this episode, list...
The Greatest Songwriter You’ve Never Heard Of
03 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
You probably don’t know her name, but you definitely know her songs. Rose Marie McCoy passed away recently at the age of 92. On this episode of the ...
George Wallace and the Legacy of a Sentence
23 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve seen the movie Selma, our new podcast features two people who are important characters in the film: Representative John Lewis, the civil r...
The View from the 79th Floor
08 Jan 2015
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 ...
Miss Subways
22 Dec 2014
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...
Last Man on the Mountain – Updated
11 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
A few years ago, we produced a story about the greatest underdog we’d ever met: Jimmy Weekley. Jimmy was the last remaining resident of Pigeonroost...
Busman’s Holiday
13 Nov 2014
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...
Weasel’s Diary, Revisited
07 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Jose William Huezo Soriano – aka Weasel – is a 26-year-old Los Angeles resident who gets deported to his parents’ home country of El Salvador, ...
When Ground Zero was Radio Row
17 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
For more than four decades, the area around Cortlandt Street in lower Manhattan was the largest collection of radio and electronics stores in the worl...
When Borders Move
06 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when, instead of people crossing the border, the border crosses the people? In this episode of the Radio Diaries Podcast, two stories fr...
Working, Then and Now
01 Sep 2014
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. ...
Strange Fruit – Voices of a Lynching
25 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The images coming out of Ferguson, MO this summer have reminded us of another upsetting image of race in America. It’s a photograph that was tak...
The Gospel Ranger
17 Jul 2014
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...
“Halfrican” Revisited
23 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When Jeff Rogers was 16 years old he started referring to himself as a “halfrican.” Jeff has a black father and a white mother. And like many teen...
Walter the Seltzerman – It’s Not Easy Being Last
02 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Back in 1919, Walter Backerman’s grandfather delivered seltzer by horse and wagon on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Today, Walter continues to deliv...
The Long Shadow of Forrest Carter
12 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Asa Carter was a speechwriter for Alabama Governor George Wallace. He penned one of the most infamous speeches of the era… Wallace’s Segregation N...
The Day Nelson Mandela Became Nelson Mandela
20 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The moment Nelson Mandela really became Nelson Mandela was on April 20th, 1964 – fifty years ago today. It happened when he stood up in a stuffy Sou...
Frankie’s Teenage Diary, Revisited
20 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
As a teenager, Frankie Lewchuck recorded an audio diary about his family in rural Alabama. 16 years later, he recorded a follow up story for the Teena...
Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair
18 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the night of May 7th, 1951, in the small town of Laurel, Mississippi, close to a thousand people gathered around the courthouse. They came to wi...
Teenage Diaries Revisited 1-Hour Special
13 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Back in the 1990s, Radio Diaries producer Joe Richman gave tape recorders to a handful of teens and asked them to report on their own lives. Now, 16 y...
A Guitar, A Cello, and the Day that Changed Music
20 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
What would it sound like if one of the world’s greatest classical cellists, and the most legendary blues guitarist of all time…jammed together? L...
Mandela: An Audio History
05 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
An award-winning radio series documenting the struggle against apartheid through intimate first-person accounts of Nelson Mandela himself, as well as ...
The Last Man on the Mountain
14 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1990s, Arch Coal began mountaintop removal mining in a corner of West Virginia called Pigeonroost Hollow. There used to be dozens of houses in ...
The View From the 79th Floor
16 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
On July 28, 1945 an army bomber pilot on a routine ferry mission found himself lost in the fog over Manhattan. Stories from the day a plane crashed in...
Teenage Diaries Revisited: Juan
19 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
16 years ago, Juan reported on his life as a recent Mexican immigrant living in poverty in Texas. In his new diary, Juan takes us on a tour of the lif...
Burma ’88: Buried History
08 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
25 years ago, university students in Burma sparked a countrywide uprising. They called for a nationwide strike on 8/8/88, a date they chose for its nu...
Teenage Diaries Revisited: Melissa
12 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
As an 18-year-old raised in the foster care system, Melissa took NPR listeners along when she gave birth to her son Issaiah. Over the past 16 years Me...
Teenage Diaries Revisited: Josh
30 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In high school, Josh documented his life with Tourette’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes uncontrollable tics and involuntary verbal ou...
Teenage Diaries Revisited: Amanda
17 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
At the age of 17, Amanda knew she was gay. But her parents kept insisting she’d grow out of it. Today, a lot has changed in the country, and within ...