x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Radio Diaries

Radio Diaries & Radiotopia

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

society & culture documentary

All Episodes

14:08

A Voicemail Valentine

Radio Diaries ·

2022/02/10

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. 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. This story originally aired on NPR’s

en-us

38:39

Diary of a Saudi Girl: Then & Now

Radio Diaries ·

2022/01/21

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 conversation

en-us

33:10

A Museum of Sound

Radio Diaries ·

2021/12/22

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 ever

en-us

16:24

A Real Life West Side Story

Radio Diaries ·

2021/12/08

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 originally

en-us

18:10

A Guitar, A Cello, and the Day that Changed Music

Radio Diaries ·

2021/11/18

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 had performed for the Queen of Spain. The other played guitar and was a regular in the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta. On that day 85 years ago, Pablo Casals and Robert Johnson both made recordings that would change music history. This episode originally aired on NPR in 2011.

en-us

40:51

A Wrench in the Works

Radio Diaries ·

2021/11/04

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 the

en-us

15:24

My Iron Lung

Radio Diaries ·

2021/10/22

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 1950s,

en-us

14:26

When Borders Move

Radio Diaries ·

2021/10/07

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 happened in 1864, when torrential rains caused it to jump its banks and go south. Suddenly the border was in a different place, and Texas had gained 700 acres of land called the Chamizal, named after a plant that grew in the area. The Chamizal was a thorn in the side of U.S.–Mexico relations for a century until Sept. 25, 1964, when the U.S. finally

en-us

34:04

The Two Lives of Asa Carter

Radio Diaries ·

2021/09/23

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 iconic best-selling book, with a message about living in harmony with nature, and compassion for people of all kinds. But the story behind the book is very different. It begins with the most infamous racist political speech in American history. This week on the podcast, the true story of the untrue story of The Education of Little Tree. This

en-us

17:18

When Ground Zero was Radio Row

Radio Diaries ·

2021/09/10

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 everything that came after. Instead, it’s about what came before 9/11. A century ago, before the twin towers were built, the neighborhood now known as Ground Zero was home to the largest collection of radio and electronics stores in the world. Back then, it was known as Radio Row.

en-us

12:21

Last Witness: The Kerner Commission

Radio Diaries ·

2021/08/26

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 series,

en-us

20:52

Prisoners of War

Radio Diaries ·

2021/08/12

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 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. Some were there for serious crimes, others for small stuff, like refusing to get a haircut. By the summer of 1968, LBJ had become

en-us

21:53

The Gospel Ranger

Radio Diaries ·

2021/07/15

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 has

en-us

25:01

The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records

Radio Diaries ·

2021/06/25

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 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

en-us

17:21

From the Archive: Josh's Diary

Radio Diaries ·

2021/06/10

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 Diaries is

en-us

17:39

The Tulsa Race Massacre, 100 Years Later

Radio Diaries ·

2021/05/27

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, she passed

en-us

34:47

Juan, 25 Years Later

Radio Diaries ·

2021/05/13

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 and has

en-us

26:32

25 Years of Radio Diaries

Radio Diaries ·

2021/04/30

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 that aired

en-us

20:36

Busman's Holiday

Radio Diaries ·

2021/04/15

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 monthly

en-us

31:50

The Last Place: Diary of a Retirement Home

Radio Diaries ·

2021/04/01

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 distracted by

en-us

256 results

Similar Podcasts

Voices of Life

APG Mannheim

Promo Estereo Podcast

Promo Estereo

Talking Timelines Podcast

Talkingtimelines

גיקונומי

ראם שרמן ודורון ניר

Drømmefanger

Drømmefanger