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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

18:23

Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier 3: The Trial

Radio Diaries ·

2026/02/26

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 episode, radio host Orson Welles, who was investigating the case, learned the officer's identity.Isaac Woodard himself told a reporter, "Nothing they can do to the police officer will give me my eyes back, but if they punish him good and legal it may keep the same thing from happening to some more of our boys coming back home. I want him

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13:12

Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier 2: Officer X

Radio Diaries ·

2026/02/19

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 name of the police officer. Or even the town where it happened. Not even Woodard himself. By the summer of '46, the case was gaining national attention thanks to Orson Welles, who was investigating the crime, week-by-week, on his radio show.Today, episode 2 of our series Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier, about an incident in a small,

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12:19

Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier 1: The Bus Ride

Radio Diaries ·

2026/02/12

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 the identity of the police officer. No one even knew the town where it happened. When the famous radio host Orson Welles heard about the crime, he pledged to solve the mystery, week-by-week, on the air. Today, episode 1 of our new series Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier, about an incident in a small, southern town that led to the

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04:35

TRAILER: Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier

Radio Diaries ·

2026/02/09

On February 12, 1946, an African American soldier heading home from WWII was attacked by a white police officer somewhere in South Carolina. The soldier's name was Isaac Woodard.No one knew the identity of the officer who attacked Woodard. No one even knew which town it had happened in. So when the famous radio host Orson Welles heard about the case, he vowed to solve it on the air.Radio Diaries and Radiotopia bring you a new series about a crime in a small southern town that led to the

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11:41

Remembering Claudette Colvin

Radio Diaries ·

2026/01/14

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 quiet and somewhat anonymous life. But many years earlier, she had done something remarkable.The woman’s name was Claudette Colvin. In 1955, she was a 15-year-old girl growing up in Montgomery, Alabama. On March 2nd of that year, Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a public bus, and was arrested. This was nine months before

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12:16

The First Computer Dating Service: Operation Match

Radio Diaries ·

2025/12/18

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 to the 1960s, when a couple Harvard students had an idea.Businesses had started using a new technology called the computer to process payroll or match a client with the right type of insurance. What if these same computers could be used to get a date? This is the story of the very first computer dating service, Operation Match.Learn about

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16:19

This Short Life

Radio Diaries ·

2025/11/20

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 testimonies about 12 Americans, from a West Virginia coal miner to a Maine farmer, all united by how the struggles of their past have shaped their present. You'll hear audio testimony from some of the people in the book.Buy THIS SHORT LIFE here. If you liked this story, find more of our work at radiodiaries.org and follow us on Bluesky,

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11:42

Detained: The Last Columbia Protester

Radio Diaries ·

2025/11/03

In April 2024, over 100 students were arrested during protests outside Columbia University, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Leqaa Kordia, a young Palestinian woman living in Paterson, New Jersey, was one of them.Kordia was let go after the protests. But months later, ICE officials took her into custody and put her on a plane to a detention facility in Texas. Kordia has now been detained there for more than seven months. She is the last Columbia protestor still in detention.Kordia's cousin,

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17:10

Identical Strangers

Radio Diaries ·

2025/10/23

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 “identical strangers.”This story originally aired on NPR in 2007. Liked this story? Donate and find more of our stories at www.radiodiaries.org. Follow us @radiodiaries on Bluesky and Instagram. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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16:38

The Gospel Ranger

Radio Diaries ·

2025/10/02

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.Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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16:41

The Working Tapes, Revisited

Radio Diaries ·

2025/09/18

In the early 1970s, author Studs Terkel interviewed the owners of Duke & Lee's Auto Repair in Geneva, Illinois, for his bestselling book, Working. He went to talk to them about fixing cars. What he found was a story about fathers and sons working together, and the tensions within a family business. We went back to Duke & Lee's four decades later and found the family business still intact—tensions and all.That was nine years ago. Recently, we heard that the family, and the auto shop,

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29:52

The Last Place

Radio Diaries ·

2025/08/07

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 revisit audio diaries from a retirement home.Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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16:30

The View from the 79th Floor

Radio Diaries ·

2025/07/28

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 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

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37:17

Two Years in the Life of a Saudi Girl, Revisited

Radio Diaries ·

2025/07/17

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. Majd chronicled her dreams of being a scientist, her resistance to having an arranged marriage, and what it was like to be a teenage girl living in one of the most restrictive countries in the world for women. Her story first aired in 2016.A lot has changed in Majd’s life over the past nine years. Last year, she completed her doctorate at

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14:14

The End of Smallpox

Radio Diaries ·

2025/06/30

Vaccines have been in the news recently. Over the last few weeks, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has changed vaccination recommendations and gutted an influential committee that recommends which shots Americans should get. Some experts worry that these changes could lead to outbreaks of diseases the US has long had under control.So this week, we're revisiting a story we made a few years ago about the world's very first vaccine, and the disease it helped eradicate: smallpox.Smallpox

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16:16

The Detainees of Crystal City

Radio Diaries ·

2025/06/13

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 after America’s entry into World War II. In response to the Axis countries’ detainment of Americans who were deemed potential spies, the Roosevelt Administration came up with an elaborate plan: find and arrest Germans, Japanese and Italians living in Latin America and detain them in camps in the U.S. The government would use them to exchange for

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19:51

Prisoners of War

Radio Diaries ·

2025/05/01

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 on the outskirts of Saigon, called Long Binh Jail. 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

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16:18

March of the Bonus Army

Radio Diaries ·

2025/04/17

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 criticize her perpetually."On this episode, we go back to 1932 when a group of World War I veterans set up an encampment in Washington, D.C., and vowed to stay until their voices were heard. It was a remarkable chapter in American history, and a demonstration of the power of citizens to come together for a cause. This is the story of the Bonus

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16:14

The Girls of the Leesburg Stockade

Radio Diaries ·

2025/04/03

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, they were transferred to the one-room Leesburg Stockade and imprisoned for the next 45 days.Only twenty miles away, the girls' parents had no knowledge of their location. A month into their confinement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) heard rumors of the girls' detention and sent photographer Danny Lyon, who took pictures of

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37:20

Guest Spotlight: Signal Hill

Radio Diaries ·

2025/03/20

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 interviews with farmworkers and Communist Party members who organized a sharecroppers' union in Alabama during the Great Depression. The interviews were recorded by historian Robin Kelley for his book, Hammer and Hoe.You can learn more about Signal Hill and check out the rest of their first issue—eight original stories—at signalhill.fm.Learn

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262 results

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