Radio Diaries

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 new monuments going up. On April 26, the nation’s first lynching memorial will open in Montgomery, Alabama. It’s called the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and it pays tribute to the more than 4,400 black people who were killed by lynch mobs b...

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. Sounds crazy, but the even crazier part is…it works. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 the South. Traveling while Black wasn’t easy. Today on the podcast we’re bringing you a story about how Black travelers made a secret road map so they could get around safely. It’s told by our friends and fellow Radiotopians at  99% Invisible . Learn abo...

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 seen since he was 5. This is his audio diary. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, AL. This was nine months before Rosa Parks did the same thing. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 recently combed through a large collection of early voicemail at the Phono Post Archive , and we discovered th...

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 forget that it wasn’t so long ago when abortions were illegal everywhere in the United States. In 1965, an underground network formed in Chicago to help pregnant women get abortions. At first, they connected women with doctors willing to break the law to...

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. A collaboration with This American Life. *** If you enjoy this podcast, please consider making a donation before the end of the year. www.radiodiaries.org/donate Thank you! Learn about your ad cho...

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 family wants to arrange her marriage. From the age of 19 to 21, Majd has been chronicling her life with a microphone, taking us inside a society where the voices of women are rarely heard. In her audio diary, Majd documents everything from arguments w...

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 undocumented. This is Juan’s story, from our series, Teenage Diaries Revisited. *** We are proud to be founding members of Radiotopia, a network of the most creative, smart, and inspiring podcasts in the world. We hope you’ll become a Radiotopia citizen today!...

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 Diaries project. In this week’s episode, listen to Juan’s Teenage Diary, as well as a new story that he told live on stage (as a grown-up) at The Moth. *** We are proud to be founding members of Radiotopia, a network of the most creative, smart, and ins...

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 there’s a very different story behind the book. It begins with the most infamous racist political speech in American History. This...

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 this episode, we bring you audio diaries from a retirement home. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 published a book with an unwieldy title: “Working: People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do.” This collective portrait of America was based on more than a hundred interviews Studs did around the country. And after “Wo...

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 to death. Over the next six years, the case went through three trials and sparked international protests and appeals. But in 1951, McGee was put to death in Mississippi’s traveling electric chair. His execution was broadcast live by a local radio sta...

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. Each month starting in 1941, a young woman was elected “Miss Subways,” and her face gazed down on transit riders as they rode through the city. Her photo was accompanied by a short bio describing her hopes, dreams and aspirations. The public got to choos...

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 was hoping to show off the new, modern, Mexico. At the same time, student protests were regularly sweeping through the streets of Mexico City. And just 10 days before the Olympics were to begin, on October 2, the Mexican army fired on a peaceful stud...

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 teachers are being paid NOT to teach. These are teachers who are accused of misconduct. Often without warning, they’re removed from their classrooms and sent to a Department of Education reassignment center. Teachers call it: “The Rubber Room.” The truth...

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.’ The elephants have already retired to a farm in central florida. Where will the 400 human cast and crew members go next? Perhaps they’ll go just an hour west of that elephant farm…to Gibsonton, Florida. It was once known as the Oddest Town in America....

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 special show in Brooklyn. For Mother’s day, we’re bringing you Melissa’s story, as she told it live at The Moth. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 dying – went on to become a Pentecostal preacher. A boy who would later help inspire the birth of Rock & Roll. His name was Brother Claude Ely…and he was known as The Gospel Ranger. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 with 7 others. One of them was Ahmed Kathrada who died this week. He was 87.  Mandela, Kathrada and the others served most of their sentences at Robben Island. Kathrada often said that being in prison for more than two decades was like being preserved...

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 friends, of life in foxholes, of combat. And he sent those audio letters home to his family in Norristown, Pennsylvania. And then he was killed in action. Michael’s tapes survived and were used to produce this story as part of the public radio series “Los...

An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States. Over the past month, the Trump Administration has unveiled plans to arrest and deport large numbers of them. Under Obama, close to 3 million immigrants were deported. Trump is trying to do it faster. And with fewer restrictions. Undocumented immigrants have long been an easy political target, especially those who’ve committ...

Daisy Anderson and Alberta Martin lived what seemed like parallel lives. Both had grown up poor, children of sharecroppers in the South. Daisy in Tennessee; Alberta in Alabama. Both women got married in their early 20’s, to men who were near 80. And both those husbands had served in the Civil War. But as it happens, they’d served on opposite sides. Daisy and Alberta were two of the last surviving...