This week we're featuring a story we loved from the StoryCorps podcast. 

In 1964, a 12-year-old paperboy from suburban Long Island spent nearly two weeks hiding among the gleaming attractions of the New York World's Fair. His adventure caused a media sensation. But the world only learned half the story.

Hart Island is America’s largest public cemetery—sometimes known as a “potter’s field.” The island has no headstones or plaques, just numbered markers. More than a million people are buried on Hart Island in mass graves, there are no headstones or plaques, just numbered markers. In this special, hour-long episode we're untangling mysteries about how people ended up on Hart Island, the lives they lived and the people they left behind.

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, and Alberta Hunter, artists who transformed American music.

But Black Swan’s success would be short-lived. Just a couple years after Pace founded the company, larger, wealthier, white competitors started to take an interest in the artists whose careers Pace had propelled. Then, Pace’s own life took a mysterious turn.

This episode was originally published in 2021.

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 series “Teenage Diaries.” 16 years later, in “Teenage Diaries Revisited,” we check back in with this group to see what’s happened in their lives.

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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 courage. She was willing to speak out about having AIDS at a time when very few South Africans did. Thembi carried a tape recorder from 2004 to 2005 to document her life. In this episode, we revisit Thembi’s diary, and we introduce listeners to Thembi’s daughter, Onwabo.

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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 an obituary show.

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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.

President Nixon was getting beaten up by the press, and in response, his administration had been trying to undercut the credibility of the media, especially television news.

The war between politicians and the media has a long history. Today on the podcast, the story of Agnew’s speech. Also, the story of Adlai Stevenson, a presidential candidate doomed to fail on this new-fangled thing called television.

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 right to sue the federal government.

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.

This story was produced in collaboration with This American Life.

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Thank you!

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.

By the summer of 1968, over half the men in Long Binh Jail were locked up on AWOL charges. Some were there for more serious crimes, others for small stuff, like refusing to get a haircut. The stockade had become extremely overcrowded. Originally built to house 400 inmates, it became crammed with over 700 men, more than half African American. On August 29th, 1968, the situation erupted. Fifty years later, we bring you the incredible story.

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.

Studs recorded all of his interviews on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, but after the book came out the tapes were packed away in boxes and forgotten for decades. A couple years ago, Radio Diaries and the organization Project& were given exclusive access to the tapes. On this episode of The Radio Diaries Podcast, we're bringing you eleven stories from Studs' Working tapes. There's the telephone switchboard operator, the Chicago police officer, the private eye, the hotel piano player and many more.

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.

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, of New York City, was elected to Congress in a historic victory in 1968. And like the squad...Chisholm made her voice heard.

In 1972, Chisholm launched a spirited campaign for the Democratic nomination. She was the first woman and first African American to run. Declaring herself “unbought and unbossed,” she took on the political establishment, declaring herself “the candidate of the people.”

This week, we’re featuring an episode of a podcast we’re big fans of: The Last Archive! The Last Archive tells little known histories and how they affect our modern lives. Today’s story, “Parakeet Panic,” explores when invasive parakeets began to spread in New York City in the 1970s — and the government decided that the solution was to kill them all.

If you liked this episode, you can listen to more of The Last Archive at thelastarchive.com, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow us @radiodiaries on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Facebook for more of our recommendations and stories, or visit us at radiodiaries.org.

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 pairs of shoes a year.

But Johnson wasn’t only known for his shoes. Johnson had an unusual theory at the time, about how workers should be treated. Some people called it “Welfare Capitalism.” He called it “The Square Deal.”

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 has changed since 1969, when "homosexual acts" were illegal in all states but one - Illinois. Today, gay marriage is legal across the nation. Here at Radio Diaries we have our own small time capsule of how much has changed. The very first audio diary I ever did, with Amanda Brand. Amanda's story was about being a gay teenager, with parents who were having a really hard time with the idea. Today on our podcast, we're revisiting Amanda's diary, and we catch up on her life now.

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, Oklahoma. In less than 24 hours, the mobs destroyed more than 1000 homes and businesses. It’s estimated as many as 300 people were killed. The Tulsa Race Riot is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. Olivia Hooker was the last surviving witness to the events of that day.

Know someone who’d make a good Last Witness? Get in touch. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook @RadioDiaries.

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 cassette recorder to document his life there for NPR. Almost two decades later, we gave Juan another recorder to report on his life as an adult. In many ways, Juan has achieved the American Dream - he has a house, a good job, and three American kids. But...he's still undocumented.

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.radiodiaries.org/march-of-the-bonus-army/

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 these interviews into a book called, “Working.” After the book was released in 1974, the tapes were packed away in Studs home office. A few years ago, we at Radio Diaries, along with our collaborator Jane Saks of Project&, were offered the chance to make a radio and podcast series out of the recordings. In today’s episode, we bring you some of our favorite stories from The Working Tapes.

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 them.

Hundreds of women were dying every year in botched abortions. In 1965, an underground network formed in Chicago to help women who wanted to have abortions, in a medically safe way.  At first, they connected women with doctors willing to break the law to perform the procedure. Eventually, women in the collective trained to perform abortions themselves.

Today on the Radio Diaries Podcast...The Story of Jane.

And a heads up -  this story includes some graphic descriptions that may not be appropriate for all listeners.

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, many of these soldiers helped to create the modern ski industry.

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 event: a "Pro-American rally." Inside, on the stage, there was a 30-foot tall banner of George Washington, sandwiched between American flags...and two huge swastikas.

Today’s episode is a special collaboration with The Memory Palace.

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This episode is sponsored by Care/Of, a monthly subscription vitamin service. For 50% off your first month, go to TakeCareOf.com and enter radiodiaries50.

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 that many of these audio letters are about the same thing: Love.

At the age of 16, he played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. He went on to make landmark recordings with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. He’s considered one of the most important drummers in history — and he would’ve turned 100 years old this week.

Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes is a new film about the musician by award-winning filmmakers Sam Pollard and (our very own!) Ben Shapiro. Today on the podcast, we sat down with them to discuss the life and music of Max Roach, and the decades of work that went into creating the film.

You can watch Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes on PBS, Amazon Prime and iTunes: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/max-roach-the-drum-also-waltzes-film/26469/.

If you’re enjoying Radio Diaries, tell a friend! Or share on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook @RadioDiaries.

Stories about walls and borders, and what happens when – instead of people crossing the border – the border crosses the people.

Act 1: Wrong Side of the Fence

Pamela Taylor technically lives in the U.S. But somehow, her house is on the Mexican side of the border wall.

Act 2: The Chamizal

Ever since Texas became a state, the Rio Grande has been the official border between the US and Mexico. The problem is, rivers can move – and that’s exactly what happened in 1864. Torrential rains caused the river to jump its banks and go south. All of a sudden, the border was in a different place… and that was a problem.

Featuring the song, “Chamizal Blues” by Bob Burns and the Tekewoods.

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This episode of the Radio Diaries Podcast has support from Audible, the largest collection of audiobooks on the planet. Select from thousands of best sellers, mysteries, memories, wellness guides, histories and more.  

Try audible by downloading a book for free today. Go to Audible.com/diaries or text DIARIES to 500500.

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 courage. She was willing to speak out about having AIDS at a time when very few South Africans were willing to. Thembi carried a tape recorder from 2004 to 2005 to document her life. In this episode, we revisit Thembi’s diary.

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 the shows at Radiotopia — try to do. We want to help you hear the world differently.

We’re in the middle of our annual fundraiser where we ask you, our listeners, to support the network that makes this show possible. Our goal is to reach 25,000 donors. Every donation counts, no matter the size. So give what you can and help us get one step closer. There’s some great new swag and opportunities to meet your favorite producers. Including a one-on-one chat with Joe Richman and the rest of the Radio Diaries team.

Go to https://www.radiotopia.fm/donate-2018e to donate. And thank you.

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.

But on this day 75 years ago, Pablo Casals and Robert Johnson both made recordings that would change music history.

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 today’s episode, we’re going back almost 80 years, to another extremely polarized moment in American history. It was 1940, and the U.S. was deeply divided about engaging in World War II. Franklin Roosevelt was running for his third term, facing a Republican challenger, Wendell Wilkie. But that election season, the Republican Party, The Democrats, and even the Communist Party managed to agree on one thing:

A song. It was called “Ballad for Americans.”

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 2020, we’ll likely see a record number of women running for President as well. It's a historic moment for women in politics. But what many people don’t know is that - over the years - there have actually been more than 35 women who have run for President.

Today on the show we have three stories of women who launched bids to be President of the United States: Victoria Woodhull, Margaret Chase Smith, and Shirley Chisholm.

These stories are part of our series, Contenders.

Sponsored by Quip - get your first refill pack FREE by going to getquip.com/diaries.

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 likes to say, in 8 hour shifts.

"I wear this uniform with pride. Everyday that I come in here I'm creased down. My shoes are shined. And I smell good. The uniform is 90% of the job. Looking the part."

In this episode we bring you audio diaries from the prison guards who work at Polk Youth Institution.

We gave Judge Jeremiah, a Rhode Island juvenile court judge, and Matthew, a 16-year-old repeat offender, tape recorders. Through their audio diaries, Matthew and the judge tell the same story from two different sides of the bench.

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.

By the summer of 1968, over half the men in Long Binh Jail were locked up on AWOL charges. Some were there for more serious crimes, others for small stuff, like refusing to get a haircut. The stockade had become extremely overcrowded. Originally built to house 400 inmates, it became crammed with over 700 men, more than half African American.

On August 29th, 1968, the situation erupted. Fifty years later, we’re bringing you that story.

Sponsors:  Quip – Get first refill pack FREE by going to www.getquip.com/diaries

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 warfare. There were three strike planes that flew over Hiroshima that day: the Enola Gay which carried the bomb, and two escort planes, the Great Artiste and the Necessary Evil. Russell Gackenbach was a Second Lieutenant and a navigator on the mission. Today, he is the only surviving crew member from those three planes.

Know someone who’d make a good Last Witness? Get in touch! You can find us on Twitter and Facebook, use the hashtag #LastWitness.

Sponsors:

LinkedIn – Get $50 off your first job posting at www.linkedin.com/diaries and use code DIARIES at checkout.

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We bring you a lot of stories each year, but we don’t often get to share the work behind them. We recently held an event at WNYC’s The Greene Space in New York City, where our subjects and producers reflected on the challenges, and joys, of telling these untold stories. For the last podcast of the year, we’re bringing you that live show: a behind the scenes look at The Unmarked Graveyard.

We want to bring you as many stories next year as we did this year — and we can’t do that without your help! Please consider making a contribution to support our work by going to radiodiaries.org.

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. This award-winning series chronicles the struggle against apartheid through intimate first-person accounts of Nelson Mandela himself, as well as those who fought with him, and against him.

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Sponsors:

_ LinkedIn,  get $50 off your first job posting at www.linkedin.com/diaries and use code DIARIES at checkout._

Bombas, a sock company on a mission. Get 20% off at www.bombas.com/diaries and use code DIARIES at checkout.

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.

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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 more than 1,300 residents of the Lower East Side. Many of the passengers were recent German immigrants who were headed up the east river for a church outing, a boat cruise and picnic on Long Island. But they would never make it. We interviewed the last living survivor of the General Slocum, Adella Wotherspoon, when she was 100 years old. Today we’re bringing you her story as part of our series, Last Witness. Plus, a portrait of the last civilian lighthouse keeper in the U.S.

Know someone who’d make a good Last Witness? Get in touch! You can find us on Twitter and Facebook, use the hashtag #LastWitness.

Sponsors:

Bombas – Get 20% off at www.bombas.com/diaries and use code DIARIES at checkout.

LinkedIn – Get $50 off your first job posting at www.linkedin.com/diaries and use code DIARIES at checkout.

TalkSpace – Go to www.talkspace.com/PRX and use code PRX to get $45 off your first month.

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, Oklahoma. In less than 24 hours, the mobs destroyed more than 1000 homes and businesses. It’s estimated as many as 300 people were killed. The Tulsa Race Riot is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. Olivia Hooker, now 103, is the last surviving witness to the events of that day.

Know someone who’d make a good Last Witness? Get in touch! You can find us on Twitter and Facebook, use the hashtag #LastWitness.

Sponsors:

Bombas – Get 20% off at www.bombas.com/diaries and use code DIARIES at checkout.

LinkedIn – Get $50 off your first job posting at www.linkedin.com/diaries and use code DIARIES at checkout.

TalkSpace – Go to www.talkspace.com/PRX and use code PRX to get $45 off your first month.

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 military bases nationwide, yet most of America’s pilots were overseas fighting the war. To solve the problem, the government launched an experimental program to train women pilots. They were known as the WASPs, the Women Air Force Service Pilots.

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 between 1877 and 1950. Visitors will walk underneath more than 800 suspended columns, each representing a county where a lynching occurred.

One of those columns represents a lynching in Marion, Indiana. It’s the lynching that inspired the song, Strange Fruit. And it’s the only known lynching where a person survived. His name was James Cameron. This is his story – and the story of the white residents who witnessed and took part in the events of that day.

This is Strange Fruit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Today marks 60 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. There are many photos from that day in 1963, but one image in particular caught people’s attention, spreading in newspapers across the country: a photo of a Secret Service agent jumping onto the back of the presidential limousine during the shooting. Today on the podcast, the story of the man in that photo: Clint Hill.

Note: This episode contains a description of violence.

Tell a friend or share your thoughts about this story on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook @RadioDiaries.

Radiotopia’s Fall Fundraiser is here! Donate today to support independent creators like us. Thank you! https://on.prx.org/3Si7UXr

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 that many of these audio letters are about the same thing: Love.

***

This episode is supported by Zola, a company that’s reinventing wedding planning. To sign up and receive a 50 dollar credit towards your own registry, go to http://www.zola.com/radiodiaries

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 perform the procedure. Eventually, they were trained and began performing abortions themselves. The group called itself “Jane.” Over the years, Jane performed more than 11,000 first and second trimester abortions.

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!