Radio Diaries

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Founded by Joe Richman, Radio Diaries has been giving people tape recorders and working with them to report on their own lives and histories for almost two decades. We’ve collaborated with teenagers and octogenarians, prisoners and prison guards, bra saleswomen and lighthouse keepers….and along the way we’ve helped pioneer a new form of citizen journalism. Radio Diaries has won every major award in broadcast journalism and produced some of the most memorable documentaries ever heard on public radio. Our stories are broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered, This American Life, BBC, and on The Radio Diaries Podcast. We also publish educational materials, including the Teen Reporter Handbook. Radio Diaries is a not-for-profit organization.

Subscribe to the Radio Diaries Podcast at http://www.radiodiaries.org/podcast
Contact us for more information: info [@] radiodiaries.org

Series

Teenage DiariesTeenage Diaries
Since 1996, the Teenage Diaries series has given tape recorders to young people around the country. They conduct interviews, keep audio journals, and record the sounds of daily life — usually collecting more than 30 hours of raw tape over the course of a year, edited into documentaries airing on NPR’s All Things Considered. Whether it’s the story of Amanda, a gay teen trying to understand her sexuality, or the story of Juan, who crossed the Rio Grande with his family illegally, these stories offer insight into the mysterious life of teenagers.


Teenage Diaries RevisitedTeenage Diaries Revisited
16 years ago, Radio Diaries gave a group of young people tape recorders to report on their own lives for our NPR series, Teenage Diaries. Five of the diarists return to chronicle their grown-up lives in Teenage Diaries Revisited. A lot of life happens in 16 years.



Mandela: An Audio History
"Mandela: An Audio History" is a groundbreaking project that weaves together an unprecedented collection of archival sound materials documenting and preserving the story of Nelson Mandela and the struggle against apartheid. Hear a rare recording of the 1964 trial that resulted in Mandela's life sentence; a visit between Mandela and his wife, Winnie, secretly recorded by a prison guard; marching songs of guerilla soldiers; government propaganda films; and pirate radio broadcasts from the African National Conference (ANC).



 
Contenders
There have been 43 presidents in American history. But the names of the hundreds who sought the office – and lost – are often forgotten. "Contenders" tells the stories of some of the most groundbreaking and unusual presidential candidates from elections past.



CristelPrison Diaries
Five inmates, four correctional officers and a judge were given tape recorders. For six months, the diarists kept audio journals and recorded the sounds and scenes of everyday life behind bars: shakedowns, new inmate arrivals, roll call, monthly family visits, meals at the chow hall, and quiet moments late at night inside a cell.




New York Works: Audio Portraits of a Vanishing City

94-year old Selma Koch runs one of New York's last old-style bra fitting shops. Walter Backerman still delivers seltzer along the same route worked by his father and grandfather. Frank Sabatino is one of two commercial fisherman left in Jamaica Bay. Charlie Zimmerman builds the rooftop water tanks that dot Manhattan's skyline. New York Works tells the stories of those who keep the city's past alive.



Willie McGeeAudio HistoriesThese audio documentaries weave together oral histories and archival tape to bring the past to life. From World War II to the Civil Rights movement, from the mining industry to the music industry, this series shares a rich, in depth look into our history. 


 

Series

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10 Pieces

The extraordinary stories of ordinary life.

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8 Pieces

Off the coast of the Bronx is a narrow strip of land where over one million people are buried. Hart Island is America's largest public cemetery. For over 150 years, the island has been mostly off limits. The Umarked Graveyard shares seven stories of individual buried there, the lives they lived and the people they left behind.

Caption: Studs Terkel
12 Pieces

In the early 1970’s, author Studs Terkel went around the country with a reel-to-reel tape recorder interviewing people for his book "Working." But until now, few of these interviews have ever been heard before.


Pieces

Caption: Rahima Banu and her mother in 1975, Credit: Daniel Tarantola/WHO
Only one human disease has ever been completely eradicated: Smallpox. Rahima Banu, a woman from rural Bangladesh, was the last person in the world ...

Bought by WXAV 88.3FM Chicago


  • Added: May 19, 2023
  • Length: 09:37
  • Purchases: 1
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On December 3, 1955, a 33-year-old Black gas station attendant named Clinton Melton was shot and killed in Glendora, Mississippi. Two witnesses — i...

Bought by WAMC Northeast Public Radio and WXAV 88.3FM Chicago


  • Added: Oct 18, 2021
  • Length: 11:44
  • Purchases: 2
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In 1969, a white journalist named Grace Halsell, published a book called Soul Sister. It was her account of living as a “black woman” in the United...

  • Added: Oct 15, 2021
  • Length: 12:18
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Decades before our current debate over critical race theory, the 1968 Kerner Commission pointed the finger at structural racism for creating the co...

Bought by WXAV 88.3FM Chicago and WXAV 88.3FM Chicago


  • Added: Oct 05, 2021
  • Length: 08:56
  • Purchases: 2
Caption: Joe Newman and Anita Sampson, Credit: ABC Action News
Joe Newman is 107 years old. He was 5 during the flu pandemic of 1918. Today, he lives in a senior apartment complex in Sarasota, Florida with his ...

  • Added: Apr 17, 2020
  • Length: 05:23
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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....

Bought by Troy Public Radio, KZMU Moab Community Radio, WXAV 88.3FM Chicago, and PRX Remix


  • Added: Sep 11, 2018
  • Length: 10:50
  • Purchases: 4
Caption: Inmates at LBJ
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 capt...

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Sep 11, 2018
  • Length: 18:19
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Second Lt. Russell Gackenbach
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...

Bought by WXAV 88.3FM Chicago and WXAV 88.3FM Chicago


  • Added: Aug 27, 2018
  • Length: 04:44
  • Purchases: 2
Caption: Olivia Hooker, Age 6 in 1921
On May 31, 1921, Olivia Hooker was six-years-old when white mobs launched an attack on the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In less than 24 ho...

Bought by WXAV 88.3FM Chicago, KOSU, KHSU, and WXAV 88.3FM Chicago


  • Added: Jun 08, 2018
  • Length: 06:20
  • Purchases: 4
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In 1965, an underground network formed in Chicago to help pregnant women get abortions. At first, they connected women with doctors willing to brea...

Bought by KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio and PRX Remix


  • Added: Feb 02, 2018
  • Length: 11:59
  • Purchases: 2