Radio Diaries

By Radio Diaries & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

What's Radio Diaries about?

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

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The Man on the President's ...

11.22.2023

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 ...

Radio Diaries episodes:

11.22.2023 The Man on the President's Limo 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 ...
11.21.2023 The Unmarked Graveyard: LaMont Dottin Back in 1995, LaMont Dottin was 21 years old and a freshman at Queens College when, one evening, he didn’t come home. His mother went to the local police precinct to try to report him missing, and his name was ...
11.09.2023 The Unmarked Graveyard: Hisako Hasegawa The Belvedere Hotel is in the heart of New York City’s theater district. Many of its guests come to see the sights, take in a show. But there are a few dozen people who call the Belvedere home. Decades ago, ...
11.02.2023 The Unmarked Graveyard: Cesar Irizarry Angel Irizarry spent years working as a detective, and in 2021 he set out on a personal investigation to track down an uncle who’d been estranged from his family for decades. But early in his search he made a disappointing ...
10.26.2023 The Unmarked Graveyard: Dawn Powell Dawn Powell wrote novels about people like herself: outsiders who’d come to New York City in the early twentieth century to make a name for themselves. For a few years, those novels put her at the center of the city’s ...
10.19.2023 The Unmarked Graveyard: Documenting an Invisible Island For more than a century, it was almost impossible to find out much about people buried on Hart Island. But in 2008, that all changed — thanks in large part to a woman named Melinda Hunt. Melinda is a visual ...
10.12.2023 The Unmarked Graveyard: Angel Garcia When Annette Vega was seven years old, she found out the man she called “dad” wasn’t her biological father. But all she knew was that her mom had had a teenage romance with a guy named Angel Garcia. Annette has ...
10.05.2023 The Unmarked Graveyard: Noah Creshevsky When Noah Creshevsky learned he was dying of bladder cancer two years ago, he decided to decline medical treatment. Soon, he and his husband David were faced with another decision: what would become of his body after he died? This ...
09.28.2023 The Unmarked Graveyard: Neil Harris Jr. A few years ago, a young man who called himself Stephen became a fixture in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Locals started noticing him sitting on the same park bench day after day. He said little and asked for nothing. When Stephen’s ...
09.21.2023 TRAILER: The Unmarked Graveyard On September 28th, we’re launching a new series: The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island. 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 ...
08.25.2023 The Longest Game In the spring of 1981, the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings met for a minor league baseball game of little importance. But over the course of 33 innings – 8 hours and 25 minutes – the game ...
07.19.2023 The Girls of the Leesburg Stockade 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. ...
06.15.2023 Busman's Holiday One day in 1947, NYC bus driver William Cimillo showed up to his daily bus route, but instead of turning right, he turned left. Over the next week, he traveled 1,300 miles in his municipal bus, ending up in Hollywood, ...
05.12.2023 Guest Spotlight: Buffalo Extreme This week we’re featuring a story from NPR’s Embedded podcast. It’s the first episode in a new series called Buffalo Extreme, which follows a cheer team from Buffalo, New York, during the year after a racist mass shooting in their ...
04.25.2023 The Gospel Ranger 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 ...
04.17.2023 The Longest Game In the spring of 1981, the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings met for a minor league baseball game of little importance. But over the course of 33 innings – 8 hours and 25 minutes – the game ...
03.30.2023 Meet Miss Subways 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 ...
03.16.2023 The Ski Troops of WWII This week we’re bringing you a story about the 10th Mountain Division, a World War II military experiment to train skiers and climbers to fight in the mountains. The men of the 10th led a series of daring assaults against ...
03.06.2023 Sofia's Choice: A Ukrainian Diary, One Year Later Sofia Bretl has lived in New York City for the last decade. But she was born and raised in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, about 25 miles from the Russian border. The city has received some of the worst shelling ...
02.13.2023 Living with Dying On Valentine’s Day 2020, Peter Fodera’s heart broke. It stopped working. He collapsed in the middle of teaching a dance class. Someone performed CPR, someone called an ambulance. EMT’s showed up and he lay motionless. Many people in the class ...
02.03.2023 The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records 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 ...
01.23.2023 The Real Refugees of Casablanca It’s been 80 years since the release of the Hollywood classic, Casablanca. When the film opened in 1943—just a year after the U.S. joined World War II—audiences were thrilled by its love story. Humphrey Bogart stars as the cynical owner ...
12.16.2022 The History Of Now One of the questions we often ask ourselves is: How can we produce stories about history that can air alongside the news of today? In 2022, answering that question was easy. In this year-end episode, we’re taking a look back ...
11.23.2022 A Guitar, A Cello and the Day that Changed Music November 23, 1936 was a good day for recorded music. Two men, an ocean apart, sat before a microphone and began to play. One, Pablo Casals, was a cello prodigy who had performed for the Queen of Spain. The other, ...
11.04.2022 Banging on the Door: The Election of 1872 Voting rights was just as hot an issue in 1872 as it is today. In 1872, Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women went to cast a ballot in the election - and Anthony ended up arrested and tried. But ...
10.20.2022 The Square Deal 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. He had a ...
10.06.2022 The Massacre at Tlatelolco In October 1968, Mexico City was preparing to host the Olympics - the first Latin American country to do so. It was an opportunity to showcase the new, modern Mexico. However, at the same time, student protests were erupting throughout ...
09.23.2022 Guest Spotlight: Ear Hustle This week we’re featuring an episode from our fellow Radiotopia show, Ear Hustle. Ear Hustle is produced inside San Quentin State Prison, in California. The show tells stories about what life is really like in prison, and after you get ...
09.09.2022 Working, Then And Now In the early 1970s, radio host and oral historian Studs Terkel went around the country, tape recorder in hand, interviewing people about their jobs. The interviews were compiled into a 1974 book called “Working: People Talk About What They Do ...
08.23.2022 The Longest Game In the spring of 1981, the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings met for a minor league game of little importance. But over the course of 33 innings – 8 hours and 25 minutes – the game made ...
07.14.2022 Rumble Strip: Finn and the Bell This week we’re bringing you a story from independent producer Erica Heilman, who makes the Rumble Strip podcast. The story is about a teenager named Finn Rooney who loved to fish and play baseball. It’s also about what happened in ...
06.29.2022 The Almost Astronaut In the 1960s, the U.S. was in a tense space race with the Soviet Union - and was losing. The Soviets had sent the first satellite and the first man into space. So, President Kennedy pledged to do something no ...
06.03.2022 The General Slocum 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 ...
05.19.2022 The End of Smallpox Only one human disease has ever been completely eradicated: Smallpox. Smallpox was around for more than 3,000 years and killed at least 300 million people in the 20th century. Then, by 1980, it was gone. Rahima Banu was the last ...
05.05.2022 The Story of Jane Before the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, abortion was illegal throughout most of the country. But that doesn't mean women didn't get them. In 1965, an underground network formed in Chicago to help pregnant women get abortions. At ...
04.19.2022 The Greatest Songwriter You've Never Heard Of You probably don’t know her name, but you definitely know her songs. Rose Marie McCoy would’ve turned 100 years old today. On this episode of the Radio Diaries Podcast, we’re remembering Rose and her music. In the 1950's and early ...
04.07.2022 Identical Strangers 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. *** Today’s ...
03.30.2022 Sofia's Choice: A Ukrainian Diary Sofia Bretl has lived in New York City for the last decade. But she was born and raised in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, about 25 miles from the Russian border. The city has received some of the worst shelling ...
03.10.2022 The Forgotten Story of Clinton Melton This week, the Senate unanimously passed legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime. It was a historic moment. Congress has tried and failed to pass antilynching legislation more than 200 times over the course of more than a ...
02.24.2022 Claudette Colvin: Making Trouble Then and Now Nine months before Rosa Parks, a 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, AL. 66 years later, Colvin’s fighting to get her record wiped clean. This episode is ...
02.10.2022 A Voicemail Valentine 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, ...
01.21.2022 Diary of a Saudi Girl: Then & Now 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 ...
12.22.2021 A Museum of Sound 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 ...
12.08.2021 A Real Life West Side Story 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 ...
11.18.2021 A Guitar, A Cello, and the Day that Changed Music 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 ...
11.04.2021 A Wrench in the Works 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 ...
10.22.2021 My Iron Lung 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 ...
10.07.2021 When Borders Move 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 ...
09.23.2021 The Two Lives of Asa Carter 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 ...
09.10.2021 When Ground Zero was Radio Row 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, ...

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Radio Diaries

What's Radio Diaries about?

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Radio Diaries episodes:

The Man on the President's Limo

The Unmarked Graveyard: LaMont Dottin

The Unmarked Graveyard: Hisako Hasegawa

The Unmarked Graveyard: Cesar Irizarry

The Unmarked Graveyard: Dawn Powell

The Unmarked Graveyard: Documenting an Invisible Island

The Unmarked Graveyard: Angel Garcia

The Unmarked Graveyard: Noah Creshevsky

The Unmarked Graveyard: Neil Harris Jr.

TRAILER: The Unmarked Graveyard

The Longest Game

The Girls of the Leesburg Stockade

Busman's Holiday

Guest Spotlight: Buffalo Extreme

The Gospel Ranger

The Longest Game

Meet Miss Subways

The Ski Troops of WWII

Sofia's Choice: A Ukrainian Diary, One Year Later

Living with Dying

The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records

The Real Refugees of Casablanca

The History Of Now

A Guitar, A Cello and the Day that Changed Music

Banging on the Door: The Election of 1872

The Square Deal

The Massacre at Tlatelolco

Guest Spotlight: Ear Hustle

Working, Then And Now

The Longest Game

Rumble Strip: Finn and the Bell

The Almost Astronaut

The General Slocum

The End of Smallpox

The Story of Jane

The Greatest Songwriter You've Never Heard Of

Identical Strangers

Sofia's Choice: A Ukrainian Diary

The Forgotten Story of Clinton Melton

Claudette Colvin: Making Trouble Then and Now

A Voicemail Valentine

Diary of a Saudi Girl: Then & Now

A Museum of Sound

A Real Life West Side Story

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

A Wrench in the Works

My Iron Lung

When Borders Move

The Two Lives of Asa Carter

When Ground Zero was Radio Row

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