Radio Diaries

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 fiancé, Anita Sampson. The complex is on lockdown, so we sent them a recorder and they interviewed each other on Anita's 100th birthday. This story is the first in a new series called Hunker Down Diaries, surprising stories from people thrown together by the pandemic. Produced in collaboration with NPR. In the coming weeks we’ll be bringing you more stories about a teenager in foster care, the daily life of hospital workers, and a couple who decided to quarantine together after their first date. If you have an idea for the series we’d love to hear from you. You can send your quarantine stories to info@radiodiaries. Or find us on Facebook and Twitter. Series art by 13milliseconds. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There’s a long history in America of white people imagining black people’s lives - in novels, in movies, and sometimes in journalism.  In 1969, Grace Halsell, a white journalist, published a book called Soul Sister. It was her account of living as a “black woman” in the United States. Lyndon Johnson provided a blurb for the book, and it sold over a million copies. Halsell was inspired by John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me, which came out in 1961. That was inspired by an even earlier book in the 1940’s. It’s hard to imagine any of these projects happening now. It seems like a kind of journalistic blackface. But Halsell’s book raises a lot of questions that are still relevant today - about race, and the limits of empathy. This episode is a collaboration with NPR’s Code Switch. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Busman’s Holiday: When William Cimillo, a NYC bus driver went on a 1,300 mile detour to Florida. This story originally aired on This American Life. Our episode is part of a network-wide project to welcome Over the Road, Radiotopia’s newest show, into the family. *** This episode is sponsored by LightStream. To get a discount on a credit card consolidation loan, go to lightstream.com/diaries. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You know the story of Rosa Parks. But have you heard of Claudette Colvin? Claudette grew up in the segregated city of Montgomery, Alabama. On March 2, 1955, when she was 15 years old, she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Nine months later, Rosa Parks did the exact same thing. Parks, of course, became a powerful symbol of the civil rights movement. But Claudette Colvin has largely been left out of the history books. In 1956, about a year after Colvin refused to give up her seat, her attorney Fred Gray filed the landmark federal lawsuit Browder v. Gayle. This case ended segregation on public transportation in Alabama. Claudette Colvin was a star witness. This is her story. 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 combed through a large collection of early voicemail at the Phono Post Archive, and we discovered that many of these audio letters have the same subject matter: love. You can see photographs of the voice-o-graphs on our website: http://www.radiodiaries.org/a-voicemail-valentine/ Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Laura Rothenberg spent most of her life knowing she was going to die young. She had cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs. When she was born, the life expectancy for people with CF was around 18 years. (It's more than double that now.) Laura liked to say she went through her mid-life crisis when she was a teenager. Joe met Laura when she was 19 and gave her a tape recorder. And for two years, she kept an audio diary of her battle with cystic fibrosis and her attempts to live a normal life - with lungs that often betrayed her. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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. **** Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today. #RadiotopiaForever Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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. **** Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today. #RadiotopiaForever Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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. Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today. #RadiotopiaForever Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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