Podcast
Radio Diaries
Hosted by Radio Diaries & Radiotopia · EN
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
27episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair
1w ago00:27:39Tap to summarizeThis episode includes topics and archival audio that some people will find disturbing.Seventy-five years ago, on the night of May 7th, 1951, close to a thousand people gathered around the courthouse in the small town of Laurel, Mississippi. They came to witness an execution. Willie McGee was a young Black man who had been accused of raping a white woman and sentenced to death.Six decades later, Bridgette McGee-Robinson teamed up with Radio Diaries to find the truth about what happened to her grandfather. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Sealab: A Home on the Ocean Floor
3w ago00:20:21Tap to summarizeFrom ancient myths of sea monsters lurking below to Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the ocean has long been both a source of fear and fascination. For Captain George Bond, a Navy medical officer in the 1960s, the deep sea was humanity's next frontier. Undersea agriculture, deep sea mining, and human colonies on the ocean floor made up his dream for the future. Today we bring you the story of the U.S. Navy's little-known experiment building homes on the ocean floor. They called it, Sealab. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Guest Spotlight: William Parker's War on Slave Catchers
Apr 200:38:41Tap to summarizeThis week we're bringing you a story from our friends at History This Week, a podcast from the History Channel.April 3, 1951. A man who escaped slavery is grabbed off the streets of Boston and thrown into a carriage. He fights back, shouting to the crowd, but it doesn’t matter. Under a new federal law, even the North isn’t safe.The Fugitive Slave Act has turned cities like Boston into hunting grounds. Freedom seekers are being captured, and ordinary citizens are being forced to help.But across the North, resistance is growing. In Pennsylvania, a man named William Parker is building a network to fight back. When slave catchers come to his door, that resistance explodes into violence.How did one law push the country dramatically closer to war? And what happens when the people targeted by this law refuse to surrender? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Detained: A Homecoming
Mar 2700:16:14Tap to summarizeLast week, Leqaa Kordia, young Palestinian woman from Paterson, New Jersey, walked out of an ICE detention center in Texas. Kordia had been held for more than a year. Radio Diaries has been following her story and recorded Kordia while detention. Now, we bring you her first interview since her release. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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The Real Refugees of Casablanca
Mar 1900:12:30Tap to summarizeWhen the Hollywood classic, Casablanca, was released in 1943, moviegoers were thrilled by the love story. Humphrey Bogart stars as the cynical owner of Rick’s Cafe, a nightclub in Morocco. Ingrid Bergman is his old flame, Ilsa, now married to Victor Laszlo, a dashing resistance leader hunted by the Nazis.Many of the characters at Rick's Café are European refugees trying to make their way to America. What most viewers didn't know is that those characters were played by actors who themselves had recently fled the Nazis. This casting choice lent the film an authenticity that helped deliver its message: that a war far from our borders was a war worth waging. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier 3: The Trial
Feb 2600:18:23Tap to summarizeThis is the final episode of our series about Isaac Woodard, a Black soldier who was beaten and blinded by a white police officer in 1946. In the last episode, radio host Orson Welles, who was investigating the case, learned the officer's identity.Isaac Woodard himself told a reporter, "Nothing they can do to the police officer will give me my eyes back, but if they punish him good and legal it may keep the same thing from happening to some more of our boys coming back home. I want him punished."But demanding accountability and getting it were two different things—especially in the Jim Crow South. This week, the officer goes to trial, and the President of the United States takes notice. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier 2: Officer X
Feb 1900:13:12Tap to summarizeLast week, we shared the story of Isaac Woodard, a Black soldier who was brutally beaten by a white police officer in South Carolina. No one knew the name of the police officer. Or even the town where it happened. Not even Woodard himself. By the summer of '46, the case was gaining national attention thanks to Orson Welles, who was investigating the crime, week-by-week, on his radio show.Today, episode 2 of our series Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier, about an incident in a small, southern town that became a spark in the growing civil rights movement. --- Thanks to Richard Gergel for his book Unexampled Courage and Indiana University’s Lilly Library for archival audio. Music from Matthias Bossi and Duke Ellington. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier 1: The Bus Ride
Feb 1200:12:19Tap to summarizeOn February 12, 1946, a Black soldier was heading home from WWII when he was brutally beaten by a white police officer in South Carolina. No one knew the identity of the police officer. No one even knew the town where it happened. When the famous radio host Orson Welles heard about the crime, he pledged to solve the mystery, week-by-week, on the air. Today, episode 1 of our new series Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier, about an incident in a small, southern town that led to the desegregation of the U.S. military. --- Thanks to Richard Gergel for his book Unexampled Courage and Indiana University’s Lilly Library for archival audio. Music from Matthias Bossi and Bill Frisell for music. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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TRAILER: Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier
Feb 900:04:35Tap to summarizeOn February 12, 1946, an African American soldier heading home from WWII was attacked by a white police officer somewhere in South Carolina. The soldier's name was Isaac Woodard.No one knew the identity of the officer who attacked Woodard. No one even knew which town it had happened in. So when the famous radio host Orson Welles heard about the case, he vowed to solve it on the air.Radio Diaries and Radiotopia bring you a new series about a crime in a small southern town that led to the desegregation of the United States military.The first episode drops February 12th on the Radio Diaries Podcast. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Remembering Claudette Colvin
Jan 1400:11:41Tap to summarizeA little over a decade ago, we went to interview a woman at her small one-bedroom apartment in a sprawling complex in the Bronx. She was living a quiet and somewhat anonymous life. But many years earlier, she had done something remarkable.The woman’s name was Claudette Colvin. In 1955, she was a 15-year-old girl growing up in Montgomery, Alabama. On March 2nd of that year, Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a public bus, and was arrested. This was nine months before Rosa Parks would do the exact same thing. But while Rosa Parks became an icon of the Civil Rights movement, Colvin spent most of her life in obscurity.Claudette Colvin passed away this week, at age 86. We’re remembering her by revisiting the story we did with her in 2015. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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