Radio Diaries

This 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

Last 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

When 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

This 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

Last 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

On 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

On 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

A 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

Looking for love is an art, not a science. People have been trying to crack the code, with mixed success, for a long time. This week we're going back to the 1960s, when a couple Harvard students had an idea. Businesses had started using a new technology called the computer to process payroll or match a client with the right type of insurance. What if these same computers could be used to get a date? This is the story of the very first computer dating service, Operation Match. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Today on the show, we sit down with photographer Andrew Lichtenstein to discuss his new book, THIS SHORT LIFE, which combines photo essays with audio testimonies about 12 Americans, from a West Virginia coal miner to a Maine farmer, all united by how the struggles of their past have shaped their present. You'll hear audio testimony from some of the people in the book. Buy THIS SHORT LIFE here. If you liked this story, find more of our work at radiodiaries.org and follow us on Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook @radiodiaries. To support our work, go to www.radiodiaries.org/donate. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In April 2024, over 100 students were arrested during protests outside Columbia University, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Leqaa Kordia, a young Palestinian woman living in Paterson, New Jersey, was one of them. Kordia was let go after the protests. But months later, ICE officials took her into custody and put her on a plane to a detention facility in Texas. Kordia has now been detained there for more than seven months. She is the last Columbia protestor still in detention. Kordia's cousin, Hamzah Abushaban, talks to Kordia through a detention phone line almost every day. Today on the show, we'll hear one of those phone calls. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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. Liked this story? Donate and find more of our stories at www.radiodiaries.org. Follow us @radiodiaries on Bluesky and Instagram. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 become a Pentecostal preacher, and later helped inspire the birth of Rock & Roll. The boy's name was Brother Claude Ely, and he was known as The Gospel Ranger. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the early 1970s, author Studs Terkel interviewed the owners of Duke & Lee's Auto Repair in Geneva, Illinois, for his bestselling book, Working. He went to talk to them about fixing cars. What he found was a story about fathers and sons working together, and the tensions within a family business. We went back to Duke & Lee's four decades later and found the family business still intact—tensions and all. That was nine years ago. Recently, we heard that the family, and the auto shop, had gone through some big changes. So we got back in touch. This week, the story of a family and their business at three moments in history. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When you spend so much of your life moving around, getting to the next chapter, what's it like to find yourself in the last place? This week, we revisit audio diaries from a retirement home. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Eighty years ago, 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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When we first met Majd Abdulghani, she was 19 years old, living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We gave her a recorder to keep an audio diary about her life. Majd chronicled her dreams of being a scientist, her resistance to having an arranged marriage, and what it was like to be a teenage girl living in one of the most restrictive countries in the world for women. Her story first aired in 2016. A lot has changed in Majd’s life over the past nine years. Last year, she completed her doctorate at Oxford University, where she was Saudi Arabia’s first Rhodes Scholar. She and her husband have a four-year-old daughter, and they recently moved home to Saudi Arabia after several years abroad. Saudi Arabia has changed a lot, too. Back in 2016, women weren’t even allowed to drive. Now they can. And many more women have careers now—including Majd. She’s now a successful scientist working for a company based in Riyadh. We recently met up with Majd while she was in Boston for a conference. Here's her diary from 2016, along with our conversation about how things have changed since then. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Vaccines have been in the news recently. Over the last few weeks, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has changed vaccination recommendations and gutted an influential committee that recommends which shots Americans should get. Some experts worry that these changes could lead to outbreaks of diseases the US has long had under control. So this week, we're revisiting a story we made a few years ago about the world's very first vaccine, and the disease it helped eradicate: 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 person in the world to have the deadliest form of smallpox. In 1975, Banu was a toddler growing up in a remote village in Bangladesh when she developed the telltale bumpy rash. Soon, public health workers from around the world showed up at her home to try to keep the virus from spreading. This is her story. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

To justify mass deportations, President Trump has invoked an old wartime law: the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The Alien Enemies Act was last used after America’s entry into World War II. In response to the Axis countries’ detainment of Americans who were deemed potential spies, the Roosevelt Administration came up with an elaborate plan: find and arrest Germans, Japanese and Italians living in Latin America and bring them to internment camps in the U.S. The government would use them to exchange for American prisoners of war. Liked this story? Find photos and more at radiodiaries.org. You can also support our work by going to radiodiaries.org /donate. Follow us on X and Instagram @radiodiaries. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It's been 50 years since the end of the Vietnam war. In honor of the anniversary, we're revisiting a story about a notorious American military prison on the outskirts of Saigon, called Long Binh Jail. 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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices