Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Life

Histories

Exploring the past to tell the history of now.

Graphic

The Drum Also Waltzes

At the age of 16, he played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. He went on to make landmark recordings with …

Graphic

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 …

Graphic

The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island

A weekly series untangling the mysteries of Hart Island, America’s largest public cemetery.

Graphic

The Longest Game

In the spring of 1981, the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings met for a minor league game …

Graphic

The Girls of the Leesburg Stockade

In July 1963, a group of young Black girls were arrested while protesting in Americus, Georgia. They were jailed at a stockade for more than 45 days, their families had no idea where they were. This is that story.

Graphic

The Gospel Ranger

Outside the Appalachian mountains, his name was barely known. But Claude Ely influenced some of the pioneers of rock & roll.

Graphic

Meet Miss Subways

Beauty pageants promote the fantasy of the ideal woman. But for 35 years, the Miss Subways contest in New York City celebrated the everyday working girl.

Graphic

The Ski Troops of WWII

The men of the 10th Mountain Division led a series of daring assaults against the Nazis in the mountains of Italy. After returning home, many of these soldiers helped to create the modern ski industry.

Graphic

The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records

The story of the first major black-owned record label and the mystery behind the man who created it.

Graphic

The Almost Astronaut

In an attempt to beat the Soviet Union in the space race, the Kennedy administration enlisted Air Force captain Ed Dwight to enter the astronaut training program as its first Black trainee.

Graphic

The End of Smallpox

Rahima Banu holds a remarkable place in history, as the last known person in the world to be infected with smallpox. This week on the RadioDiaries podcast, the story behind a global effort to eradicate the deadly virus.

Graphic

The Story of Jane

The story of an underground abortion service that operated pre-Roe vs. Wade.

Graphic

A Museum of Sound

Thanks to the Music Modernization Act, tens of thousands of recordings made before 1923 will enter the public domain for the very first time on January 1, 2022.

Graphic

My Iron Lung

On June 8, 1953, five-year-old Martha Lillard contracted polio. She spent six months in the hospital, where she was put …

Graphic

Last Witness: The Kerner Commission

Former Senator Oklahoma Fred Harris is the last surviving member of the Kerner Commission, a group appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the root causes of the violence and civil unrest that swept the nation in the late ’60s.

Graphic

America Vs. America

On March 1, 1954, four young Puerto Rican New Yorkers launched on attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Graphic

How to Lose an Election: A History

In every U.S. presidential election since 1896, the losing candidate has given a concession speech.

Graphic

The Forgotten Story of Clinton Melton

Emmett Till’s murder is considered the spark that ignited a burgeoning Civil Rights movement. But there was another brazen murder of a Black man that happened just three months later, in a neighboring town in the Delta.

Graphic

Soul Sister: The Limits of Empathy

A story about the limits of empathy. A collaboration with NPR’s Code Switch.

Graphic

March of the Bonus Army

In 1932, 20,000 WWI veterans set up a tent city in Washington. They called themselves the Bonus Army.

Graphic

Busman’s Holiday

The story of William Cimillo, a New York City bus driver who snapped one day in 1947, left his regular route in the Bronx, and drove his municipal bus down to Florida.

Graphic

Claudette Colvin: “History Had Me Glued To The Seat”

You know the story of Rosa Parks. But have you heard of Claudette Colvin?

Graphic

A Voicemail Valentine

Audio love letters recorded around the world in the 1930s and 40s.

Graphic

The View From the 79th Floor

On the Radio Diaries Podcast, we tell the story of the plane that crashed into the Empire State Building.

Graphic

The Dropped Wrench

Sometimes we make mistakes. They just don’t always happen in a nuclear missile silo. This story was produced in collaboration with This American Life.

Graphic

Prisoners Of War

During the war in Vietnam, there was a notorious American prison on the outskirts of Saigon…a prison for American soldiers.

Graphic

The Working Tapes

In the early 1970’s, author Studs Terkel went around the country with a reel-to-reel tape recorder interviewing people about their jobs.

Graphic

Remembering Olivia Hooker

Olivia Hooker was one of the last surviving witnesses to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

Graphic

When Nazis Took Manhattan

On February 20, 1939, 20,000 American Nazis rallied at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The event was billed as a “Pro-American” rally, but it championed Hitler and fascism.

Graphic

A Guitar, A Cello, and The Day That Changed Music

November 23, 1936, was a very good day for recorded music.

Graphic

Ballad for Americans

How a ten minute operatic folk cantata managed to unite Democrats, Republicans and Communists.

Graphic

Last Witness: Mission to Hiroshima

Russell Gackenbach is the only surviving member of the crew that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This is his story.

Graphic

Last Witness: The General Slocum

In 1904, a steamship on its way to a church picnic sank in the East River. More than 1,000 people, many of them women and children, died in the disaster.

Graphic

Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair

Bridgette McGee is unearthing everything she can about her grandfather’s life – and his death.

Graphic

A Movement, a Massacre, and Mexico’s 50 Year Search for the Truth

The secret behind the 1968 massacre of students in Tlatelolco.

Graphic

The Two Lives of Asa Carter

Asa Carter and Forrest Carter couldn’t have been more different. But they shared a secret.

Graphic

The Chamizal: A Town Between Borders

When the U.S. and Mexico chose the Rio Grande as an international border, they didn’t expect the river to move.

Graphic

Working Then and Now

In the early 1970s, radio host and oral historian Studs Terkel recorded more than 130 interviews for his bestselling oral history “Working.”

Graphic

Mandela: An Audio History

A five-part radio series documenting the struggle against apartheid.

Graphic

Burma ’88

25 years ago, university students in Burma sparked a countrywide uprising. They called for a nationwide strike on 8/8/88, a date they chose for its numerological power.

Graphic

Mexico ’68: A Movement, A Massacre, and the 40-Year Search for the Truth

The Massacre of Tlatelolco has become a defining moment in Mexican history, but for forty years the truth of that day has remained hidden.

Graphic

The Square Deal

George F. Johnson was the owner of the Endicott Johnson Corp. — at one time the country’s leading shoe manufacturer — and one of the nation’s leading welfare capitalists known for his labor policy, the “Square Deal.”

Graphic

Strange Fruit: Voices of a Lynching

“Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck, for the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, for the sun to rot, for a tree to drop. Here is a strange and bitter crop.” -Abel Meeropol

Graphic

Becoming Nelson Mandela

Mandela was a lawyer, freedom fighter, leader of the African National Congress, and finally, president.

Graphic

Soweto 1976

On June 16th, 1976, in South Africa, a group of school children in the black township of Soweto held a protest and changed the course of a nation.

Graphic

The Pygmy in the Zoo

On September 8th, 1906, New York’s Bronx Zoo unveiled a new exhibit that would attract thousands of visitors. Inside a cage, in the monkey house, was a man.

Graphic

West Side Story: Michael Farmer and the Murder that Shocked New York

More than fifty years ago, Puerto Rican and black gang members in New York City fatally stabbed Michael Farmer, a white teenager.

Graphic

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.”

Graphic

Victoria Woodhull: The First Woman to Run for President

In the 19th century, Victoria Woodhull was many things: a clairvoyant, a businesswoman, an advocate for women’s rights and sexual freedom, and a presidential candidate.

Graphic

William Jennings Bryan: The Speech That Changed Politics

William Jenning Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech is known today as one of the most important oratorical performances in American history.

Graphic

Adlai Stevenson: A Candidate in the Age of Television

The 1952 presidential campaign pitted the popular General Dwight D. Eisenhower against the intensely private Adlai Stevenson. It was an election fought on a new battleground: television.

Graphic

Margaret Chase Smith: Cold War Warrior in Pearls

In 1964, Margaret Chase Smith became the first woman from a major party to run for President.

Graphic

Shirley Chisholm: The Politics of Principle

In 1972, Shirley Chisholm launched a spirited campaign for the Democratic nomination. She was the first woman and first African American to run.

Graphic

Gracie Allen: The Joke That Became a Campaign

In 1940 the United States was just emerging from the shadow of the Great Depression and war loomed in Europe. Into these serious times stepped Gracie Allen.

Graphic

The “Veep”

Alben Barkley served in Congress for close to 40 years and was Harry Truman’s vice president. But he never made it to the pinnacle of power.

Graphic

When Ground Zero was Radio Row

For more than four decades, the area around Cortlandt Street in lower Manhattan was the largest collection of radio and electronics stores in the world. Then in 1966 the stores were bulldozed to make way for the new World Trade Center.

Graphic

The WASPs: Women Pilots of WWII

In the early 1940s, the government launched an experimental program to train women pilots. They were known as the WASPs, the Women Airforce Service Pilots.

Graphic

The 10th Mountain

The men of the 10th Mountain Division led a series of daring assaults against the Nazis in the mountains of Italy. After returning home, many of these soldiers helped to create the modern ski industry.

Graphic

Lady Writes the Blues

You may not know her name, but Rose Marie McCoy was one of the most prolific songwriters of the 1950s and 1960s.

Graphic

Gibtown

At one time Gibsonton, Florida was considered the oddest town in America.

Graphic

The Starting Five

The NBA, now a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry, looked very different a half century ago.

Graphic

Civil War Widows

Seven decades ago, Daisy Anderson and Alberta Martin were brand new brides. And their husbands served on opposite sides of the Civil War.

Graphic

Conrad’s Garage

“To invent, you need a good imagination… and a pile of junk…” -Thomas Edison

css.php