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 is episode two in our new series The Unmarked Graveyard, untangling mysteries from America’s largest public cemetery. Each week, we’re bringing you stories of how people ended up on Hart Island, the lives they lived and the people they left behind. Learn about your ad ...
Oct 05, 2023•14 min
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 body was found in 2017, the police were unable to identify him, and he was buried on Hart Island. Then, one day, a woman who knew him from the park stumbled upon his true identity, and his backstory came to light. This is the first episode in our new series The Unmarke...
Sep 28, 2023•26 min
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 million people are buried on Hart Island and many are shrouded in anonymity. Explanations for how they ended up there can be hard to find. Over the next seven weeks, we’ll untangle mysteries about the lives they lived and the people they...
Sep 21, 2023•5 min
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 made history. It was the longest professional baseball game ever played. This story was produced in collaboration with ESPN's 30 for 30 . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aug 25, 2023•44 min
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. Only twenty miles away, the girls’ parents had no knowledge of their location. A month into their confinement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) heard rumors of the girls’ detention and sent photographer Danny Lyon, who took pictures of the...
Jul 19, 2023•16 min
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, Florida. The bus had broken down, he’d run out of money, and had no way of getting home. Plus, he was now the most wanted bus driver in the country. This story originally aired on This American Life in 2014. Go to www.radiodiaries.org to find more stories and sign up for our monthl...
Jun 15, 2023•20 min
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 neighborhood. On May 14, 2022, the world changed for residents of Buffalo when a white man approached the Jefferson Street Tops supermarket and started shooting. He murdered ten and injured three people, almost all Black. That day, teenagers and children from a Black ...
May 12, 2023•44 min
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
Apr 25, 2023•17 min
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 made history. It was the longest professional baseball game ever played. This is an excerpt of a story in collaboration with ESPN's 30 for 30 . If you liked this episode, vote for us in the Webby Awards! The Webby’s celebrate the best of the internet, and The Longest Game has been nominated for Be...
Apr 17, 2023•20 min
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 down on transit riders as they rode through the city. Her photo was accompanied by a short bio describing her hopes, dreams and aspirations. The public got to choose the winners – so Miss Subway represented the perfect New York miss. She was also a barometer of changin...
Mar 30, 2023•11 min
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 the German army in the mountains of Italy. Though the division fought in WWII for only four months, it had one of the highest casualty rates of the war. After they returned home, many of the soldiers helped to create the modern ski industry. This story originally aired on NPR’s...
Mar 16, 2023•25 min
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 so far in the war. That’s where her mother lived when war broke out. As conditions in Kharkiv worsened, they faced a difficult choice. Music in today’s episode includes the Ukrainian band Dakha Brakha — playing at San Francisco Jazz Center on March 14th. Proceeds and donations go to organ...
Mar 06, 2023•13 min
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 thought they had just witnessed the death of their favorite teacher. But later at the hospital, Peter’s heart started beating again. On the anniversary of Peter’s brush with death, he sat down with his daughter Juliana who has Noonan Syndrome, a rare geneti...
Feb 13, 2023•14 min
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 careers of Ethel Waters, Fletcher Henderson, William Grant Still, Alberta Hunter, and other influential artists who transformed American music. But Black Swan’s success would be short-lived. Just a couple years after Pace founded the company, larger, wealthier, whi...
Feb 03, 2023•24 min
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 of Rick’s Café, a nightclub in Morocco. Ingrid Bergman plays his old flame Ilsa, who’s married to 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 d...
Jan 23, 2023•13 min
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 at some of our favorite stories from the past year. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dec 16, 2022•31 min
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, Robert Johnson, played guitar and was a regular in the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta. These recordings would change music history. This episode originally aired on NPR in 2011. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 23, 2022•17 min
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 another woman named Victoria Woodhull took things even further. That same year, she ran for president of the United States - the first woman in American history known to do so. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nov 04, 2022•13 min
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 unusual idea of how workers should be treated. Some people called it “Welfare Capitalism.” Johnson called it “The Square Deal.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 20, 2022•18 min
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 the city. On October 2, just days before the Olympics were supposed to begin, the Mexican army fired on a peaceful student protest in the Tlatelolco neighborhood. The official announcement was that four students were dead, but eyewitnesses said they saw hundred of...
Oct 06, 2022•25 min
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 out. This episode is the first in Ear Hustle’s new season. It’s a beautiful, funny, and surprising story about the ways being incarcerated can mess with your sense of smell, and touch, and just about everything else. Episode artwork is by Richard Phillips, from a...
Sep 23, 2022•32 min
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 All Day and How They Feel About What They Do,” which became a bestseller. This week, we’re revisiting two of those conversations. The first is with Gary Bryner, an auto worker and union leader. The second is with Renault Robinson, a police officer. We spoke...
Sep 09, 2022•15 min
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 history. It was the longest professional baseball game ever played. This is an excerpt of a story in collaboration with ESPN's 30 for 30 . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aug 23, 2022•19 min
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 Finn’s community in Vermont after he took his life in January 2020. (A warning that this story discusses suicide) The story, “Finn and the Bell,” recently won a Peabody award. Special thanks to Finn’s mother, Tara Reese, and to the people of Hardwick, Vermont who spok...
Jul 14, 2022•36 min
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 country had done: send a man to the moon. This mission excited many white Americans, but many Black Americans thought the space program wasted money that could’ve helped Black communities. So, the U.S. embarked on a plan that could beat the Soviets and appease Black Americans: tapping Air F...
Jun 29, 2022•22 min
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 of the passengers were recent German immigrants who were headed up the East River for a church outing, a boat cruise and picnic on Long Island. They would never make it. We interviewed the last survivor of the General Slocum, Adella Wotherspoon, when she was 100 years old. Today, we’re bringing...
Jun 03, 2022•14 min
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 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 vir...
May 19, 2022•23 min
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 first, they connected women with doctors willing to break the law to perform the procedure. Eventually, they were trained and began performing abortions themselves. The group called itself “Jane.” Over the years, Jane performed more than 11,000 first and secon...
May 05, 2022•15 min
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 the woman behind smash hits by Tina Turner, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross and many others. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Apr 19, 2022•18 min
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 episode is supported by Green Chef. Visit GreenChef.com/diaries130 and use code diaries130 to get $130 off, plus free shipping. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Apr 07, 2022•19 min
