HV037- Prison

Hearing Voices from NPR®
037 Prison: Life Behind Bars
Host: Joe Richman of Radio Diaries
Airs week of: 2010-03-17 (Originally: 2008-11-12)

“Prison” (52:00 mp3):

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A Prison Diary (2001 CD | NPR series) from a former Polk Youth Institution, North Carolina. Former inmate. John Mills is out now and co-hosts our hour with Prison Dairies producer Joe Richman. (Check the accompanying Picture Projects 360 Degrees, a multimedia “Perspectives on the U.S. Criminal Justice System.”

Voices and sounds of youth in at Utah’s Washington County Crisis Center, a techno tone poem. Handcuffs, metal detectors and slamming cell doors are striking musical instruments, and incarcerated teenagers in this streetwise chorus. (PBK: site | space.)

Payton Smith’s calls her mom in prison with some questions, produced with Transom.

Another Prison Diary from Sergeant Furman Camel, a guard at Polk Youth Institution, North Carolina.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola Prison, is a sprawling old plantation on the Mississippi River. Angola holds more than five-thousand prisoners, mostly African Americans. Unless they’re pardoned by the Governor, lifers know they will never again see the outside world — that they will die inside Angola prison. Producer: David Isay with Wilbert Rideau and Ron Wikberg; mix engineer: Anna Maria deFrietas.

Radio Diaries 15yo

Radio Diaries “celebrates 15 years of stories on public radio. A video retrospective hosted by Ira Glass with animation by James Blagden. Music by The Books”:

Produced by Anayansi Diaz-Cortes and Joe Richman with help from John Wong, Eric Pearse Chavez, Sue Johnson, Sara Pellegrini, Samara Freemark and Kara Oehler.

HV077- AIDS Diaries

Hearing Voices from NPR®
077 AIDS Diaries: For AIDS Awareness Day
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2009-11-25

“AIDS Diaries” (52:00 mp3):

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Portraits of people fighting a plague:

South Africa has been hit hardest with H-I-V/AIDS. Five million people are infected (Avert: SA). One of them, Thembi Ngubane, at nineteen years old, carried a recorder in 2005 to document her life (NPR | PRX). Produced by Joe Richman, edited by Debra George and Ben Shapiro; more of Thembi’s story, with an audio-visual gallery, is at AIDSdiary.org.

December 1st is World AIDS Day. In the arts community it also had this other name, DWA.

Poet Kwame Dawes travels his native Jamaica talking about HIV/AIDS. This is part of the hour-program “Live Hope Love: HIV/AIDS in Jamaica” (PRX) Support came from the MAC AIDS Fund, of MAC Cosmetics, and from and PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Produced by Stephanie Guyer-Stevens and Jack Chance of Outer Voices, for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Their emmy-winning muchomedia website for the project Live Lope Love.

Barbara Bryon of Seattle unknowingly passed the virus to her daughter, Dori, in the womb. Dori considers her mother “her number one hero.” She suffers from numerous disabilities, a result of oppportunistic infections that she’s faced in the past 19 years. Dori passed away September 2004. Produced for The Vernacular Project.

African AIDS orphans keep their parents’ memories alive within “memory books” and “memory boxes,” keepsakes that help children orphaned by the AIDS virus to remember their parents. Abiola Tilley-Gyado of Plan International and AIDS workers Jonathan Morgan and Kylie Thomas describe what’s kept inside. The interviews came courtesy of Plan InternationalBush Radio of South Africa, produced for the Africa Learning Channel.

Thembi Ngubane (AIDS Diary.) died June 2009. Radio Diaires’ Joe Richman prepared a memorial (NPR). The memorial service was held a small church in Thembi’s township, Khayelitsha. Mourners sang “Asoze Saphela Amandla,” the song she sings at the end of her diary, “Never Give Up,” which has become an AIDS anthem in South Africa.

DWA Broadside by Barbara Kruger

HV030- Nine to Five

Hearing Voices from NPR®
030 Nine to Five: The Working Week
Host: Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler of Mapping Main Street
Airs week of: 2009-09-02 (Originally: 2008-09-24)

“Nine to Five” (52:00 mp3):

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For Labor Day, the work we do, from Wall Street traders to taxi cab drivers. People who work with brassieres, dead bodies, lost golf balls, and off-the-books in an underground economy. Part one…

The Ramones obviously believe “It’s Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)” (1980 Pleasant Dreams).

Meryn Cadell fills out a “Job Application” (1992 Angel Food for Thought).

In the 1950s Tony Schwartz conversed with The New York Taxi Driver about “A Temporary Job.” (This 1959 LP is on The Library of Congress National Recording Registry).

Steve Fisk recites some “Government Figures” (1980 Over and Thru the Night).

Grief and guts fill the work day of Aftermath,® Inc: Specialists in Crime Scene and Tragedy Cleanup, Trauma Cleanup, Accidental Death Cleanup. Interview with Tim Reifsteck by Laura Kwerel, produced by Nick van der Kolk; an excerpt from “Aftermath,” a Love and Radio podcast. (L & R’s slogan: “What Ira Glass might make if he showed up to work drunk.”) More…

HV063- Lincoln Monument

Hearing Voices from NPR®
063 Lincoln Monument: A Civil War
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2009-07-01

“Lincoln Monument” (52:00 mp3):

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For Lincoln’s birthday bicentennial year and Independence Day, Old Abe, the Civil War, and its still-present aftermath:

The United States Marine Band recorded a “Lincoln Centennial” on February 12 1909 (from A Lincoln Portrait).

Abe’s 1860 presidential campaign song was “Lincoln and Liberty;” it’s sung for us by Dan Zanes (ex-Del Fuegos, off Parades And Panoramas: 25 Songs Collected By Carl Sandburg For The American Songbag).

“I Heard Lincoln That Day,” says Gettysburg eyewitness Walter Rathvon, in archival audio recorded on Lincoln’s birthday 1938 by WRUL radio, Boston. Set to an instrumental “Lincoln’s Triumph (a Funeral March),” part of the Lincoln Shuffle (by Bryce Dessner, guitarist for The National and Clogs, composed for the great bicentennial site 21st Century Abe, used with their re-mixing blessings).

NPR recreates the “Gettysburg Address,” with the words of John Dos Passos read by Noah Adams, and Lincoln’s speech read by Lars Hoel; produced by Bob Malesky for NPR’s The Sunday Show. More…

HV058- Motherly Love

Hearing Voices from NPR®:
058 Motherly Love— Moms, Young and Old
Host— Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of— 2009-05-06

“Motherly Love” (52:00 mp3):

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For Mother’s Day:

Muriel & Walter Murch compose “A Mother’s Symphony” from womb sounds.

In 1996 Radio Diaries producer Joe Richman gave ”Melissa Rodriguez from New Haven: Teen Mom” a microphone and tape recorder. Melissa was 18 and pregnant. Joe asked her to make an audio journal of her life, for the series Teenage Diaries.

Amy Jo, single mother of two toddlers, is “Surrounded by Lights,” by producer Erin Mishkin of Public Radio Redux and SALT Institute for Documentary Studies.

Myra Dean tells StoryCorps of the day her son was killed by a reckless driver.

Ben Adair takes his mom in search of her mom and “Family Baggage.” Ben heads American Public Media’s Sustainability and Global Climate Change Reporting Initiative.

Katie Davis admits “I Live with My Mother,” part of her DC Neighborhood Stories.

Toronto musician Charles Spearin with his neighbor “Mrs. Morris,” from The Happiness Project.

Seattle producer Jake Warga’s ”Far Side” calendars make metaphor and memories of his mother’s life and death.

And HV wishes all moms, especially ours, a happy Mother’s Day.

Mexico ‘68

On NPR ATC tonight: A half-hour of “Mexico’s 1968 Massacre” from Radio Dairies. “In the summer of 1968, students in Mexico began to challenge the country’s authoritarian government.”

HV039- Portrait of a Plague

HV039- Portrait of a Plague
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
039 Portrait of a Plague— For AIDS Awareness Day
Host— Joe Richman of Radio Diaries
Airdates— 11/26/2008 – 12/03/2008

Portrait of a Plague (53:00 mp3):

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W.H.O. World AIDS Day
The 1st of December A Day Without Art

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