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Aural History Productions
Talking History, based at the University at Albany, State University of New York, is a production, distribution, and instructional center for all forms of "aural" history. Our mission is to provide teachers, students, researchers and the general public with as broad and outstanding a collection of audio documentaries, speeches, debates, oral histories, conference sessions, commentaries, archival audio sources, and other aural history resources as is available anywhere. We hope to expand our understanding of history by exploring the audio dimensions of our past, and we hope to enlarge the tools and venues of historical research and publication by promoting production of radio documentaries and other forms of aural history. In addition to our weekly radio program, we are engaged in numerous educational efforts, from running and sponsoring workshops to offering full-semester courses on radio production and oral history. Some of the most talented radio producers and engineers currently working in public and non-commercial radio now contribute to Talking History—both to our programming and to our educational efforts through production workshops. Here, you'll also find digital archives of their enormously creative and captivating works. Our weekly broadcast/internet radio program, Talking History, focuses on all aspects of history. Follow the link to the left, "The Radio Show," for more information on the program and to access the live WWW broadcast. Below you will find our latest archived shows; to enjoy more, make use of the pop-down menu to the left; it will give you access to our full radio archive.
August 26, 2010 [Talking History was pre-empted this week. We feature this previous (2004) broadcast for those who might have missed it.]Segment 1: "The Nights of Edith Piaf" (1994).
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Time: 29:06"She rose every day at dusk and sang, rehearsed, performed, ate and drank and sang until dawn. Then she slept all day and began to create and unravel again as the sun went down. Nearly every song Edith Piaf sang, and she recorded over 400 of them, was a moment taken from her life in Paris. Piaf would tell her composers a story, or describe a feeling or show them a gesture. And they would put music and lyrics to her pain and passion, giving her back her own musical autobiography. Charles Aznavour, Francis Lai, Georges Moustaki, Henri Contet -- some of France's greatest musicians and composers recall their nights with the 'the Little Sparrow'." First produced by The Kitchen Sisters for Soundprint in 1994. Segment 2: From the Archives: "John Steinbeck interview. (Feb. 11, 1952)."
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Time: 11:57.A selection from an interview with John Steinbeck conducted on February 11, 1952. The interviewer is not identified. Steinbeck talks about the setting of his novel The Grapes of Wrath, the dust bowl of the 1930s, the Great Depression, Federal Government aid for farmers, and comparisons of migrant farmers in the 1930s and the 1950s. For more information on this audio recording, contact Talking History/University at Albany, or the National Archives' Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Records LICON, Special Media Archives Services Division, College Park, MD.
Segment
3: "Frederick Douglas."
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Time: 15:41
This examination of Frederick Douglas’ autobiography was produced as a segment of "The Teacher as Historian," at WNYE–FM in New York City. William L. Andrews, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, examines Frederick Douglas’ Autobiography as a source of information on the man, the institution of slavery, and the abolitionist movement. Prepared by Talking History/OAH.
August 19, 2010Segment 1 and 3: "Lincoln'd Music" (2009).
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Time: 26:47From Central Illinois and WUIS, we bring you this exploration of Abraham Lincoln's musical tastes, as a window into mid-19th century popular musical tastes in general. As described by the producers, it's an exploration of "the music Lincoln loved along with the music he heard throughout his life stretching from childhood through presidency … and ultimately assassination. We’ll hear some of the musical anecdotes that have been passed down through the years. And we’ll also find out more about period instruments and the origins of mid-nineteenth century popular songs." Segment 2: "A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" (1896; 1927 performance).
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Time: 3:20Sometimes songs that have nothing to do with war become associated with it. Soldiers pick up tunes and lyrics that resonate in a particular way that seems somehow appropriate for the battlefield. Such was the case with this ragtime tune, composed in 1896, the year of the great heat wave that took the lives of close to 1500 people in New York City (see Edward P. Kohn's recent book, Hot Time in the Old Town (Basic Books, 2010). Composed by August Metz, with lyrics by Joe Hayden, the song became, two years later, one of the most popular battle songs of the Spanish American War, especially among Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. This version was performed many years afterwards, by Bessie Smith, in 1927.
August
12, 2010
Eric Foner: "Abolitionism and the Idea of American Freedom"
[PREVIOUSLY AIRED IN 2002; Due to technical difficulties we did not broadcast a new Talking History this week. Here's an older program you might be interested in hearing.]
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Part 2:
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Eric Foner, DeWitt
Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and
former president of the Organization of American Historians (OAH), talks about
the contributions that the 19th century Abolitionist Movement made to the development
of American ideas about freedom. Foner is the author of a number of books, including:
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before
the Civil War (1970), Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976), Politics
and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (1980), Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation
and Its Legacy (1983), Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution,
1863–1877 (1988), Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders
During Reconstruction (1993), The Story of American Freedom (1998),
and Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (2002). Foner delivered this talk in Elizabethtown, New York, on August 11, 2002 as part
of the John Brown Lives! lecture series. [Recorded, edited and produced
by Talking History ~ University at Albany.]
Aug. 5, 2010Segment 1 and 3: "Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster" (2010).
PART 1:
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Time: 25:20PART 2:
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Time: 19:48Greg Hooker and Spencer Smith produced this adaptation of journalist Svetlana Alexievich's book, Voices from Chernobyl, an oral history of the worst nuclear power plant disaster in human history that took place in Chernobyl, Ukraine, on April 26, 1986. The production utilizes six dramatic actors reading the English translations of oral testimonies of survivors of Chernobyl. The piece was produced at WGDR, Goddard College in Plainview, Vermont, with permission of Salkey Archive Press. It is narrated by Greg Hooker and the testmonies of Lyudmilla, Valentin, Vasily, Sergei, Anna, and Larysa are performed by Deborah Bremer, Bob Carmody, Roman Kokodiniak, Brooke Pearson, Mary Wheeler, and Elizabeth Wilcox. WGDR, For more information about Chernobyl and Svetlana Alexievich's book, see: http://chernobyl.info/ and http://www.alexievich.info/indexEN.html. Segment 2: "Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground (1864; 1972 reading ~ partial)."
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Time: 21:50Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was one of the greatest and most prominent 19th century Russian authors and essayists. His many novels -- including The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Poor Folk, The Double, and others, explored the depths of social, political, and existential crises in a rapidly modernizing Russia. One of his works, Notes from Underground, prublished in 1864, is widely considered the greatest literary expression -- and anticipation of -- existentialism. Here we present a 1972 reading of Doestoevsky's Notes from Underground, compliments of Pacifica Radio Archives. The reading was produced by Kathy Dobkin as the "3rd annual WBAI reading of a classic novel." This excerpt from the first of four parts is read by stage and film actor Morris Carnovsky. To access the full reading, go to: http://fromthevaultradio.org/home/2010/06/18/1135/. Readings of the rest of the novel are accessible through links on that site.
July 29, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "The Frankfurt School" (2010).
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From Against the Grain, we offer this piece examining the history of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. ATG host and co-producer C.S. Soong interviews Thomas Wheatland, author of The Frankfurt School in Exile (U. of Minnesota Press, 2009). Program summary: "Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer: tremendously influential thinkers all, and all part of a grouping of German scholars called the Frankfurt School. A new book by Thomas Wheatland examines the Frankfurt School's interactions with US intellectuals in New York City. It also contests conventional understandings of the impact of Marcuse's ideas on the New Left."
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Time: 10:04The Frankfurt School drew scholars from various social science and humanities disciplines -- sociology, economics, history, political science, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. One of the most influential psychologists associated with the group was Erich Fromm. Fromm was heavily engaged in pushing his discipline into a socially transformative mode. Here, in this selection of a talk he delivered at the American Orthopsychiatry Association's 43rd Annual Meeting in San Francisco on April 13, 1966, he offers some of his views on "The Automaton Citizen and Human Rights." For the full talk, go to the Google Video site: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-385174775844362652.
July 22, 2010
Segment 1: "Nell Painter on the History of White People (2010)."
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Time: 35:51.
On July 18th, 2010, Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University, read from and discussed her recent book, The History of White People. Her presentation took place in the evening at the Old County Courthouse in Elizabethtown, New York. Former Princeton colleague and novelist Russell Banks introduced Painter. This talk was part of a series sponsored by John Brown Lives! and John Brown Coming Home.
For more information about Painter and her recent book, see: www.nellpainter.com and NYT Review of A History of White People.
Segment 2: "Ku Klux Klan 1950s Leader Eldon Edwards (1957)."
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In the mid-1950s, reacting to civil rights progress in the courts, Eldon Edwards, an automobile paint sprayer from Georgia, founded a modern reincarnation of the 19th century Ku Klux Klan, "U.S. Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan." The organization ultimately drew 15,000 members and spread to nine states. For more information on Eldon and his organization, see: www.adl.org/issue_combating_hate/uka/rise.asp. In 1957, Edwards was a guest of Mike Wallace on the ABC's 1957-58 "The Mike Wallace Interview" television series. This is a very brief, edited selection from that interview. The full interview is available at the Harry Ransom Center's Web site devoted to the series: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/film/holdings/wallace/.
Segment 3: "Black Pirates (2010)"
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Time: 8:30
From Virginia Foundation of the Humanities' (VFH) With Good Reason, we continue with part two of a broadcast we aired several weeks ago. Part one focused on the "Secession Showdown" in Virginia in 1860; this segment focuses on "Black Pirates" and features an interview by show host Sarah McConnell with historian Cassandra Newby-Alexander of Norfork State University, who "argues these black pirates experienced more freedom on their outlaw ships than on 'civilized' dry land. . . . Historians estimate that of the nearly 5,000 pirates who terrorized America’s Atlantic coast in the early 1700s, twenty-five to thirty percent were of African descent, many of them freed slaves."
Segment 4: "Historian Henry Steele Commager (1954)"
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Time: 11:46
Former NYU, Columbia University, and Amherst College historian Henry Steele Commager was interviewed by Larry Lesueur and August Heckscher in this November 1954 edition of the Longines Chronoscope (this is the audio from the original television broadcast). The discussion touched on a number of issues, including an examination of free speech and tolerance in the 1950s in comparison to earlier periods in the U.S. and relative to European nations. Original broadcasts of the Longines Chronoscope are all availabel at the National Archives (Archives II) in College Park, Maryland. They are now in the public domain and no longer copyright restricted. For more information on Commager, see: http://www.commager.org/biography.asp
July 15, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Rocketing Ahead" (2010).
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Richard Paul with Soundprint produced a series, Out of This World, exploring the history of the U.S. space program. We've aired two other segments from this series. Here, we present the earliest of the three segments in the series. It explores "how the Democrats rode Sputnik to the White House in a campaign that forever changed science, technology and academia in America."
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Time: 10:12French writer Jules Verne is widely considered the originator of the modern science fiction genre. His From the Earth to the Moon (De la Terre à la Lune) was published in 1865 and predicted an era in which space travel was possible. Though the mechanisms for space flight were somewhat poorly conjectured by Verne, there were some uncanny similarities in Verne's novel to the U.S. Apollo program of the 1960s (actually, the program ran from 1961 to 1975): Verne's cannon -- the instrument that projected Verne's manned capsule -- was called Columbiad and the Apollo 11 command module was named Columbia; in Verne's novel -- as on the first successful Apollo moon launch -- the astronaut crew numbered three; the journey in both cases began in Florida. There were still other similarities. For the full text of Verne's novel, see: http://jv.gilead.org.il/pg/moon/. Copies are also available on Google Books at: http://books.google.com/. For other information on Verne, see: http://www.julesverne.ca/index.html. For the full LibriVox reading of the entire book (from which we took this selection), go to: http://librivox.org/from-the-earth-to-the-moon-by-jules-verne/.
July 8, 2010
Segment 1: "John C. Greene on 'Science in the Time of Thomas Jefferson' (1963)."
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Broadcast initially by the Voice of America (VOA) in 1963, as part of a VOA series on the history of science, here's a talk by John C. Greene, a major historian of U.S. science who taught at the University of Connecticut for decades. He is the author of The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (1959), Science, Ideology and World View: Essays in the History of evolutionary Ideas (1981), and American Science in the Age of Jefferson (1984). For a short biography and overview of his work, see the introductory sections of the finding aid to his papers, deposited at the Univ. of Connecticut - Storrs: http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/findaids/Greene/MSS19960008.html.
Segment 2: "Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (1791) ~ a LibriVox Reading (2007)."
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Founding father, inventor, diplomat, scientist, writer, publisher, and philosopher: Benjamin Franklin was known for all these things. He left quite a legacy, and part of that legacy is very familiar to U.S. history students: his Autobiography. It has become an iconic text, used widely in survey courses in U.S. history. Perhaps little know by students and the general public, however, is the fact that Franklin's autobiography first appeared posthumously in France and in French -- back in 1791 (as Memoires De La Vie Privee). It took another two years before the first English translation was produced, published in London in 1793 as The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D. Originally Written By Himself, And Now Translated From The French. Here -- from LibriVox (www.librvox.org, is a reading of chapter 9 of Franklin's autobiography. For the full text of the Autobiography, see: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/franklin-home.html.
Segment 3: "Virginia's Secession Movement (2010)"
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From Virginia Foundation of the Humanities' (VFH) With Good Reason, we bring you this recent segment on the "Secession Showdown" of 1860 in Virginia. Civil War author Bill Freehling offers his views on "turning points in one state's months-long, bitter battle over whether to secede from the Union." Freehling is Senior Fellow with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and author of Prelude to the Civil War, The Road to Disunion, The South vs. The South, and most recently, edited, along with Craig M. Simpson, Showdown in Virginia: The 1861 Convention and the Fate of the Union
(Univ. of Virginia Press, 2010).
July 1, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Sheila Rowbotham: Feminist Visionaries."
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Time: 29:21
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Sasha Lilley talks with historian Sheila Rowbotham about her latest work,
Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century. From Against the Grain:
"They were socialists, free love advocates, birth
control campaigners, and trade unionists. Feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham
describes the women who transformed gender relations in the US and the
UK at the turn of the last century..."
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Time: 08:27In segment 1 Sheila Rowbotham discusses the writings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, perhaps best know for her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," and her treatise Women and Economics. Here, from LibriVox, is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of Gilman's Herland, a 1915 utopian novel that portrays an ideal, isolated society of women and the three male explorers who enter their world. Audio readings of the entire work, are available at http://librivox.org/herland-by-charlotte-perkins-gilman .
June 24, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Backstory: Scales of Justice ~ A History of Supreme
Court Nominations." 2010.
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From BackStory and the history guys: "Just in time for the Kagan
confirmation hearings, BackStory is delving into the long history
of appointments to the Supreme Court. What qualities did presidents and
lawmakers look for in Supreme Court justices 200 years ago, and how have
those expectations changed? How much have nominees’ personalities and
backgrounds mattered in the past? Was the confirmation process always
as “politicized” as it seems today? Was it more so? How has media coverage
affected the process? Join the History Guys as they explore the highlights
– and lowlights – of Supreme Court nominations past." For more interview
excerpts, additional information, or to join in a discussion of the program,
visit http://backstoryradio.org/2010/06/the-supremes/.
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Time: 11:58Abe Fortas was appointed to the Supreme court by Lyndon Johnson. Later when Johnson nominated Fortas to be Chief Justice a filibuster ensued over charges that Fortas had acted inappropriately in terms of his financial dealings and his contact with Johnson while on the bench. Here, in a recording from the University of Virginia Miller Center of Public Affairs is Abe Fortas speaking in 1981, offering his recollections of President Lyndon Johnson. For the complete Fortas talk and other audio as well, go to http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/forum/detail/81.
June 17, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Lena Horne Remembered"
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From Pacifica Radio Archive's From the Vault, we bring you excerpts
of some of the programs Lena Horne did with Pacifica Radio in the 1960's.
When Lena Horne was Blacklisted in Hollywood, she found a home at Pacifica
Radio as did Paul Robeson and many others whose voices were silenced elsewhere.
Segments 1 and 2 focus on an unusually in-depth interview with Ms. Horne
conducted for KPFA in 1966. Segment 3 is an excerpt from a 1967 documentary,
"Lady Day," based on on Billie Holiday's autobiography. Here
is a dramatization of Holiday's meeting with Lena Horne shortly after
Holiday's release from prison.
June 10, 2010Segment 1 and 3: "Votes for Women" (2010).
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Sandra Sleight-Brennan recently produced this one-hour documentary to mark the 90th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment. Utilizing songs, voice re-creations, interviews, and historical commentary, the documentary reviews the long years of struggle that culminated in the final ratification of the 19th amendment on August 19, 1920. For more information on the history of the quest for women's suffrage, see: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/woman-suffrage/ and http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/nineteentham.htm. Segment 2: "James Keir Hardie on Women's Suffrage in Britain (1905)."
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Time: 3:36Scottish socialist and labor leader James Keir Hardie was one of the founders of the British Labor Party. He is one of the best known 20th century political labor leaders in Great Britain. During his long and influential career, he advocated self-rule for India, an end to segregation in South Africa, opposition to World War I (he was a life-long pacifist), and promoted -- as he did in this speech delivered in the House of Commons in 1905 -- suffrage for women. The reading of Hardie's speech comes to us from www.librivox.org (see, specifically, http://librivox.org/united-kingdom-house-of-commons-speeches-collection/. For a short overview of Hardie's life and career, see: www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRhardie.htm.
June
3, 2010Segment 1: "The Maypole at Merrymount (1999)."
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Time: 28:30.Here's another historical documentary from Mary Borten, from the series "A Sense of Place." The piece focuses on the conflict between two 17th century North American colonial antagonists: "In their own words, Governor Bradford of Plymouth Colony and adventurer Thomas Morton tell the story of a clash that destroyed one man and symbolized fateful differences that determined our attitudes toward Native Americans and the ultimate course of the nation. This long-forgotten conflict between the Pilgrim Fathers and a freethinking fur trader resonates with today's moral concerns. Marvelous voices, the men's own vivid narrative and evocative music make this footnote to history as fresh as tomorrow." Segment 2: "Arthur Garfield Hays on McCarthyism (1951)."
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Time: 4:03Arthur Garfield Hays (1881-1954) had a dual personality. He was perhaps best known for his decades-long work for the American Civil Liberties Union (he was a founding member). But he was also a wealthy corporate attorney, which perhaps provided him the resources to take on many pro-bono cases. Among the many cases Hays was involved with were the Tennessee Scopes Trial (1925), related to the issue of prohibitions on the teaching of evolution; the Sacco and Vanzetti Case; and the 1933 defense of members of the Communist party in Germany accused of setting th Reichstag Fire. Segment 3: "Racial Cleansing in America (2007)."
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Time: 19:45From Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, we present this short examination of racial expulsion in America: "Once in awhile you come across an American town or county that has long been virtually all-white, even though surrounding communities have substantial black populations. It may not always be an accident. In the six decades after the Civil War, in more than a few rural communities, white mobs violently expelled virtually all of their black neighbors. A new book, Buried in the Bitter Waters, describes a dozen of these racial expulsions. Among the places living with this uneasy history is Corbin, Kentucky, a small railroad town in the Appalachian foothills."
May 27, 2010Segment 1 and 3: "Working with Studs [Terkel]" (2010).
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Media. | MP3 unavailable by producer request. Time: 26:27From Transom.org, we present this intimate portrait of oral historian Studs Terkel: "For many years, Transom editor, Sydney Lewis, worked side by side with Studs on his radio show and his books. For this remembrance, told in a seamless blend of doumentary and reminiscence, she brings together of crew of Stud's co-workers with their great stories along with wonderful previously-unheard tape of Studs himself." Segment 2: "Jane Addams on the Evils of Prostitution (1912)."
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Time: 6:43Here is a reading (from www.librivox.org) of chapter 1, "As Inferred from an Analogy," of Jane Addams' A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, a treatise on prostitution. The various chapters of the book first appeared in McClure's magazine. The full 1912 text is available at Google books; go to books.google.com and search for the book title.
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