Aural History Productions

The Radio Archive ~ July - December, 2011

December 29, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Action Speaks: Ronald Reagan and the Air Traffic Controller's Strike of 1981" (2011).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 27:18.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 25:54.
Here's a recent segment from Providence, Rhode Island's Action Speaks -- a discussion of the significance of the 1981 Air Traffic Controller's Strike: "President Reagan's firing of the Air Traffic controllers for refusing to return to work introduced a battle with labor whose echo is still very much a part of our contemporary political discourse. President Reagan sent a message to public service unions--and to unions in general--that they would not be dictating the terms of their relationship to corporate America or to federal or state governments and that the era of labor's victories would be over. With our panelists, Michael Downey, President RI Council 94 ASCME, Georgetown University Professor Joseph McCartin, the author of a new book on this moment, and Paul Cannon, former PATCO member, we will look at how the President's decision to punish the controllers for their walkout signaled the beginning of a new relationship between our government and organized labor. We will look at how this moment was nested into the rise of free market philosophy and how it resonates today in the contemporary conflicts in Ohio, Wisconsin and in many other states and municipalities.
Panelists Dr. Joseph McCartin is an Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University. He is an expert on twentieth century U.S. labor, social and political issues. He teaches courses in 20th Century U.S. Labor History,The U.S. Since 1945, America Between the Wars, 20th Century (and Modern) U.S. State and Society, and 20th Century U.S. Social History. His new book is Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America. Mike Downey is the president of RI Council 94 AFSCME. He followed his father and grandfather into a career as a plumber. He went to La Salle Academy. After La Salle, he went to plumbing school, a five-year program of work and classes. Downey, of Irish heritage, lives now in Charlestown, where he was on the Town Council, but grew up in Providence and Narragansett. Paul Cannon was an Air Traffic Controller for 13 years in Boston. He was the President of a PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) local between 1975 and 1979, stepping down to be the first Choirboys in New England. He resigned as a Choirboy and became campaign manager for George Kerr and participated in the PATCO strike and stayed active with the local. Later he became a business agent for Teamster Local 122."

Segment 2: "Pacifica Radio Archives Selection: The Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979-81 (edited)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 5:36.
Here's an edited selection from archival recordings from the Pacifica Radio Archives focusing on the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979-1981 (November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981) -- when 52 Americans were held hostage by a militant group of Islamist students who took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian Revolution. The hostage seizure and the failed attempts by the Carter administration helped bring down his administration and brought Ronald Reagan to power. For more information on the event, see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/carter-hostage-crisis/.

December 22, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Eadward Muybridge, Technology, and the West" (2011).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 29:58.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 15:25.
From Against the Grain: "The photographer Eadweard Muybridge met Leland Stanford at a time when technological breakthroughs were beginning to alter myriad aspects of everyday life. Muybridge's innovations paved the way for cinema, Stanford's obsessions fueled the beginnings of Silicon Valley, and Rebecca Solnit has written a book about the consciousness-changing advent of modern technology." Rebecca Solnit is the author of River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (Penguin, 2003).

Segment 2: "Edward Steichen on Photography: Lyman Bryson interview of Edward Steichen, December 31, 1969 (Edited selection)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 5:32.
Here's a selection from an interview with American photographer (and painter) Edward Steichen (1879-1973), one of the giants of 20th century still photography. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy in 1963, for his artistic work of many decades. He and his close friend Alfred Stieglitz helped establish Photo-Secession, along with the exhibition gallery "Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession," later known as "291" -- devoted to promoting photography as a fine art form (it also exhibited the work of many European modern painters who were still relatively unknown in the U.S.). Steichen's work on the gallery soon carved out for him a well-earned reputation as a curator. He was offered and accepted the positionf of Director of photography for the Museum of Modern Art in New York soon after World War II; it was there that he created one of the largest and most ambitious photography exhibitions in the 20th century -- "The Family of Man." -- an international exhibit of 503 photographs representing the fundamental rites, irituals, and stages of human life, The exhibit toured widely thourghout the U.S. and abroad and was ultimately pusblished in book form. For more information on Steichen, see his autobiography, A Life in Photography (1963). To hear the entire interview with Steichen, go to:
http://forum-network.org/lecture/creative-method-edward-steichen-photography.

December 15, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Subhumans and Superbeasts: Bisons and Jews in the Warsaw Zoo" (2011).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 31:39.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 14:47.
He're a piece from Poland -- produced and written by David Mairowitz & Malgorzata Zerwe -- and prepared for English language broadcast by Australian Broadcast Corporation/Radio Nationals's Hindsight: "In late 1939, as the Germans occupied Warsaw, the city zoo became a sanctuary for hundreds of Polish Jews, who were hidden in the lions' cages by Jan and Antonina Zabinski, the keepers of the zoo. Most of those who were hidden were ultimately smuggled out of the country to freedom. But there's a dark parallel tale within this story: while the Zabinskis were helping to save a race of people from extermination, Germany's eminent zoologist, Lutz Heck, had commandeered the Warsaw zoo in order to try and re-introduce, through rudimentary genetic engineering, an extinct species of ox known as the aurach."

Segment 2: "Lucy Larcom: A New England Girlhood (1889; selection, LibriVox reading, 2011)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 11:07.
Lucy Larcom -- mill worker, poet, and teacher, wrote one of the most detailed and perceptive accounts of early industrial women's work in 1889 -- A New England Girlhood: Outlined from Memory -- recounting, among other things, her decade in the Lowell mills. Here we present an excerpt from that work, as read by a Librivox reader. For the full reading (and links on-line versions of her book), go to: http://librivox.org/a-new-england-girlhood-outlined-from-memory-by-lucy-larcom/.

December 8, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Revolutionary Notions: Emmanual Wallerstein on Revolutions" (2011).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 28:32.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 23:13.
Here's another excellent interview from Against the Grain, with Immanuel Wallerstein, who has just completed the 4th volume of his now classic The Modern World System (The Modern World-System IV: Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789-1914, UC Press, 2011): "Inequalities in wealth and status abound, despite the official rhetoric of equal rights and opportunity. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, the French Revolution had thunderous consequences for the capitalist world-economy and for how struggles between haves and have-nots have played out. Ideals promoted by the French revolutionaries, he argues, generated dynamics that produced a liberalism determined to contain radicalism at every turn."

Segment 2: "Jeannette Rankin Againt War (1941)."
Real Media. MP3. Time:4:40.
Here is an edited selection from a Mutual Radio broadcast of the congressional debate and vote on the declaration of war against Japan on December 8th, 1941, highlighting Jeannette Pickering Rankin's sole vote againt that declaration. Rankin had also voted against the entry of the United States into World War I in 1917. Consistent with her pacifist views, the first woman elected to the US Congress (from Montana as a Republican) repeated her vote in 1941.

December 1, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "The Birth of Reality Television: An American Family" (2011).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 31:19.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 19:02.
Here is another intriguing discussion of significant events that have transformed American society and culture -- from New Hampshire's Action Speaks (produced by AS220: "When Directors Alan and Susan Raymond put their cameras--and us--into the lives of an upper middle class white family from Santa Barbara in 1970-1971, California, the schisms in the American Family became readily apparent. What was revealed was not Leave it to Beaver. What was introduced was, well, unreal...or was it? With this week's panelists, we will look at how TV changed through the popularity of An American Family. With the current proliferation of 'Reality TV' and its 'reality' which often seems quite suspect, we will wonder what accounts for its popularity, whether or not An American Family can be seen as its direct ancestor and ask what it might be 'preparing us for.' Here is a chance to look more deeply at a subject that sits with us in our living rooms, brought to you by an American Family that allowed us to sit in theirs. This Program's featured panelists include: Alan and Susan Raymond -- Academy Award-winning filmmakers whose work influenced and changed the landscape of American television. In 1971, as the filmmakers of the seminal 1973 PBS cinema verite series An American Family, the Raymond's captured the daily life of the Loud family and forever changed the vision of the American family on television. Many of Alan and Susan Raymond's films are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Paley Center for Media and Bibliothèque nationale de France, in Paris. The Raymonds have created feature length documentaries about dyslexia, schools in the era of No Child Left Behind, children at war and the rise of Elvis Presley. They have been selected for the Television Academy Archives as Emmy TV Legends and received The International Documentary Association Pioneer Award in 2010 for their body of work. Their films have been broadcast on PBS, ABC News, HBO, and the BBC. Robert Self teaches and writes in twentieth-century U.S. history. His principal research interests are in urban history, the history of race and American political culture, post-1945 U.S. society and culture, and gender in the mid-century city. His first book, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for for Postwar Oakland, was published by Princeton University Press in 2003. It won four professional prizes, including the James a. Rawley prize from the Organization of American Historians (OAH). He is currently at work on a book about gender, sexuality, and political culture in the U.S. from 1964 to 2004. Lynne Joyrich is associate professor of Modern Culture and Media where she has taught film and television studies, as well as gender and sexuality studies, since 1999. She is the author of Reviewing Reception: Television, Gender, and Postmodern Culture (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996) and of a number of articles and book chapters on film, television, feminist, queer, and cultural studies in various journals and anthologies. She is also a co-editor and member of the editorial collective of the media and cultural studies journal Camera Obscura.

Segment 2: "Family (1976-1980)."
Real Media. MP3. Time:9:54.
Family was an ABC TV drama series that aired between 1976-1980, produced by Leonard Goldberg, Mike Nichols, and Aaron Spellling. It featured actors Sada Thompson, James Broderick, and Meredith Baxter Birney and dealt with many serious issues -- including infidelity, abortion, and divorce. Here we present a short audio excerpt from the pilot episode of the series.

November 17, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "In the Beginning: Evolution and Creation in American History" (2011).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 31:19.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 19:02.
Here is another selection from BackStory -- a look at the history of the tension between religion and science in the U.S.: "More than 85 years after the Scopes 'Monkey Trial,' debates over the proper place of Darwin in American schools are alive and well. In the past year, lawmakers in seven states have considered legislation that would reduce the focus on evolutionary theory in public school biology classrooms, and a number of GOP presidential hopefuls have made headlines by endorsing the alternative teachings of 'intelligent design.' Public opinion polls, meanwhile, consistently show that only a minority of Americans believe that Darwin was right. In this episode of BackStory, the History Guys explore the relationship between science and religion throughout American history, especially where questions of human origins are concerned. How did the Founders conceive of "creation," and why did the idea of extinction pose such a challenge to their worldview? How were Darwin's ideas received in the U.S., and why did it take six decades before public school systems started challenging the teaching of his theories? Are there periods in American history when science and religion have not been at odds? These are a few of the questions on the table as BackStory takes on (the history of) the biggest question of them all: "Where did we come from, anyway?"

Segment 2: "Clarence Darrow on Industrial Conspiracies" (Selection ~ 1912; 2011)
Real Media. MP3. Time:9:54.
Clarence Darrow defended John Thomas Scopes in the Scopes Trial (The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes) in 1925 -- a trial that put the teaching of evolution on trial. But years earlier Darrow had an equally significant role in the defense of brothers John J. and James B. McNamara, accused of the October 1, 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in Los Angeles, California in which 21 newspaper employees were killed. The bombing was an outgrowth of labor anger at the Times' support of the open shop. Darrow, in the course of preparing the brothers' defense, was brouight up on charges of attempting to bribe a juror, but was acquitted. Shortly after his acquittal, he delivered a speech at the Heilig Theater in Portland, Oregon on Sept. 10, 1912, in which he discussed the vast class inequalities that prevented working people from obtaining justice in the U.S. and suggested that perhaps there was some justification for violent industrial conspiracies in the face of the unequal power relations that capitalism had created. Here we present an excerpt from Bryan's speech, as read by Richard Kilmer for LibriVox.

November 10, 2011
Segment 1: "A Conversation With Norman Corwin" (2010).
Real Media. MP3 unavailable by request of producer. Time: 30:37.
Norman Corwin died October 18, 2011 at his Los Angeles home at the age of 101. Corwin was one of the legends of radio -- a writer, director, and producer of hundreds of radio palys and documentaries during radio's "Golden Age." William Shatner, who worked with Corwin as narrator of several of Corwin's radio programs, wrote of that he was "the poetic soul of discretion and a a monument to artistry in America." Here, we present an interview by Katy Sewall conducted in June of 2010, right after Corwin's 100th birthday. It was originally broadcast on KUOW Public Radion on November 24, 2010.

Segment 2: "Edward R. Murrow on Radio" (1948)
Real Media. MP3. Time: 3:58.
Edward R. Murrow. like Corwin, was one of the giants of radio -- and equally, of TV broadcast journalism. He and production partner Fred Friendly at CBS produced a host of programs that have become radio news classics. Here we present excerpts from a few of the radio broadcasts Murrow worked on. For a short biography of Murrow, go to the Museum of Broadcast Communications at: http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=murrowedwar.

Segment 3: "Norman Corwin's 'One World Flight' Series" (1947)
Real Media. MP3. Time: 21:29.
In 1946, Norman Corwin traveled to 17 nations to document the postwar world. After being named as the first recipient of the "One World Flight" Award, he utilized his prize -- a four month round-the-world trip that paralleled Wendell Wilkie's historic diplomatic flight -- to produce a 13-part radio series that documented his travels and the state of mind of people around the world in the wake of the conclusion of World War II. For more information on "One World Flight," see: http://www.digitaldeliftp.com/DigitalDeliToo/dd2jb-One-World-Flight.html.

November 3, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Gary Dorrien on Benjamin E. Mays ~ The Negro's God and the Black Social Gospel (2011).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3 unavailable by request of producer. Time: 32:04.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3 unavailable by request of producer. Time: 21:12.
Today we bring you the second of two programs focusing on the Black Social Gospel movement, featuring Gary Dorrien, professor of religion at Columbia University, Episcopal priest, and Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary. It comes to us from the Chautauqua Institution (www.ciweb.org). In this talk, Dorrien focuses on Benjamine Elijah Mays, former president of Morehouse College and one of the spiritual mentors of Martin Luther King. For a short biography of Mays, see: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h.2627.

Segment 2: "Mr. Barton's Sermon" ~ selection from Chapter 26 of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (LibriVox reading)
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:56.
Here is a selection from Chapter 26 of Edward Bellamy's 1887 utopian socialist classic, Looking Backward. For the full text of the book, see http://fiction.eserver.org/novels/looking_backward/. Looking Backward was extremely influential in the late 19th century America; it helped spawn a whole movement, known as "Nationalism" which advocated a major transformation of political and economic life along the lines suggested by Bellamy in his book -- centralized socialism. It also influenced non-socialist reformers and Social Gospel ministers. This reading comes to us from LibriVox (http://www.librivox.org).

October 27, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Defying White Supremacism: Reverdy Ransom and the Black Social Gospel " (2011).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3 unavailable by request of producer. Time: 29:11.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3 unavailable by request of producer. Time: 24:21.
Today we bring you the first of two programs focusing on the Black Social Gospel movement, featuring Gary Dorrien, professor of religion at Columbia University, Episcopal priest, and Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary. It comes to us from the Chautauqua Institution (www.ciweb.org). PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: "Dorrien has published a dozen books and more than 100 articles. Dorrien’s passion for social ethics manifested in his lecture, 'Defying White Supremacism: Reverdy Ransom and the Black Social Gospel.' The little-known Ransom helped to popularize the Black Social Gospel. He was a contemporary of such figures as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois and endured much persecution for his beliefs and approach to achieving racial equality."

Segment 2: "Reinhold Niebuhr, in His Own Words (selections, archival and 1958 interview segment)
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:55.
Here are two edited selections of Reinhold Niebuhr speaking; the first is from one of his sermons, the second from a Mike Wallace interview conducted in 1958. Niebuhr was one of the most influential theologians in 20th century America. He merged elements of theological liberalism and conservatism in his views; many have referred to him as a "theological realist" -- attempting to make theology relevant to public affairs, foreign policy, and contemporary social realities. He was the author of many works, but perhaps his most influential publication was his 1932 Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics. You can find much more information on Niebuhr at: http://being.publicradio.org/programs/niebuhr-rediscovered

October 20, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Torn Curtain: The Secret History of the Cold War ~ Episode 5: The Nuclear War We Nearly Had in 1983" (2006).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 30:45.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 22:54.
Here's the final episode in Hindsight's production of Torn Curtain: The Secret History of the Cold War: "Today, the 1980s are remembered as the decade in which American strength and determination under the presidency of Ronald Reagan led to the final collapse of communism and the liberation of eastern Europe. Yet the world nearly paid a terrible price for Reagan's uncompromising stand against the 'evil empire' in the early 80s. In late 1983, the world came closer to the brink of nuclear war than at any time since the Cuba crisis. Deeply paranoid Soviet politicians and military leaders believed that the US was preparing to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union—and argued that the Soviets should prepare to strike first if necessary."

Segment 2: "Universal Newsreel: B-25 Crashes in the Empire State Building" (1945)
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:22.
Here is an edited soundtrack excerpt from a Universal Newsreel focusing on a very famous plane crash. On July 28 1945, a U.S. Army B-25 bomber crashed into the 78th and 79th floors of the Empire State Building, taking the lives of eleven people in the building, as well as the 3-men crew in the plane. Though there was extensive damage to the Empire State Building, its structural integrity was not compromised. For more information on this event, see: http://www.withthecommand.com/2002-Jan/NY-empireplane.html."

October 13, 2011 [TALKING HISTORY was not broadcast today. Here's a previously broadcast program from 2003.]
Segment 1 and 3: "WHER-1000 Beautiful Watts: The First All-Girl Radio Station in the World" (2006).
Part 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 25:10.
Part 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 33:11.
From the Lost and Found Sound Web site: "They went on-air October 29, 1955, in Memphis, Tennessee, and stayed there for 17 more years. Legendary record producer Sam Phillips had always wanted a radio station. When the FCC finally gave him a frequency, 1430 on the AM dial, Sam came up with a one-of-a-kind idea—an all girl format—women announcers, sales staff, management, record librarians, copy writers. At the time, stations had at most one girl announcer. Each woman who interviewed for a job at WHER thought she would be that girl. It wasn't until the day before the station went on the air that the girls themselves found out the station would be all female. Produced in 1999 by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) and mixed by Jim McKeby.

October 6, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Segment 1 and 3: "Torn Curtain: The Secret History of the Cold War ~ Episode 4: The Week that Changed the World -- Nixon, China, and the Vietnam Wart" (2006).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 28:07.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 26:29.
Produced by Australia Radio National's Hindsight, this is part 4 of a 5-part series on the Cold War. Here is a summary of the segment: "A handshake between President Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao in 1972 had repercussions around the world, and ultimately altered the balance of global power for evermore. This program explores the geo-political shifts during the later years of the Cold War which led to Richard Nixon's secret visit, in 1972, to communist China. It also charts the role Australia played in what became known as the 'Opening to China', and the world-wide ramifications of the slow thaw which began to take place between east and west in the wake of these events."

Segment 2: "Trotsky and the Left Opposition" (1938).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:44.
Here, in 1938, Leon Trotsky addresses his supporters in the Left Opposition in the United States. The Left Opposition was established in Russia in 1923 to oppose the growing bureaucratization of Russian socialism and the rising influence of Stalin. Member believed in the importance of sustaining a world-wide Socialist revolutionary movement -- a "permanent revolution." Stalinists supported the notion of "Socialism is one country." There were various other differences between the factions but ultimately members of the Left Opposition were expelled from the Soviet Communist party and went into exile. The group came to be called "Trotskyist" since Trotsky was the central leader of the anti-Stalinist opposition. The Left Opposition soon grew into an international movement with the formation of the International Left Opposition in 1930. The organization and its members were targeted by Stalin through the 1930s and beyond. Many were executed after the Moscow Purge Trials of 1936-38. Trotski was assassinated in Mexico in 1940. For more information on Trotsky and the Left Opposition, see the Marxists Internet Archive: http://www.marxists.org.

September 29, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Peace Corps Voices" (2011).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 28:07.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 26:29.
Here is a piece produced in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps in 2011, from independent producer Amy Meyer: "This one-hour radio documentary explores the impact of service on volunteers by combining audio recordings they made in various countries and contemporary interviews with them. From Ghana in the 1960s to Nepal in the 1990s to recent service in The Gambia, these recordings present voices of people the American volunteers met, lived with and, in one case, married. The show offers an aural tour and history of the Peace Corps with instrumental music, singing, and natural sounds from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the former Eastern Bloc. Participants in the documentary include: a member of the very first Peace Corps cohort, sent to Ghana in 1961, who toted a portable reel-to-reel recorder; a woman who served in Sierra Leone and recorded children singing Kumbaya in 1969; a couple who married in Burkina Faso, she a Peace Corps volunteer and he a local resident; a man who trained teachers in Peru in 1970 and learned Spanish from AlejandroToledo—a past president of Peru; a current Wisconsin Public Radio employee who recorded scenes from village life in Nepal; and a farmer in Massachusetts who worked with children in Togo to produce PSAs condemning bush fires. The program also includes archive audio from the 1961 Rose Garden ceremony in which President Kennedy bid farewell to the very first volunteers. Independent producer Amy Mayer has worked at two NPR affiliates (KUAC and WFCR) and volunteered at KPFA. She has earned awards for a public affairs program she hosted for four years and for her reporting and commentaries. She's based in western Massachusetts and her work has aired nationally on NPR News programs such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. She has also produced for Marketplace, Living on Earth, Only A Game and Justice Talking. Award-winning public radio journalist Tanya Ott, news director at WBHM in Birmingham, Alabama, edited the documentary."

Segment 2: "Tuesday in November" (1945, OWI film sound track).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:44.
The U.S. Office of War Infromation (OWI) produced this propaganda film on the 1944 U.S. presidential election. It was "made to show the world that the United States was sufficiently secure to hold a free and fair election during wartime. Shows campaign activities, efforts to ensure the secrecy of the ballot and fairness of the election, and media coverage of the electoral process, all culminating in a giant nighttime gathering in Times Square where a huge crowd awaits the result." Here we present an edited selection of excerpts from teh sound track of the film. The director of the film was John Houseman. For more information Tuesday in November, see: http://www.archive.org/details/Tuesdayi1945.

September 22, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln" (2011).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 27:59.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 23:23.
Produced by Against the Grain, this interview with historian and sociologist Robin Blackburn, author of An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln (Verso, 2011), explores the relationship between Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln: "They may seem an unlikely pair, but they knew of each other, and Marx was intensely interested in the Civil War and the fate of slavery. Marx also influenced the culture and trajectory of US worker radicalism, which fueled the b

Segment 2: "An Anti-Slavery Alphabet" (LibriVox reading of an antislavery children's book published in 1846-47).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 6:11.
Written by Hannah and Mary Townsend, and first presented and sold at the December 1846 Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Fair, this children's book sought to spread antislavery ideas and ideals to youth. It was formally published in early 1847 and enjoyed wide circulation amongst the growing abolitionist population in the decade preceding the Civil War. The original book consisted of "sixteen leaves, printed on one side, with the printed pages facing each other and hand-sewn into a paper cover. Each of the letter illustrations is hand-colored." The Mississippi Department of Archives and History has placed a digital version of the original book on line. You can view it at: http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/asa/. Here we present a LibriVox (http://www.librivox.org) reading of the text.

September 15, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Torn Curtain: The Secret History of the Cold War ~ Episode 3: The Vietnam War and Richard Nixon's Secret Nuclear Alert " (2006).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 29:20.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 23:52.
Produced by Australia Radio National's Hindsight, this is part 3 of a 5-part series on the Cold War. Here is a summary of the segment: "Richard Nixon has just been elected on a promise of peace with honour—a promise to get American troops out of Vietnam and heal the deep divisions in American society. But within six months of moving into the White House, Nixon would embark on a highly secret strategy of massively escalating the war—and bluffing the Soviet Union that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons. We'll also hear some surprising revelations about how Soviet leaders saw the Vietnam war—and their involvement in it.

Segment 2: "A Republican Who Believed in Government: NY Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller's First NY State of the State Address (1959, SARA).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:02.
Here is an interesting item from the NYS Archives -- a selection from Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller's first State of the State address, delivered on January 7th, 1959. In it, Rockefeller "talks about New York's need for leadership that can achieve advances such as the Erie Canal, the Thruway, the St. Lawrence Seaway, etc., and about addressing emerging issues before they become problems, to better shape tomorrow. " In fact, as a New York Republican Governor, serving from 1959 through 1973, he demonstrated a proclivity to use state government aggressively in the areas of education, housing, welfare, medical care, environmental protection, transportation, civil rights, and the arts. The recording comes from "Series: 13700-83, Audio and video tapes, 1951-1986, New York (State) Governor. Identifier: NYSA_13700-83_rtr_1959-01-07A_edit1." For more information on this and other recordings, go to: http://www.archives.nysed.gov/a/digital/audio/audio_archival_rockefeller_state_of_state.shtm..

September 8, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Living Nine Eleven" (WNYC, 2011).
PART 1: Real Media. Time: 31:04. [MP3 unavailable by request of producers.]
PART 2: Real Media. Time: 25:08. [MP3 unavailable by request of producers.]
WNYC in New York City, the city's world-famous public radio station, recently put together a series of programs commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. This is one of them: "Ten years after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, as part of WNYC's 'Decade: 9/11' coverage, this special explores New Yorkers' most visceral and immediate emotional reactions to the attack on the World Trade Center and how they are - and are not -- still with us today. Fear and shock, grief and guilt, anger, gratitude and solidarity -- these emotions overwhelmed many New Yorkers along with the billowing cloud of smoke and debris after the Towers collapsed. WNYC's award-winning news team spent days, months, and then years reporting on the attacks and their aftermath. Through a mix of their recordings at the time and interviews with people ten years later, WNYC reporter Marianne McCune guides us through the stories of people who were directly impacted by what happened and have been struggling for a decade to make sense of it." For more information on WNYC's 9/11 programs, go to: http://www.wnyc.org/series/911-tenth-anniversary/.

Segment 2: "After Pearl Harbor: Oral Histories from the Library of Congress" (1941).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 1:36.
Here is a selection from an oral interview (with Buffalo, NY resident Dorothy Baer) conducted in the immediate aftermath of the Dec. 7th, 1941 Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese Air Force. All of the recordings are available on the American Memory site of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress' (LOC) Web project devoted to the project. Here is a short introduction to the recordings (from the LOC Web site): "In 1941, fieldworkers for the Library of Congress's Radio Research Project made documentary recordings of Americans from around the country who described their lives, sang their songs, and told the stories of their own regions. The project's staff believed that most commercial radio broadcasts of the day were dominated by programs created in the great urban centers and that these programs failed to reflect regional culture, local talent, and, in particular, the voices of the people speaking in their own words. The project included recordings from farmers, merchants, day laborers, and bankers from the Eastern Shore of Maryland; a traveling carnival set up near Washington, D.C.; an Okie migrant labor camp in southern California; and a folk festival in Asheville, North Carolina. Alan Lomax, head of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture), was serving as folklore consultant for the project. On December 8, 1941, the day following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Lomax sent a telegram to fieldworkers in ten different localities around the United States, asking them to collect "man-on-the-street" reactions to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war by the United States. This request resulted in approximately four and one half hours of recordings that were used to create a fifteen-minute radio program for the Mutual Broadcasting System. . . ." For more information on this fascinating and informative project, and to access the entire group of recordings, go to: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afcphhtml/afcphhome.html. A number of 9/11 oral history projects -- in particular the "Sonic Memorial Project" [http://www.sonicmemorial.org/sonic/public/index.html] -- were inspired by the1941 project.

September 1, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Torn Curtain: The Secret History of the Cold War ~ Episode 2: Science, Spies and Australia's Bid for the Bomb " (2006).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 32:53.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 21:04.
Produced by Australia Radio National's Hindsight, this is part 2 of a 5-part series on the Cold War. Here is a summary of the segment: "In July 1949 a brilliant young Australian physicist and member of the Communist party, Tom Kaiser, who had just completed his PhD research at Oxford, took part in a demonstration outside Australia House in London. Within days, he was caught up in a web of Cold War intrigue stretching from Canberra to London and Washington. At stake was Australia's bid to become a nuclear weapons state—and the activities of a Soviet spy ring at the highest levels of the Australian government." For more information about Hindsight, go to their Web site: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/.

Segment 2: "Cold War Films: On the Beach" (1959).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:49.
Release in 1959 and directed by Stanley Kramer the film On the Beach -- based on a novel by Nevil Shute -- offers a depressing but not graphic view of a world facing extinction after a thermonuclear war. The immediate horrors of that war take place entirely off screen; all the viewer knows is that a cloud of radioactive dust will soon settle on Australia and its inhabitants, as it did on other continents and other peoples, and will extinguish the lives of all. Among the film's cast are: Gregory Peck (in the role of USS Sawfish captain Dwight Lionel Towers), Ava Gardner (in the role of Moira Davidson), Fred Astaire (a scientist ) and Anthony Perkins (playing a Royal Australian Navy lieutenant named Peter Holmes). Here we present a short audio selection from the sound track of the film.

August 24, 2011 [PROGRAM PRE-EMPTED TODAY. CHECK OUT THIS PREVIOUS BROADCAST]
"Passaic On Strike." (2006)
Part 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 29:36.
Part 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 24:22.
In 1926, 16 thousand woolworkers in Passaic, New Jersey, walked out after their meager wages were cut 10%. It was a long strike - nearly a year - and it caught the attention of intellectuals and activists nationwide. Over the harsh winter of 1926, Passaic became a battleground, not just between workers and bosses, but between the traditional trade unions and a renegade organizer in the American Communist Party, who envisioned a militant, industrial union for all workers. The program has ten parts, but was broadcast in two long segemnts -- Part I: The Battleground; Part II: Vera and Albert; Part III: Strike! Strike!; Part IV: The Strike Bulletin; Part V: Workers' Relief; Part VI: The Silent Movie; Part VII: Strike Strategy; Part VIII: The Riot Act; Part IX: Enter the AFL; Part X: The Final Chapter. This documentary was produced by <em>Talking History</em> contributing producers David S. Cohen & Marty Goldensohn for the New Jersey Historical Commission and NJN Public Radio.

Segment 2: "From the Archives: Truman and the 1952 Steel Strike." (1952)
Real Media. MP3. Time: 19:30.
In January of 1952, upon the expiration of its contract, the United Steelworkers of America sought wage and benefit increases from Steel manufacturers. Employers claimed they were hamstrunged by government price controls (imposed during the Korean War). Union leaders agreed to delay a strike until the Wage Stabilization Board could review its demands. Upon review of the Union's case, the Board did authorize a small wage increase, but the Steel Companies refused to go along. This precipitated a strike in April. Truman, blaming the employers, issued an executive order and seized the mills, citing his emergency wartime powers. His seizure, though, was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in June of that year (they called it an illegal usurpation of congressional powers). Soon after that ruling, Truman took his case to the Congress, appealing to them to authorize intervention; this recording is the speech he delivered to a joint meeting of Congress. The strike, by the way, continued well into August, when the nation's major steel mills offered a wage increase not dissimilar to that originally authorized by the War Stabilization Board. For a transcription of Truman's speech, see: http://steelseizure.stanford.edu/Truman/harry.truman.1952.june10.html. For more information about this particular 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.

August 18, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Torn Curtain: The Secret History of the Cold War ~ Episode 1: Living within the Truth—the Cold War as Struggle of Ideas" (2006).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 31:54.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 21:23.
Produced by Tom Morton and ABC National's Hindsight, "Torn Curtain: The Secret History of the Cold War" examines the Cold War as both "a geo-political contest and an ideological struggle. The contest of ideas was fought out within societies as vigorously - sometimes as viciously - as it was between east and west. This episode focuses on the global protests of 1968 and draws connections between events in Prague, Paris, Berlin and Berkeley. A story of revolution, rock'n'roll - and the power of the powerless." Today we present part 1 of the program.

Segment 2: [Off site link] "Cold War Songs: Elton John's "Nikita" (1985).
"Nikita".
Released by Elton John in 1985 on his album Ice on Fire," this Cold War-inspired song, desribes a one-way and unfulfilled love interest across the Berlin Wall with an East Berlin (GDR) border guard -- one frustrated by the physical and ideological gulf between the singer and the object of his desire. The essence of the song is encapsulated in the last stanza: "And if there comes a time / Guns and gates no longer hold you in / And if you're free to make a choice / Just look towards the west and find a friend. Elton's John's fictional "Nikita" was often interpreted -- as in the music video that Elton John himself agreed to make -- as a female guard when in fact John wrote it about a male guard. For the full lyrics and a short selection of the song, go to: http://www.eltonography.com/songs/nikita.html.

August 11, 2011
Segment 1: "Silvana Siddali on Lincoln, Electoral Politics, and the Constitutional Crisis of the Civil War" (2008).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 28:12.
Here is a selection drawn from the 2008 Lincoln Legacy Lecture Series at the University of Illinois -- a talk by Dr. Silvana Siddali, Associate Professor of History at St. Louis University and author of From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts, 1861-1862. Siddali explores how the political "elections leading up to and during the U.S. Civil War reflected Americans' view of the future of the U.S. Constitution and President Lincoln's power to influence it."

Segment 2: "John Buroughs ~ 'Midsummer in the Catskills" (1902).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:47.
Here is a recitation of one of John Burrough's many odes to the Catskills -- the poem "Midsummer in the Catskills" -- by Alan Davis Drake. John Burroughs (1837-1921), who is closely identified with New York State's Catskill Mountains, is perhaps one of the best known literary naturalists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His nature essays were widely read and helped promote both the conservation and preservation movements of the 20th century. He was a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt and many naturalists, including John Muir. For more information on Burroughs, see: http://www.catskillarchive.com/jb/.

Segment 3: "Timothy Egan on Theodore Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America " (1910).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 23:29.
From Humanities Montana, we bring you this selection from the series "The Write Question," a discussion with the Pulitzer Prize winning author Timothy Egan of his most recent book, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America. The book examines the Great Fire of 1910 that burned about three million acres in Northern Idaho and Western Montana's "and helped shape the United States Forest Service. The book also details some of the political issues of the time focusing on Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot."

August 4, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "The Spanish Revolution and Civil War" (2011).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 28:36.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 22:03.
From Against the Grain, we bring you this conversation between Ramsey Kanaan and Stuart Christie about Spanish anarchists and the Spanish Revolution: "Few attempts at radical social transformation are as inspiring as the Spanish Revolution, which was launched in response to a fascist coup in 1936. Yet it fell apart tragically. Anarchist writer Stuart Christie, who was imprisoned for attempting to assassinate the dictator Francisco Franco, discusses the social forces at play in the Spanish Revolution, its disintegration, and anarchist resistance to Franco in its aftermath." Stuart Christie is the author of We the Anarchists! A Study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927-1937 (Perseus, 2008).

Segment 2: "Emma Goldman -- Selection from Anarchism and Other Essays" (1910).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 4:10.
Here's a LibriVox reading from a radical classic by one of the "most dangerous anarchists" of the 20th century (according to J. Edgar Hoover). For the full text of Goldman's text, see: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/Goldman/front.html. For more information about Goldman, and to sample some of her writings, visit the Emma Goldman Papers Project Website at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/, from which the following short bio is borowed: "Emma Goldman (1869–1940) stands as a major figure in the history of American radicalism and feminism. An influential and well-known anarchist of her day, Goldman was an early advocate of free speech, birth control, women's equality and independence, and union organization. Her criticism of mandatory conscription of young men into the military during World War I led to a two-year imprisonment, followed by her deportation in 1919. For the rest of her life until her death in 1940, she continued to participate in the social and political movements of her age, from the Russian Revolution to the Spanish Civil War.

July 28, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "The Japanese in California" (1959).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 30:09.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 27:27.
Pacifica Radio's From the Vault recently made the following 1959 Pacifica documentary available; it's a 1959 production heavily based on oral interviews with Japanese-Americans in California. Here's a summary of the production from From the Vault: "We present Pacifica Radio's earliest known recording of Japanese Americans and their families from California talking about life in America. This extraordinary 1959 recording documents stories of family life before the war and how the internment process changed lives forever. Voices include ordinary citizens, teachers, students, lawyers, architects, and farmers, and Hito Okada, one of the founders and former presidents of the oldest and largest Asian civil rights group, the Japanese America Citizens League. The original recording was produced by Marshall Windmiller from Pacifica Station KPFA 94.1 in Berkeley California."

Segment 2: "Crystal City Internment Camp" (1945).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 9:37.
Here's the sound track of a 1945 government film made by the Immigration and Naturalizaton Service (INS) about the largest Alien internment camp established during World War II -- located in Crystal City, Texas. It was run by INS and the Department of Justice. Although there were far larger camps operating in California and other western states, which housed individuals of Japanese descent -- ciitzens and aliens -- who lived along the Pacific coast, they were technically not alien "internment camps," but "War Relocation Camps." The latter were created under Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1942 Executive Order 9066 which established "exclusion zones" from which Japanese were removed. For more information on the INS and Dept. of Justice internment camps, and specifically the Crystal City camp, see: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/quwby.

July 21, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "The Early Walter Benjamin." (2011)
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 30:06
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 21:15
In this episode from AGAINST THE GRAIN, Howard Eiland, editor of Walter Benjamin's Early Writings, 1910-1917 (Harvard U. Press, 2011), discusses Benjamin and his work. From AGAINST THE GRAIN: "Human consciousness, creativity, development, and organization: So many facets of the human condition interested Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), whose insights into the big questions of modern existence continue to resonate. A new volume of Benjamin's early writings, in which the German philosopher-critic holds forth on topics like education, creativity, history, and the search for truth, is edited by Howard Eiland."

Segment 2: "Maria Montessori: The Montessori Method."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 11:34.
Maria Montessori was an Italian physician and educator known for developing educational methods, still in wide use today, that foster learning at the individual child's pace. This reading of Chapter 7, "Exercises of Practical Life" is from The Montessori Method published in English in 1912. More details on Maria Montessori, her teaching methods, and audio of the entire work are available at LibriVox.

~ ~ ~ ~

July 14, 2011
Segment 1 and 3: "Backstory: Borrowed Times: A History of the National Debt."
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 31:30.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 18:33.
From The History Guys at Backstory " With Congress at a standstill over whether to raise the nation�s borrowing limit, and the national debt approaching the size of the entire U.S. economy, you�d be hard pressed to find a politician with anything good to say about our debt. But America�s first Treasury Secretary famously called it a �national blessing.� What did he mean by that, and are there other times in history when Americans have actually celebrated our national debt? ... why debt has continued to be so controversial in a nation that was founded on borrowing. What factors have contributed most to our ballooning deficit, and who, historically, have been most concerned about it? To whom does the nation owe all this money, and how has the slate of creditors changed? Is the current debt crisis truly unprecedented? How can history help us understand the extent to which debt endangers our 21st century economy?"

Segment 2: "The Lives of Great Men: Owen D.Young." (1937).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 16:47.
This biographical dramatization of the life of Owen D. Young comes to us from a 1937 broadcast of "The Lives of Great Men" one of many Smithsonian Institution radio recordings, many done in collaboration with the National Brodcasting Company and the US Office of Education. among his many accomplishments, Young became the Chairman of the Board of the General Electric Corporation. Here, in the context of the discussion on debt, we note his work on what became the "Young Plan," negotiating Germany's foreign debt after World War I. His efforts on this front led Time magazine to name him "Man of the Year" in 1929.

~ ~ ~ ~ July 7, 2011 [We did not broadcast Talking History today; here is a previous broadcast from 2004 that we thought you might enjoy].
Segment 1: "George Stoney, Documentary Filmmaking, and the Uprising of '34."
Part 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 30:04.
Part 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 18:40.
Talking History's Gerald Zahavi interviews George Stoney about his life and career as a documentary filmmaker and pioneer in community media. The interview focuses on Stoney's various projects, including field work under Howard University's Ralph Bunch for Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, and collaborations on over 50 films, including the historical documentary, "The Uprising of '34." Stoney has taught filmmaking at NYU for more than three decades.

Segment 2: From the Archives: "David E. Lilienthal on Oak Ridge and Atomic Energy (1949)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 6:51
David Eli Lilienthal (1899�1981), born in Morton, Ill., became a well known liberal lawyer who spent almost his entire life in public service. He was first appointed by Gov. Philip La Follette to the Wisconsin public service commission. Then, in 1933, he was tapped by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to serve as one of three directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). On January 1, 1947, President Truman established the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and nominated Lilienthal to be its first chairman. As the director of the AEC from 1947 to 1949, he became a strong advocate of civilian control of the US atomic-energy program. In this speech, delivered in 1949 at Oak Ridge Tennessee, Lilienthal expresses his hopes that atomic energy will ultimately be used for peace and not war. For more information about the 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.

~ ~ ~ ~

Home | Guide to Listening | The Radio Show | The Radio Archive Producers | Production | Labor History Archive | Contacting Us

---

Copyright © 1997-2021 Talking History