Random Oral history Podcasts

In season three of the Queens Memory podcast, “Our Major Minor Voices,” we feature stories from our neighbors of Asian descent in Queens, New York. Too often, these voices are deemed “minor” – as in “of a minority.” But in our borough, these voices are a major force. From the Little Manila shops under the 7 train line to bustling Punjab Avenue in Richmond Hill, this series takes us inside 8 Asian neighborhoods whose languages, cultures, and belief systems without question play a major role in shaping the future of our borough. A new episode drops every Monday, beginning April 11, 2022. The Queens Memory podcast is a production of Queens Public Library and was made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. The views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this episode are those of its creators and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of National Endowment for the Humanities, Queens Public Library, the City University of New York, or their employees. For more on the Queens Memory podcast, visit QueensMemory.org/podcast.

Categories: Education

Tags: Asian, asian american, Bangla, bangladeshi, chinatown, Chinese, Elmhurst, Flushing, Hindi, immigration, Jackson Heights, Korean, Little Manila, mandarin, Nepali, new york city, oral history, Personal Stories, queens, Richmond Hill, Tagalog, Tibetan, Urdu, Woodside

You Can’t Eat the Sunshine is the podcast of Esotouric, the offbeat Los Angeles company that turns the notion of guided bus tours on its ear. Each week, join Kim Cooper and Richard Schave on their Southern California adventures, as they visit with fascinating characters for wide-ranging interviews that reveal the myths, contradictions, inspirations and passions of the place. There’s never been a city quite like Los Angeles. Tune in if you’d like to find out why.

Categories: Arts, Society & Culture

Tags: Aimee Semple McPherson, alternative history, architecture, archives, Art Deco, Arts District, Beaux Arts, Boosterism, boyle heights, Brian Kaiser, Bunker Hill, Bus Tours, Charles Bukowski, Charles Fletcher Lummis, decorative arts, Downtown Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, Ernest Batchelder, Esotouric, Gale Banks, Googie, Historic Core, Historic Preservation, History, hollywood, hot rods, Huell Howser, James M. Cain, John Fante, John Parkinson, Kim Cooper, libraries, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Lyman Stewart, oral history, Public Policy, Raymond Chandler, research, Richard Schave, Route 66, San Gabriel Valley, Sister Aimee, Skid Row, southern california, Steve Jobs, The Garden of Allah, tile, tourism, Watts Towers, West Hollywood, Wyvernwood

Stories to bridge divides and build community.

Categories: Arts, Education, Society & Culture

Tags: A Peace of My Mind, change, Culture, documentary, interview, life, oral history, race, social issues, Society, storytelling, USA

The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art enlivens the extraordinary human stories behind America’s most significant art and artists. It is the preeminent and most widely used resource dedicated to collecting, preserving, and making available for study the papers and other primary records of the visual arts in America.

Categories: Arts, Business, Government, History, Society & Culture

Tags: American Art, Archives of American Art, Judy Chicago 034214, oral history, smithsonian

Marco Zaza has been telling family stories—funny or sad or nostalgic stories—at various dinner tables for over half a century now. These are tales that reveal one family’s experience as immigrant- and first-generation Italian-Americans. With this podcast Marco shares these entertaining memories with a broader audience. Now illuminated with conversations that add details and tangential stories, the episodes elicit the laughter and tears that always resulted when he treated his family, gathered around a meal, to a sweet memory or two.

Categories: History, Society & Culture

Tags: family, Family history, Funny, Immigrants, immigration, italian-american, Italy, memories, nostalgia, ohio, oral history, storytelling, touching

Survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust are the subjects of “Those Who Were There,” a new podcast from Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. The podcast is narrated by Eleanor Reissa, actress and Yiddish theater director, and historical oversight by Professor Samuel Kassow. “Those Who Were There” podcast features audio from videotaped interviews conducted between 1979 up to the present. “Back in 1979, video was regarded as a remarkable, groundbreaking technology for documenting the experiences of survivors. The testimonies that resulted were and remain very powerful,” said Stephen Naron, director of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. “Today, by adapting our holdings to the podcast format, we have an opportunity to bring these intimate personal accounts of Holocaust survivors and witnesses to a world-wide listenership. After all, only a fraction of our more than 4,400 testimonies have ever been viewed. Every voice, every story is important, and the podcast is a chance to provide a public space for each survivor, one episode at a time.” The podcast’s first season will feature 10 episodes, including accounts from Jewish survivors, non-Jewish witnesses and liberators. The memories shared express a wide range of experiences before, during and after the Second World War by those who experienced it. Still, it is only a small glimpse into the thousands of stories held in this diverse archive.

Teenaged Judith Perlaki recalled cheating death twice after being deported from Hungary to Auschwitz. But most of her family wasn’t so fortunate. While assigned to sort the belongings of people sent to the gas chambers, Judith discovered the dresses of her little sister and aunt.

Categories: Education

Tags: History, Holocaust Studies, Jewish Studies, oral history, Testimony

Folklife Today tells stories about the cultural traditions and folklore of diverse communities, combining brand-new interviews and narration with songs, stories, music, and oral history from the collections of the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center.

Categories: Arts

Tags: American Folklife Center, cultural traditions, folklife, Folklife Today, interviews, library of congress, LOC, music, oral history, songs, storytelling

To document the cascade of public health, social, and financial crises set in motion by COVID-19, the Archives of American Art created an oral history series that recorded responses to the global pandemic across the American art world. Conducted virtually, the Pandemic Oral History Project features eighty-five short-form interviews with a diverse group of artists, teachers, curators, and administrators. Averaging twenty-five minutes long, each interview provides a firsthand account of and urgent insights into the narrator’s triumphs and tragedies in the summer of 2020. With more than thirty hours of recorded video and audio, the series bears witness to an unprecedented era as it unfolded in real time.

Categories: Arts, History

Tags: archives, Archives of American Art, artist interviews, contemporary art, covid-19, Living Artists, oral history, pandemic, pandemic project, smithsonian

On Thursday, April 9th, 2020 the Queens Memory Project launched a COVID-19 documentation project in Queens, New York. The project, found at https://queenslib.org/covid, has the active support of a broad coalition of cultural organizations and citizen historians organized to document this extraordinary moment in Queens history. These are the stories shared by Queens residents who are living, working, learning, and helping one another during this unprecedented time.

This episode of the Queens Memory Project Podcast was conceived and produced by the Queens Public Library Teen Advisory Board. The Queens Public Library Teen Advisory Board is a yearlong program were members take the lead in creating and implementing a project that helps their peers and community. This year’s TAB decided to work on a podcast to interview the voices they felt have been left out of the conversations around Covid-19. After much discussion, TAB members decided to highlight the voices of their peers and their experiences with quarantine and distance learning. After spending the first half of the school year learning the basics of podcasting, members worked together to write the interview questions and were responsible for interviewing, producing, and hosting the episode. Once they learned the basics of creating a podcast episode, the TAB members set out to interview people across generations and life experiences to ask the question “How are you doing?” Answers varied widely and touched upon the topics of virtual school, the disruption of daily routines, new skills learned during lockdown, and social media use. Interviewees often chose to highlight the positives of their experiences in quarantine.

Categories: Education

Tags: corona virus, covid-19, new york city, oral history, Personal Stories, queens

Coney Island Stories is a podcast produced from oral histories in the Coney Island History Project archive. We record interviews in English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and other languages with people who have lived or worked in Coney Island and adjacent neighborhoods or have a special connection to these places. Founded in 2004, the History Project is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that aims to increase awareness of Coney Island’s legendary and colorful past and to encourage appreciation of the Coney Island neighborhood of today. You can search and listen online to over 375 oral history interviews in our archive: https://www.coneyislandhistory.org/oral-history-archive

Categories: History, Society & Culture

Tags: amusement parks, brooklyn, Charles Denson, Coney Island, Coney Island History Project, History, Immigrants, oral history

We are Magic is a podcast about trauma, healing and transformation. We are Magic serves to be a collective archive of survivor wisdom and collect stories from the true experts in the field of trauma: the survivors.

Categories: Education, Health & Fitness, Society & Culture

Tags: growth, Healing, love, mental-health, oral history, pathography, self care, storytelling, Transformation, trauma

OUT HERE is a folklore series determined to bring America together. It’s a love letter to people whose voices deserve to be heard.

Categories: History, Society & Culture

Tags: american history, archive, detroit, everyday americans, everyday people, folklore, folklore series, indigenous people, kyana gordon, marginalized people, michigan, new mexico, oral history, out here folklore, out here folklore series, out here show, out here with kyana gordon, west virginia, Zora Neale Hurston

America Works, an ongoing podcast series from the Library of Congress, features the voices of contemporary workers from throughout the United States talking about their lives, their workplaces, and their on-the-job experiences. Drawn from hundreds of longer oral history interviews collected by fieldworkers for the American Folklife Center’s Occupational Folklife Project (OFP), America Works is a testament to the wisdom, wit, knowledge, and dedication of today’s working Americans. These engaging oral histories, which have are preserved in the American Folklife Center’s archive, are enriching and expanding America’s historical record. Interview with cement plant worker Jude Bejarano, who was interviewed by historian Vyta Pivo as part of a project documenting the occupational culture of Cement Workers in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. The Lehigh Valley is considered “the birthplace of the American cement industry.”

Categories: Arts

Tags: America Works American Folklife Center, folklife, interviews, library of congress, LOC, occupational folklife, oral history, storytelling

The People’s Recorder is a podcast about the 1930s Federal Writers’ Project: what it achieved, where it fell short, and what it means for Americans today.

Each episode features stories of individual writers, new places, and the project’s impact on people’s lives. Along the way we hear from historians, novelists, and others who shed light on that experience and unexpected connections to American society today.

The People’s Recorder recounts a forgotten chapter in our history. Join us on an unvarnished tour of America.

The People’s Recorder is produced by Spark Media with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Florida Humanities, Virginia Humanities, Wisconsin Humanities, California Humanities and Humanities Nebraska.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Categories: Arts, History, Society & Culture

Tags: American Literature, american society, Federal Writers' Project, folklore, Great Depression, History, Literature, oral history, WPA

Award-winning real stories of the Cold War told by those who were there. Every week we interview an eyewitness of the Cold War. Across soldiers, spies, civilians, and others, we aim to cover the whole range of Cold War experiences. Hosts Ian Sanders, James Chilcott, and Peter Ryan bring your ears into the heart of the Cold War. Reading a history book is one thing, but hearing a human voice, with every breath, hesitation and intonation brings a whole new dimension to understanding what it was like to be there. We cover subjects such as spies, spying, the Iron Curtain, nuclear weapons, warfare, tanks, jet aircraft, fighters, bombers, transport aircraft, aviation, culture, and politics. We also cover personalities such as Fidel Castro, JFK, Ronald Reagan, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Mikhail Gorbachev, Konstantin Chernenko, Margaret Thatcher, John F. Kennedy, Josef Stalin, Richard Nixon, Lech Walesa, General Jaruzelski, Nicolae Ceaușescu. Other subjects include Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, West Berlin, East Berlin, Cuban missile Crisis, Berlin Airlift, Bay of Pigs, SALT, Perestroika, Space Race, superpower, USSR, Soviet Union, DDR, GDR, East Germany, SDI, Vietnam War, Korean War, Solidarność, Fall of the Wall, Berliner Mauer, Trabant, Communist, Capitalist, Able Archer, KGB, Stasi, STB, SB, Securitate, CIA, NSA, MI5, MI6, Berlin Wall, escape, defection, Cuba, Albania, football, sport, Bulgaria, Soviet Union, Poland, China, Taiwan, Austria, West Germany, Solidarity, espionage, HUMINT, SIGINT, OSINT, IMINT, GEOINT, RAF, USAF, British Army, US Army, Red Army, Soviet Army, Afghanistan, NVA, East German Army, KAL007, T-72, T-64, Chieftain, M60 The podcast is for military veterans, school teachers, university lecturers, students and those interested in Cold War history, museums, bunkers, weapons, AFVs, wargaming, planes, A Level, GCSE students

Categories: History, Society & Culture

Tags: Berlin Wall, cold war, Czechoslovakia, ddr, East Germany, GDR, History, Hungary, nato, oral history, poland, Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact

A podcast series compiled from oral histories and produced as part of a digital exhibition exploring how Liberal Judaism has evolved since it was co-founded by British visionary Lily Montagu in 1902. This podcast series of oral histories is part of the exhibition: “Lily’s Legacy – Voices and Visions of Liberal Judaism”, a project supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. It was produced by Miri Lawrence and Lucia Scazzocchio, narrated by Harry Hurst, sound editing and design by Lucia Scazzocchio, and special thanks to all the contributors who agreed to share their stories. For more information about what you’ve just heard, do visit the exhibition website, https://lilyslegacyproject.com

Categories: History, Religion & Spirituality

Tags: Judaism, liberal judaism, Lily Montegu, oral history, religion

Oral histories of Myanmar – life stories; some starting as far back as the late 1920’s.From my years of involvement in Myanmar I have become aware of the increasing scarcity of the generation of Myanma citizens who were born during the colonial period and have lived through the tumultuous years since that time. For me, these men and women are “national treasures” whose experience, perseverance and wisdom gained during their long lives will be lost unless we capture their stories in some way. To this end I have decided to interview a number of these elderly citizens. My hope is that these interviews will be of interest to historians, sociologists and other researchers in the future as well as for the family and friends of those interviewed.

Categories: Arts, Society & Culture

Tags: Colony, History, independence, life stories, military junta, myanmar, oral history, WW2

Hi, I’m Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, your host of WISDOM AT WORK: : Older Women, Elderwomen, Grandmothers on the Move!, the podcast that kicks old stereotypes to the curb! Come meet these creative, outrageous, authentic, adventurous, irreverent and powerful Disrupters and Influencers. Older Women, Elderwomen, Grandmothers – from the living room to the courtroom – making powerful contributions in every walk of life. We know them most intimately as loving caregivers, the older women in our lives with a thousand stories about their grandchildren and pictures in their purses…. In this podcast, you’ll come to know even more about our Older Women, Elderwomen, Grandmothers – they are galvanized, determined and are guaranteed to get you thinking! What drives them? What are they up to? What is the potential of Older Women, Elderwomen, Grandmother power, and how is it changing the world?! WISDOM AT WORK: : Older Women, Elderwomen, Grandmothers are on the move…you don’t want to be left behind!

Categories: Kids & Family, Society & Culture

Tags: aging, Gerontology, Grandchildren, grandmother, grandmothers, Human Rights, older women, oral history, seniors, women over 50, women over 60, women's movements, women's rights