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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.
June 26, 2008 Segments 1 and 3: "The Carlin Case. (2008)."
Segment 1:
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Time: 39:29.
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Time: 17:38. This production, featuring Tony Diaz and Kym King and produced by Ernesto Aguilar, utilizes audio from the Pacifica Radio Archives and other sources "to explore the so-called Carlin case, the context, the evolution of free speech and the generation that pushed its rights beyond the scope of what was conceivable back in Independence Hall."
Segment 2: From the Archives: "Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley (1964)."
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Time: 5:27.
Mario Savio was one of the leaders of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1965. This selection from one of his public addresses -- delivered at the Sproul Hall sit-in at The University of California at Berkeley on December 2, 1964 -- is perhaps the most famous of his speeches. For a transcription of the speech, see http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mariosaviosproulhallsitin.htm.
Segment 2: From the Archives: "The Souls of Black Folk: A Reading (1903; 2008)."
June 19, 2008
Segments 1 and 3: "An Interview with Jean Renoir (1960)."
Segment 1:
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Time: 25:45.
Segment 3:
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Time: 27:50.
From From The Vault -- an exploration of the life and career of French film director Jean Renoir, in his own words. Renoir's "influence on the art of cinema is indisputable with iconic films as Rules of the Game (1939), Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), The River (1951) and his masterpiece Grand Illusion (1933), which was the first Foreign Language film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. In 1960, Pacifica station WBAI producer Dale Minor sat down for a lengthy interview with an animated, opinionated and charming Jean Renoir." Also included are some comments from film critic Pauline Kael.
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Time: 25:58.
"The Souls of Black Folk, written by W.E.B. Du Bois and published in 1903, is one of the most lyrical and pathbreaking explorations of race in America. Du Bois not only explored the sociological and cultural dimensions of black culture, but also took on Book T. Washington's notions of how best for blacks to advance in a white, Euro-American society. Our thanks to LibriVox.Org for making this and many more recordings of classic texts available to the general public.
Segment 2: "Frank Zappa Takes on the PMRC" (1985).
June 12, 2008
Segment 1: Emmanuel Okocha on the Biafran Secession of 1967 (2008).
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Time: 27:37.
Dialogue's George Liston Seay interviews Emmanuel Okocha, the author of Blood on the Niger: The First Black on Black Genocide. "The Biafran secession from Nigeria in 1967 unleashed one of Africa’s most brutal wars as the federal government quelled the rebellion. So savage were reprisals that many view the Nigerian response as a precursor of the genocidal tragedies in Rwanda and Darfur a generation later. Emmanuel Okocha, orphaned by the conflict, details the dreadful massacre of the village of Asaba during the Biafran War."
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Time: 32:30.
In 1985, the Parents' Music Resource Center (PMRC), led by Tipper Gore, pressured both Congress and the record industry to adopt a music ratings system, similar to that already adopted by the film industry. On September 19th, 1995, in response to this pressure, the U.S. Senate's Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, held a hearing on the issue. Among those who testified were: Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, John Denver, and Frank Zappa. Today we present Zappa's testimony. For a transcript of Zappa's testimony, see: http://downlode.org/Etext/zappa.html. For a short biography of Zappa, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa.
Segment 3: "American Bloomsbury."
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Time: 25:58.
Francesca Rheannon, producer of Writers Voice, talks with two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony Lewis about his pithy and thought-provoking study of the evolution of the First Amendment, Freedom for the Thought that We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment (Basic Books, 2007).
Segment 2: From the Archives: Louisa May Alcott's Hospital Sketches (1863; Librivox, 2008)."
June 5, 2008
Segment 1: Tahima Anam on Bangladesh's Creation: A Golden Age (2008).
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Time: 26:55.
Dialogue's George Liston Seay interviews Tahima Anam, author of A Golden Age. "In 1971, East Pakistan rose in revolt against the oppressive regime that had, for so long, exploited its wealth and disdained its people. That regime was based in West Pakistan, the dominant portion of a political state whose physical entity was separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory. Like all wars this conflict was written in the blood of individuals. In her new book author of "A Golden Age" Tahmima Anam tells the story of Bangladesh's creation through the eyes of a courageous young widow."
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Time: 24:14.
From LibriVox [www.librivox.org], here is a partial reading of the chapter three of Louisa May Alcott's Hospital Sketches (1863; expanded edition, 1869). Alcott, the Transcendentalist, abolitionist, and feminist author best known for her work Little Women (1868), served for around six weeks in a Union hospital in Georgetown, DC in the winter of 1862-63. She wrote extensive letters about her experiences there as a nurse and edited them together to produce Hospital Sketches in 1863. While in service, Louisa contracted typhoid fever and although she recovered after treatment with calomel (a drug heavily laden with mercury and used to cure typhoid), the heavy dosage of mercury she received in her treatment plagued her for the rest of her life. There are extensive WWW sites focusing on Alcott. For a good start, see:
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Time: 27:36.
Francesca Rheannon, producer of Writers Voice, interviews author Susan Cheever about her book, American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work, an examination of the intellectual life of a group of distinguished writers and thinkers whose lives revolved around Concord, MA. There the Transcendentalists "invented a new form of American literature that often came from the yearnings, erotic passions, and disappointments they so deeply felt. Cheever tells us about the ambivalent relationship between Emerson and Thoreau, how Nathanial Hawthorne turned his despair into THE SCARLET LETTER and why Louisa May Alcott began writing LITTLE WOMEN. The daughter of the American writer John Cheever, Susan Cheever is the also the author of the memoir AS GOOD AS I COULD BE, published in 2001, as well as numerous other books."