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Radio Diaries

Radio Diaries

By: Radio Diaries & Radiotopia
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About this listen

First-person diaries, sound portraits, and hidden chapters of history from Peabody Award-winning producer Joe Richman and the Radio Diaries team. From teenagers to octogenarians, prisoners to prison guards, bra saleswomen to lighthouse keepers. The extraordinary stories of ordinary life. Radio Diaries is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm

Copyright © 2017. All rights reserved.
Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Two Years in the Life of a Saudi Girl, Revisited
    Jul 17 2025

    When we first met Majd Abdulghani, she was 19 years old, living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We gave her a recorder to keep an audio diary about her life.


    Majd chronicled her dreams of being a scientist, her resistance to having an arranged marriage, and what it was like to be a teenage girl living in one of the most restrictive countries in the world for women. Her story first aired in 2016.


    A lot has changed in Majd’s life over the past nine years. Last year, she completed her doctorate at Oxford University, where she was Saudi Arabia’s first Rhodes Scholar. She and her husband have a four-year-old daughter, and they recently moved home to Saudi Arabia after several years abroad.


    Saudi Arabia has changed a lot, too. Back in 2016, women weren’t even allowed to drive. Now they can. And many more women have careers now—including Majd. She’s now a successful scientist working for a company based in Riyadh.


    We recently met up with Majd while she was in Boston for a conference. Here's her diary from 2016, along with our conversation about how things have changed since then.

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    37 mins
  • The End of Smallpox
    Jun 30 2025

    Vaccines have been in the news recently. Over the last few weeks, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has changed vaccination recommendations and gutted an influential committee that recommends which shots Americans should get. Some experts worry that these changes could lead to outbreaks of diseases the US has long had under control.

    So this week, we're revisiting a story we made a few years ago about the world's very first vaccine, and the disease it helped eradicate: smallpox.

    Smallpox was around for more than 3,000 years and killed at least 300 million people in the 20th century. Then, by 1980, it was gone.

    Rahima Banu was the last person in the world to have the deadliest form of smallpox. In 1975, Banu was a toddler growing up in a remote village in Bangladesh when she developed the telltale bumpy rash. Soon, public health workers from around the world showed up at her home to try to keep the virus from spreading. This is her story.

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    14 mins
  • The Detainees of Crystal City
    Jun 13 2025

    To justify mass deportations, President Trump has invoked an old wartime law: the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

    The Alien Enemies Act was last used after America’s entry into World War II. In response to the Axis countries’ detainment of Americans who were deemed potential spies, the Roosevelt Administration came up with an elaborate plan: find and arrest Germans, Japanese and Italians living in Latin America and detain them in camps in the U.S. The government would use them to exchange for American prisoners of war.

    Liked this story? Find photos and more at radiodiaries.org. You can also support our work by going to radiodiaries.org /donate.

    Follow us on X and Instagram @radiodiaries.


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    16 mins

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