World AIDS Day Special Feature: Thembi's AIDS Diary

This World AIDS Day, Radio Diaries would like to feature Thembi's AIDS Diary: A Year in the Life of A South African Teenager.

In 2004, at the age of 19, Thembi Ngubane was given a tape recorder to keep an audio diary of her life with AIDS. Over the course of a year, Thembi recorded more than 50 hours of tape, which we edited into a half-hour documentary for broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered on April 19, 2006.

Thembi's story has become more than a radio documentary. Recently, Thembi came to the US for an AIDS Awareness tour. Her diary has become a powerful tool to help reduce the stigma of AIDS, highlight the need for antiretroviral drugs in Africa, and infuse young people with the information and inspiration to bolster existing AIDS awareness campaigns.

In this World AIDS Day special feature podcast, Thembi's AIDS Diary is hosted by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

This documentary was produced by Joe Richman/Radio Diaries with help from Ben Shapiro, Deborah George, Chris Turpin/ NPR, Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, Sue Johnson, Miyuki Jokiranta, Sean Cole, Britta Frahm, and Samantha Schongalla.

Length: 26 min
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Radio Diaries is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people document their own lives for public radio. To find out more and to hear all our stories, visit radiodiaries.org.

Identical Strangers

What is it that makes us who we really are? Our life experiences or our DNA? Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein were both born in New York City. Both women were adopted as infants and raised by loving families. They met for the first time when they were 35 years old and found they were "identical strangers".

Paula and Elyse then discovered the reason they had been separated as infants: a research study of identical twins designed to examine the question of nature versus nurture. This documentary includes the first tape ever broadcast of Dr. Peter Neubauer describing his secret experiment.

This piece originally aire on NPR's All Things Considered on October 25, 2007.

Paula and Elyse have written a book about their experience.

Produced by Joe Richman with help from Deb George, Ben Shapiro, and Anayansi Diaz-Cortes

To listen to all our stories, visit RadioDiaries.org

The Pygmy in the Zoo

One hundred years ago, on September 8th, 1906, the Bronx Zoo in New York unveiled a new exhibit that would attract thousands of visitors to come and marvel. Inside a cage, in the monkey house, was a man. His name was Ota Benga. He was 22 years old, a member of the Batwa people, pygmies who lived in what was then, the Belgian Congo.


This piece was originally broadcast on September 8th on NPR's All Things Considered.

Produced by Joe Richman/Radio Diaries

Length: 9:13 min


Learn more about the book, Ota Benga, by Phillips Verner Bradford, grandson of the explorer who brought Ota Benga to America.


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Radio Diaries is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people document their own lives for public radio. To find out more and to hear all our stories, visit radiodiaries.org.

Soweto 1976

In South Africa, on June 16th, 1976, a group of school children in the black township of Soweto decided to hold a protest. At the time, nobody thought their action would change the course of a nation.

Produced by Joe Richman and Ben Shapiro. 
This piece was originally broadcast on June 16th, 2006 for the 30th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising on NPR's All Things Considered.

Length: 13 min

Read the transcript

To find out more about South Africa and apartheid this Black History Month, check out Mandela: An Audio History

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Radio Diaries is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people document their own lives for public radio. To find out more and to hear all our stories, visit radiodiaries.org.