5 Podcasts That Revisit the Past Through Oral Histories

When the term oral history first came into use, the oral aspect referred to the way information was collected — a historian or researcher would conduct interviews with people with firsthand knowledge of a particular event, then collate those accounts, usually into a written form. Such was the case with 'Division Street: America,' a landmark 1967 book by Studs Terkel, which explored the lives of some 70 Chicago residents as a microcosm of a divided country. More than 50 years on, that oral history has been updated in audio form. Here's a primer on 'Division Street: Revisited,' along with four other podcasts in a similar format.
'Division Street Revisited'
For Melissa Harris, a former Chicago Tribune journalist, returning to the stories that Terkel told in 'Division Street' has been a passion project 15 years in the making. When she discovered that Terkel's archived tape recordings had been digitized, podcasting was on the rise, and the format was an obvious fit. The result is 'Division Street Revisited,' which continues the stories of seven of the book's Chicagoans through interviews with family members and friends (since the subjects themselves were no longer alive). In the spirit of Terkel's original work, Harris and Mary Schmich, her fellow executive producer, focused on people whose stories speak to larger cultural issues. One episode spotlights a gay actor who lived in fear of his family finding out about his sexuality; another, a Native American who moved to Chicago from the reservation and became a pioneer for Native culture in the city.
Starter episode: 'Myra Alexander: Never Too Old to Be Free'
'Fiasco: Iran-Contra'
This historical series is a spiritual successor to the long-running Slate podcast 'Slow Burn,' chronicling pivotal moments in American history through interviews with people who witnessed it. The host, Leon Neyfakh, who worked on the first two seasons of 'Slow Burn' before departing to start 'Fiasco,' has said that his guiding principle is to approach broad political history through emotionally rich personal stories. In this way, each season of Fiasco reframes a seemingly well-known chapter of history through the recollections of dozens of key players, beginning with the early years of the AIDS epidemic in its first season. The most recent installment explores the Iran-contra scandal, when senior officials in the Reagan administration violated an arms embargo for Iran with the intention of financing anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua. Through deftly woven interviews, this complex and multifaceted saga becomes not just easy to follow, but also impossible to stop listening to.
Starter episode: 'Get Me Kevin Kattke'
'Making Gay History'
The decade-old nonprofit Making Gay History — founded to remedy a lack of substantive LGBTQ+ history in classrooms and mainstream discourse — and the podcast of the same name are offshoots of the celebrated 1992 book, 'Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945-1990,' by the journalist Eric Marcus. Drawing inspiration from Terkel's work, Marcus chronicled the lives of key figures in the queer civil rights movement, conducting interviews with people like the playwright Larry Kramer, the transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson and the National Football League player David Kopay, among the first professional athletes to come out as gay. Across more than 150 episodes, the 'Making Gay History' podcast features digitized excerpts from these alongside equally compelling interviews with lesser-known figures. Marcus occasionally shifts from host to subject, as in the ninth season, in which he talks about coming of age at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic.
Starter episode: 'Sylvia Rivera — Part 1'
'Witness History'
This podcast from the BBC World Service delivers on a simple premise — 'history told by the people who were there' — but does so in a snappy, bite-size format that sets it apart from most lengthy oral histories. Each episode is just 10 minutes, and unspools a single archival eyewitness account of a memorable chapter in 20th and 21st century history. Many episodes focus on tragic or dramatic incidents like the final days of Hitler before he killed himself in 1945, as told by his secretary, and the 1972 Andes plane crash as told by a survivor. Others explore cultural turning points like the 1995 launch of Windows 95, or the publication of a landmark novel like 'Lord of the Flies.' No matter the subject, the firsthand accounts always make for compelling listening.
Starter episode: 'Oklahoma City Bombing'
'Cold War Conversations'
A treasure trove of personal narratives that flesh out what life was really like on either side of the Iron Curtain power this richly detailed series. Ian Sanders, the host and producer, has evident passion for his subject, and began the series in 2018 as a way to gather and preserve as many human stories from the Cold War as possible. Over more than 400 episodes, he's interviewed a vast array of soldiers, spies, defectors and everyday civilians who had to navigate life in the Eastern Bloc. Listening to even one episode of 'Cold War Conversations' will make this sprawling, potentially intimidating period of history feel vivid and compelling.
Starter episode: 'Gillian — A US Student Visiting Cold War East Germany'

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