by Jo Ella Straley
French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss died last Friday at his home in Paris. By way of remembering the man and his work, here is an hour-long documentary--originally broadcast November 27, 1980--that explores his ideas about culture using a lot of complicated sound mixes. It's called "A Question of Place." From NPR, 1980 edition.

By Jo Ella Straley

Anyone who has been to an airport in the last few years knows that there are a lot of rules: Take off your shoes. Put your lip balm in a plastic bag. Get that computer out of your bag!

NPR's Brian Naylor reported today on whether these measures actually make flying any safer. But whether or not the "millimeter wave whole body imager" is truly effective, I think it's safe to say many of the enhancements to airport security that were made since 1985 do benefit travelers. Take for instance the fact that the baggage under the aircraft is now actually screened which was not true back then, as you'll hear in this report by Wendy Kaufman:

from June 24, 1985 All Things Considered

By Janel White

Freelancer reporter Ben Calhoun did a story about Reading Rainbow this morning. Today is the last day that Reading Rainbow will be broadcast on PBS.

I remember watching this show growing up and wanting to be one of the kids who recommended books. NPR's Ira Glass captured some of those kids auditioning for the show, as well as librarians and publishers discussing the value of the program.

from October 19, 1986 Weekend All Things Considered

By Jo Ella Straley
Today we remember the third longest-serving senator in US history, Edward Kennedy. Ron Elving and Brian Naylor offer a full account of his life here. I wanted to offer something a little more obscure, so I dug into the archives and found this 1982 profile of Kennedy by Linda Wertheimer. The piece is set against the backdrop of a mid-term conference held by the Democratic Party in Philadelphia where the idea of running Kennedy for president again in 1984 had traction. Big issues at the time included the deficit, inflation, and nuclear arms...

from June 24, 1982 Morning Edition

By Jo Ella Straley
Scott Hensley reports today on NPR's Health blog that the American Heart Association has named over-consumption of sugar as a factor in one's risk of acquiring heart disease. The AHA's reasoning, Hensley says, is that Americans consume 150-300 more calories per day--and much of that from sugar--than they did 30 years ago. More calories without more exercise means weight gain, which likely means heart disease and other problems.

It just so happens reporter Bruce Gellerman filed a story in 1985 (not quite 30 years, but still) on Americans' sugar consumption. Gellerman questions people on the street about the sugar content of one Coca-Cola and no one knows the answer.

Continue reading "Sugar: The Great White Menace" >

By Janel White

Last Thursday, convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, was released from prison because he is suffering from terminal prostate cancer. NPR's Rob Gifford provided reaction from the residents of Lockerbie regarding this release on All Things Considered.

Pan Am Flight 103 crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988 just a few days before Christmas. That day Robert Siegel talked with NPR's Bill Buzenberg about the crash on All Things Considered.

Twelve years later on All Things Considered, NPR's Julie McCarthy covered the trial of the two bombing suspects. On the second day of the trial, Julie captured audio of al-Megrahi's daughter defending her father.

By Janel White

Every summer many talented interns descend upon Washington, DC, for 10 weeks of (hopefully) life-changing experiences.

The summer "class" of interns at NPR are ending their time here this week. Every "class" is given the opportunity to produce their own 30-minute radio show, called Intern Edition and premiere it for the NPR staff. This year actually marks the 10th Anniversary of the Intern Edition program here at NPR.

Being a former intern, I wondered what kind of intern stories has NPR featured in the past?

Continue reading "Gone Fishing For Interns" >

By Maureen Clements & Jo Ella Straley

"Dear Mom & Dad, It's the first day of camp and the food is terrible again. This morning we had cold cereal and I got in a fight over Rice Krispies."

If you need more help remembering what it was like, listen to what the little man says:

from July 31, 1982 All Things Considered

By Jo Ella Straley
Curious to hear the pieces discussed in this month's Playback podcast? Find them below.

By Jo Ella Straley
This just in: video games! If you play them all the time you will get repetitive stress injuries! But that was the news in 1984 and the New England Journal of Medicine christened the phenomenon "video game palsy." In our time we've seen some pretty heavy reporting on injuries and hazards posed by the Nintendo Wii, but this was all completely new then--this world beyond Pong.

Here's a piece from All Things Considered that ran July 4, 1987. Have a listen if you're concerned that you might have "Space Invader's Wrist."

By Jo Ella Straley
The latest news on South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford prompted NPR's own human catalog of US politics--known to most people as Ken Rudin--to compile a list of recent sex scandals. Here in the archive, though, we have a real long memory and today I'm going to take us all the way back to Gary Hart, a man who could have been president but a few things got in the way.

In the following interview, Myra MacPherson discusses the role of the wife in politics with NPR's Susan Stamberg. "The political wife is always called on to shore up the unshoreable," she says referring back to Joan Kennedy who "lock-stepped" with her husband Edward through the 1980 presidential campaign, only to divorce soon afterward. What is it that makes politicians' affairs more noxious than regular celebs? MacPherson's suggestion: "It's the sense of '...oh, I owe it all to my wonderful wife, what's-her-name,' as they go off having affairs. It isn't so much having an affair that bothers people as much as the hypocritical stance that a politician seems to willingly take. And he can do that about something such as marriage, then can he do that about other issues?"

I should mention this interview about marriage and politics ran over 20 years ago (May 10, 1987 Weekend Edition Sunday). Reader question: what do you think, if anything, has changed?

By Jo Ella Straley
In the news business people worry about having a "peg" for their stories, some current event or anniversary that situates your story inside what's relevant to listeners. News isn't "apropos of nothing." Thankfully, I'm not in news, I'm in the library so I can share with you this classic 1983 meditation on love by teenagers in Eugene, OR.

First, let's set the mood with a quiz:

Which of these most adequately describes the feeling that humans have come to call "love":
a. "a really big birthday cake with candles and drippy frosting that is sickeningly sweet... but you just eat it and eat it and eat it, and then you get sick."
b. "walking down school halls, seeing someone catches that your eye, and slowly getting to know them--saying 'hi' once in a while. It's like.........WOW."
c. "anything anyone says, you feel happy about it."
d. a driving beat in the music bed.

Everybody picked your answers? Ok, press play to find out more (I've left the dead roll music in there so you can do a little dance after life's greater mysteries are revealed):

Puppy Love - February 14, 1983 All Things Considered by M'Lou Zahner-Ollswang

By Maureen Clements

The other day I was pawing around the stacks and came across the All Things Considered theme from 1971. It's a hoot. Listen carefully for the voice of Mike Waters. He was one of the early All Things Considered hosts. He also had one of the most stylish radio voices around.

By Jo Ella Straley

Karl J. Bray's thoughts on taxes

Today is the day we have, for the most part, finished our taxes, almost finished, filed for an extension, or begun a slide into the kind of state in which we are only fit for public office. But the United States is full of all sorts of colorful individuals, many of whom have their own reasons for not wanting to engage in this annual ritual. Consider the late Karl J. Bray, tax attorney, Utah congressional candidate (success rate: 1% of vote), and author of the pamphlet "Taxation and Tyranny" which posited that the income tax was search and seizure without due process of law, and thus illegal. Clever! Right?

Oops, he went to jail. Hear all about it in this 1976 Susan Stamberg profile.

By Jo Ella Straley

Evan Mecham AP Photo/Rob Schumacher

Rod Blagojevich is back in the news today, the US attorney's office said to expect a filing on "a significant criminal matter" having to do with the former governor. So since we're down here in the archives, let us take this moment to time travel -- back to a place where things were simpler, but recordings were much more difficult to transfer from place to place. The year is 1988, the place is Arizona, and on April 4th, the state senate removes Governor Evan Mecham from office, finding him guilty on two charges of misconduct.

In this case, "misconduct" is sort of a vague word for "obstructing justice by trying to thwart an investigation into charges that an aide had made a death threat against a grand jury witness." But wait, there's more! Fast-forward to 1990 when the former governor attempts a re-entry into politics. I think I'll let NPR's Howard Berkes tell the story...

By Maureen Clements
In tribute to the late novelist and screenwriter Horton Foote, we now present his wonderful interview with Lynn Neary for Morning Edition. It aired on January 15, 1986.

By Jo Ella Straley
You probably already received the popular chain email "Worst Album Covers EVER" -- say about 15 times somewhere between 2003 and 2006 -- or maybe you just saw it online. I don't want to beat a dead horse any more than the next guy, but I feel that spoken word recordings have largely been omitted by fellow Internet compilers. Here at NPR we have a carefully-selected collection of recordings, some of which happen to have somewhat amusing covers. For your edification and amusement:

By Hannah Sommers

In preparation for Thursday's White House health care summit we've been digging through the audio archives for highlights from the health care debates of the 1990s. The first stop in our research is usually our internally maintained audio database. The indexing we do highlights such elements as the names of all speakers heard in NPR coverage, the context of their contribution (direct interview, public statement, acting, singing, etc.), and any particularly unique sounds such as protesters chanting, "Yes we can!"

Clinton speaking before Congress, September 22, 1993 / David Ake, AFP/Getty Images

While our database includes these, plus subject and geographic terms, one thing it doesn't account for is the visual dimension. In radio, the visual exists in the mind of each listener -- that's one reason so many of us love the medium. But this time, we were looking for the speech where Bill Clinton famously held up a prototype health care card and promoted his plan for guaranteed health care security. Using our own transcript search capabilities, those in Nexis, and referring to external sources such as this one from PBS, we were able to translate the elements of a visual description into an event with a date that could be found in the audio archives. On deadline!

By Jo Ella Straley

Tonight we look forward to hearing President Obama's first address to a joint session of Congress. If there's one thing almost everyone can agree on about Mr. Obama, it's that he's good at public speaking. Ever wonder what he might have sounded like before he spent two years out on the road campaigning for president? I did, so I searched our library database and found this 1994 commentary that ran on All Things Considered. It's a response to Charles Murray's book The Bell Curve. Does he sound familiar?

Who knew this skinny kid with a funny name would one day go on to even greater fame than making commentaries for All Things Considered? We can find this today because a librarian in the past took the time to get the name right. By the way, the odd spelling in the title of this post is lifted directly from the October 28, 1994 All Things Considered rundown. A rundown is like a table of contents for shows, and often contains phonetic spellings of unfamiliar names, places, or terminology.

By Kee Malesky

Barbara Semonche, my friend and mentor who is director of the library at UNC's School of Journalism, sent this link to the news librarians' listserv today. It's a 1981 report by KRON-TV in San Francisco about early attempts to bring newspapers to your home computer! Imagine that!

Check out the video (but don't make any smart remarks about the hair styles!)

By Maureen Clements

Several months ago, public radio maven Ira Glass graciously boarded the NPR mothership to present a lecture on producing great radio. While nattering about Ira's visit, JoElla reminded me of the This American Life episode called Cringe. In it, Ira opines about his very first radio interview, which just happened to be with the outgoing cast of M*A*S*H. According to Ira, listening to the tapes induced serious cringing.

That got me to thinking, was the piece he produced cringe-worthy too? After some archival digging, we've managed to unearth the first radio piece Ira ever produced for NPR so you can judge for yourself. Be sure to catch Ira's voice at minute mark 3:37.

M*A*S*H Staff on Show - June 25, 1980 Morning Edition by Ira Glass