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Army Suicides Outpace Combat Deaths.

NPR reports that Army suicides in January were the highest since they started counting (1980).

New Radio Lab Podcast: Is Dying optional?

Radio Lab asks the question and finds that yes, sometimes (in some ways) it is...  Think about CPR for starters.

Wisconsin Death Trip on BackStory (sensitive images)

The newish history show from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities put together this slide show to accompany it's most recent episode.  [Please note they slide show contains pictures of dead people (including children) -- albiet from a very long time ago.]

New Radio Lab: After Life

New Radio Lab is about the moment of death - when, how, what...

From the website:  "[I]n a slight departure from our regular format, we bring you eleven meditations on how, when, and even if we die."

Radiolab Afterlife Extras

Radiolab's latest episode was 11 meditations on the after life.  Now, their website features additional meditations 12, 13, 14, 15, and number 16 is this YouTube video

On the Train With Another Fallen Kennedy

NYTimes audio slide show about Paul Fusco's "RFK Funeral Train" project.  Fusco was a photog for Look Magazine on  board the train carrying Robert Kennedy from L.A. to D.C.  Found as part of Benjamin Chesterton's "Mulitmedia of the Month" series on Resolve: "A collaborative online community that brings together photographers and photo industry professionals of every kind to find ways to keep photography relevant, respected, and profitable."

Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?

There has never been a proven case of an innocent person getting the death penalty.  The case of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in Texas in 2004, may become the first.

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out...

The green burial movement:  featuring a 34-year-old woman who would like to have her body composted by worms.

Winner of Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Documentary, from the Radio & Television News Directors Association, 2009. Winner of PRNDI Award for Best Documentary from Public Radio News Directors Inc., 2009.

Ageing, living

The book Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives gets a radio reprieve with a new story specially commissioned for the BBC's One Planet programme about ageing. But this episode is most noteworthy as the one where the host makes an old lady cry.

 

Audio Documentary Europe

Mine rescue, 1936

As the world's media watches the rescue of trapped miners in Chile, we look back to 1936, when the Canadian Radio Commission reported for six days the attempts to rescue three men trapped in a mine at Moose River, Nova Scotia. A selection of the reports, from the CBC Archives. 

 

Audio Documentary Europe

My Father Takes a Vacation

A young man tells the story of another, his father, who upped and left his kids in Sweden while he travelled to Ireland. This documentary features two physical and emotional journeys, that will move probably anyone who's been a young man. The video is an English transcript of the bi-lingual original, while this longer all-English version was also produced. 

 

Audio Documentary Europe

Radio the night John Lennon died

WFMU in New Jersey posts this recording of a sweep across the FM dial in New York, on the night John Lennon died there in 1980.

 

Rolling Stone magazine has also released audio of an interview with John Lennon, three days before. Listen here. Includes strong language.

 

Connor Walsh for AD, Brussels

 

A Workin' on the Whalin' O

An engaging insight into the grim world of rural life and whaling in the mid-20th century. In the late 1980s, New Zealander Dan Bergin recounted his tough working life, to producer Jack Perkins. Perkins has himself recently retired, and this story is part of a retrospective on his work.

Connor Walsh, AD, London.

Lost Voices

An insight into throat cancer that could only be portrayed in audio. From London-based science and medicine producer, Elizabeth Hauke. Don't listen if you have a cough!

Connor Walsh, AD, London

Forest to Desert

Forest to Desert is described best by the producer Sarah Boothroyd: 'An audio doodle about this phrase: "Humankind is preceded by forest, and followed by desert."' Great use of natural, found and sampled sound, composed together to clearly follow that brief. Produced for and featured in the Third Coast Festival's Short Docs Radio Ephemera Challenge in 2008.

The Dialogue Project

The Dialogue Project does what it says on the tin – dialogues, usually between the producer Karl James and one interviewee, on personal, passionate, or intimate topics. The results are beautiful, and span a range of topics from this French astronaut talking about our world, to two people's very different expereince of being caned, to the death of a child. 

Last Lennon Interview

December 5, 1980, John Lennon did a radio interview for RKO. It aired three days later, hours before he he was shot and killed outside the Dakota. Here are excerpts from what is said to be Lennon's last interview.

Death At Christmas

"It's just what I do: it's who I am" says Dr Stuart Hamilton in the mortury. Christmas is a busy time at work for him. 

Winter's Rest is a excerpt from The D-Word, by London producer Ed Prosser, about death – in this case at Christmas. It's rather pretty. 

Alice Springs is Drowning in Alcohol

Why does a small town in the heart of Australia's outback have that nation's highest rate of alcohol-related death? Tragic for hundreds of families, though tavern owners and undertakers aren't complaining.

Raise the Wreck of the OBL

 

It's Friday afternoon. You've had a tooth abscess, are on two types of medication, and are presenting a national talk show in Ireland. And your team gives you an interview with the man who wants $200,000 so he can quickly pop out to the Indian Ocean, pull up Osama Bin Laden's body, and get a $20, 000,000 reward. How do you react?

 

Raw Audio Of Aurora Shooting Police/Fire Dispatch