A Voicemail Valentine

Radio Diaries

Radio Diaries & Radiotopia

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2022

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Nowadays we’re very accustomed to recording and hearing the sound of our own voices. But in the 1930s many people were doing it for the first time. And a surprising trend began. People started sending their voices to each other, through the postal service. It was literally voice-mail.

We combed through a large collection of early voicemail at the Phono Post Archive, and we discovered that many of these audio letters have the same subject matter: love.

This story originally aired on NPR’s All Things Considered in 2018.

You can see photographs of the voice-o-graphs on our website: https://www.radiodiaries.org/voicemail-valentine-2022/.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to Radio Diaries. This is Joe, and we have some exciting news from a fellow radio topia show.
0:05.8	Everything is alive has a new series called The Animals.
0:09.4	It's an interview show where all the subjects are animals. Here's a sneak peek.
0:14.2	My name is Jerry Dra. You can see me, okay? Okay, good.
0:19.8	I'm a jellyfish, so that's why I always check with people.
0:22.8	We're celebrities in the natural world.
0:24.8	You know, that's the thing about being a butterfly that I don't think people understand is the pressure.
0:28.8	This is my son, Joseph, and we are kangaroos.
0:32.8	Joseph, we should say you are currently still in the pouch.
0:36.8	Yeah, I live in the pouch, still.
0:38.8	Okay.
0:39.8	The show's funny and full of heart and surprises.
0:42.8	You can listen to the animals right now and everything is alive podcast feed.
0:48.8	Radio topia.
0:51.8	From PRX.
0:52.8	From PRX's radio topia, this is Radio Diaries. I'm Joe Richmond.
0:56.8	Now by virtue of the authority vested in me as a rabbi in Israel under the laws of the state of California.
1:02.8	For I pronounce you Edward and Ruth to be as the new wife before God and man.
1:10.8	Ruth and Eddie Elcott got married on September 3rd, 1943.
1:15.8	A year after they had met at a USO dance in Chicago.
1:18.8	In order to get married, Ruth took the train from Chicago all the way to California
1:23.8	where Eddie was getting ready to leave to go fight in World War II.
	...

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