The latest audio project I've been working on is Not Even Past, a podcast based on entries in Encyclopedia Virginia. With this round of episodes I was trying to make a more direct connection between Virginia's past and the country's present. For each historical event or person at the center of the episode, I found a guest with a parallel life experience.
One episode I recommend is Crazy Bet & Mary Jane. It's the story of Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Bowser, two women--one black, one white--living in Richmond, Virginia, working together to bring down the Confederacy from within. Their contemporary counterpart is Grace Aheron, an aspiring minister who is considering how to make the Episcopal Church a more progressive force for good.
Another good, albeit hard, listen is Her Body Was Not Her Own, which tells the harrowing tale of Carrie Buck, who was sterilized in 1927 for being "feebleminded." Before working on this podcast, I had no idea that sterilization was legal from 1927 to 1972 and that during that period 8,300 Virginians were sterilized. This was happening within the context of a national eugenics mania among the scientific community, which was gathering evidence that certain social problems, including shiftlessness, poverty, and prostitution, were inherited and ultimately could be eliminated through selective sterilization.