Laura Rothenberg spent most of her life knowing she was going to die young.
She had cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs. When she was born, the life expectancy for people with CF was around 18 years. (It's more than double that now.) Laura liked to say she went through her mid-life crisis when she was a teenager.
I met Laura when she was 19. I gave her a tape recorder. And for two years, she kept an audio diary of her battle with cystic fibrosis and her attempts to live a normal life - with lungs that often betrayed her.
The Ski Troops of WWII
From Prison to President
The Last Place
A Guitar, A Cello, And The Day That Changed Music
The Story of ‘Ballad for Americans’
Serving 9-5: Diaries from Prison Guards
The Man Who Put the ‘P’ in NPR
Crime Pays
Strange Fruit
Mandela’s Prison Years
A Visit to the Memory Palace
Matthew and the Judge
Seeing the Forrest Through the Little Trees
The Traveling Electric Chair
From Bullets to Balance Sheets
The Square Deal
Fly Girls
Claudette Colvin – A “Teenage Rosa Parks”
First Kiss
The Greatest Songwriter You’ve Never Heard Of
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Criminal
Ear Hustle
Song Exploder
The Truth
the memory palace