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 Last Witness
The Press is the Enemy
The View from the 79th Floor
The Dropped Wrench
Prisoners of War
The Working Tapes of Studs Terkel
Stories from a Vanishing New York
Shirley Chisholm: Unbought and Unbossed
The Square Deal
Amanda's Diary: Revisited
Last Witness: Surviving the Tulsa Race Riot
Juan's Diaries: Undocumented, Then and Now
The Bonus Army
The Working Tapes
The Story of Jane
The Ski Troops of WWII
When Nazis Took Manhattan
A Voicemail Valentine
The Border Wall
Thembi's Diary
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It is Free
Criminal
Ear Hustle
Song Exploder
The Truth
the memory palace