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.
A Guitar, A Cello, and the Day that Changed Music
The Song That Crossed Party Lines
Campaigning While Female
Serving Time 9-5: Diaries from Prison Guards
Matthew and the Judge
Prisoners of War
Last Witness: Mission to Hiroshima
Nelson Mandela at 100
Busman’s Holiday
Last Witness: The General Slocum
Last Witness: Surviving the Tulsa Race Riot
Fly Girls
Strange Fruit, Revisited
Crime Pays
The Green Book
Deported: Weasel’s Diary
Nine Months Before Rosa Parks
A Voicemail Valentine
The Story of Jane
The Dropped Wrench
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It is Free
Criminal
Ear Hustle
Song Exploder
The Truth
the memory palace