PODCAST
“Talking Hart Island is a tremendous historical resource that reminds us that there are many different ways of literally unearthing the past and its people. Listen and learn.”
Dr. Ian Dowbiggin
Professor of History, University of Prince Edward Island
ABOUT TALKING HART ISLAND
- “Talking Hart Island” is a half hour weekly podcast that explores the history of Hart Island, America’s largest mass graveyard.
- Hart Island has been used as New York City’s potter’s field since 1869. It is estimated there are over 1,000,000 people buried there.
- Because of recent advances in DNA and fingerprint technology though, we now have learned who some of these previously forgotten and anonymous people were. The results are truly shocking.
- “Talking Hart Island” will interview a special guest each week selected from an extraordinary assembly of scholars, authors, and scientists in the fields of history, law, medicine and the arts as we unravel a secret kept hidden for over 150 years.
TESTIMONIALS
A compelling, and fascinating detailed history of Hart Island, the final resting place of lesser known and sometimes famous New Yorkers…Enriching…Rewarding
—-Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Professor of History, Colgate University
Bringing to life the souls of the past that until now have been lost to history…Highly Recommended.
—-Richard M. Ryan, Professor of Psychology, University of Rochester
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TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 1
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST Episode 1 “The Island at the Center of the World”: with Russell Shorto, Author, Historian, and Journalist. Before there was a
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 2
Episode 2 “The Treasure of Hart Island”: A Novel, by Mike Monahan. Hart Island is haunted by the spirits of the dead. It is used
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 3
Episode 3 “Superstorm”: with Dr. David A. Robinson, Professor at Rutgers University and the New Jersey Climatologist. What would become the largest Atlantic storm on
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 4
Episode 4 “Bobby Driscoll”: with Dave Bossert, Director/producer Disney Animation Studios. The clean cut child star with an impish, upturned nose, and beguiling expression was
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 5
Episode 5 “Five Points”: with Professor Tyler Anbinder. By the late 1820’s the Five Points had already been considered a slum where poor immigrant and
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 6
Episode 6 “Forgotten Ellis island”: with Lorie Conway. The lost story of the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital saved tens of thousands of lives, as immigrants
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 7
Episode 7 “Hart Island A Musical”: by Michelle Elliot and Danny Larsen. “Hart Island”, is the story of two people on the fringe of society.
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 8
Episode 8 “Inside Rikers: Stories From the World’s Largest Penal Colony”: with Jennifer Wynn, Professor, City University of New York. Wynn teaches a writing class
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 9
Episode 9 “A Pickpockets Tale”: with Timothy J. Gilfoyle, Professor, Loyola University. In George Appo’s world, child pickpockets swarmed the crowded streets, addicts drifted in
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 10
Episode 10 “Damnation Island”: with Stacy Horn, Author. Purchased by the city in 1828, the island soon harbored an almshouse, an insane asylum, a hospital,
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 11
Episode 11 “Dawn Powell”: with Tim Page, Professor, Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic, writer, and editor. Does the name Dawn Powell mean anything to you? I
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 12
Episode 12 “Bellevue”: with Dr. Danielle Ofri Essayist, editor, and practicing internist in New York City. How exactly did bodies end up on Hart Island?
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 13
Episode 13 “Leola Dickerson”: with Peter Strauss, Senior Partner at Pierro, Connor, and Strauss. She lay on the floor for three days. A slip and
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 14
Episode 14 “The Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire”: with Hasia Diner, Professor New York University. As historian Robert Hughes notes, “The Tenth Ward of Lower
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 15
Episode 15 “The Manly Arts”: with Elliott J. Gorn, Professor, Purdue University. Well before Hart island became New York City’s potters field, Hart Island, or
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 16
Episode 16 “Shelia Terry”: with Larry Powell, Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham. American film actress Shelia Terry was a true Hollywood starlet of the
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 17
Episode 17 “The Great Arrival”: with Diane Vecchio, Professor, Furman University. Most of this generation of Italian immigrants took their first steps on U.S. soil
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 18
Episode 18 “Leonard Melfi”: with Edward Berkeley, Professor, The Julliard School. Leonard Melfi was revered by his peers as one of the most respected and
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 19
Episode 19 “Ship Ablaze”: with Edward T. O’Donnell, Professor Holy Cross University. There were few experienced swimmers, among the over 1,300 Lower East Side residents,
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 20
Episode 20 “Ruth Proskauer Smith”: with Ian Dowbiggin, Professor at University of Prince Edward Island. Ruth Proskauer Smith, or Ruth P. Smith as she became
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 21
Episode 21 “The Bowery”; Dr. Robert Aronowitz, Physician and medical historian, University of Pennsylvania. “The Bowery is one of the oldest stretches of land in
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 22
Episode 22 “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History”: by John Barry, Author and historian. The influenza pandemic is believed
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 23
Episode 23 “Leo Birinski”: with Barbara Kosta, Professor, University of Arizona. For a man with a little known history, no legitimate records to prove his
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 24
Episode 24 “Still Born”: with MJ Adams. Fifteen years after a Manhattan hospital sent her stillborn baby to New York City’s potter’s field for burial,
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 25
Episode 25 “The Tenement Museum”: with Kevin Jennings, Director. The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located at 97 and 103 Orchard Street, in the Lower
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 26
Episode 26 “Ghosts of St Vincents”: with Tom Eubanks. Founded in 1849 to care for indigent immigrants in Greenwich Village, St. Vincent’s Hospital was sold
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 27
Episode 27 “Greta Garbo”: with Lois Banner, Professor (ret) USC. Leo Birinski was a playwright, screenwriter and director. He worked in Austria-Hungary, Germany and in
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 28
Episode 28 “Louisa Van Slyke”: with Author Gail Jarrow. The ship lurched in the heavy North Atlantic swell, its bow plunging deep in the troughs
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 29
Episode 29 “Hebrew Free Burial Society”: with Amy Koplow, Executive Director. While many of the young women and men who perished in the Triangle Shirt
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 30
Episode 30 “Six to Celebrate” Simeon Bankoff, Executive Director of Historic District Council. In 2017 the annual “Six to Celebrate” initiative from the Historic Districts
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 31
Episode 31 “Potters Field(s)”: with Andrew Berman, Executive Director, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. By the early 1800’s New York City boasted a population
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 32
Episode 32 “Boroughs of the Dead”: with Marie Carter, Editor, writer, teacher, and tour guide. When detectives and forensic scientists were called to investigate the
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 33
Episode 33 “Angels of Mercy”: with William Seraile, Professor Emeritus, Lehman College, City University of New York. The Colored Orphan Asylum was founded, in New
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 34
Episode 34 “Grave Yard of Strangers”: with Norma Jean Gradsky. Leo Birinski was a playwright, screenwriter and director. He worked in Austria-Hungary, Germany and in
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 35
Episode 35 “AIDS”: with Michael Bronsky, Professor, Harvard University. On a hot midsummer night in June of 1969, a group of police officers stormed into
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Episode 36 “Burial Grounds in a Segregated City”: with Tom Angotti, Professor Emertis, Hunter College. During the period of Dutch and English settlement, New York
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Episode 37 “AIDS-The First Five Years”: with Jean Ashton, Director, New York Historical Society Resources & Programs. It is estimated that during the AIDS epidemic
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Episode 38 “Lloyd “The Whistler” Threlkeld”: with Douglass Fraser, Professor and Musicologist. Lloyd Buford Threlkeld, also known as “The Whistler” for his ability to make
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Episode 39 “The Orphan Trains and Charles Loring Brace”: by Michael T. Keene In 1848 Ireland was gripped by famine. Nearly a million people would