In 1954, entertainment superstar Danny Kaye became UNICEF's first Ambassador at Large, a post he held until his death in 1987. This is Mr Kaye's personal recounting of his first East Asian tour visiting many of the world's impoverished children.

Longtime New York Public Radio engineer Jim Stagnito, a.k.a. Stag, bid the station farewell last week.

Kee Malesky, NPR’s longest-serving librarian, was in New York on October 15 for a talk and an afternoon “salon”. Sponsored by METRO, she was promoting her recently-published, second book, Learn Something New Every Day.

On March 5, 1853 a German piano maker named Henry Steinway (né Steinweg) founded Steinway & Sons at 85 Varick Street in New York City, barely five blocks from the present-day WNYC studios. Less than three months later another, much younger German piano maker named Helmuth Kranich would arrive at these shores. Little did he suspect that one of his children would someday work at a competing form of entertainment: radio, specifically WNYC.

On December 11, 1991, Salman Rushdie "quietly ventured outside Britain and emerged" [1] to speak at a Columbia University dinner celebrating the 200th anniversary of the First Amendment. The thunderous applause that greets Mr Rushdie's unexpected appearance sets the tone for his speech.

As New Sounds celebrates composer John Cage's 100th birthday, we at the WNYC archives add our own, irreverent archival item to the celebration: a WMCA News Parade program with an eerie premonition of John Cage's famous "silent" piece, 4'33".

Listen to the irrepressible June LeBell as she chats with the grand dame of French cooking in America, Julia Child.

This week the Leonard Lopate Show interviews Natalia Makarova. Listen to a WQXR interview Bob Sherman did with Makarova in 1977, when she was prima ballerina at American Ballet Theatre.

What do Fugazi, Star Trek, and Illinois farmers have in common? The preservation of culture, with an eye toward the future.

Preservation is moving toward center stage in the audio world, and nowhere is this more patent than at the AES Convention. Marquee names (Chuck Ainlay, Bob Ludwig) are expressing concern over the legacy of their work, and their talks are increasingly well attended by the rank-and-file membership, who increasingly face challenges that require coordinated solutions.

What was WQXR's worst nightmare in 1948? Was it to have their supposedly long hair* cut? No -- as it turns out, it was to be part of a big network.

On the occasion of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 150th anniversary, we look back at its younger days, 70 years ago.

The largest court in the United States Tennis Association's complex in Flushing Meadows, where the US Open has taken place since 1977, is named after Arthur Ashe, one of tennis's great ambassadors. Today we give you a chance to listen to the late Ashe, in a 1987 installment of WNYC's broadcast of Voices at the New York Public Library, where he spoke about his upcoming book on racism in sports.

Listen to Dr. Francis W. Reichelderfer, Chief of the United States Weather Bureau, discuss the state of the art in hurricane prevention and control in this 1961 edition of "New Horizons in Science".

The publication of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times in 1971 caused more than a commotion --it precipitated the first of the "credibility gaps" between the US government and the American public. Listen to a interview with Sidney Zion, shortly after he broke the story on Daniel Ellsberg supplying the documents to the paper.

Philip Levine is set to become the nation's Poet Laureate this Fall, but he already was WNYC's Poet in Residence back in 2003. Listen to Levine read William Matthews' "Mingus at the Half Note," and how the poem relates personally to him.

By 1966 the Whitney Museum was already in its third building on Madison and 75th Street. Listen to its then director John Baur speak only three years after that move.

Listen to a young Claire Bloom reading from a selection of letters by Emily, Anne and Charlotte Brontë in "The Brontë Sisters," a 1957 program submitted for consideration to the Peabody Awards.

Our five-year old at home loves The Singing Lady, WNYC's program of tales and music for children from before her parents were born.

Senior Archivist Marcos Sueiro Bal recently attended the annual conference of IASA, the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, in Philadelphia. He reports on some of the highlight presentations (besides being enveloped by the sounds of the world’s largest pipe organ).