Following his 27-year imprisonment, Nelson Mandela was, in 1994, poised to become the leader of a post-Apartheid South Africa.
Before he did so, he wanted to write his autobiography outlining his early life, coming of age, education and the years spent in prison on Robben Island.
The resulting book, The Long Walk To Freedom, was an international hit. It wasn’t well known that the work was written with the ghostwriting help of US journalist Richard Stengel.
Stengel travelled to South Africa and recorded Mandela’s thoughts on a series of tapes which, since then, have lain in storage.
Now a new podcast series is exploring the recordings.
Mandela: The Lost Tapes, from Audible, features never-before heard audio of his conversations with Nelson Mandela from 1993. Stengel was asked about the tapes being lost for so long – and why we haven’t heard them until now.
“Well, they were never lost. When I made them with him in ’93, technically he owned them,” said Stengel. “I mean, the book is his book. And so all of that material became archival stuff that nobody really paid attention to anymore.
“So I thought, you know what? I’m going to see if the Mandela Foundation, which owns them, will license them to me to make a podcast.”
One focus of the book was how Mandela emerged from prison a radical freedom fighter to become a global statesman.
“I do think those prison years were a kind of crucible that melted away all the impurities in his personality and made him this very mature, calm, self-disciplined 72-year-old who came out when he came out of prison.”
Mandela: The Lost Tapes, Audible
Skyline Drive
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0nQuBy7vDb0gHP7bUOlxlB?si=62c11da7bbb04c87
When Mangesh Hattikudur set out to do a show on astrology, he didn’t realise the first interview would change his life. But as he tries to put his world back together, he realises the incredible ways astrology presents itself in society.
He tries to decipher why we keep looking to the stars for answers, and what happens when you don’t believe in it, but astrology keeps happening to you.
Playing Dead
https://open.spotify.com/episode/02wROqSRD6zHWOTTFRdaaw?si=3e6ddb9811e348de
Actor Michael Nathanson (the late Agent Sam Stein on Netflix’s The Punisher) explores the deaths (and lives) of some of television and film’s most iconic characters in this new interview podcast.
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