Radiolab · WNYC Studios

Our Common Nature: West Virginia Coal

November 21, 2025·54 min·4 clips
Chris Saunders on his mother Zora collecting every racist joke a white miner wrote her into a book.
First comes a mother.

As heard by us

A son's account of his mother's wit in the face of racist harassment, and the cost hidden inside good work.

Appalachia frames a story about love as practice, not sentiment. Chris remembers his mother answering racist harassment with patient wit: when a coworker kept trying to tell her racist jokes, she told him to write them down, saved the pages, and said she was making him a book.

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Why you'd press play

Someone figured out how to disarm a racist co-worker by making him write down every ugly joke himself.

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