Grandma's Been There
Siobhan Barry
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About This Podcast
Host and creator Siobhan Barry takes listeners back to the 1950s and 1960s. Her stories, sometimes funny and sometimes serious, are time traveling trips through the days of penny candies, neighborhood ice cream parlors, fifty-cent movie tickets, air raid drills, summers without air conditioning, street games, homemade toys, football weddings, transistor radios, Beatlemania, and a cultural revolution.
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Recent Episodes
S2E76 It's My Birthday!
I’m a June baby, one of Cancer’s moon children born right after the longest day of the year. In other words, I’m lucky enough to be able to celebrate my birthday right as the summer begins.
S2E75 Banned
Before I even became a teenager, there were plenty of banned rock and roll records out there. Many of them were in my own record cabinet.
S2E74 I Cannot Tell A Lie
When we were kids, the adults in our lives wanted to be sure we understood that honesty was always the best policy. But how was that concept supposed to sink in when they were constantly lying to us?
S2E73 Hair
When I was a year old, I still hadn’t grown any hair. My mother Scotch taped a bow to the top of my bald head so I would look less like a little boy in girls’ clothing. As a teenager in high school,…
S2E72 All About Bill
In March of 1968, Bill Graham opened The Fillmore East. Though it only lasted three years, it would be hailed by both musicians and concert goers as the most unforgettable and greatest rock venue…
S2E71 How Did They Do It?
Brooklyn mothers like mine always found a way to make it all happen for their families. These women that grew up in the Great Depression and came of age during a world war were filled with resilience…
S2E70 The Coolest Place in the World
As a thirteen-year-old, I prayed for one Greenwich Village folksinger or one barefoot East Village poet to stray across the Manhattan Bridge and start an artistic community in my neighborhood.…
S2E69 I Know Something You Don't Know
When I was a kid, there was one sure way to get under another kid’s skin. All you had to do was look at them and taunt, “I know something you don’t know.” It never failed. At first, they tried to…
S2E68 Well, Hello Mister Soul
On Christmas morning in 1967, I was kinda disappointed when the record I got wasn’t the one I had asked for. I didn’t think I wanted that album. Fortunately for me, my mother knew better.
S2E67 The Fox Hunter
In 1961, when someone from my school newspaper asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer turned a few heads. I was seven and it was the height of the baby boom. The world was bursting…
S2E66 A Bench For All Seasons: Spring
One of my favorite ways to recharge is to just sit outside and watch the seasons do what they do best. Each season has a unique personality, but there is one thing they all have in common. They don’t…
S2E65 Xanadu's Landlord
When you watch the same movie at various stages of your life, you see the story from very different perspectives. I recently watched “Citizen Kane” again for the first time since I was seventeen. It…
S2E64 The One True Church
The road to heaven was paved with suffering. Getting slapped by the bishop during our Confirmation ceremony was a reminder of just how hard it was to be a Christian. Only the baptized could go to…
S2E63 Baby, You're A Rich Man
New books, new records, the latest clothes and shoes, new movies… Guess what city they all hit first? New York, of which Brooklyn is a part. Thanks to your location, you’re more worldly and savvy…
S2E62 School Days Part 2
By the time I became a fourth grader, I knew my way around the culture and the campus of my school. I wasn’t “new” anymore. My condolences went to the latest class of first graders. I’d survived, and…
S2E61 School Days Part 1
The mornings always felt two times longer than the afternoons, and Mondays always felt twice as long as Fridays. But lunchtime recess? Well, that flew by faster than we could rip open a candy bar…
S2E60 Going Viral
In the 1950s and early ‘60s, there was a laundry list of what were referred to as “childhood illnesses” that every single one of us were going to get at some point. Viruses that all came with pink…
S2E59 Hey Mom, Can The Beatles Stay Here Tonight?
As pre-teen rock and roll fans in the mid 1960s, we were passionate followers and defenders of our musical idols. Laugh if you want, but we were totally sincere. With the kind of joy these young…
S2E58 Rock and Roll
Since we just passed the 67th anniversary of the date that's come to be known as "the day the music died," I thought I'd spend a few minutes talking about my earliest memories of rock and roll and my…
S2E57 The Media Push
The television shows made during the 1950s and '60s helped shape the way we felt about Brooklyn. Those shows presented an image of family life in American towns that were totally unrecognizable to…
Frequently Asked Questions
Grandma's Been There has published 77 episodes since February 2025, covering topics in Comedy, History.
Grandma's Been There is currently highly active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 20m.
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