In March, 1993, LeAlan Jones, thirteen, and Lloyd Newman, fourteen, collaborated with public radio producer David Isay to create the radio documentary Ghetto Life 101, their audio diaries of life on Chicago's South Side. The boys walked listeners through their daily lives: to school, to an overpass to throw rocks at cars, to a bus ride that takes them out of the ghetto, and to friends and family members in the community.

Their candor brought listeners face to face with a portrait of poverty and danger and their effects on childhood in one of Chicago's worst housing projects.

Ghetto Life 101 and the follow-up piece, Remorse, became some of the most acclaimed programs in public radio history, winning almost all of the major awards in American broadcasting, including: the Livingston Award, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Awards for Excellence in Documentary Radio and Special Achievement in Radio Programming, and the Prix Italia, Europe's oldest and most prestigious broadcasting award.