The Lives They Lived

This episode contains descriptions of violence. 

At the end of every year, The New York Times Magazine devotes an issue to remembering those who have died in the past year.

This year’s focus is gun violence, which is now the leading cause of death for American children, and the short lives that ended far too soon because of it.

Today, we remember three of them: Lavonte’e Williams, Elijah Gomez and Shiway Barry.

On today’s episode: The voices of Cheese, Shiway Barry's best friend; Crystal Cathcart, Elijah Gomez’s aunt, and his mother, Jennifer Cathcart; and Lavonte’e Williams’s mother, Miracle Jones, and Michael Jones and Tanika Jones, his grandparents.

Background reading: 

• A boy just baptized. A girl who just had her Sweet 16. These are the stories of 12 children killed by guns this year.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.