The complete audio documentary as broadcast by NPR, plus exclusive bonus interviews and commentary. In the early 1970's, author and radio host Studs Terkel went around the country with a reel-to-reel tape recorder interviewing people about their jobs. The result was the bestselling book Working. The great interviewer of his day, Terkel celebrated the uncelebrated, and Working elevated the stories of ordinary people and their daily lives. For over four decades, the Working tapes were packed away in Terkel's home office and remained unheard-until now. Partnering with the Chicago History Museum and the Studs Terkel Archives, Project& was given exclusive access to the original recordings and spent a year working with Radio Diaries preparing them for the world to hear as part of the national multimedia initiative, Working in America. The result is a stunning audio documentary that captures the voices of Americans from vastly different backgrounds, each reflecting on the rewards, the challenges, and the often surprising value of work in their lives. Four decades later, we hear from some of these same people as they reflect on their original interviews-and on the startling changes in their lives since. Hosted by Joe Richman.
At nearly ninety-five, Studs Terkel has written about everyone's life, it seems, but his own. In Touch and Go, he offers a memoir that—embodying the spirit of the man himself—is youthful, vivacious, and enormous fun.
Terkel begins by taking us back to his early childhood with his father, mother, and two older brothers, describing the hectic life of a family trying to earn a living in Chicago. He then goes on to recall his own experiences—as a poll watcher charged with stealing votes for the Democratic machine, as a young theatergoer, and eventually as an actor himself in both radio and on the stage—giving us a brilliant and often hilarious portrait of the Chicago of the 1920s and 1930s. He tells of his beginnings as a disc jockey after World War II and as an interviewer and oral historian—a craft he would come to perfect and indeed personify. Finally, he discusses his involvement with progressive politics, leading inevitably to his travails during the McCarthy period, when he was blacklisted and thrown out of work despite having become by then one of the country's most popular television hosts.
Fans of Studs Terkel will find much to discover in these remarkable reminiscences. Others will be captivated to learn of the unique and eclectic life of one of America's greatest living legends.
"We don't know anything about the past and we don't seem to want to know it. And all the time the people who can tell us about it, make it meaningful, the real repositories of living information, are being lost." - Studs Terkel
Together, these stories represent an extraordinary panorama of American life and work throughout the century and the ways in which the times have changed.
Coming of Age is a compelling picture of what we have gained through "progress", and what we have lost.
The first revised and updated version of this 1970’s cult classic. A rousing musical with a cast of twenty, Working is for anyone who has ever punched a clock, a cow or a supervisor - or wanted to.
An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Eileen Barnett, Orson Bean, Harry Groener, Kaitlin Hopkins, Michael Kostroff, Kenna Ramsey, Vickilyn Reynolds, Vincent Tumeo and B.J. Ward.
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