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The Working Tapes: Then & Now

Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel

In the early 1970’s, author Studs Terkel went around the country with a reel-to-reel tape recorder interviewing people about their jobs.

The result was a book called “Working.” It became a bestseller and even inspired a Broadway musical… something rare for an oral history collection. “Working” struck a nerve, because it elevated the stories of ordinary people and their daily lives.

But until now, few of these interviews have ever been heard before.

For decades, the reel-to-reel tapes were packed away in Terkel’s home office. Radio Diaries, along with Project&, combed through them to produce a new radio series and tracked down a few of the interviewees, forty years later.


Episode 1: An auto union worker, a switchboard telephone operator, a press agent…

Episode 2: A Chicago police officer, a female advertising executive, a gravedigger…


Episode 3: A private eye, a jockey, a hotel piano player…


Episode 4: The father and son auto mechanics…


We have generous support from The New York Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the South Carolina Humanities Council, the Omer Foundation, and our community of listeners. Thank you. 

 

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