In Silicon Collar, I celebrate modern day workers and their machines. So, imagine my joy when Jennifer Pockell Dimas pointed me to a series on NPR about workers in the 1970s
“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 book 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. Studs celebrated the un-celebrated.
But until now, few of the interviews have ever been heard before. For decades, the tapes were packed away in Studs’ home office.
Radio Diaries and our partner Project& were given exclusive access to those recordings and we have spent the past year combing through them. We’re archival tape geeks, and listening to these tapes has felt like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
You can stream them on NPR.org, and subscribe to the Radio Diaries Podcast for the entire series.
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