The host of this 1971 live open dialogue is a famous Stud Terkel. I post this now because some of my subscribers say that I am kind of like him as an interviewer and storyteller. I am a person with a deep admiration and respect for the ordinary man and woman. In fact, I see myself as one. Just as Studs Terkel did.
For those of you too young to have seen or heard or read him, Studs was an American writer, a historian, an actor, and a broadcaster who presented oral history style interviews on radio with folks he called "the common man."
His early life helped give him confidence in talking with people. In the 1930s his parents ran a rooming house that also served as a meeting place for people from all walks of life. Terkel said that he understood people from talking with tenants and visitors who gathered in the lobby.
I credit my intense curiosity for talking with people and hearing what they think in part because as a young boy growing up in blue-collar suburban Long Island, New York, I didn't know the world, I didn't understand others and why they did what they did. When I was a high school student in East Meadow, the school experienced violence on a daily basis. I didn't understand why boys were violent. I didn't understand why teachers got mad when I said things they didn't like. And so much more. My passionate curiosity was genuine and it provoked the questions that I asked and how intensely I listened when others responded.
Studs could listen with an open mind.. He had a well-known radio show called The Studs Terkel Program where he interviewed famous and not famous folks. Studs was a great story teller and talker. He was a character himself who people found fascinating - more than I am - and he was very informal - like me.
Example: He was doing an interview in the ’60s with a woman who lived in Chicago projects and after the interview she asked him to replay the interview for her to hear. He replayed it and she just sat there completely attentive to what she was saying. When it was all done, she said, ‘You know, I didn’t know I thought that way.” I experience this response to my interviews on a regular basis from the people who I interviewed. "I didn't know that I thought that way."
When Studs was quite old, he was robbed-mugged in Chicago. Just as the thieves were about to go off with his money, he asked, ‘Hey, can you give me enough back to take the bus home?”
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16 ноя 2022
