He said that his interviewing philosophy was influenced heavily by the poem “Questions From a Worker Who Reads” by German Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht. He explained, “If I were to ask the audience now watching this Web site, ‘Who built the pyramids?’ the first reaction, reflex, is ‘pharaohs.’ The pharaohs didn’t lift a finger. … No, slaves, the anonymous ones through the centuries built the pyramids. … I’m interested in … those millions and multi-millions and millions of people down through the centuries who made the wheels go round but never made our traditional history books. We hear of generals, we hear of kings, we have industrialists, great statesmen. But who are these others?”
He said that there was too much emphasis on competition in schools. “Is that what school’s about?” he said. “To beat somebody else out. I thought school was to enrich a person’s life. … We teach our kids to be competitive, to get the A at the expense of … that’s not it. It’s to learn about the world, to learn about the past, to learn about the then so know more about the now. And to be part of a community.”
Additional Interviews With Studs Terkel
Terkel spoke to Don Swaim of CBS Radio on Oct. 5, 1988, about his radio program.
Terkel discussed politics and the art of finding interesting people in an Oct. 29, 2003, interview with Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
Terkel did multiple interviews with NPR in the 1980s and ‘90s.
To learn more about Studs Terkel, read his profile on findingDulcinea.
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