Episode Summary:

One of our favorite episodes to work on was “Episode 6: Native Historians do Stand-up” about the WPA project to preserve the Oneida language and history.  But that was not the first time we explored this story.  We first traveled to Oneida, conducting interviews and digging into archives, when we produced our documentary Soul of a People.  One of those interviews was with the remarkable Loretta Metoxen. 

Until her death in 2021, Metoxen was the Tribal Historian for the Oneida Nation, a position she served in for over two decades.  She was tasked with preserving, documenting and interpreting her people’s history, culture, and traditions.  Having learned directly from the WPA’s Oscar Archiquette, Metoxen is clear in her reflections on the groundbreaking work of the Oneida writers during the Depression and its huge impact today.  

To hear the full interview, consider joining our Patreon Community at www.patreon.com/PeoplesRecorder

Additional Links: 

Learn more about Loretta Metoxen

Oneida Nation Cultural Heritage Website

Oneida Books Rediscovered

Credits: 

Director: Andrea Kalin

Interviewer: Oliver Lukacs

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Interview Re-record and Editor: Ethan Oser

Featuring Music from the Oneida Singers and Pond5

For additional content, visit www.peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

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Episode Summary:

Studs Terkel was many things – a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, oral historian, radio legend, fiery populist, labor advocate and, above all, a master listener.  For 45 years, his Chicago radio show invited everyday people to share their stories – the kind of history that often gets forgotten. 

In 2006, we turned the tables and asked Studs to tell us his story.  This never-before-released interview was one of his last before his death at age 96.  Before we left, he signed our copy of his book about the Depression, Hard Times, with a simple message: “Keep up the good work.”   

And that’s what we’re trying to do with The People’s Recorder – carry forward Studs’ legacy of person-first storytelling.  

To hear the full interview, consider joining our Patreon Community at www.patreon.com/PeoplesRecorder

For just $5/month, you can have access to extended interviews, plus upcoming bonus episodes and AMA events. Support us on Patreon and keep these stories coming.

Additional Links: 

Learn more about Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel Radio Archives

"Working" by Studs Terkel

Credits: 

Host: Chris Haley

Director and Interviewer: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Editor: Ethan Oser

Featuring Music from Pond5

For additional content, visit www.peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

In 2006, award-winning filmmaker and producer Andrea Kalin sat down for an interview with bestselling author and renowned presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. Together, they discussed the social and political landscape of 1930s America, the Great Depression, and how the New Deal employed writers to document that unique moment in U.S. history. 

Now, for the first time ever, that insightful and inspiring conversation is available for you to enjoy. 

To hear the full interview, consider joining our Patreon Community at www.patreon.com/c/PeoplesRecorder.

For just $5/month, you can have access to extended interviews, exclusive bonus episodes and Ask Me Anything events. Support us on Patreon and help keep these stories coming. 

Credits: 

Director and Interviewer: Andrea Kalin 

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello 

Editor: Ethan Oser 

Featuring Music from Pond5 

For additional content, visit www.peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: ‪@peoplesrecorder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

Tune in for an important update on The People's Recorder!

Host Chris Haley shares the state of the podcast now in the wake of recent funding cuts and also the exciting plans we have coming up over the next few months, including a sneak preview of "Gospel of Fear," our trilogy of episodes about Congressman Martin Dies, the playbook he used to attack the WPA and the Federal Writers' Project, and how we're all still feeling the impact of that playbook today.

The People's Recorder is also now on Patreon! Support the podcast and help keep these stories coming and out in the world where they belong. Become a patron for only $5/month and receive access to exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, AMA events, and more!

For more information and to sign up, visit: www.patreon.com/peoplesrecorder

Image Description and Credit:

Protestors in Center City Philadelphia, 1939, staging a symbolic "funeral" for the Federal Writers' Project, a Works Progress Administration program soon to be gutted by federal budget cuts. From the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Episode Credits:

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Editor: Ethan Oser

Featuring Music from Pond5

For additional content, visit www.peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes Summary:

A beautiful and powerful art exhibition is touring the country right now, called Pictures of Belonging, which explores three artists of Japanese descent - Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi and Miné Okubo.  The exhibition puts these artists and their work in their rightful place in the history of American art.  

For this bonus episode, producer and lead writer David Taylor visits the exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and shares his insights about Miné Okubo, who was featured in Episode 9: Is This Land Your Land?  She was a painter who was working with Diego Rivera on murals for the WPA when she was detained and sent to an incarceration camp during World War 2.  She used her artwork to bear witness to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war.  

Links and Resources:

Pictures of Belonging: Japanese American National Museum

Pictures of Belonging: Smithsonian American Art Museum

Citizen 13660 - a short film from the National Park Service

Sincerely, Miné Okubo - a short biography from the Japanese American National Museum

Further Reading:

Citizen 13360 by Miné Okubo

Miné Okubo: Following Her Own Road by Greg Robinson

Peaceful Painter: Memoirs of an Issei Woman Artist by Hisako Hibi

The Other American Moderns: Matsura, Ishigaki, Nora, Hayakawa by ShiPu Wang

Credits:

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Editor: Amy Young

Featuring music from Pond5

Produced with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Florida Humanities, Virginia Humanities, Wisconsin Humanities, California Humanities and Humanities Nebraska. 

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The People’s Recorder was funded in part with a grant from Wisconsin Humanities. But did you know that Wisconsin Humanities also has their own podcast, Human Powered?

Hosted by Adam Carr and Dasha Kelly Hamilton, Human Powered focuses on the power of the humanities in Wisconsin's prisons. We wanted to share an episode from that terrific show with you today. 

People in prisons are cut off from their families, their communities, and in some cases their own feelings. Making art in prison can be a way to affirm your humanity in a place that is often dehumanizing. So, when organizers of an exhibit of prison art put out a call for submissions, they were flooded with responses from incarcerated artists working without support, formal programs or materials. This episode tells the story of that exhibit.

Guests: 

Joshua Gresl

John Tyson

Sarah Demerath

Debra Brehmer

​

Learn more about Human Powered at www.wisconsinhumanities.org/podcast

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Episode Summary:

In the 1930s, the notion of making an incubator for creativity in a region devastated by the Great Depression got tested in Nebraska. This episode looks at what happened there when the Writers’ Project came to town, through a group of creatives from contrasting backgrounds, including a hobo, a nurse and a hardware store poet – all under the watchful eye of a university professor and a celebrated novelist. 

Starting from chaos, they ignited a surprising alchemy and made the Lincoln office one of the most productive Writers’ Project hubs in the country. The Season 1 finale listens in as Americans face war clouds on the horizon, and a national radio show asks, “Can we count on youth to uphold the American Way?”

Speakers:

Stephen Cloyd, librarian and historian

Marilyn Holt, historian

James Reidel, biographer and poet

Douglas Brinkley, historian

Links and Resources:

Rudolph Umland and the Federal Writers' Project

The Nebraska Federal Writers' Project - Lincoln City Libraries

Mari Sandoz and the Writers' Project

Weldon Kees reads his poem, "1926"

WPA Guide to Nebraska (free PDF)

Prairie Schooner

Reading List:

Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees, by James Reidel

Nebraska During the New Deal, by Marilyn Irvin Holt

Soul of a People by David A. Taylor

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, by Timothy Egan

The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees, edited by Donald Justice

Crazy Horse, by Mari Sandoz

Credits

Host: Chris Haley

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Writer: David A. Taylor

Editor: Ethan Oser

Assistant Editor: Amy Young

Story Editor: Michael May

Additional Voices: Jared Buggage, Sam Hanks, JoJo Drake Kalin, Antonio Macias, James Mirabello, Mariko Miyazaki, Kate Rafter and Sarah Smack

Featuring music and archival from: 

Aaron Copland

Alexandria Symphony Orchestra

Joseph Vitarelli

Bradford Ellis

Mike Sayre

Ceiri Torjussen

Pond5

Library of Congress

National Archives and Records Administration

New York Public Radio Archives Collection

Nebraska Public Media

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Produced with support from:

National Endowment for the Humanities

Humanities Nebraska

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

The Franklin Delano Library and Museum is an amazing place which just celebrated its 75th anniversary.  President Roosevelt had the idea to build the library on his family property in Hyde Park, New York, using private funds.  And then he donated the library and its historical collections, including all of his personal and official papers, to the US Government.  This started the precedent of Presidential Libraries that we continue today.  

Last month, we sat down with the FDR Library and its director Bill Harris and had a great discussion about the Federal Writers' Project, its impact then, and why it still matters today.  Please join our host Chris Haley, writer-producers David Taylor and James Mirabello and historian Sara Rutkowski for a few highlights from that conversation.

You can see the full discussion on the FDR Library’s YouTube channel here.  

Links and Resources:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library and Museum

"Rewriting America: New Essays on the Federal Writers' Project" with Sara Rutkowski

Credits:

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Editor: Amy Young

Featuring music from Pond5

Featuring: Chris Haley, Bill Harris, David A. Taylor, Sara Rutkowski and James Mirabello

Produced with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Florida Humanities, Virginia Humanities, Wisconsin Humanities, California Humanities and Humanities Nebraska. 

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This month, we're doing something a little different.  There are some amazing podcasts out there that give us a view of America through a distinctive lens. One of our favorites is Sidedoor: A podcast from the Smithsonian.  

Every episode, host Lizzie Peabody sneaks listeners through Smithsonian's side door to search for stories that can't be found anywhere else.

We're excited to share one of those stories. “King’s Speech” is about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the evolution of his iconic I Have a Dream speech.  It’s fascinating to chart the history of his speech and to hear how Dr. King was influenced by poet Langston Hughes, who worked with the Federal Theatre Project in the 1930s and co-wrote a play with one of the writers featured in the People's Recorder, Zora Neale Hurston.

Guests:

Kevin Young, Director of Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture

W. Jason Miller, Author of Origins of the Dream: Hughes's Poetry and King's Rhetoric

Enjoy the episode!  To hear more, search for Sidedoor wherever you get your podcasts or go to www.si.edu/sidedoor.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

This episode features two more stories of outsiders remaking themselves and California history. 

Eluard McDaniel left the Jim Crow South for California as a boy, and remade himself as an activist and writer on the West Coast. His account of his life brought him national attention when it appeared in American Stuff, a book of creative works by members of the Federal Writers’ Project and Federal Art Project selected by Henry Alsberg.

Miné Okubo was a rising artist with the Federal Art Project who drew on her art and her life story to depict a hidden history of injustice during World War II in her book Citizen 13660. Even decades later, a culture of silence surrounded that experience – until her book won an American Book Award and became testimony that sought redress for Japanese Americans incarcerated during the war.

Speakers:

David Bradley, novelist

Seiko Buckingham, niece of Miné Okubo

Jeanie Tanaka, niece of Miné Okubo

David Kipen, journalist and author

Links and Resources:

"American Stuff" anthology by members of the Federal Writers' Project and prints by the Federal Art Project

'Citizen 13660" short film by the National Park Service

"Sincerely, Miné Okubo" short film from the Japanese American National Museum

"Pictures of Belonging" 2024 art exhibition

Eluard McDaniel entry, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives

Reading List:

Citizen 13660, by Miné Okubo

Miné Okubo: Following Her Own Road, by Greg Robinson

The Dream and the Deal, by Jerre Mangione

“Bumming in California” by Eluard McDaniel, in On the Fly: Hobo Literature and Songs, 1879 – 1941, PM Press

The Chaneysville Incident: A Novel, by David Bradley

Dear California, by David Kipen

Black California, edited by Aparajita Nanda

California in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the Golden State with introduction, by David Kipen

Credits:

Host: Chris Haley

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Writer: David A. Taylor

Editor: Ethan Oser

Assistant Editor: Amy Young

Story Editor: Michael May

Additional Voices: Jared Buggage, Mariko Miyazaki, Kate Rafter and Amy Young

Featuring music and archival from: 

Pete Seeger

Joseph Vitarelli

Bradford Ellis

Pond5

Library of Congress

National Archives and Records Administration

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Manny Harriman Video Oral History Collection, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, NYU Special Collections.

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Produced with support from:

National Endowment for the Humanities

California Humanities.

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