People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to ano… - Studs Terkel

People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being.

After the stock market crash, some New York editors suggested that hearings be held: what had really caused the Depression? They were held in Washington. In retrospect, they make the finest comic reading. The leading industrialists and bankers testified. They hadn’t the foggiest notion what had gone bad. You read a transcript of that record today with amazement: that they could be so unaware. This was their business, yet they didn’t understand the operation of the economy. The only good witnesses were the college professors, who enjoyed a bad reputation in those years. No professor was supposed to know anything practical about the economy.

We sent him to school for him to take this heavy equipment. I worked and cooked over at the school, helped send him there. I said, “I’m not sendin’ you to school to come out here and go to work for these strip mines.” I’d rather see him in Vietnam than see him doin’ strip jobs.

As long as you can say I’m better than they are, then there’s somebody below you can kick. But once you get over that, you see that you’re not any better off than they are. In fact, you’re worse off ‘cause you’re believin’ a lie.