Studs Terkel

The trailblazing actor and director Sidney Poitier, star of A Raisin in the Sun, The Defiant Ones, and other films, has died at the age of 94. Listen to two interviews with him conducted decades apart by Studs Terkel.

Bughouse Square with Eve Ewing takes interviews between the legendary Studs Terkel and people such as James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry and pairs them with contemporary conversations and musings on the same themes from Studs's kindred spirit Eve Ewing. 

50 years ago today, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in the midst of the 1968 presidential campaign. Explore his unrealized potential in a 1969 Studs Terkel interview. "There was this great strength to him, a decency and simplicity and a willingness to listen and a willingness to learn."

Studs Terkel talked to everyone, from people down on their luck to people at the top of their career. Now many of his insightful conversations are available through the Studs Terkel Radio Archive – discover five exceptional conversations with remarkable people here.

"I want to be an honest man, and I want to be a good writer," James Baldwin tells Studs Terkel in this eloquent and incisive conversation from 1961. He achieved both, in his clear-eyed writing and speaking about America and race, as is brilliantly obvious here.

What Christmas traditions do different cultures, from Brazilians to Slavs to African Americans, have to celebrate the holidays? Hear global folk singers and a legendary children's librarian discuss festive customs with Studs Terkel.

Hear excerpts from a 1977 Studs Terkel interview with Ron Kovic, the author of the best-selling memoir Born on the Fourth of July, which became an Oliver Stone film. "I know that the people of this country want to face up to the truth of that war," Kovic says.

In 1981, the monumental poet of the Caribbean appeared on Studs Terkel's radio show to discuss his native West Indies, their unique people, and elemental landscape.