Simone de Beauvoir Tells Studs Terkel How She Became an Intellectual and Feminist (1960) — openculture.com

Before Ira Glass, before Terry Gross, before any number of NPR personalities and internet podcasters who these days bring us interview after fascinating interview with the great minds of our time, there was Studs Terkel. In addition to his almost superhuman achievements as an oral historian, film and TV actor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Terkel pioneered the radio interview with his Chicago radio show, which ran for over four decades. “With no written questions,” an NPR eulogy tells us, Terkel would “pick up a riff and improvise.” In 1960, he brought his jazz-like improvisational style to Paris, to the apartment of existentialist philosopher and novelist Simone de Beauvoir.

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