Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work

StoryCorps is a nonprofit organization, founded in 2003 by David Isay, that was created to collect and preserve stories and conservations from participants all over America. Its goal is to highlight voices from all walks of life to reflect American diversity and capture different experiences. Unlike many interview formats that pair subjects and journalists, StoryCorps records conversations between two people who know each other well, resulting in an intimate discussion. These recordings are preserved and cataloged at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, as well as shared through the StoryCorps website and app and NPR radio broadcasts.

The organization began in 2003 as a single Story Booth in Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Isay invited renowned scholar and oral historian Studs Terkel (most famous for his book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do) to launch the project. By 2005, Isay had also launched two Mobile Booths based at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, which traveled across the country to collect stories. That year, StoryCorps also debuted its weekly broadcasts on NPR.

In 2007, StoryCorps published its first book, Listening Is an Act of Love, which became a New York Times bestseller. It also won a prestigious Institutional Peabody Award (an award for excellence in radio, television, and online media that is similar in prestige to the Pulitzer Prize for print media). During its 20-year history, StoryCorps has published five books, of which Callings is the most recent. It won a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, and Isay also won the 2015 TED Prize and used the prize money to launch the StoryCorps app, a tool for recording and sharing stories. In 2016, StoryCorps won a News & Documentary Emmy for their animated short “Traffic Stop.”

StoryCorps has launched several initiatives within its overall project. These initiatives include the Griot Initiative focused on African American history; OutLoud, which preserves LGBTQ stories; the Justice Project, which collects stories from incarcerated people and their families; and One Small Step, which tries to broach the polarized political climate by organizing conversations “across political divides” (“History of StoryCorps.” StoryCorps).