Episode Summary

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During the height of the Great Depression, the U.S government hired out-of-work writers and laid-off reporters and sent them out to record the stories of all kinds of Americans. Called the Federal Writers’ Project, historians have called the program a giant “listening project.”

In this introductory episode, host Chris Haley, sets the stage, laying out 1930s America, the New Deal, and the cultural forces that both supported and opposed the Writers’ Project.  We are introduced to the agency’s national director Henry Alsberg and a handful of its writers across the country, including Zora Neale Hurston. We also dig into the key questions that are still debated in public forums today: What history gets told?  And who gets to tell it?