The recent­ly-launched dig­i­ti­za­tion project Pop­Up Archive hosts a great selec­tion of Studs Terkel audio. The site’s archive of inter­views comes from Terkel’s 1952–1997 radio show, “The Studs Terkel Pro­gram,” on the Chica­go sta­tion WFMT.

While Terkel is famous for inter­view­ing every­day peo­ple for his oral his­to­ries of the Depres­sion, work, and World War II, and his radio show fea­tured its fair share of stu­dents, domes­tic work­ers, and vet­er­ans, this par­tic­u­lar archive is full of big names: Actress and come­di­an Lily Tom­lin. Lit­er­ary the­o­rist Edward Said. Actor and activist Sid­ney Poiti­er.

A short trip into the inter­views reveals Shel Sil­ver­stein telling Terkel the sto­ry of his as-yet-unpub­lished book Laf­ca­dio, The Lion Who Shot Back, in a rapid-fire Chica­go accent. Terkel inter­views the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Diane Arbus about the Depres­sion, try­ing in vain to elic­it any mem­o­ries at all per­tain­ing to finan­cial stress. (Even Terkel couldn’t win them all.) And an inter­view with James Bald­win is punc­tu­at­ed by the unmis­tak­able sound of a Zip­po lighter in use.

Cur­rent­ly, there are about twen­ty audio files avail­able, and the archive promis­es more to come, pend­ing dig­i­ti­za­tion and the clear­ing of rights. (Let’s hope they hur­ry up! Some of the place­hold­er entries for not-yet-avail­able interviews—Buckminster Fuller, Mar­garet Mead, Arthur C. Clarke—are most tan­ta­liz­ing.)

The one down­side to this archive is that you can’t down­load the interviews—a poten­tial draw­back for addict­ed pod­cast fans. How­ev­er, if you have a smart­phone and a good data con­nec­tion, it’s sim­ple enough to lis­ten to the files straight from your phone’s Chrome brows­er.

Above you can lis­ten to Terkel inter­view a young Bob Dylan in 1963. The remain­ing parts of the inter­view can be found here. Note: The Dylan inter­view isn’t actu­al­ly in the Pop Up archive. But it is anoth­er one of Terkel’s leg­endary inter­views. So we want­ed to add it to the mix.

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Studs Terkel Reads Poem “Blessed Be The Nation”

Voic­es from the Depres­sion: Studs Terkel Inter­views

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on the Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Sev­en­ty-sev­en years ago, in a move unprece­dent­ed since the Glo­ri­ous Rev­o­lu­tion of 1688, King-Emper­or Edward VIII abdi­cat­ed the throne. Today’s audi­ences will rec­og­nize the episode from The King’s Speech: less than a year after hav­ing ascend­ed to the British king­ship in Jan­u­ary of 1936, Edward became roman­ti­cal­ly entan­gled with a yet-to-be-divorced Amer­i­can socialite named Wal­lis Simp­son. As long as the King’s liaisons remained dis­creet, the cou­ple was afford­ed a respectable amount of pri­va­cy by the roy­al fam­i­ly and the British media. Things grew more com­pli­cat­ed, how­ev­er, when Simp­son divorced her sec­ond hus­band in Octo­ber of 1936, and the pair decid­ed to mar­ry, come hell or high water.

A King of the Unit­ed King­dom of Great Britain and North­ern Ire­land being wed­ded to a twice-divorced Amer­i­can socialite would have caused a furor. As the head of the Church of Eng­land, Edward could not mar­ry a divorced woman whose for­mer hus­band (let alone hus­bands) remained alive. Simpson’s first divorce proved even more problematic—it was grant­ed based on “emo­tion­al incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty,” and may not have been rec­og­nized under both Church and Eng­lish law. The King’s mar­riage to Simp­son also raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an Amer­i­can Queen, a sac­ri­le­gious idea in the eyes of his sub­jects.

Faced with a choice between the crown and his love, Edward VIII chose to step down. On Decem­ber 10, 1936, the King signed the fol­low­ing dec­la­ra­tion of abdi­ca­tion:

In the audio clip at the top of the post, Edward VIII takes to the radio waves to declare his abdi­ca­tion on Decem­ber 11. Brim­ming with hard­ly-con­tained emo­tion, Edward attempts to explain his rea­sons to the British peo­ple (read the full tran­script here):

“You all know the rea­sons which have impelled me to renounce the Throne. But I want you to under­stand that in mak­ing up my mind I did not for­get the coun­try or the Empire which as Prince of Wales, and late­ly as King, I have for twen­ty-five years tried to serve. But you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impos­si­ble to car­ry the heavy bur­den of respon­si­bil­i­ty and to dis­charge my duties as King as I would wish to do with­out the help and sup­port of the woman I love.”

For those who had doubts about Simpson’s true feel­ings for the King (some sus­pect­ed her of car­ing only about the king’s mon­ey), the next 35 years would pro­vide suf­fi­cient proof. The pair remained mar­ried until Edward’s death in 1972.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.