Last week, award-winning journalist, activist, and author Barbara Ehrenreich passed away at the age of 81. During her very influential career, she wrote twenty-one books, including the bestselling Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001).
So much of Barbara Ehrenreich’s worldview-changing writing and ethos resonates with what we do here at WORT, and especially A Public Affair. We dedicate this hour to her memory by first discussing her life, work, and legacy with her friend and colleague Alissa Quart, guest hosted by Richelle Wilson.
Then, for the second half of the show, we play an archived tape from when Barbara Ehrenreich came to the WORT studios in October 1999 to talk about her then-forthcoming book Nickel and Dimed with host Esty Dinur. The version aired on the show was lightly edited to fit the broadcast time.
Unfortunately, the end of the 1999 interview was cut off on the original tape. The 41-minute recording uploaded here is the most complete version WORT has.
Alissa Quart is executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and author of four books, including Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America (HarperCollins, 2018).
Cover photo: Barbara Ehrenreich reading at the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice in Washington, DC, March 2014, photo by Slowking, licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0
