Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work

StoryCorps founder Dave Isay explains how he came to the idea for this book. He recalls that his earlier StoryCorps book about mothers came out around Mother’s Day, and he was invited to speak on The Colbert Report. The day after he was on the show, he and his pregnant wife had an appointment with their ob-gyn, Dr. Austin Chen. She expressed regret that she never did anything worthy of being invited on The Colbert Report. However, Isay believes that her work and the impact she has on her patients’ lives are more important than everyone who has been on the show combined.

This conversation gave him the idea for a new book about the meaning people derive from their work. Isay argues that the “theme of work threads throughout StoryCorps’ dozen-year history” (3), an archive from which he pulls the most powerful stories about work for this collection.

Isay quotes oral historian Studs Terkel, who argues that work is about the search “for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying” (3).