While anthropologists and Ira Glass might argue otherwise, oral history isn't the sexiest of modern mediums. Recordings are often left in dusty boxes, and transcripts make for awkward reading, while video cameras are ubiquitous as the documentary-making devices of choice. And yet, what do you gain when you lose the lens?

Judging from the work of Studs Terkel, a former radio DJ from Chicago who has amassed thousands of hours of oral histories, it's the invaluable sense of camaraderie that bonds the interviewer and interviewee — a sliver of organically preserved history that's branded with individuality, laced with a graceful nostalgia, and flawed by the limits of memory.

Terkel's best work is centered on concepts — from race to labor to growing old in the 20th century — but the breadth and scope of his work are also remarkable. The now 96-year-old spent 45 years hosting radio shows, has written dozens of books, and has investigated jazz, theatre, and radio-DJ subcultures to teenage culture and human reactions to nuclear weapons. Terkel approaches themes in American culture from the bottom up, forgoing highbrow academic theory to simply ask people what they think and how they feel. "Did you find yourself in ticklish situations?" Terkel asks an Irish mobster in Hard Times ; "You don't recall at any time feeling a sense of shame?" he questions a woman who waited in soup lines during the Depression; and "Are you scared of anything?" he queries an ex-prize fighter.

The uninitiated could start with My American Century , a collection of eight oral histories, or listen to Voices of Our Time , a six-CD compilation of his radio interviews; but, unabridged collections such as Hard Times, Working , and Division Street truly capture the majesty of Terkel's work. These projects demonstrate his intricate handling of a subject — respectively, the Great Depression, the psychology of labor, and the history of urban Chicago — and illustrate his multi-angled approach to places and eras.

Terkel's explorations are thorough, but they're also human. Even if no history is totally unbiased, he maintains that some part of every story and every storyteller is true. That's why he believes it's important to include these oral histories — or your grandparents' stories — in our collective memories. You can read about the Industrial Revolution in history books, or you can read Upton Sinclair's fictional portrayals, but Terkel's oral histories somehow marry the best of both. There are truths and untruths that do not exist in textbooks, yet claw deep into the soil of American history.

How often do you hear the report from an assembly-line machinist and not the union leader? And when is the factory worker's story ever put next to the factory owner's? Whatever the topic, there are no marginalities for Terkel. His work isn't limited by trying to figure out how the so-called "other half" lives; instead, he canvasses across wide spectrums. Once added together, these individual voices form a great patchwork quilt of Americana in dialect, spirit, and story. Take as another example this excerpt from an interview in Working with Mike Lefevre, a steel-mill worker: "It's hard to take pride in a bridge you're never gonna cross, in a door you're never gonna open. You're mass-producing things and you never see the end result of it. [Muses.] I worked for a trucker one time. And I got this tiny satisfaction when I loaded a truck. At least I could see the truck depart loaded. In a steel mill, forget it. You don't see where nothing goes."

Organizations like StoryCorps and the popularity of public-radio podcasts show that a camera isn't always necessary to tell the story. But there remains a sense of urgency in collecting oral histories: "We don't know anything about the past and we don't seem to want to know it," Terkel has said. "And all the time the people who can tell us about it, make it meaningful, the real repositories of living information, are being lost." Terkel's oeuvre is so expansive, it's easy to forget there's just one man asking all these questions. From a ragtag kid who hung around Chicago's Bughouse Square to his first job in the WPA radio division and his later years in the DJ booth, Terkel's life seems to be propelled by curiosity. When his snarfy laugh isn't shooting staccato into the microphone, his voice is rich and full of kindness — in short, every ounce of Terkel and his endeavors is sincere.

-McKay McFadden