The Open Mind Online Digital Archive

As host of the PBS public affairs show “The Open Mind” since it first aired in 1956, historian Richard Heffner has interviewed some of the most prominent intellectual personalities of the twentieth century. His guests have included leaders and pioneers in the fields of law, politics, the social sciences, and philanthropy. Notable guests have included economists Alan Greenspan, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Milton Friedman; Nobel laureates Martin Luther King and Elie Wiesel; anthropologist Margaret Mead; Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and Stephen Breyer; and feminist leaders Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan.

In collaboration with Teachers College of Columbia University, Richard Heffner will create a digital archive of the recordings of all the “Open Mind” interviews, available to the public online with related video, audio, and print resources. The online archive will be searchable by key words, events, and names, and will provide a unique window into twentieth century intellectual and cultural life for teachers, students, researchers, journalists, and others.