Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work

Dave Isay, born in 1965 in Connecticut to psychiatrist Richard Isay and author Jane Isay, is the founder and president of StoryCorps. He graduated from New York University in 1987 and founded Sound Picture Productions, a predecessor to the StoryCorps project, in 1994. Isay is a New York Times best-selling author, a recipient of six Peabody Awards, and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. He founded StoryCorps in 2003 and has since won several awards for the work, including a $1 million TED Prize, which is awarded each year to an individual recognized for their bold vision.

He was in medical school when he first began working in public radio. When he started doing interviews, he realized that was what he wanted to do with his life and withdrew from medical school to pursue his new passion. He began his audio career as a radio producer, doing interviews and educational programs, including “The Execution Tapes,” a series of 19 recordings about the 23 electrocutions carried out by the state of Georgia since 1984. Long before he began StoryCorps, he was already heavily interested in the stories of everyday Americans and invested in drawing connections between various political, cultural, and religious viewpoints.

Since founding StoryCorps in 2003, running and expanding the organization has been his primary focus. Though Isay does not devote one of the chapters of Callings to his own work, he discusses the way these stories resonate with him in his Introduction. In so far as Callings is a self-help book, Isay emphasizes the qualities of discipline, flexibility, strength, and intuition in Finding Purpose and Pleasure in Work.

Though listed as the author, Isay did not write each chapter as they are based on transcripts from real conversations recorded and published by StoryCorps. Rather, he curated and edited these conversations alongside his coauthor, Maya Millett, who was the executive book editor at StoryCorps. Isay’s personality, interests, and philosophies come through in the way he chooses the book’s interviews, how they are organized, and the order in which they appear.