Scholar Exhibits

Drug Guru Timothy Leary and a Rare Interview with Steve Jobs

Kept at a constant, cool 62 degrees, the GBH Archives house an amazing six decades of television and radio programs, from experimental video in the 60s and 70s to local news, and video, scripts, and uncut interviews from PBS signature series like NOVA and American Experience. Among its treasures is the first episode of Julia Child's The French Chef. (The recipe? Beef Bourguignon.) There are interviews with Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin for a 1963 program called The Negro and the American Promise; ZOOM shows from the 1970s; the unedited interviews from the acclaimed 1983 GBH-produced series, Vietnam: A Television History—and so much more. Over the past year, 89.7 GBH's Morning Edition host Bob Seay and I, with help from GBH Archives' staff, searched the vault and created radio feature stories based on some of the gems we found. In the inaugural edition of "From the Vault," we offer poignant, discovered footage that gives you a deeper understanding of two stories recently in the news. Watch, and then listen to Bob's stories. This Month From the Vault: Drug Guru Timothy Leary and a Rare Interview with Steve Jobs. Originally Published January 2012.

In 1967, a GBH crew shot LSD: Lettvin vs. Leary live at MIT's Kresge Auditorium, where MIT professor Jerome Lettvin debated LSD guru Timothy Leary. Leary makes his "turn on, tune in" case to a packed crowd. Watch for fireworks when Lettvin then takes the stage.

Steve Jobs gave few interviews, but in 1990, he sat down with a crew from the remarkable GBH-BBC series The Machine That Changed the World. In the interview, Jobs talks about how that revolutionary device, the Macintosh personal computer, came to be, and the particular gifts of the people who made it.