Terry Gross
speaker
23,660 appearances
401 recordings
17 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard yesterday
Terry Gross’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 277 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 77.
Appearances
Roberta Shorak directs the show.
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Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.
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I'm Terry Gross.
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Like the main character in her new novel, the
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Claire Vay Watkins lives in the Mojave Desert near Death Valley.
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Also, like in the novel, the desert around her is being developed by an energy company for solar energy.
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Solar might sound like clean energy, great, but solar on this grand scale is wreaking havoc on the desert ecosystem.
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Like many frontier territories, the desert attracts misfits, loners, drifters, and as Watkins puts it,
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Weirdos.
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In the new novel, each of those types is represented in a small community of people protesting the quote green energy gold rush.
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But really, what can they do?
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What power do they have to defeat a corporate project already underway?
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Is protest futile, delusional, self-serving?
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There's a lot of questions this novel raises, like how can a mother decide to live in the desert when her ex husband and child have moved across the country for a better job and better schools?
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How has Rose, the new novel's protagonist, been shaped by having had a mother, father, and stepfather who were each addicted to alcohol or drugs?
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Twelve step programs have always been part of her life as a witness or participant.
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Watkins' new novel is titled Yellow Pine.
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That's also the name of the Solar Desert Project in the book.
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Her previous novel I love you but I've chosen darkness is her most autobiographical book and quotes from the memoir My Life with Charles Manson by her father Paul Watkins.
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The cover describes Paul Watkins as Manson's number two man.
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Showing 981–1000 of 23,660 · page 50 of 1183
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