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Why did the host become fascinated with Terry Gross and long‑form interviews?
Welcome to search engine. I'm PJ Vote. No question too big, no question too small. When I was fourteen, I had a disc man with an FM radio feature. And when I got tired of whatever weaker than CD was in there, I turned on the radio and listened to Terry Gross on her show Fresh Air. Fresh Air, I would argue, is the best long form interview show that anyone has ever made. The way she interviews people, Terry Gross is famous for her astounding levels of preparation. Whoever it is, a writer, a musician, an actor, anybody, she will have seen or heard everything they've ever done, she'll have read all the other interviews, and then she'll arrive and just be completely present. You can feel a lot of times when she interviews someone this feeling that she's getting a public person to reveal something new and genuine about themselves that they never have.
A good episode of Fresh Air for me seems like it can answer the question. How did this person come to be? I didn't know all that when I was little. I just knew I liked her interviews more than any others. I was drawn to them because I could listen to adults in public talking the way I imagined that they spoke privately. It was thrilling. When we started Search Engine, it was my first time trying to learn how to conduct long form interviews. I'd interviewed a lot of people before, but long form is a different skill, differently hard. And I wanted to interview Terry Gross about how she does it. The question of the episode was either gonna be how do you interview people or how do you make an interview show or maybe just how do you listen?
I got her email. I sent her a short note that took a very long time to write. And she wrote back a polite note saying she was busy but to check again in the future when things might be calmer over there. So it's gonna do that. But then a few weeks ago, I heard this interview she'd given for Fresh Air's fiftieth anniversary. And it was just to my ear the platonic ideal of the conversation I'd hoped to have. Somebody had done it better than I could. The interviewer is this man named Sam Fragoso. He has a podcast called Talk Easy. Sam's a young podcaster, but he's the real deal. You can tell he'll be doing this when he's old. And he's very clearly trying to interview Terry Gross with a level of preparedness and care and attention with which she interviews other people.
Sam is trying to Terry Gross, Terry Gross. And Terry, who's almost never on the other side of the microphone is settling into it over the course of the interview. She's clearly not entirely comfortable being the person being asked questions, but also she's clearly trying to be generous to someone who has tremendous respect for her. To give him what other people have given her. Trust and vulnerability. The whole thing, it's long, it's an hour and a half. And when I listened, I thought This is the conversation you'd play for someone who asked, How do I interview people? It's a class. But it's not just that. It also helped me move forward with some other questions that had been crashing around my brain. About life and lineage and how someone thinks about a life spent in service of their work that they love.
Terry's husband, who she was with for forty seven years, the writer Francis Davis, died earlier this year. And Sam also talks to her about that relationship and that loss and she shares what that kind of grief is like. It's a rare kind of conversation. Okay, here's Sam and Terry.
Terry Gross.
Yes.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for coming to Philly to do this. I'm honored.
I've never been in Philadelphia. This feels like the perfect occasion to come to Philadelphia. How are you doing?
Oh, I'm I'm doing okay. You know, y y you probably know my husband died a few months ago, but under the circumstances I think I'm really doing okay.
Has it been easy to get back to work in the aftermath of that? He passed uh April fourteenth, right?
Yeah. Um well, you know, I took a couple of weeks off just to you know, organizing the funeral and dealing with some of the immediate stuff you have to deal with.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why did the host become fascinated with Terry Gross and long‑form interviews?
0:00–12:11
2
How did the host’s teenage years and family background shape his career path?
12:11–22:20
3
What interview techniques does the host use to get guests to open up?
22:20–31:58
4
Why was the Monica Lewinsky interview considered controversial and how did the host handle it?
31:58–46:48
5
How does the host view the future of public radio amid funding cuts?
46:48–1:00:31
6
Does the host plan to retire after fifty years on Fresh Air?
1:00:31–1:13:07
7
What personal reflections does the host share about loss, grief, and finding meaning?
1:13:07–1:27:07
8
What final advice does the host give listeners about living a good life?
1:27:07–1:37:42