In January, I joined Audible’s Original Content team after spending seven years as a producer at National Public Radio’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. There, part of my job involved homing in on the most interesting parts of an interview: distilling longer conversations into tight, broadcast-ready pieces and selecting which clips to play at the beginning of the show to pique interest among listeners. I’ll now put those same skills to work by highlighting some moments from my time at Fresh Air that illustrate what makes a Terry Gross interview so great:
The author with Terry Gross in 2016. Photo credit: Molly Seavy-Nesper
I started at Fresh Air in September of 2008. One of the first interviews I worked on was with a man named Maher Arar. I’d never heard of him before, but I haven’t been able to forget his story. Arar’s interview is a great example of how audio can help amplify an otherwise unheard voice that brings a perspective that is important in the current cultural or political moment. Arar is a dual citizen of Canada and Syria. In 2002 he was heading home to Canada after a family vacation when, during a layover at JFK airport, he was detained on suspicion of being a member of Al Qaeda. The United States used “extraordinary rendition” to send him to Syria where he was beaten, tortured, and held in a tomblike cell for 10 months:
People often ask me, “What’s Terry Gross like?” My short answer is that she’s great. Terry is extremely hard-working, considerate, generous, and down to earth. She never cuts corners, and she does the work that hosts on other programs often leave to producers. Terry reads the books, watches the films, listens to the albums, and writes thoughtful questions to prepare for an interview. Here’s an example of what a book typically looks like after Terry is done reading it:
Terry explains, “Every time I read something that I want to make sure I remember, especially if it might lead to a question, I circle or draw a line through it, and then I dog-ear the page. When I’m done reading the book, I go back to each dog-eared page and take notes on everything that I’ve marked. Later, when I’m ready to write up my questions, I can read my notes to jog my memory, or refer to my notes for quotes or facts.”
Writing a good question is one thing; knowing when to ask it is another skill, entirely. The questions for a typical Fresh Airinterview are thoughtfully arranged into chapters, which are ordered in a way that will, hopefully, get a guest to open up as organically as possible. When Terry interviewed tennis star Andre Agassi, she asked him about his crystal meth use, but not until they were more than 20 minutes into the interview:
Writing good questions and organizing them strategically goes a long way toward getting a guest to open up. But sometimes people just don’t want to talk about certain aspects of their lives on the radio, even if they’ve written publicly about them. People are complex and everyone is different; it’s impossible for an interviewer to know which topics cross the line for a guest. To get around this, Terry has a little spiel that she gives to her guests before the interview gets going, something like, “If I ask you anything that’s too personal, just tell me and I’ll drop it and move on.” For Terry’s guests, her speech says “this is a safe space” and that there is an emergency plan. When comic Marc Maron interviewed Terry before a live audience at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, he parodied her spiel. Before Maron joined her on stage, Terry sat alone before the audience when his voice came over the house speakers:
Listen to the full episode here (requires a Howl premium subscription)
Even though Terry tries to put people at ease, that doesn’t mean she’s going to avoid asking hard questions, especially of politicians. When Terry interviewed Hillary Clinton in June 2014, she wanted to know if Clinton supported gay marriage before it was time to endorse it politically — before Clinton’s constituents were ready to accept it. Clinton interpreted Terry’s question as an accusation about being politically calculating and gave evasive answers. Terry kept asking follow-up questions, which led to Clinton criticizing Terry for “being very persistent,” a quality that I really admire in her. Their exchange went viral:
Another question I get a lot about my time at Fresh Air is, “Did you get to meet a lot of famous people?” The answer is no. Most of Fresh Air’s interviews are conducted remotely, with Terry in the WHYY studio in Philadelphia and her guest at another public radio station in another city. But I think it makes for better radio because Terry and her guest hear only each other’s voices — there are no nonverbal cues to exchange, no shrugging of the shoulders or folding of the arms to replace words. In this confessional-like setting there is no pressure to maintain eye contact, smile, or nod. All that’s left is the conversation distilled down to its essence. While it would have been exciting to meet Jay-Z, I’m not sure that a face-to-face interview would have turned out this well:
A person doesn’t have to be a famous to be compelling. An interview conducted by a prepared host with an informed, comfortable guest can make you interested in something you didn’t know you cared much about. In this case, the tomato industry
Journalists are often guests on Fresh Air. And they’re usually great at explaining complex issues in ways that are informative and entertaining. But it’s the journalists who cover war zones who always leave me wondering what makes them tick. What drives someone to run toward gunfire to capture a story? The story isn’t usually about the journalist as a person, so we rarely get to find out. But in 2015, photojournalist Lynsey Addario released a memoir and came on Fresh Air to talk with Terry. It struck me that Terry and Lynsey were kind of kindred spirits: Two women who demonstrated a practically unfathomable dedication to their work. Addario told Terry the story of being kidnapped in Libya while on assignment for the New York Times:
There’s a lot of work that has to happen before Terry can say, “From WHYY in Philadelphia, I’m Terry Gross with Fresh Air.” Yes, Terry is truly amazing, but it would be irresponsible of me to write about what makes her interviews so special without acknowledging the behind-the-scenes team led by Executive Producer Danny Miller. Fresh Air’s producers sift through piles of books and stay on top of current events, movies, and music. They help identify who Terry should talk to and when, work with publicists, and book studio time. They help Terry decide what she should watch, hear, and read in order to prepare for an interview. During the interview, an engineer keeps everything sounding good while a team of two producers furiously logs the raw “tape” coming in. Afterwards, they edit the interview down to broadcast length, passing it back and forth several times before handing it off to Danny, who listens to every piece of tape before it goes on the air. It’s a very well-oiled collaborative team, and I was so lucky to be a part of it.
