
Terry Gross, the award-winning
host of NPR's Fresh Air, will give a
talk on “All I Did Was Ask: An Evening with Terry Gross” on Wednesday, Nov. 13,
at 7:30 p.m. in Union
College's Nott Memorial.
The talk, the last of the term in Union's Perspectives at the Nott series, is free and open to the
public.
Since 1973, she has been
interviewing some of the most prominent figures of our time – John Updike,
Arthur Miller, Spalding Gray, Diane Keaton, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Jimmy
Carter, Elie Weisel, Marilyn Mason and Jerry Falwell. Her unmistakable voice
reaches some 2 million listeners across 300 public radio stations nationwide.
“The good thing,” said Gross in a recent
interview with Metro Santa Cruz, “is
that anything you could possibly be interested in has a potential connection to
the show. The bad thing,” she continues, “is that anything you could possibly
be interested in has a connection to the show.”
“She has the best interview show
on any medium in the U.S.,”
says William Drummond, a Berkeley-based NPR correspondent, in the Metro interview with Michael Mechanic.
“She actually reads [her subject's] books. With many talk shows, you're lucky
if they read the liner notes. She's also not afraid to ask a completely naive
question, but often it's the question everyone wants to know the answer to.”
“I love the guests she has and how
she talks to them, how she doesn't interject herself in it too much,” says
Linda Schact, a veteran TV news reporter at KPIX in San
Francisco. “Too many reporters have their own agenda
and charge ahead with their questions without listening to what the person is
saying.”
Gross, 45, was an English major in
college and fell into radio serendipitously after a disastrous attempt at
teaching eighth grade — ending with her being fired. After a period of despair
and odd jobs, she took over a slot on a feminist program on the University
of Buffalo station. Two years
later, she followed the station's program director to WHYY in Philadelphia,
where she was hired as host and producer of Fresh Air, then a live,
local interview show.
“It's a wonderful medium for
conversation and for all things related to language, whether it's a reading or
even a song, because there is nothing visual to distract you,” says Gross,
asked what she finds special about radio. “You're not thinking about somebody's
hairdo or whether you like their clothes. You are just engaged in what they
have to say.”
For more information, call (518) 388-6131.