Terry Gross, host of "Fresh Air"
Interview by ANDREW GOLDMAN
You’ve been hosting “Fresh Air” for 37 years. Is there an endpoint? Or do you hope to drop dead at the microphone?
No, when you put it that way. That sounds so horrible in every way.
Too graphic? I was picturing decades hence.
I still really like my work. My goal in life has always been to work less. It’s a goal I’ve constantly failed at until recently when Dave Davies joined us as a guest host.
In preparation for your interviews, you are said to read at least a book a day and to work every night except Fridays and Saturdays.
I read more than is healthy. With writers, I might have to go through two or three books in one day. I love reading. I don’t love having to read at the pace that I read at for the show.
Did you choose “Fresh Air” over having children?
First of all, I never really felt called to have children. And when I started hosting “Fresh Air,” I had a lot of plants. After a few weeks of hosting “Fresh Air,” I had no plants. I couldn’t even keep up with watering them. I know I’m missing out on very, very special things; things I will never understand, because I will never get a chance to experience them.
I imagine you don’t particularly like kids.
I relate to children much better when they get verbal. Sometimes I feel like when I see a baby that I should throw my catnip toy and scratch them under the chin like I do my cat.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say that they have erotic associations with your voice.
With my voice? That really makes me laugh.
This can’t be a surprise to you.
I don’t get that a lot. I’m very short, under five feet, and I often think of myself as smaller than life. Until I was on radio, I went through life being, as far as I was concerned, invisible, which of course I am on radio. But it’s one thing to be invisible on radio; it’s another thing to be invisible in real life.
I gather that people frequently assume you’re a lesbian. Several years ago, it came up at a cocktail party for your husband, the writer Francis Davis, celebrating his Pew Fellowship.
The spouse of a recipient went up to my late mother-in-law and said: “That’s Terry Gross. Did you know she’s a lesbian?” She just thought that was hysterical. There’s actually a Web site called NNDB, where they list people’s biographical statistics, like your date of birth and religion. They have my sexual orientation as “Matter of Dispute.”
Before Bill O’Reilly walked off your show in 2003, he asked you over and over if you’d been tougher on him than on Al Franken, who was on the show a few weeks earlier promoting a book highly critical of O’Reilly. You conceded you had. Was it a fair point?
I thought it was a totally unfair question. There was no need to be tough on Franken. This was before Air America, before he ran for office. I don’t think you treat a satirist and comic the same way you treat the person who sees himself as the toughest interviewer in America, who has a microphone every night to espouse his political views.
When you interviewed Gene Simmons in 2002, he said some really shocking things to you, like, “If you want to welcome me with open arms, I’m afraid you’re also gonna have to welcome me with open legs.” He wasn’t in the studio with you. Do you suppose he would have been such a pig had you been face to face?
He probably wouldn’t have. I’ve had guests walk out on me but never had a guest walk out on me face to face, ever.
What’s so funny about that interview is, despite saying all those filthy things, Gene Simmons sounds so much like everybody’s Jewish grandfather from Miami.
I know. That’s what I love about Howard Stern too. On the one hand he’s so out there and so radical, but within him is this kvetchy Jewish grandfather. Howard Stern is a radio genius.
You two are perhaps the best at eliciting revealing interviews out of your subjects. What do you think the biggest stylistic difference is?
I don’t ask about their penis size.
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