This one popped up in my podcast feed last weekend. Apologies for a second Terry Gross/Fresh Air story in less than a month. The previous post (click HERE) was much shorter and a bit more about the history of the show, more of a promotion of the show, Fresh Air, and its history. This interview is a much slower walk through Terry Gross’s personal history and the twists and turns that led her to the show  and what the show has become.

I’ve listened to the 2-hour interview twice and being on my own personal rediscovering project (working through my own journals and essays going back to the 1970s), I enjoyed listening to the various unexpected turning points in her life and career, some horribly personal, that have given us this incredible gift of professional journalism that has been unflinching in it’s gaze at the best of human creativity and struggle and sometimes failure. Also, of note, to me, is that, given this long history of interviews and conversations, she recognizes that things change and what we need changes, and standards change and all of that is part of what it means to be human. And the role of the journalist is to discuss these things without being prurient or as a hit-piece trying to “score points,” but to be honest and human. 

When discussing her family she said that her father’s motto might have been: “Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst,” and how frustrating that mindset was for her growing up. I love the stories about realizing that she needed to “rebel” against her parents, whom she deeply loved, by dropping out of school and taking a cross-country trip, but then later realized that she still hadn’t figured out that she had more than the option to do what her parents wanted versus what her boyfriend wanted. She hadn’t realized that there could have been a third option. I think about my own possible motto and can’t decide between, “Well, that didn’t go as planned,” or “Well, that could have gone better.” 

The interview ending with thoughts about public media and its future… I didn’t come to appreciate NPR/PBS until very late and am concerned that it will disappear because the current conman in charge doesn’t understand institutions and the public good. This reminds me of how writers in the late 1960s and 70s thought that we’d have space colonies and trips to the outer planets by the 2000s, had the country continued to fund the space program anywhere close to Apollo levels. But Nixon wanted this institution to pay for itself and human space flight has been stuck in low-earth orbit for the past 50-years and space flight itself has become the plaything of the billionaires. Fresh Air and Terry Gross and NPR are a gift of what non-profit journalism can really accomplish and contribute to society and civilization. Enjoy (while you can). JBB

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Tags: Fresh Air, life lessons, Talk Easy Sam Fragoso, Terry Gross, Video Weekends

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