About Fresh Air

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio's most popular programs. Each week nearly 4.5 million people tune in to the show's intimate conversations broadcast on more than 450 National Public Radio (NPR) stations across the country, as well as in Europe on the World Radio Network.

The one-hour program features Terry Gross' in-depth interviews with prominent cultural and entertainment figures, as well as distinguished experts on current affairs and news.

Though Fresh Air has been categorized as a "talk show," it hardly fits the mold. Its 1994 Peabody Award citation credits Fresh Air with "probing questions, revelatory interviews and unusual insights." And a variety of top publications count Gross among the country's leading interviewers. The show gives interviews as much time as needed, and complements them with comments from well-known critics and commentators.

Fresh Air, produced at WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and broadcast nationally by NPR, has more than doubled its audience since 1989. Its subject matter has also expanded with the changing times. The show originally centered almost exclusively on interviews with popular cultural and entertainment figures such as Tony Bennett, David Mamet, Stephen Sondheim and Nicholas Cage. But Fresh Air has added to its guest list people who can provide perspectives clarifying almost any topic in the news.

"If you want to understand a political conflict, it helps to understand the culture in which that conflict is taking place", Gross says. "When there is a crisis in a foreign country, we sometimes call up that country's leading novelist or filmmaker to get that cultural perspective." Fresh Air's interviews, which are much more in-depth than most news interviews, have helped listeners understand the roots of religious fundamentalism, meet doctors who care for war victims, understand the difficulties facing education reformers and much more.

Of course, the people behind the most interesting books, films and music continue to be a primary subject of Fresh Air. "I try to show the connections between the person's work and their life that led to that work," Gross says of her cultural interviews. And it is her trademark meticulous research that lets her link ideas and experience in ways that help even the most reticent guest relax.

Fresh Air is also known for its nationally recognized critics and commentators, including classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz of The Boston Phoenix, winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for criticism; linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, usage editor of The American Heritage Dictionary; pop music critic Ken Tucker of New York Magazine; rock historian Ed Ward, coauthor of Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll; television critic David Bianculli of the New York Daily News; jazz critic Kevin Whitehead of The Village Voice and Coda; book critic Maureen Corrigan of Georgetown University; world-music and American-roots music critic Milo Miles, who writes for The Village Voice and The New York Times.

Terry Gross started out in public radio in 1973, at WBFO in Buffalo. Soon after, she became producer and host of Fresh Air, then a live, daily show broadcast locally, at WHYY in 1975. She was joined by Daniel Miller, now the show's senior producer, in 1978. A weekly, half-hour edition of the show premiered nationally in 1985, and soon won an International Radio Festival Gold Medal and a prestigious Ohio State Award.

Fresh Air's substitute hosts are David Bianculli, TV critic for the New York Daily News, and Dave Davies, senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News.

Fresh Air premiered nationally in its current hour-long version in 1987, designed as the lead-in to All Things Considered. Miller has been the show's senior producer since 1987; other current staff members include producers Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Naomi Person and Monique Nazareth; director Roberta Shorrock; Fresh Air Weekend Producer AnnMarie Baldonado; Patty Leswing, Ian Chillag and Sam Briger; station services coordinator Dorothy Ferebee; engineering supervisor Joyce Lieberman, technical director Audrey Bentham and engineers Robert Perdick and Julian Herzfeld.

Major funding for Fresh Air is provided by Barnes & Noble, The George Gund Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and NPR member stations. Fresh Air is distributed via satellite to public radio stations Monday through Friday at noon, 3 and 7 p.m Eastern time.