Terry Gross (born February 14, 1951) is an American journalist who is the host and co-executive producer of Fresh Air, an interview-based radio show produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and distributed nationally by NPR. Since joining NPR in 1975, Gross has interviewed thousands of guests.

Gross has won praise over the years for her low-key and friendly yet often probing interview style and for the diversity of her guests. She has a reputation for researching her guests' work the night before an interview, often asking them unexpected questions about their early careers.

Early life

Terry Gross was born in Brooklyn, New York City, and grew up in its Sheepshead Bay neighborhood, the second child of Anne (Abrams), a stenographer, and Irving Gross, who worked in a family millinery business, where he sold fabric to milliners. She grew up in a Jewish family, and all her grandparents were immigrants, her father's parents from Tarnów, Poland, and her mother's from the Russian Empire. When she was young, people would often ask where Gross came from, assuming that her lack of a heavy Brooklyn accent meant she grew up elsewhere.

In 1968, Gross graduated from Sheepshead Bay High School. She earned a bachelor's degree in English and a Master of Education degree in communications from the University at Buffalo.

thumb|Terry Gross, host of the NPR radio program Fresh Air, in the WHYY studios in Philadelphia in 2004

Career

Gross began her radio career in 1973 at WBFO, an NPR CPB-funded college station, then broadcasting from the Main Street Campus

In 1975, she moved to WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to host and produce Fresh Air, which was a local interview program at the time. In 1985, Fresh Air with Terry Gross went national, being distributed weekly by NPR. It became a daily program two years later. Gross typically conducts the interviews from the WHYY-FM studios in Philadelphia, with her subject at the studio of a local NPR affiliate convenient to them, connected via telephone or satellite feed. For the majority of these conversations, Gross is not face-to-face with her subjects. Gross prides herself on preparation; prior to interviewing guests, she reads their books, watches their movies, or listens to their CDs. The Boston Phoenix opined that "Terry Gross ... is almost certainly the best cultural interviewer in America, and one of the best all-around interviewers, period. Her smart, thoughtful questioning pushes her guests in unlikely directions. Her interviews are revelatory in a way other people's seldom are." Much has been written about Gross's voice,

Difficult interviews

There have been some occasions when Gross' interviews have not gone smoothly. Gross asked Nancy Reagan about the lack of funding and mishandling of HIV/AIDS by her husband, President Ronald Reagan, which was not well received. Several guests, including Lou Reed, Jann Wenner, Faye Dunaway, Peter Boyle, Monica Lewinsky, Bill O'Reilly, and Adam Driver, have stopped their interviews prematurely.

Three notable examples are:

  • February 4, 2002: Kiss singer and bassist Gene Simmons. The interview began with Gross not pronouncing Simmons's original Hebrew last name to his liking. Simmons dismissively replied to her that she pronounced without "flavor" because she had a "Gentile mouth"; Gross responded that she is Jewish. In the interview, Gross asked Simmons about his studded codpiece, to which Simmons replied, "It holds in my manhood, otherwise it would be too much for you to take," adding, "If you want to welcome me with open arms, I'm afraid you're also going to have to welcome me with open legs," to which Gross replied, "That's a really obnoxious thing to say." Unlike most Fresh Air guests, Simmons refused to grant permission for the interview to be made available on the NPR website. The interview appears in Gross's book All I Did Was Ask. As of 2024, the interview is available in the Fresh Air archive online.
  • October 8, 2003: Fox News television host Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly walked out of the interview because of what he considered biased questions, creating a media controversy fed by the ongoing presidential campaign. Toward the end of the interview, O'Reilly asked Gross if she had been as tough on Al Franken, who had appeared on the program two weeks earlier. Gross responded, "No, I wasn't ... we had a different interview." Gross was later criticized by then NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin for "an interview that was, in the end, unfair to O'Reilly" and that "it felt as though Terry Gross was indeed 'carrying Al Franken's water.' " Dvorkin described Gross's interviewing tactic of reading a quote critical of O'Reilly after he had walked out of the room as "unethical and unfair". Gross was later supported by an NPR colleague, Mike Pesca, who contended that O'Reilly did have the opportunity to respond to a criticism that Gross read to O'Reilly leveled by People magazine, but that he defaulted by prematurely abandoning the interview.
  • February 9, 2005: Lynne Cheney, conservative author and the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney. The initial focus of the interview was on Cheney's latest history book, but Gross moved on to questions about Cheney's lesbian daughter Mary and her opinion of the Bush administration's opposition to same-sex marriage. Cheney declined to comment on her daughter's sexuality, but repeatedly stated her opposition to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which was being endorsed by President George W. Bush. Cheney declined to discuss the matter further. When Gross brought the interview back to issues of gay rights, Cheney again refused to comment. According to producers, Cheney had been warned that Gross would ask about politics and current events.

Other appearances

On October 30, 1988, Gross played radio host "Rose Butler" in a remake of the famous The War of the Worlds broadcast of fifty years earlier. The 1988 version was produced by WGBH in Boston and picked up by 150 National Public Radio stations.

Gross appeared as a guest voice on The Simpsons as herself in the episodes "The Debarted" and "The Girl on the Bus".

During the spring 1998 semester, Gross was a guest lecturer at University of California-Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

In 2015 she appeared on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me and played the game "Not My Job", answering questions about Hulk Hogan.

In June 2017, Gross appeared as a guest-voice on Clarence as Aberdale Public Radio host, Debra Copper, in the episode "Public Radio".

In January 2020, Gross appeared on the PBS program Finding Your Roots, in which she explored her Jewish heritage. A year prior, host Henry Louis Gates Jr. had been a guest on Fresh Air.

In 2020, Gross appeared as a fictionalized version of herself in the audiobook version of the Max Brooks novel Devolution.

She is the voice of Pam in the HBO Max animated series The Fungies!.

Personal life

While she was in college in the late 1960s, Gross was married for about a year to a man she knew from high school, with whom she had been living previously. Gross said she dropped out of college in her sophomore year to hitchhike with him across the country before they were married.

Gross was married to Francis Davis, a former jazz critic for The Village Voice, from 1994 until his death in 2025. Together since 1978, Davis came from a Catholic background, but neither he nor Gross was religious.

Awards

  • 1981: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Award for Best Live Radio Program
  • 1987: Ohio State Award
  • 1989: Drexel University, Honorary Doctor of Letters
  • 2007: Literarian Award, a lifetime achievement award given by the National Book Foundation
  • 2007: SUNY–Buffalo, Doctor of Humane Letters
  • 2022: Peabody Award

Works and publications

Books

  • Gross, Terry. All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists. New York: Hyperion, 2004. , . .

Audio

  • Gross, Terry. Fresh Air on Stage and Screen. [Washington, D.C.]: National Public Radio, 1998, 1996. Two sound cassettes. . .
  • Tape 1. Mel Brooks, Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Ed Harris, Jeremy Irons, Nathan Lane, Mercedes McCambridge, Wallace Shawn/André Gregory
  • Tape 2. André Braugher, Divine, Faye Dunaway, Clint Eastwood, Dennis Franz, Audrey Hepburn, Dennis Hopper, Samuel L. Jackson, Harvey Keitel, Tracey Ullman
  • Gross, Terry. Fresh Air on Stage and Screen. Vol. 2. [Washington, D.C.]: National Public Radio, 2000. Three CDs. . .
  • David Chase, John Cusack, Catherine Deneuve, Peter Fonda, Gene Hackman, Uta Hagen, Werner Herzog, Dustin Hoffman, Anjelica Huston, Samuel L. Jackson, David Mamet, Bill Murray, Diane Keaton, Al Pacino, Sidney Poitier, Clarence Williams III, James Woods
  • Gross, Terry. Laughs: Fresh Air with Terry Gross [Terry Gross Interviews 21 Stars of Comedy]. Philadelphia, PA: WHYY, 2003, 2004. Three CDs. . .
  • Disc 1: Ahmed Ahmed & Maz Jobrani, Al Franken, Bill Maher, Conan O'Brien, Richard Pryor, Martin Short, Tracey Ullman
  • Disc 2: Richard Belzer, Drew Carey, Larry David, Carol Leifer, Jon Lovitz, Colin Quinn, Chris Rock
  • Disc 3: Phyllis Diller, Jay Leno, Jackie Mason, Bob Newhart, Joan Rivers, Henny Youngman
  • Gross, Terry, et al. Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Terry Gross Interviews 11 Stars of Stage & Screen. [Minneapolis, Minn.]: HighBridge, 2007, 2014. Two CDs. . .
  • Dave Chappelle, George Clooney, Stephen Colbert, David Cronenberg, Tim Curry, Jodie Foster, Lisa Kudrow, CCH Pounder, Thelma Schoonmaker, Billy Bob Thornton, Robin Williams
  • Gross, Terry. Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Faith, Reason & Doubt. [Minneapolis, Minn.]: Highbridge Co., 2008. Three CDs. . .
  • Disc 1. Karen Armstrong, Pastor John Hagee, Tim LaHaye, Julia Sweeney, Michael Wex
  • Disc 2. Richard Dawkins, Francis Collins, Barbara Brown Taylor, Steven Waldman, Shalom Auslander
  • Disc 3. Akbar Ahmed, James H. Cone, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Reynolds Price, Bishop Gene Robinson
  • Gross, Terry. Fresh Air with Terry Gross Funny People: More Interviews with Stars of Comedy. Minneapolis, Minn: Highbridge, 2010. Two CDs. . .

Video

  • 2012: Birbiglia, Mike. Fresh Air 2: 2 Fresh 2 Furious (short film).

References

Further reading

  • Terry Gross at NPR