Talk Easy Turns 10 (with Terry Gross)
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Higher Ground
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2026
⏱️ 109 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
To mark the beginning of Talk Easy’s 10-year anniversary, Sam called up Terry Gross.
Watch this episode on YouTube.
Then, we turn to their conversation from Philadelphia last fall. They discuss Terry’s half century hosting Fresh Air (8:00), early memories of writing (13:00), and her improbable road to public radio (29:38). Terry walks us through the formative years of Fresh Air (33:37) and its seminal conversations with Kurt Vonnegut (40:21), John Updike (46:30), Monica Lewinsky (49:30), Joan Didion (1:00:55), and more.
On the back-half, Gross reflects on forty-seven years of partnership with her late husband, jazz writer Francis Davis (1:03:24), their shared affinity for reading and music (1:05:57), the future of public media (1:19:16), and why she continues to have faith in (and love for) the long-form interview (1:31:35).
Original air date: September 14, 2025
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Forgo, so welcome to the show. |
| 0:19.5 | Welcome to the show. |
| 0:39.5 | All right. So, as some of you know, Talk Easy turns 10 this month. I think the real date is April 7th of 26. To celebrate the occasion, I've been asking listeners to write in at Talk EasyPot at |
| 0:46.5 | Gmail.com with their favorite episodes. But to kickstart this thing, I wanted to replay this |
| 0:53.8 | episode with Terry Gross because so many of you wrote in with that suggestion. |
| 0:59.2 | And it feels kind of perfect at this moment to replay the talk. |
| 1:05.1 | But before we do that, I thought if she's available, I would call up Terry, who I believe has the week off. |
| 1:13.0 | So hopefully this isn't a massive intrusion. |
| 1:15.3 | So, okay, here we go. |
| 1:17.8 | I told her we were going to do this, but you know, she's busy. |
| 1:21.8 | Hey, Sam. |
| 1:22.6 | Hi. |
| 1:23.3 | It's your week off. |
| 1:24.6 | How are you doing? |
| 1:25.9 | I'm doing okay. |
| 1:26.7 | I had a lot of... The reason I needed the week off was to get some sleep, |
| 1:31.3 | because there's never enough time to sleep, but also to catch up, like, on taxes. |
| 1:35.3 | You know, when you're on constant deadline, and I probably don't have to tell you this, |
| 1:39.3 | deadlines take precedent over everything. |
| 1:42.3 | I know. |
| 1:43.3 | And so everything else in life that has to be done just piles up around you. |
| 1:47.9 | So I take staycation so I can deal with everything else that I haven't dealt with. |
... |
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