Welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vote. No question too big, no question too small. When I was

14, I had a disc man with an FM radio feature. And when I got tired of whatever weaker

than CD was in there, I turned on the radio and listen to Terry Gross on her show Fresh Air.

Fresh Air, I would argue, is the best long-form interview show that anyone has ever made.

The way she interviews people, Terry Gross is famous for her astounding levels of preparation.

Whoever it is, a writer, a musician, an actor, anybody, she will have seen or heard everything they've ever done,

she'll read all the other interviews, and then she'll arrive and just

be completely present. You can feel a lot of times when she interviews someone, this feeling that

she's getting a public person to reveal something new and genuine about themselves that they never

have. A good episode of fresh air for me seems like it can answer the question,

how did this person come to be?

I didn't know all that when I was little.

I just knew I liked your interviews more than any others.

I was drawn to them because I could listen to adults in public

talking the way I imagined they spoke privately.

It was thrilling.

When we started Search Engine, it was my first time trying to learn how to conduct Longform interviews.

I'd interviewed a lot of people before, but Longform is a different skill, differently hard.

And I wanted to interview Terry Gross about how she does it.

The question of the episode was either going to be, how do you interview people, or how do you make an interview show, or maybe just how do you listen?

I got her email. I sent her a short note that took a very long time to write, and she wrote back a polite note saying she was busy, but to check again in the future, when things might be calmer over there.

So I was going to do that.

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