Lemonada

Lemonada

This is Talk Easy. I'm San Francisco.

Welcome to the show.

Today, broadcast legend Terry Gross.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of her show, Fresh Air.

What began in 1975 as a local experiment at W.HY.Y in Philadelphia, has since grown into a national institution, one that not only transform public radio, but laid the groundwork for podcasting. In that half century, Terry has

conducted over 15,000 interviews with actors, authors, politicians, comedians, filmmakers,

you name it, her disarmingly candid line

of questioning, with that calm yet incisive voice of hers, has become a permanent fixture of

American life. And yet, in all those years behind the microphone, she's rarely sat on the opposite

side of the table. By her own admission, up until recently,

she's been an inhibited interviewee, preferring to remain a blank slate for the listener,

someone whose private life is in the background so that her guest could step fully into the foreground.

But earlier this spring, that became no longer possible. After 47 years of marriage,

Terry's husband, the jazz critic Francis Davis, passed away on April 14th after a protracted

illness. He was 78. Then, two and a half weeks later, Terry returned to remember Francis on the air,

the professional and personal inextricably linked,

which, of course, makes it all the more meaningful to sit with her in this moment,

to honor not only five decades of fresh air,

but also the life she and Francis built together.

And so for today's very special episode, I got on a plane to Philadelphia to talk to Terry about

...