Terry Gross
Fresh Air with Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley is a nationally recognized radio program and podcast, featuring in depth conversations exploring a wide variety of popular culture, news and issues. The show sets the standard for long-form audio interviews. Presenting Fresh Air with its second Peabody Award, Stephen Colbert said, “This NPR staple is where many of us come for some of the most insightful interviews anywhere, a place where artists, musicians, actors, directors, playwrights, authors, poets, showrunners [and] talk show hosts, open up about their work, their process and their life.”
Fresh Air is one of public media’s most popular programs, with over 3.8 million listeners weekly on over 646 NPR stations. For over 35 years, co-executive producer and host Terry Gross has engaged in conversations with newsmakers to open windows into their hearts, minds and work. In 2015, President Obama presented Gross with a National Humanities Medal, which recognized how her interviews have “pushed public figures to reveal personal motivations behind extraordinary lives — revealing simple truths that affirm our common humanity.” A regular contributor since 2021, award-winning public media journalist Tonya Mosley was named co-host of Fresh Air in April 2023.
Tonya Mosley is an Emmy award-winning journalist and the co-host of Fresh Air. Previously, she was the co-host of NPR’s midday program Here & Now, where she led daily coverage during the Trump administration, the pandemic, and the racial reckoning of 2021. On January 6, 2021, she hosted live NPR special coverage of the insurrection as it was happening. Before radio, Mosley created award-winning news features and long-form television programming as a producer, reporter, anchor, and correspondent for various outlets, including NBC and Al Jazeera America. She is also the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Truth Be Told, and She Has A Name.
Fresh Air is produced at WHYY Inc. the leading public media organization in the greater Philadelphia region and distributed nationally by NPR. In addition to Terry and Tonya, Fresh Air’s roster of commentators add reviews of books, music, film, TV and podcasts. Fresh Air has received two Peabody Awards. The 1994 Peabody citation recognized the program for its, “probing questions, revelatory interviews and unusual insights,” and in 2022 Fresh Air won its second Peabody in the Institutional category.
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Li won a Pulitzer for her memoir about the suicides of her two sons. In her new novel, Music Against the Night, she writes about two young prodigies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. -
Prine died in 2020 from complications of COVID-19. To mark what would have been his 80th birthday, we listen to an interview from 2018 in which he talked about the surgeries that altered his voice.
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Reich, who turns 90 on Oct. 3, created a vocabulary that influenced nearly every form of music — classical, electronic, jazz and pop. He talked about his groundbreaking work in 1999 and 1989.
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A self-described "folkie to the bone," Giddens sings and plays banjo and fiddle in this interview. Her latest album, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, takes its name from an Emily Dickinson poem. -
Wilson, who died Sept. 1, spiced her singing with funk, hip-hop and blues. Kevin Whitehead offers an appreciation, and we listen back to Terry's 1988 interview with Wilson.
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Rosanne Cash was 18 when her famous dad gave her a list of 100 essential country songs he thought she needed to know. She's since worked across many musical genres. Originally broadcast Oct. 5, 2009.
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Coltrane would have turned 100 on Sept. 23. We speak to his son Ravi, also a tenor saxophonist, and we revisit a 1998 interview with Elvin Jones, a drummer who performed and recorded with Coltrane.
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"I've always believed that a part of my magic, if there was any, was the fact that I look so artificial — but I am so totally real," Parton said in 2001. -
Marsh, who died Aug. 14, was one of rock's most influential voices. He edited The Rolling Stone Record Guide and wrote profiles of Bruce Springsteen and The Who. Originally broadcast in 1997.
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Best-known for his band The Frames and his part in the 2007 film Once, Hansard got his start as a street busker in Dublin. He died July 29 in a motorcycle crash. Originally broadcast in 2008.
