#freshair30

For Our 30th Anniversary, Fresh Air Tapes Live With Seth Meyers Of 'Late Night'

Late Night host Seth Meyers joined Terry onstage in front of more than 2,000 Fresh Air fans for our 30th anniversary celebration. Don’t miss their conversation. 

Today (May 11) is Fresh Air’s 30th anniversary of being a daily, national program. That’s amazing. That also means Terry has been doing this longer than I’ve been alive.

Like a lot of people my age, my first memories of NPR were in the backseat of my parents’ car. It wasn’t long before I became a fan myself. The road trip from my hometown in Massachusetts to Philadelphia, where I went to college, was about 5 Fresh Air interviews long. I distinctly remember picking out interviews with Sacha Baron Cohen, Lisa Kudrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Jack Black and loading them onto my pink iPod mini. 

After I graduated and was miserable working in restaurants and retail, Terry’s interviews kept me sane. She kept me company during a time in my life when I felt lost and directionless. I remember Caitlin Moran, Lena Dunham, and Matt Weiner, to name a few.

I started at Fresh Air in May of 2013. I co-write the Fresh Air webpages on NPR.org with the lovely Bridget Bentz, run the social media, and handle the podcast. 

In the spirit of our anniversary, I thought I’d mention a few of my favorite interviews since I’ve been here, behind-the-scenes. 

John Waters: I have listened to this interview so many times, I practically have it memorized. I love how hard he makes Terry snort-laugh with gems like, “In Baltimore, if you're hitchhiking, you're a hooker that doesn't have the Internet.” 

Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber: Some of my favorite interviews are ones where I’ve never heard of the guest before and then they totally blow me away. Pastor Nadia started a church for outsiders (junkies, drag queens, comedians) and has a really original and inclusive philosophy about faith. 

Joaquin Phoenix: I have a special place in my heart for this interview, because the day it aired was the day I was introduced in the credits for the first time. This show was completely bonkers. He was unpredictable and bizarre, but we were all having so much fun listening in while the interview was taping. 

Lynsey Addario: While working as a bad-ass photojournalist in a war zone, Addario was kidnapped with two of her journalist colleagues. She talks about that harrowing experience in this interview. It’s riveting. Plus, as a web producer, putting together a slideshow of her work was a real joy. 

Michael K. Williams: Williams, known for playing Omar on The Wire, was a dream guest (open, funny, thoughtful) I love when he called Terry “T,” and talks about how the Rhythm Nation music video inspired him to pursue a career in the arts. His kindness radiates through the speakers.

I’m sure I’m forgetting tons of other favorites, but those are the ones that came to mind. 

We’ve got plenty of exciting things coming down the pike. Thanks for listening, reading, following the show! We can’t wait to see what you pick as your favorite interviews with the hashtag #freshair30. 

Onward, 

Celebrating 30 Years of Fresh Air

From associate producer Heidi Saman:

It's been six years since Terry spoke with Jess Goodell and I've never forgotten it. I was aware of post traumatic stress disorder but I didn't really get it until I heard Goodell describe her experience in the Mortuary Affairs unit in Iraq in 2004. As a member of the Mortuary Affairs unit, Goodell had to recover and process the remains of fallen troops. She was on the show to talk about her memoir, Shade it Black: Death and After in Iraq.

As she went through the pockets, wallets, and personal belongings of dead marines, Goodell said, “It was very common to find a spoon to eat with, and often people might have letters or pictures in their pockets as well.” She once found a picture of a sonogram in a marine’s wallet.

At one point she revealed this to Terry: “I found myself making sure that all of my belongings were clean and folded and in order and that I didn’t have anything in my pockets that would add to the work of the Mortuary Affairs marines.”

As the associate producer on an interview, I’m logging the interview as it’s coming in. When Goodell said this, I was so overwhelmed I stopped typing. What do you say after that? What is Terry going to say after that?

After what felt like a crazy long pause (to me), Terry said: “So you started thinking of yourself as a potential corpse?”

Jess responded, “You start to think that any day you might be on the litter,” and she went on to describe her own near-death experience.

Time and time again, I find myself asking, “How does Terry do that?” How does she take a moment of intensely personal revelation and keep asking questions that make the guest feel trusting and open. My instinct would be to just thank them for even saying that and end the interview. But that’s why we love Terry. She goes there, and she asks the questions we’re afraid to ask.

As the interview goes on, you can hear Goodell’s hesitation to some of Terry's questions, but you can also hear her trusting Terry, and wanting to describe what happened to her and her PTSD as clearly and as precisely as possible.

I produced this interview with our books producer, Sam Briger, and I have worked on so many interviews that have been near and dear to my heart that I can’t begin to list them all. This was just one that made its mark on my heart.

Terry always says it's difficult to pick favorite interviews, and I totally agree.  I can't even remember the interview I worked on this week or what we have booked for next week (That's a slight exaggeration.  This week I worked on Jill Soloway.  Next week it's Hasan Minaj.)  Still, I will try to point out a few interviews that I will always remember when forced to go through my mental archives.

David Rakoff  A lot of public radio listeners will remember the late David Rakoff from his work on This American Life.  In 2001, he talked to Terry about his acting career, and being frustrated by the roles that were offered to him.  He said they would fall under two categories -- “Jew-y McHebrew’ or 'Fudgy McPacker.'  He did dramatic/hysterical renditions of the lines he remembered.  He was so funny, and elicited the much sought after Terry "snort.”  Now, I have laughed a lot while logging interviews on Fresh Air, but during this one, I had to stop logging because I was crying from laughing so hard.  Fresh Air replayed this part of the interview when Rakoff passed away too soon in 2012.

Thelma Schoonmaker  I first stated booking film, TV, and theater interviews for Terry in the spring of 2005, so this is an early one.  Schoonmaker is the film editor who has worked with Martin Scorsese for over 40 years.  She has edited all of his films since Raging Bull in 1980.  She's just this wonderful, thoughtful artist who works behind the scenes, plugging away, making great films.  Terry's interview with her was one smart lady who loves movies talking to another smart lady who loves movies.

Mike Mills

I have loved booking directors, actors, and comedians early in their careers and watching their bodies of work grow.  People like Lena Dunham, Flight of the Conchords, and Hari Kondobolu come to mind. I have loved booking interviews with director Mike Mills over the years. We booked him after his first film Thumbsucker in 2005, then for his movies Beginners and 20th Century Women.  He is the ideal guest: open, smart, self-deprecatingly funny, and talks so well about how his work connects to his life, a favorite Fresh Air theme.  I feel their conversations about his films, that in reality are like love letters to his parents, end up leading to larger conversations between Terry and Mike,  about their parents who they have lost.

Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang This one is a little more current.  I am not alone in this but one of my favorite recent TV shows has to be Master of None.   Some of the episodes from that first season (Parents and Indians on TV) live on my list of favorite episodes of TV ever.  I loved hearing friends Aziz and Alan talk about their own lives and how they incorporated their experiences into the show.  Everyone loves Aziz; I am glad we were able to have Alan on too.  We should forever thank them not just for this show, but for their work on Parks and Recreation.  And this is just one of the interviews that covered these great, really personal shows based on the lives of a great comedian, sort of the antecedents of Louie.  I am glad in the last few years, we have featured interviews with people like Aziz and Alan, Donald Glover, Issa Rae, and Rachel Bloom.

Sacha Baron Cohen  I am proud of booking this one.  Up until this point, Sacha Baron Cohen was very committed to staying in character as Borat while doing all the promotion of his movie.  We were so happy that he agreed to do Fresh Air as himself, thus revealing that he was this accessible, intelligent guy.  He was quick to slip into his Borat voice though.  We love when guests slip into their characters' voices.

Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva It was a round about way to book an interview.  The movie The Bang Bang Club, starring Taylor Kitsch and Ryan Phillippe, told the story of a group of war photographers in South Africa during Apartheid.  We used the movie as an excuse to book an interview with Marinovich and Silva, two of the real photographers who inspired the film.  Both of them had lost dear friends to the work.  And both of them had been injured while trying to visually capture combat situations.  In fact,  Silva was recording his part of the interview from Walter Reed Army Medical Center; he had lost both of his legs in a land mine explosion in Afghanistan and was still recovering.  At one point, a nurse comes in to talk to Silva.  It was such a rare radio moment that we decided to leave it in the interview.  Terry has spoken to many war correspondents and photographers over the years. These interviews are inevitably harrowing, tragic, thoughtful, and moving.

--Ann Marie Baldonado, Fresh Air producer