Breaths Of Fresh Air: The Art Of The Terry Gross Interview
In January, I joined Audible’s Original Content team after spending seven years as a producer at National Public Radio’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. There, part of my job involved homing in on the most interesting parts of an interview: distilling longer conversations into tight, broadcast-ready pieces and selecting which clips to play at the beginning of the show to pique interest among listeners. I’ll now put those same skills to work by highlighting some moments from my time at Fresh Air that illustrate what makes a Terry Gross interview so great.
I started at Fresh Air in September of 2008. One of the first interviews I worked on was with a man named Maher Arar. I’d never heard of him before, but I haven’t been able to forget his story. Arar’s interview is a great example of how audio can help amplify an otherwise unheard voice that brings a perspective that is important in the current cultural or political moment. Arar is a dual citizen of Canada and Syria. In 2002 he was heading home to Canada after a family vacation when, during a layover at JFK airport, he was detained on suspicion of being a member of Al Qaeda. The United States used “extraordinary rendition” to send him to Syria where he was beaten, tortured, and held in a tomblike cell for 10 months.
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