I listen to a number of NPR podcasts and perhaps I'm misremembering but it seems there's an uptick in the past few years of interviewing and discussing the lives of just "regular folks", people who work blue-collar jobs, people with conservative religious backgrounds, etc., ... and not in a disparaging way.
But ... Fresh Air with Terry Gross still largely wanders the fields of the cultural left with nary a nod to alternative viewpoints.
Ugh. I can't stand Terry Gross. They should call it "Terry Gross Talks About Her Feelings While Interesting Guests Listen And Wonder What They're Doing There."
Terry Gross is the best interviewer in English with a regular show in any medium, and has been for decades. I’d even even be willing to proclaim her best of all time, if you only count people with long-running interview shows. (There are some documentary filmmakers who are great interviewers, etc., but only publish occasional niche work.)
She is invariably respectful, even of complete asshats. She prepares well for every interview, listens to her guests, asks good starting questions and insightful follow-up questions, and gets people to open up about topics they don’t usually discuss. She knows she has a wide audience and makes sure guests explain things in an accessible way. She doesn’t throw softballs at people, but she also isn’t aggressively confrontational. It’s clear that her goal is always to understand where someone is coming from give them space to explain their point of view in their own words, rather than trying to win an argument, score cheap points, or kiss ass.
As a result, she usually has very good guests, from a wide variety of backgrounds, talking about a wide variety of topics.
Pick anyone going on a book (or whatever) interview circuit and listen to / watch 4 or 5 of their interviews back to back. The Fresh Air interview turns out best almost every time. Usually it’s not even close. Other interviewers try to tell the guest’s story for them, or are trying to push the guest into one identity bucket or another, or have a point they want to make and won’t listen, or haven’t prepared and have no idea about the guest’s field or background.
I'd put Bob Edwards (former Morning Edition anchor, now on SirriusXM) in there as well.
Paul Kennedy, CBC, Ideas isn't strictly an interview programme, but it's exceedingly good long-form, and intelligent.
I'm surprised I'm not coming up with any British / BBC interviewers, though there can be good programming there as well, at times.
Brooke Gladstone and Bob Edwards of On the Media also make my list. Their subject range from friendly to collegial (other people in the media industry), to hostile. It's possible to tell the dynamic, but the demeanor is always professional.
I am quite the fan of Gross, and she's grown on me over the years.
As a 20+ year listener of NPR (and Terry Gross), I always thought Gross was the best interviewer without a doubt. About 2 years ago, I stumbled upon a Howard Stern interview and was blown away. Never thought much of the shock-jock before, but you should check out his interview with Letterman from last week.
People have different tastes, and that's okay. Not all shows are for everyone. There's no need for gratuitous negativity. It adds nothing to the conversation and can easily derail it.
Yeah, Fresh Air/Terry Gross is pretty caught up in her own bubble, if you ask me. She gets pretty feisty when guests challenge her from time to time, which I enjoy. (Good listening when that happens!)
Contrast her to any of the Right-Wing talk programmes, where an "opposition" guest can't get a word in edgewise.
Gross does not berate her guests. She can and does ask tough questions, but she's not emotionally aggressive.
Classic instance is her interview of O'Reilly, where he cut the mic and left the interview. There are lots of online mentions of this, though I'm not sure the episode itself is. See:
(Her interviews are almost never in-studio, so guests are typically remote, as in this case.)
At the same time, it's quite obvious that Gross is a massive fan of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, to the point of schoolgirl crush. I find it endearingly charming.
The difference is the right wing talk radio shows are on commercial radio. Any show on NPR has an enormous advantage, because they're not packed with advertisements that tempt people to flip to another station. So the host can't really have a relaxed, in depth conversation with anybody.
The few left wing commercial radio shows out there are no different from their ideological counterparts.
But ... Fresh Air with Terry Gross still largely wanders the fields of the cultural left with nary a nod to alternative viewpoints.