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.
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.