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Fresh Air Archive: 40 years of interviews with the voices that shape our world

freshairarchive.org

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Re: Fresh Air Archive: 40 years of interviews with the voices that shape our world

#11
post #2

Can anyone find a good way to browse? Closest thing I could find to an index is a alphabetical list of guests - but the formatting is made for mobile or something and you have to keep clicking 'load more' every couple of names. https://freshairarchive.org/search/guests In creating avenues for discovery ('collections' and 'topics') the simplest one seems to have been ignored - just listing all the segments with releva…

i get around the almost ubiquitous usage of the "more" page design by: 1) going to end of page (END button) 2) clicking 3) repeat until there is no more mores

i only have to move mouse once, as the END button scrolls to the next more at the same spot. Thus it is a rote typing on two alternate keys repeatedly.

It would be nice if there were a JS button doing all automatically.

Re: Fresh Air Archive: 40 years of interviews with the voices that shape our world

#12
post #3

I look forward to checking this out. Gross is a very skilled interviewer, and this looks like a filter for the better stuff. Off the top of my head, the relatively recent interviews with Philip Glass and Tara Westover are fantastic. There are also some interviews that did not go so well. The tension when Gene Simmons came on the show ( https://freshairarchive.org/segments/gene-simmons ) was brutal but I've heard her…

Terry Gross is the best regular interviewer in the US. She prepares well, is thoughtful and respectful, thinks on her feet, asks good follow-up questions, and focuses on getting the guest to talk.

Re: Fresh Air Archive: 40 years of interviews with the voices that shape our world

#13
One that may be of particular interest to HN readers: here's Gross interviewing Steve Jobs in 1996, right before his return to Apple and the long, remarkable run of successes that would come from that, on "the future of computer technology": https://freshairarchive.org/segments/steve-jobs-future-web

EDIT: And a few more blast-from-the-past interviews, for good measure...

- Bill Joy, in 1989: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/computer-scientist-bill...

- Stewart Brand on Silicon Valley, also in 1989: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/short-history-silicon-v...

- Richard Stallman, 1991: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/software-and-copyright

- Mitch Kapor, 1993: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/information-highway

- Bill Gates, 1995: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/bill-gates-future-infor...

- Tim Berners-Lee, 1996: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/creator-world-wide-web

- Andy Grove, 1996: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/intel-president-and-ceo...

- Jerry Yang, 1997: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/jerry-yang-navigating-w...

- Linus Torvalds, 2001: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/computer-programmer-lin...

- Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 2003: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/google-founders-larry-p...

- Jimmy Wales, 2007: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/jimmy-wales-user-genera...

Re: Fresh Air Archive: 40 years of interviews with the voices that shape our world

#15
post #5
post #3

I look forward to checking this out. Gross is a very skilled interviewer, and this looks like a filter for the better stuff. Off the top of my head, the relatively recent interviews with Philip Glass and Tara Westover are fantastic. There are also some interviews that did not go so well. The tension when Gene Simmons came on the show ( https://freshairarchive.org/segments/gene-simmons ) was brutal but I've heard her…

The Howard Stern interview is great too.

Joe Rogan, while not the best interviewer, is getting better. When he prepares, he can ask good questions and gets the guest to come out of their shell. He's one of the only places to go for good long form interviews.

Re: Fresh Air Archive: 40 years of interviews with the voices that shape our world

#16
~50% of this archive is just Terri Gross telling people about themselves to them. I was always so perplexed at how she could secure interviews with so many interesting people, then just talk through the whole thing, literally talking over interviewees to tell interviewees what they said or what happened to them. I miss pre-Trump NPR so much, but Fresh Air has always been an immensely frustrating program.

As interesting as a lot of these interviews might seem based on subject, I think many people would get a lot more out of a Big Broadcast with Ed Walker archive.

Re: Fresh Air Archive: 40 years of interviews with the voices that shape our world

#17
post #3

I look forward to checking this out. Gross is a very skilled interviewer, and this looks like a filter for the better stuff. Off the top of my head, the relatively recent interviews with Philip Glass and Tara Westover are fantastic. There are also some interviews that did not go so well. The tension when Gene Simmons came on the show ( https://freshairarchive.org/segments/gene-simmons ) was brutal but I've heard her…

Terry Gross is the best regular interviewer in the US. She prepares well, is thoughtful and respectful, thinks on her feet, asks good follow-up questions, and focuses on getting the guest to talk.

I could not disagree more. She talks far too much. I think she lets her personality as a Personality get in the way.

I know this is subjective, and I don't need you to agree with my opinion. I'm only responding because I listened to her for almost two decades and have never been able to tell anyone these thoughts except for an undeserving ex-gf and a hapless hitchhiker.

Re: Fresh Air Archive: 40 years of interviews with the voices that shape our world

#18
post #2

Can anyone find a good way to browse? Closest thing I could find to an index is a alphabetical list of guests - but the formatting is made for mobile or something and you have to keep clicking 'load more' every couple of names. https://freshairarchive.org/search/guests In creating avenues for discovery ('collections' and 'topics') the simplest one seems to have been ignored - just listing all the segments with releva…

I really wish podcasts, radio shows, &c would include archive- or collection-based torrents for those of us who want to mass-download episodes to local for offline on-demand. RSS is wonderful for upkeep but having to perform a manual click-and-save across hundreds or thousands of episodes is a questionable use of time and it's not always easy to web-scrape the .mp3 files via a script. Maybe I should just go get a sma…

If all old episodes are actually kept in the RSS feed, there are scripts for this.

Here's one: https://gist.github.com/Wowfunhappy/e042b04a34b25bfe25d04b28...

You could also run the script automatically every week to download and backup new episodes—no need for a dedicated podcast phone.

Re: Fresh Air Archive: 40 years of interviews with the voices that shape our world

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terry Gross is the best regular interviewer in the US. She prepares well, is thoughtful and respectful, thinks on her feet, asks good follow-up questions, and focuses on getting the guest to talk.

I could not disagree more. She talks far too much. I think she lets her personality as a Personality get in the way. I know this is subjective, and I don't need you to agree with my opinion. I'm only responding because I listened to her for almost two decades and have never been able to tell anyone these thoughts except for an undeserving ex-gf and a hapless hitchhiker.

>> She prepares well, is thoughtful and respectful, thinks on her feet, asks good follow-up questions, and focuses on getting the guest to talk.

> I could not disagree more.

Someone could talk too much and all of these things could still be true. Which part do you disagree with?

Re: Fresh Air Archive: 40 years of interviews with the voices that shape our world

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not disagree more. She talks far too much. I think she lets her personality as a Personality get in the way. I know this is subjective, and I don't need you to agree with my opinion. I'm only responding because I listened to her for almost two decades and have never been able to tell anyone these thoughts except for an undeserving ex-gf and a hapless hitchhiker.

>> She prepares well, is thoughtful and respectful, thinks on her feet, asks good follow-up questions, and focuses on getting the guest to talk. > I could not disagree more. Someone could talk too much and all of these things could still be true. Which part do you disagree with?

>Terry Gross is the best regular interviewer in the US.

This is the part i disagreed with. All of your other statements serve to qualify this assertion. I have great respect for her staff, but i find her interview style over-the-top and self aggrandizing.

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