Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Terry Gross & Alison Steele -- Radio Birds of a Feather

Perhaps my favorite radio show/podcast is NPR's Fresh Air, the daily hour-long interview show hosted by Terry Gross. It's been on the air almost as long as I've been alive (so a lonnnggg time) and is a radio institution. Gross is an amazing interviewer and she's interviewed nearly every famous and important person alive. 

It's also one of the longest running shows ever hosted by a woman and, in this #MeToo era, that's certainly significant. 

In this (also very long) interview with New York magazine, Terry Gross talks about her career, her show, and her interviewing style. But what I loved most of all is that she gives a shout-out to Mr NYC favorite, Alison Steele the Nightbird, the deceased legendary overnight DJ and subject of one one Mr NYC's most popular blog posts ever.

Gross says, about the early days of her career, ""... I'd only heard one woman on the radio, Alison Steele, the Nightbird." Gross doesn't say if Steele was inspiration (and the interviewer is probably too young even to know who Alison Steele was) but it's awesome to see Alison Steele (who's been dead for more than twenty-years) get this kind of tribute. Steele never had the fame or success of Gross but she was the forerunner, the inspiration, and, in this time, more important than ever before.   

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