Yes, Terry Gross is giving advice to be uncomfortably familiar if you try this on someone you've never seen before. She gets to do that because interviewing her

Yes, Terry Gross is giving advice to be uncomfortably familiar if you try this on someone you've never seen before. She gets to do that because interviewing her is a pretense; the interviewee knows her by reputation, and she knows them by their public persona. If you don't know the person, then yes, you have to ante up with small talk, let them warm up to you, and all the usual stuff. The point is that open-ended questions let other people drive the conversation, and it usually works better that way. Plus, you can't accidentally bring up an awkward topic if you don't choose one.