7 ms·

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

134 points by smacktoward 7y ago

sarcher 7y ago
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 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 relevant metadata. Hopefully I'm just missing something obvious.
- drdeadringer 7y ago
  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 smartphone with a monthly data plan just for podcasts, but I really shouldn't have to.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    If all old episodes are actually kept in the RSS feed, there are scripts for this. Here's one: https://gist.github.com/Wowfunhappy/e042b04a34b25bfe25d04b28914196d4 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.
- emanuensis 7y ago
  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.
ilamont 7y ago
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 https://freshairarchive.org/segments/gene-simmons) was brutal but I've heard her say before that it's been the most listened-to online episode since it originally aired in 2002.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- batbomb 7y ago
  The Howard Stern interview is great too.
  - colordrops 7y ago
    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.
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      Rogan’s interviews are largely a thinly-veiled excuse to push right-wing BS to the impressionable young men that comprise his audience. As someone who’s had to talk people out of racist and misogynistic ideology that they were pipelined into through Rogan/his guests, I really wish he didn’t have so much purchase. I know he has a very polished “chill” veneer, but his long-time friendship with Alex Jones should clue people in to what he’s actually after. He even appeared on Jones’ show a week after one of the Sandy Hook parents who had been targeted by Jones’ listeners killed himself. https://slate.com/culture/2019/03/joe-rogans-podcast-is-an-essential-platform-for-freethinkers-who-hate-the-left.html https://slate.com/culture/2019/03/joe-rogans-podcast-is-an-e...
BurningFrog 7y ago
I don't get the Gross love. She's so very wordy. Likes to use 40 words to ask a 5 word question.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Wistar 7y ago
  Her wordy elixir elicits excellent responses.
smacktoward 7y ago
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 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-joy https://freshairarchive.org/segments/computer-scientist-bill... - Stewart Brand on Silicon Valley, also in 1989: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/short-history-silicon-valley https://freshairarchive.org/segments/short-history-silicon-v... - Richard Stallman, 1991: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/software-and-copyright https://freshairarchive.org/segments/software-and-copyright - Mitch Kapor, 1993: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/information-highway https://freshairarchive.org/segments/information-highway - Bill Gates, 1995: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/bill-gates-future-information-highway https://freshairarchive.org/segments/bill-gates-future-infor... - Tim Berners-Lee, 1996: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/creator-world-wide-web https://freshairarchive.org/segments/creator-world-wide-web - Andy Grove, 1996: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/intel-president-and-ceo-andrew-grove-building-his-success https://freshairarchive.org/segments/intel-president-and-ceo... - Jerry Yang, 1997: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/jerry-yang-navigating-world-wide-web https://freshairarchive.org/segments/jerry-yang-navigating-w... - Linus Torvalds, 2001: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/computer-programmer-linus-torvalds https://freshairarchive.org/segments/computer-programmer-lin... - Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 2003: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/google-founders-larry-page-and-sergey-brin https://freshairarchive.org/segments/google-founders-larry-p... - Jimmy Wales, 2007: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/jimmy-wales-user-generated-generation https://freshairarchive.org/segments/jimmy-wales-user-genera...
- stallmanite 7y ago
  Thanks for linking to these specifically. Wouldn’t have spent the time to find it otherwise but am loving the Richard Stallman interview.
- JohnBooty 7y ago
  Oh my goodness, thank you. I simply had no idea that she'd interviewed any of these folks!
mavsman 7y ago
Misread this then realized it's missing "Prince of Bel-" and it's not what I had hoped.
classicsnoot 7y ago
~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.
- unethical_ban 7y ago
  I miss pre-Trump America, too. On topic, though, a good interview is engaging to the listeners, and not every interviewee is interesting on their own. It is her job to set the stage, to guide the conversation to find the most unique and intriguing things about a person or a story.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kja1123 7y ago
Somebody should write an article on how to do this Monaco, the editor framework that powers VScode, so you can build your own flavor of vscode for fun.
killjoywashere 7y ago
A small smattering of people to search for that hackers might not think as much about: Present: * Richard C. Holbrooke * Zbigniew Brzezinski * Madeleine Albright * Lord David Owen * Larry Page & Sergey Brin * Norman Schwarzkopf Absent: * Sandy Berger * Tony Lake * Henry Kissinger * Cyrus Vance * Anthony Zinni Some other things to search for: * Booker Prize * Nobel Prize * MacArthur Fellows And I'll stop here for fear of wandering off and forgetting to add the comment.

134 points by smacktoward 7y ago

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 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 relevant metadata. Hopefully I'm just missing something obvious.

drdeadringer 7y ago
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 smartphone with a monthly data plan just for podcasts, but I really shouldn't have to.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  If all old episodes are actually kept in the RSS feed, there are scripts for this. Here's one: https://gist.github.com/Wowfunhappy/e042b04a34b25bfe25d04b28914196d4 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.
emanuensis 7y ago
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.

ilamont 7y ago

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 https://freshairarchive.org/segments/gene-simmons) was brutal but I've heard her say before that it's been the most listened-to online episode since it originally aired in 2002.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
batbomb 7y ago
The Howard Stern interview is great too.
- colordrops 7y ago
  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.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    Rogan’s interviews are largely a thinly-veiled excuse to push right-wing BS to the impressionable young men that comprise his audience. As someone who’s had to talk people out of racist and misogynistic ideology that they were pipelined into through Rogan/his guests, I really wish he didn’t have so much purchase. I know he has a very polished “chill” veneer, but his long-time friendship with Alex Jones should clue people in to what he’s actually after. He even appeared on Jones’ show a week after one of the Sandy Hook parents who had been targeted by Jones’ listeners killed himself. https://slate.com/culture/2019/03/joe-rogans-podcast-is-an-essential-platform-for-freethinkers-who-hate-the-left.html https://slate.com/culture/2019/03/joe-rogans-podcast-is-an-e...

BurningFrog 7y ago

I don't get the Gross love. She's so very wordy. Likes to use 40 words to ask a 5 word question.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Wistar 7y ago
Her wordy elixir elicits excellent responses.

smacktoward 7y ago

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 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-joy https://freshairarchive.org/segments/computer-scientist-bill... - Stewart Brand on Silicon Valley, also in 1989: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/short-history-silicon-valley https://freshairarchive.org/segments/short-history-silicon-v... - Richard Stallman, 1991: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/software-and-copyright https://freshairarchive.org/segments/software-and-copyright - Mitch Kapor, 1993: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/information-highway https://freshairarchive.org/segments/information-highway - Bill Gates, 1995: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/bill-gates-future-information-highway https://freshairarchive.org/segments/bill-gates-future-infor... - Tim Berners-Lee, 1996: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/creator-world-wide-web https://freshairarchive.org/segments/creator-world-wide-web - Andy Grove, 1996: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/intel-president-and-ceo-andrew-grove-building-his-success https://freshairarchive.org/segments/intel-president-and-ceo... - Jerry Yang, 1997: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/jerry-yang-navigating-world-wide-web https://freshairarchive.org/segments/jerry-yang-navigating-w... - Linus Torvalds, 2001: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/computer-programmer-linus-torvalds https://freshairarchive.org/segments/computer-programmer-lin... - Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 2003: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/google-founders-larry-page-and-sergey-brin https://freshairarchive.org/segments/google-founders-larry-p... - Jimmy Wales, 2007: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/jimmy-wales-user-generated-generation https://freshairarchive.org/segments/jimmy-wales-user-genera...

stallmanite 7y ago
Thanks for linking to these specifically. Wouldn’t have spent the time to find it otherwise but am loving the Richard Stallman interview.
JohnBooty 7y ago
Oh my goodness, thank you. I simply had no idea that she'd interviewed any of these folks!

mavsman 7y ago

Misread this then realized it's missing "Prince of Bel-" and it's not what I had hoped.

classicsnoot 7y ago

~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.

unethical_ban 7y ago
I miss pre-Trump America, too. On topic, though, a good interview is engaging to the listeners, and not every interviewee is interesting on their own. It is her job to set the stage, to guide the conversation to find the most unique and intriguing things about a person or a story.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kja1123 7y ago

Somebody should write an article on how to do this Monaco, the editor framework that powers VScode, so you can build your own flavor of vscode for fun.

killjoywashere 7y ago

A small smattering of people to search for that hackers might not think as much about: Present: * Richard C. Holbrooke * Zbigniew Brzezinski * Madeleine Albright * Lord David Owen * Larry Page & Sergey Brin * Norman Schwarzkopf Absent: * Sandy Berger * Tony Lake * Henry Kissinger * Cyrus Vance * Anthony Zinni Some other things to search for: * Booker Prize * Nobel Prize * MacArthur Fellows And I'll stop here for fear of wandering off and forgetting to add the comment.