Carrie Fisher’s ‘Fresh Air’ Interview

“Oh, I think I do overshare, and I sometime marvel that I do it. But it’s sort of – in a way, it’s my way of trying to understand myself. I don’t know. I get it out of my head. It creates community when you talk about private things and you can find other people that have the same things. Otherwise, I don’t know – I felt very lonely with some of the issues that I had or history that I had. And when I shared about it, I found that others had it, too.”

Source: NPR
Published: Nov 28, 2016
Length: 24 minutes (6,000 words)

Fresh Air Interview: Joaquin Phoenix

Awkward, wonderful interview with an actor who hates to be interviewed:

PHOENIX: If I was driving and I heard this, I’d be – I’d change the channel.

GROSS: I wouldn’t.

PHOENIX: I’d be like, why – can you shut up?

GROSS: Really? Does it bother you like that?

PHOENIX: No. I mean, I don’t know, sometimes I just, you know, I just think, who cares?

GROSS: We, who love movies, care. Does that help answer the question?

PHOENIX: OK.

Source: NPR
Published: Jan 25, 2014
Length: 36 minutes (9,222 words)

David Rakoff’s ‘Half Empty’ Worldview Is Full Of Wit

An interview with the humorist and essayist about his book, Half Empty, his Academy Award-winning short film, and his recurrence of cancer:

“GROSS: You were diagnosed with cancer in your 20s. Now you’re in your 40s and have a cancer diagnosis again. Are you dealing with it emotionally differently now in your 40s than you did in your 20s?

“Mr. RAKOFF: Yes, I think I am. I think – well, first of all, the cancer that I had in my 20s was, I even referred to it as the dilettante cancer. You know, it was Hodgkin’s lymphoma, eminently curable and just a whole different ballgame from what I’ve got now.

“And I was a little less interested in knowing about the cancer back then in my 20s. I was sort of like, well, do whatever you need to do. I’m just going to sit here and lie back and think of England.”

Source: NPR
Published: Sep 21, 2010
Length: 28 minutes (7,017 words)

The Fresh Air Interview: ‘South Park’s’ Trey Parker and Matt Stone

Mr. PARKER: So let’s make it look like it was “Family Guy” and not us. So then that gave us the whole idea for the show, that we would put “Family Guy” in the show and only have Muhammad appear in the “Family Guy” part. So if they ever saw a still of it on the Internet, or they ever saw anything, they’d know it was “Family Guy” and not us. And then they would get bombed and not us.

Source: NPR
Published: May 28, 2010
Length: 36 minutes (9,159 words)

The Fresh Air Interview: Church of Scientology, Fact-Checked

Interview with The New Yorker’s Lawrence Wright on his Paul Haggis vs. Scientology story. “GROSS: There was a meeting that you refer to in your article about Scientology, where people from the New Yorker staff met with representatives from Scientology. What was this meeting about? Mr. WRIGHT: That was one of the most amazing days of my life. I had been out to Los Angeles to interview Tommy Davis over the Memorial Day weekend. And when he finally did come to meet with me, he said that he had decided not to talk to me. But I asked him if he would agree at least to, you know, to respond to our fact-checking queries about the church. And he agreed to that. And over a period of time, we sent them 971 fact-checking queries, which alarmed them.”

Source: NPR
Published: Feb 9, 2011
Length: 11 minutes (2,947 words)

The Fresh Air Interview: Joan Rivers

“Some man, 60 years old, that couldn’t take the business and went and killed himself. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with that when you’ve got a 16-year-old daughter who gets the call? Huh? And I’ll tell you how you deal with that. You go through it, and you make jokes about it, and you continue with it, and you move forward. That’s how you do it, or that’s how I do it. Everyone handles things differently. How do you make jokes about how to deal with bankruptcy? How do you deal with your fired from Fox when your numbers were still good, and you can’t get a job for a year and a half? You do it. And I do it by making jokes.”

Source: NPR
Published: Jun 9, 2010
Length: 28 minutes (7,120 words)

The Fresh Air Interview: Jay-Z

GROSS: You know how a lot of hip-hop artists, when they’re on stage they kind of like grab their crotch?

JAY-Z: Yeah. I have a great explanation for that. … When you get up there [on stage] you feel naked, right? So when you feel naked what’s the first thing you do? You cover yourself. So that bravado is an act of I am so nervous right now and I’m scared to death. I’m going to act so tough that I’m going to hide it. And I have to grab, you know, my crotch. That’s just what happens.

Source: NPR
Published: Nov 16, 2010
Length: 35 minutes (8,891 words)