Terry Gross
Terry Gross
Terry Gross is the host and co-executive producer of Fresh Air, an interview format radio show produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and distributed throughout the United States by NPR. She has been in this position since 1975 and has conducted thousands of interviews over the 40 years working at the job...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRadio Host
Date of Birth14 February 1951
CountryUnited States of America
football dad children
I mean, Dad was one of these people who simply could not lose, you know? He could not stand it when a kid was beating him. He would go crazy when the child came to that moment, which, you know, you have to come to - I mean, Dad played Old Maids like he played football. He just simply had to win every single thing every single time.
children kids knowing
The line changed my life 'cause I thought of some poor woman I hadn't even met walking around the United States or the world not knowing she's going to be beaten up by me and these kids, unborn, not knowing they were going to be born into the family of a child-beater just because I was. So it really did have a great effect on me.
children lines way
So the Great Santini was how he liked being referred to by his children. He would line up his seven children, and there was this ritual we'd go through. And he would say, who's the greatest of them all? And we - the seven - would say, you are, oh, Great Santini. And he would say, who knows all, hears all and sees all? You do, oh, Great Santini. So this was the ridiculous way I was raised.
morning children dad
Dad mistook - for some reason unbeknownst to me - he mistook his family for a platoon of Marines. I mean, he - the exact same thing he brought to the disciplining of a squadron, a battalion, a platoon, he brought to the disciplining of his children. He ran the house - he had Saturday morning inspections for us, he had white-glove inspections for us as kids.
mother children class
I was in an adolescent psychology class at Citadel when the guy said, if you had a mother who was beaten, there's a great chance you'll beat your wife. And if you were beaten as a child, there's a terrific chance you're going to be a child-beater.
commercial
We don't want commercial relations. We don't need that clientele.
constant resisted
Mooney is a constant agitator who has resisted the seductions of conformity.
might assault
Rapists who might've been convicted were free to assault other women.
mom dream crazy
My parents were pretty open about a lot of things, especially my mom. And any kind of little crazy thing I was into, she was very supportive of. You know, whether it was BMX bike racing or being in the Boy Scouts or surfing or anything else, she always seemed to sort of support it. And I think it's because she was an immigrant and that idea of sort of having her kids be able to have access to their dreams and whatever they wanted to follow was very important to her.
growing-up kids names
I'm first generation American, and my parents were both from Nigeria. And so I always say that I'm literally an African American. So my last name is Famuyiwa, it's different. And so that was a part of my experience from people not being able to pronounce it to not sort of having sort of a shared, common history with a lot of the kids that I was growing up with because my parents were from Africa.
creative eras late
That era in the late '80s through the '90s was really when the music was so new, fresh, energetic, but still creative. It hadn't quite gotten corporatized yet.
kids thinking self
I think in particularly with young kids who don't have a lot of positive influences, pop culture almost becomes a larger part of that self-discovery and how you define yourself.
sex past law
The sex drive is one of the most fundamental human urges, and throughout history, there have been laws regulating what is considered acceptable sexual behavior. In the past century, the law has had trouble keeping up with changing social and moral standards.
brother dad boards
All my brothers and sisters have stories about Dad like this. I remember, when my sister was about to beat him in checkers for the first time, he knocked the board over.