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Terry Gross at her microphone in 2018

Terry Gross

Terry Gross is the host and an executive producer of Fresh Air, the daily program of interviews and reviews. It is produced at WHYY in Philadelphia, where Gross began hosting the show in 1975, when it was broadcast only locally. She was awarded a National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2016. Fresh Air with Terry Gross received a Peabody Award in 1994 for its “probing questions, revelatory interviews and unusual insight.” America Women in Radio and Television presented her with a Gracie Award in 1999 in the category of National Network Radio Personality. In 2003, she received the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Edward R. Murrow Award for her “outstanding contributions to public radio” and for advancing the “growth, quality and positive image of radio.” Gross is the author of All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians and Artists, published by Hyperion in 2004. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and received a bachelor’s degree in English and M.Ed. in communications from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She began her radio career in 1973 at public radio station WBFO in Buffalo, NY.

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16:10

Drug Legalization: Legalization will Increase Addiction.

Health care analyst and substance abuse expert Joseph Califano. He was LBJ's assistant for domestic affairs from 1959-65 and Secretary for Health, Education and Welfare under Jimmy Carter from 1977-79. Joseph Califano is also president of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, a research and experimental care facility at Columbia University. (Interview by Barbara Bogaev)

20:03

Drug Legalization: "The War on Drugs Is Lost."

Ethan Nadelmann, Director of The Lindesmith Center, a research center devoted to broadening the debate on drug policy, and looking at strategies that have been overlooked or ignored. (The Lindesmith Center is located in New York City, 212-887-0695) (Interview by Barbara Bogaev)

17:46

From the Archives: An Archive of Industrial Films.

Richard Prelinger is a archivist educational, industrial, and public-service films made from the 1930s through the 1960s. He's the director of Prelinger Associates, Inc., and he's collected some 25,000 films with titles like "A is For Atom," "Good Wrinkles: The Story of a Remarkable Fruit," and "Are You Popular?" Some of his collected films will be shown at the American Museum of the Moving Image (Jan 27-Feb 11).

22:02

From the Archives: Understanding the Larger World of Human Sexuality.

Sexologist Leonore Tiefer book "Sex Is Not a Natural Act: and Other Essays."(Westview) was published in 1995, and has since come out in paperback. In the book she looks at our society's anxieties and ignorances towards sex. She also questions what is "normal" sex and how people are to know how to have sex if no one talks about it. Tiefer received a Ph.D. in physiological psychology with a dissertation on hormones and mating behavior of rats. But Tiefer came to realize she knew nothing of the social norms of sexuality and questioned how sexual norms evolved.

Interview
21:58

James McBride Pays Tribute to His Mother.

Journalist and musician James McBride. His new book, is "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother" (Riverhead) about his mother who was white and Jewish, but refused to admit her race. McBride's father was black. For years, McBride knew nothing about his mother's early life. It wasn't until he started work on the book, that she opened up to tell him that her father was a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi in rural Virginia, a racist, and he sexually abused her.

Interview
28:28

Pianist and Composer Leon Fleisher.

Pianist and composer Leon Fleisher. The 67 year old musician was a child prodigy. Thirty years ago he lost the use of his right hand, because of a disability, (later diagnosed as "repetitive stress syndrome") and so he began to play the left-hand repertory. Last year he made a "two-handed" comeback. It culminated with a performance on January 13, with the Orchestra of St. Luke's at Carnegie Hall. He credits the increased movement in his right hand to the deep message therapy, rolfing. (Interview by Barbara Bogaev)

Interview
22:05

Tom Blanton Discusses "White House E-Mail."

Tom Blanton is the editor of the book "White House E-Mail: The Top Secret Computer Messages The Reagan/Bush White House tried to Destroy." It is published by New Press. Blanton is the executive editor of the National Security Archive, a freedom of information advocacy group. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Interview
17:25

Conditions in Chinese Orphanages: "Death by Default."

Sidney Jones, is regional director of Human Rights Watch in Asia. Recently Human Rights Watch published a report on abandoned children in China, and their treatment in China's state-funded orphanages, "Death by Default: A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China's State Orphanages." The report finds the death rate in the orphanages "staggering," and in some cases constitutes a sinister "systematic program of child elimination." (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane) f

Interview

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