Fresh Air Weekend collects the best cultural segments from the week's programs and crafts them together for great weekend listening. Stations have the flexibility to carry weekday and weekend programs together or separately.

25 Years, and Still Fresh
Fresh Air with Terry Gross is one of radio’s most enduring success stories. Produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, this weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues continues to grow in popularity after more than 15 years as a national program. Each week, nearly four million people tune in to the show’s thought-provoking conversations with some of today’s most prominent cultural and entertainment figures, as well as distinguished experts on current affairs and news.

Terry Gross, who recently marked her 25th year as host of Fresh Air, has conducted nearly 5,000 interviews during the program’s national run — plus thousands more during Fresh Air’s 12 years as a local program. A variety of top publications count Gross among the country’s leading interviewers. She asks probing questions while taking great care to create an atmosphere in which guests feel comfortable and thus volunteer rather than surrender the answers. The show gives interviews as much time as needed, and complements them with comments from well-known critics and commentators.

Fresh Air originally centered almost exclusively on interviews with popular cultural and entertainment figures such as Tony Bennett, David Mamet, Stephen Sondheim, and Nicholas Cage. But in recent years the program has added to its guest list people who can provide perspectives clarifying almost any topic in the news, from then-Senator Bill Bradley to former President Jimmy Carter to Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulic and cyclist Greg Lemond.

“If you want to understand a political conflict, it helps to understand the culture in which that conflict is taking place,” Gross says. “When there is a crisis in a foreign country, we sometimes call up that country’s leading novelist or filmmaker to get that cultural perspective.” Fresh Air’s interviews, which are much more in-depth than most interviews, have helped listeners understand the roots of religious fundamentalism, meet doctors who care for war victims, understand the difficulties facing education reformers and much more.

Fresh Air is also known for its nationally recognized critics and commentators, including classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz of The Boston Phoenix, winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for criticism; linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, editor of The Future of the Book; pop music critic Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly; film critic John Powers, executive editor of L.A. Weekly; rock historian Ed Ward, co-author of Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll; television critic David Bianculli of the New York Daily News; jazz critic Kevin Whitehead of The Village Voice and Coda;book critic Maureen Corrigan of Georgetown University; world-music and American-roots music critic Milo Miles, who writes for The Village Voice and The New York Times.

With its reliable mix of in-depth interviews and thought-provoking commentary and criticism, Fresh Air with Terry Gross will continue to provide listeners both new and old with reason to tune in and come back each day for insight on the world around them.