Gross, Terry: Fresh Air

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If you like interview programs perhaps you have listened to Fresh Air, produced in Philadelphia and broadcast regularly many public radio stations.  The host is Terry Gross, our guest on this edition of Radio Curious. I wanted to know who she is, and what she does to prepare for and create Fresh Air. When we visited by phone from her home near Philadelphia, I asked her how puts together so many interesting programs so frequently.

The books Terry Gross recommends are “Self-Consciousness: Memoirs,” by John Updike, and “U and I,” by Nicholson Baker.

The program was originally broadcast: March 7, 1994

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Sandra Kamusukiri as Maria Stewart: A Visit With a Free Black Woman – Boston 1840

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Maria W. Stewart, as characterized by professor and scholar Sandra Kamusakiri, was a free black woman who lived in Boston, MA, from the 1820s to the early 1840s. She was the first American born woman to lecture in public on political themes and likely the first African-American to speak out in defense of women’s rights. A forerunner to Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, she was intensely religious and regarded as outspoken and controversial during her time. For more than a century, Maria W. Stewart’s life contributions remained obscured, illustrating the double pressures of racism and sexism on the lives African-American women. I met with Mariah W. Stewart in the person of Professor Sandra Kamusukiri during the 1996 Democracy in America Chautauqua, held in Ukiah, California.

Maria Stewart recommends “The Fair Sketches of Women,” by John Adams and “The Bible.”

Originally Broadcast: November 27, 1996

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Gilbert, Ronnie, as “Mother Jones”: ‘The Most Dangerous Woman in America’

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Mary Harris Jones, Mother Jones, was born in 1830. She lived a quiet, non-public life until she was approximately 47 years old and then, for almost the next fifty years, she was a fiery union organizer, strike leader, and fighter for safe and humane working conditions, the eight hour day, and child labor laws. Around the turn of the century, she was called the most dangerous woman in America. Her legacy has lived on in the form of a magazine that bears the name, Mother Jones; and in the form of a one-woman play about her life, produced, acted and written by singer and songwriter Ronnie Gilbert.

Mother Jones recommends any books by Leo Tolstoy. Ronnie Gilbert recommends “Hawaii,” by James Mechiner.

Originally Broadcast: March 12, 1997

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