If you don’t love Terry Gross, I can’t help you, son.
Her NPR show, “Fresh Air,” has interviewed thousands of people since it began in 1985. Her guests have included famous musicians, politicians, actors and authors.
The show recently opened up its searchable archives, so we took a look to see what Oak Cliff-related content might be in there.
We found this interview with Jerrold Ladd who, at 20 years old in 1994, published a memoir about his life growing up in the projects in Oak Cliff and West Dallas. Ladd received a lot of attention for his book, “Out of the Madness: Out of the Projects to a Life of Hope,” but has since disappeared from the literary world.
Bill Minutaglio is a journalist who lived in Oak Cliff when he was a writer for the Dallas Morning News in the 1990s. He and his wife wrote, “The Hidden City,” about the history of Oak Cliff in 1990. In this interview from 1994, he discusses his book about then-Governor of Texas and presidential hopeful George W. Bush.
Other Dallas-related content in the “Fresh Air” morgue includes this 1991 interview with the late political writer Molly Ivins, who lived in Lakewood when she was a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald.
And there’s this 2004 interview with journalist Scott McCartney who writes “The Middle Seat” column about travel in the Wall Street Journal and lives in Lake Highlands.
And, hey, why not throw in this 1998 interview with Ray Charles, who once lived in South Dallas, wherein he talks about his country music side.
