Fresh Air - Dave Davies Reflects On His Career In Radio & Reporting

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Dave Davies, Fresh Air's longtime fill-in host, is cutting back workload on the show. Today we're paying tribute to him — by listening to clips of some of his memorable interviews. And we'll talk about his reporting career in Philadelphia and the odd jobs he had along the way.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. With me is Dave Davies, who you know as a longtime interviewer on Fresh Air. Today, he's here as my guest. He's the interviewee. Here's why. Dave has been an indispensable member of our team for many years. The last few months have been a period of transition for Dave, having fulfilled his wish to cut back from a couple of interviews a week on our show to doing occasional interviews. We're grateful to still have him on the show, even if it is only occasional. Before the year ends, we want to pay tribute to him and ask him to share some stories from his broadcasting and newspaper career. I've known Dave since 1983, when he joined WHYY's newsroom covering city politics.

From there, he moved to the commercial all-news Philly radio station, and then to the newspaper world, covering city and state politics and government for the Philadelphia Daily News, where he worked for 20 years and became one of Philly's preeminent city news reporters. In 2010, he returned to WHYY full-time, splitting his position between the news department and Fresh Air. But he'd started doing interviews on our show back in 2001, even before his official return to radio. Dave has also been my savior. When I got a bad cold and lost my voice, when a family member was sick and needed my help, when I needed a vacation, Dave was there to guest host. When I or anyone on the show needs advice about an especially perplexing question relating to journalistic ethics, he's our go-to guy.

I really admire his ability to think clearly on and off the air, to explain complicated issues in a clear, engaging way, to know when to be skeptical and how to convey his genuine empathy. He's a great storyteller, even while asking a question. Dave, it's really going to be fun to talk to you as an interviewee. So let's begin. You started doing Fresh Air interviews while you were covering Philadelphia and Pennsylvania politics and government. And those interviews tend to be about policy, campaigning, or corruption. Was it hard to make the transition to interviews where they're very personal and you're not asking about corruption or campaign spending? You're asking about deeply personal things that are very sensitive to ask somebody to talk about in a public way.

Yeah, they're different in many ways. I mean when I'm reporting, usually what I'm doing is asking questions to elicit information and quotes that I will use among information from many sources in the story. So that interview is a part of what's eventually going to be part of the story I tell. In the case of a fresh air interview, this is the product. It also means that my questions matter. I mean, they are going to be heard by the listener, so they need to be coherent, and I can't stumble through it. And it's one of the reasons that I write out most of my questions beforehand. I may not read them on the air, but it helps if I think through how I'm going to ask this in a coherent way,

particularly if I'm setting up a film clip or a story. I mean, you really want to make sure, because while you're doing an interview on fresh air, the audience is always in your mind. And if you're listening to an answer and something isn't clear because the guest is using shorthand for something or it's just not quite working, you have to intervene in some way to make sure the audience stays with it. So it's a very, very different experience. And it took some years to really get comfortable with it. You covered, I think, eight mayor's races, five administrations, numerous scandals, and no disrespect to Philly, you had to write a lot about corruption. So I want to play an excerpt of an interview that's about organized crime,

which sometimes has connections to politics. This isn't a Philadelphia story. This is a Chicago story. It's an interview with Frank Calabresi Jr., whose father was with the head of a big syndicate in Chicago, and he kind of muscled his son to be part of it. Dave, you want to pick up the story and introduce the clip? Yeah. Frank Calabrese, Jr. was sort of brought into his father's crime family and did, you know, a lot of stuff, gambling, theft. He never killed anybody, which...

He almost did, but he didn't. Right. He never killed anybody. He was invited to do it. Right, right. He avoided committing murder, which allowed him to – it would affect his life later. Essentially, he and his father were – and some other relatives, an uncle of his, were all sent to prison for – I think it was a gambling syndicate that they were involved in. And he decided that he was going to have to go to the FBI and help convict his father because his father was just such a bad character that he was unredeemable and that Frank Jr. would never have a real life. And too many other people would be hurt if he didn't.

So he writes a letter to the FBI and says, I want to cooperate. Not in return for anything. He just said, I want to cooperate. They eventually took him up on it. He wore a wire on his father in prison, and his father was indicted, and Frank Jr. testified against him. So let's hear the excerpt of the interview. And this was recorded after Frank Calabresi Jr. wrote a memoir. these recordings of your father implicating himself, that's not enough. You've got to go take the stand at the trial, tell the jury the story of your getting the tapes, and also to translate the code that your father uses as he speaks to you. So that means you're going to have an extended stretch on the stand face-to-face with your father. How did you feel approaching that?

I felt confident. I knew the day I did the letter, my life was going to change. And I know that the day I did the letter that I would be sitting on the stand in the same room as my dad going through all this. So I knew it was going to happen. It's just a matter of time. It's just a matter of waiting. What I never thought about was the emotion that would come over me when I walked in that courtroom from not seeing my dad. I want to say probably for about a good five years I hadn't seen him. And there he is sitting over there. He's aged.

And, you know, I walk in the room and I just didn't stare at him, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see him sitting there and I could see a dad looking at his son and me looking back at him. And at first you're just looking to see how they look or what's going on with them. You know, I wanted to run over and hug him. I really wanted to go over there and hug him. And, and, and it killed me. And so that first day on the stand, I only was on the stand for a half hour because it was towards the end of the day. But I'll tell you, after five minutes of being on the stand, it didn't take me long to have that love for my dad turn into hatred for my dad and remind me of what I'm doing and I'm sitting up there doing it. And explain the transformation. Was it the questions you had to answer?

No, no. It was my father sitting over there, the gestures he was making and trying to stare. Being in a room with my father, it didn't take long because I knew him, and I knew what he was doing. I knew what he was trying to do. What gestures do you mean? Yeah, he laughed. He shook his head when I talked. He bounced around in his chair. He tried giving me, and I won't look at him. I won't give him the satisfaction. The other thing is there was a huge volume of material that you had to present to a jury in a calm and convincing way. Yeah. And, you know, it wasn't hard because I lived it and I knew the codes.

And, you know, once I settled in, I knew I had a job to do. Now, I could tell you that every day that I went home from the court, and I might have slept an hour a night, I cried. I paced. And it wasn't about what I had to do in court. It was about, it's my father. I love him dearly to this day, but I didn't love his ways, and I still don't understand why he didn't have mine and my brother's backs ever. When you undertook the step to testify against your father, and we ought to say not just your father. I mean, other people went down. This was a huge indictment, a massive case. You chose not to go into the witness protection program.

You didn't want to be cut off from your family. You wanted to be able to be honest and earn a living in some way. What can you tell us about your life today? Yeah, witness protection, I've caught a lot of flack for not going, but I have to be here. I have to be here. I have to give my father that chance of getting revenge on me if he needs to, and I didn't want to bring my kids into that program. I know nobody's going to bother my kids and I don't want anybody to bother my brothers. So they know where I'm at. Did you just say that you had to give your dad the chance to come after you if he wants to? Yeah.

What do you mean? Well, I feel that there's a difference between, you know, one of the names that they like to tag people with is rat. And, you know, I don't feel I'm a rat cooperating witness. I am a turncoat. I mean, you could call me a lot of different things, but rats run and hide, and I couldn't run and hide. You know, Franklin, I read the beginning of your book, and it begins with you writing, you're in prison, and you write the letter to the the FBI saying I want to talk to you about this. And you explain your motivation at the beginning of the book that you wanted to help them make sure that your father was kept in prison the rest of his life. And I read that and thought that can't be the real reason.

Whenever anybody in organized crime testifies or informs on people, it's because there's something in it for them. They want a reduced sentence. They want immunity. They want a deal. You didn't get any of that, did you? Oh, what I got is a chance to live my life free and clear with my dad. So I did get something. And a lot of people around me also got to live their lives free of him too. But to this day, my father sitting locked behind three doors still instills fear in a lot of people. People are still scared sometimes to mention his name. So that was Dave Davey's interview with Frank Calabresi Jr.

The interview was recorded in 2011 and 2011. And his father, Frank Calabresi Sr., died the following year in prison. Dave, I love that interview. It's really gripping. And I'm wondering, like, was he in the studio with you or was it long distance? And do you know what his reaction was when it was over? It was long distance. And before I just answer that directly, Terry, I just want to mention, give a shout out to Sam Brigger, who is our books editor, who found this story for us.

I mean, you know, so much of what we do depends on having a good guest with a story to tell. And the staff on Fresh Air are just so great at doing this. I mean, I don't want to start mentioning names because I'll leave somebody out. But these folks, I mean, you mentioned that I'm doing less on the show now. And these folks are kind of a second family to me. And I really miss them. And I want people to know how terrific they are and valuable and great at what they do. I second everything you just said, except for missing them because I'm here. You are here. Yeah, Frank Calabrese, we were not in the same studio. And when we finished

the interview, he said that he felt just emotionally wrecked by telling me that story. It was a reminder that even though someone may have written about it, and in his case, told the story probably dozens of times, that doesn't mean it's going to be easy for them. And I really appreciated him bearing with it and sharing it with us. I want to play another clip from one of your interviews that you recorded in 2013. And it has a very surprising and dramatic postscript that we'll talk about after we hear the clip. The interview is with Kate Christensen, who had just published a memoir

that revolved around food and its connections to her emotional life. It was called Blue Plate Special, an autobiography of my appetites. You want to take it from here and introduce the clip? Yeah, Kate is a terrific writer. And this describes her life, including some painful stuff. I mean, her father abused her mother, and she writes about that. And

also, when she was in high school, she went to a private school in upstate New York, where it turned out there was a math teacher who would take her into the woods on walks, pin her against a tree, and then fondle her. And this went on for more than part of her junior and senior years. And so at a certain point in the interview, I brought it up. And we're going to hear, I guess, a slightly edited version of that exchange. So here's the excerpt of Dave's interview with Kate Christensen. And then there were some very appalling behavior by some of the adults at the school. Yes. When I think back to the 70s, to the late 70s in high school and what it was like in that school and how the grownups acted and how the students acted, I feel like I was personally appalled.

A lot of the teachers were sleeping with students. But the students – the student body in general, there wasn't a sort of outrage about it. And it seemed to be what was happening. It was sort of trendy. Well, I mean, you were a victim. I mean, this teacher repeatedly molested you. I mean, not rape. I mean, clothes were on.

But it was, you know, there was contact that was utterly inappropriate. It happened more than once. And you as a kid kind of were overwhelmed and couldn't resist. When you say you were a victim, I think, was I? I don't really identify that way. I see it as I was a young girl far from home and this man. He liked to paw me repeatedly. But I didn't let it – see, I didn't allow it and that was part of the problem. I didn't allow myself to be upset by it.

I didn't allow myself to really feel the full extent of the rage that might have been a more appropriate response. I was 16 and naive and didn't – and I didn't speak up and I didn't ever tell him to stop. Trevor Burrus Do you think that was emotionally damaging to you? I mean, it's the kind of thing that today, I mean, the guy would spend years in prison for. I know. I know. It's so different now and I'm glad it's so different because I feel like adolescence is such a weird time. And I

mean, so much of my energy was going toward acting like I had it all together, when in fact, I was falling apart on a daily basis. So that was Dave's interview with Kate Christensen, a short excerpt. Dave, how did you think the interview went when it was over and compare that to what Kate Christensen wrote subsequent to the interview in an article in Elle magazine? Well, I thought the interview went fine. I mean, we covered a lot of ground. The part that we heard was just a small part of the interview, and she has an interesting life and it was an interesting story. But then about six or seven months later, an article appeared in Elle magazine, which Kate Christensen had written, which was about that interview and its fallout.

One thing she wrote was that the interview was actually very painful and traumatic to her. And she sort of described me as somebody pushing her to reveal these things that were hard. I mean, she described me, she said at one point, I was like a bloodhound on the scent of good radio, which kind of bothered me because I thought I was being reasonably, you know, patient and sympathetic to her. Although listening back again, I realized you can hear that nervousness in her voice, that nervous giggle. And I wish I just said, you know, I'm so sorry that you had to endure this as a teenager. And I don't know that it would have mattered. I mean, these interviews are very

artificial circumstances. She's in a studio with headphones. But I just wish I had been a little more attentive and empathetic. In any case, what she said happened is after the interview, parents at that school now, I mean, decades later, were so infuriated by that, they got in touch with the administrators, which hired an investigator, a woman who had been head of, I think, sex crimes at a DA's office. And they investigated this whole thing. They identified this teacher who was no longer teaching there but a member of the community. They publicly exposed him, banned him from further contact with the school. And in fact, a few other people who had engaged in this behavior were exposed. And they sent an investigator out to talk to Kate. She was

in Portland, Maine, a woman, a lawyer. And Kate said that, you know, when she sat down with this lawyer, that the lawyer asked a question. And Kate said, oh, my friends had it so much worse and then burst into uncontrolled sobbing 35 years too late. And if you read the article, you can see it online. You can see how this really affected her emotionally and prevented her from having fulfilling sexual relationships and just being herself. And after that, she got help and I think dealt with it in a way that she hadn't. It was a really remarkable thing. I traded emails with her last week and she said, I wanted to make sure she was comfortable with me bringing this up again. She said, yeah, the interview changed my life. And it really, it was kind of a learning experience for me too. Were you shocked to see what a profound effect the interview had on her?

How first she felt that you kind of exploited her pain and then because people came forward as a result of her coming forward, that it changed her life in such a positive way. Yeah, I didn't feel like her description of me, that wasn't the me that I thought I was in that interview, but that's the way she experienced it at the time. And I have to respect that. Absolutely. One thing I learned from that interview is just because someone has written about a difficult experience, maybe more than once, doesn't mean that they're going to be comfortable talking about it. And you have to be aware of that. And the second thing is that, you know, what we do matters.

I mean, this stuff goes out into the world and can have impact. By the way, she has remained productive. Her latest novel is called Welcome Home, Stranger. And she has a real career, and I hope she's happy. You know, but this is true for both of us and probably for all broadcast interviewers. You never know what happens after an interview ends. You have this really intimate conversation on the air sometimes. You've asked about the most personal thing because the person you're interviewing has probably written about it in some way, either through fiction or through memoir. And then you

part ways and you may never see them again. And of course, may never know about the impact if there was any impact on their lives. Yeah, so true. I mean, we only get the tiniest fraction of reaction that they have and that others have to these things. I guess that's just the way it is. But in this case, I'm glad it led to something positive. Okay, it's time for another break. Let me reintroduce you. I'm talking with Fresh Air's Dave Davies, and he's a longtime interview contributor on our show. But this year he started cutting back on the number of interviews,

so we're paying tribute to him before the year ends. And we'll be back with more of my interview with Dave after we take a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. Hi, I'm Tanya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. Before we get back to our show, we want to take a minute to say thank you so much to our Fresh Air Plus supporters and anyone listening who donates to public media. Everything you hear from the NPR network really does depend on your contributions. For anyone listening who isn't a supporter yet, right now is a great time to get involved. If you like perks, Fresh Air Plus offers sponsor-free listening and exclusive bonus episodes. If you want to make a tax-deductible donation to your

favorite NPR station or stations, that's great too. We've even had NPR Plus subscribers make additional contributions. No matter how you give, your donation helps us continue to bring you news and shows across the NPR network. If you value what we do here, please give today at donate.npr.org slash fresh air or explore NPR Plus at plus.npr.org. Thanks. Let's get back to my interview with Dave Davies. This is an interview that's very special to me because Dave has been my long-term colleague here on Fresh Air. He's contributed a zillion interviews, great interviews to our show.

And this year he decided it's time for him to do fewer interviews. And we miss him. But we appreciate the interviews that he's still doing. Before the year ends, we wanted to pay tribute to him and have him share some stories about his long career in broadcasting and in the newspaper world. Dave, I want to play another interview of yours. And this is an interview with Robert Caro, who's famous for his biographies of Robert Moses. That book was called The Power Broker, and for his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, President Johnson. And, you know, Caro's biographies are so well-researched and so detailed yet compelling,

and very long as well, hard to prepare for. So the excerpt that we're going to hear is him talking about when he interviewed former First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, about LBJ's extramarital affair with someone named Alice March. Do you want to pick it up from there? Sure. Alice March, she was originally Alice Glass, and she was someone that LBJ knew. And Carroll concluded that they had in all likelihood had an affair. They had an association for many, many years after that in which she was a good friend and political advisor. And he felt he had to research that side of the story. And he felt he had to research

that side of the story. And so he went to this town where Alice Marsh had lived and asked a lot of questions. And he knew when he started asking questions, that would get back to Lady Bird, Lyndon Johnson's widow who was still alive. And this clip is him describing what happened when Mrs. Johnson asked her folks to tell Robert Caro that she wanted to talk to him. And so he came for a conversation after he had been investigating this woman that Lyndon Johnson had had this relationship with. And Lady Bird Johnson knew that he'd been investigating. Right, because word had to have gotten back to her. Yeah. So let's hear that excerpt.

Secretary says she'd like – Mrs. Johnson would like to see you out at the ranch this Saturday. Right, because word had to have gotten back to her. Yeah. So let's hear that excerpt. Secretary says she'd like, Mrs. Johnson would like to see you out at the ranch this Saturday. So I went out there. So she summoned you for this? Yes. Oh. So she sits at the head of the table, and I'm sitting at her right hand. My stenographer's notebook where I take notes is to my right hand.

So I'm looking down at the stenographer's notebook, which is, if you can picture it, it means I'm looking away from her. And without a word of preamble, she starts telling me about Alice Glass and how important her influence was in Lyndon's life. And, you know, she talks about how elegant, how beautiful and elegant she was. She says something like, the quote's in the book, I remember her in a succession of lovely dresses and me in less lovely. She says, you know, everything Alice told him, he had long, when he comes to Congress, she meets him when he's a new congressman and his arms are very long and ungainly. She says, make an advantage of that by wearing always French cuffs with beautiful cufflinks. And he did that for the rest of his life. And there are times in his life where she saved his political career, one in particular.

Alice Marsh did. Alice Marsh did. But she's talking about this Lady Bird, and during the whole time she's talking to me, I can't bear to look up at her. I just sit there writing notes. So she speaks admiringly of this woman who probably had an affair with her husband. And it's interesting because you spent so much time talking to Lyndon Johnson's little brother, Sam Houston Johnson, and wanting to get the real story from him. Were you prepared to just leave it there with Lady Bird?

I mean, not ask about the pain it might have caused? Let's say I didn't ask any questions at that interview. It's the only interview that I can remember where I didn't ask any questions. And in fact, I couldn't bear to look up at the person I was interviewing. And so you didn't feel like that was something you just needed to get to the bottom of? Well, from my point of view, I had gotten to the bottom of it because I had seen,

I could document how she said, for example, a number of times in which she saved his political career. You know, he relied on her during the war. He's in Australia. So that was Robert Caro after he'd published a memoir about writing massive biographies of powerful people. And that was Dave Davies doing the interview. It was recorded in 2019 after the memoir was published. David, obviously made a really big impression on you that when Lady Bird Johnson was talking about basically the importance of President Johnson's mistress in his life, that Carol couldn't even look at Lady Bird and didn't

ask her any follow-up questions. Have you had an experience in your interviewing career where you couldn't bear to look at the person and it was so personal you didn't even ask follow-ups? You didn't want to ask about the pain that that experience caused? are useful, but I'd gotten a tip about a tyrannical boss in the city's water department. Those are the toughest stories to write because they involve stories that are very hard to verify. There's often no little, there's little documentation. But this person had told me that this boss was just such a tyrant and how he had really berated and abused this one guy who had a special needs son. And I don't remember all the details. But I thought, well, this is worth pursuing.

And so I called this guy time and time and time again. He wouldn't call me back. And I finally just, you know, I had his address. And I went up and knocked on his door. And he opened it and he knew who I was. And he said, all right, come in. And we sat down at his kitchen table. And he started talking about a little bit.

And soon he was just weeping. I mean full out bawling. And what he said, he was absolutely right about, which was, if you write this story, it'll be a story in the paper and some people will read it, but nothing's going to happen to this person. And my life's really going to be ruined. I need this job. And I walked away from the story. I just thought he is right. I mean, this person's not going to be fired or prosecuted. It's just – and he is going to endure terrible personal cost. And that was one where I just said, yeah, you know what? I've put a lot of hours in here.

I'm not going to do this story. And I'm sure you always felt good about that decision afterwards. I think it was the right call, yeah. But it's tough. I mean, I think a lot of reporters just, you know, have the ability to summon a level of detachment that says, you know, not my problem where the chips land. And I couldn't ever quite do that.

I respect that. Since so much of Caro's book was about, you know, writing massive biographies, researching them, interviewing people, did you learn anything about interviewing or reporting from reading that memoir that's been helpful to you? No, it mostly made me feel small. That's great. You know, I mean, what he was doing is a lot of what I did with New Saver, which is to mine public records and to develop sources. But, you know, if I worked on a story for a couple of months, that was a long time. I mean, he worked for years on these things. And I was kind of in awe of his determination. Well, we have to take another break. So let me reintroduce you if you're just joining us.

My guest is Dave Davies. You know him as a longtime Fresh Air interviewer. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Dave Davies, who's been contributing interviews to Fresh Air since 2001. And then recently he decided it's time to cut back on the number of interviews. So we're paying tribute to him before the year ends, but he will be back next year, just doing fewer interviews than he used to

do. I want to play another clip. And people who know you well from Fresh Air know that one of your specialties is sports. Like when we get a sports book or when it's like World Series time or spring training or Super Bowl or whatever, if there's an interview on Fresh Air about it, it's going to be yours. At least that's been the history of it. So this is a sports-related interview. And it's an interview with Joe Buck, who is still or was? Is still. He's probably the best-known television sports broadcaster.

And my question demonstrates why you do the sports interviews. So he's a play-by-play sports announcer, and when you interviewed him, he had done 19 World Series and four Super Bowls and was about to do his fifth. What else do you want to say about this before we hear it? Because I know what I want to say. I was interested in the craft of what he does. I mean that, you know, the ability to again and again while you're watching a game live describe what people are already seeing on their televisions in a way that kind of connects with and enhances the experience. And there's no script for that, right?

You're just watching the action and calling it live. And so I picked an example of that that I remembered. Yeah, and what I have to say I'll say for after we hear the clip. So this is Dave interviewing Joe Buck. All right. Now I want to play a call of yours, which is exactly about this, accentuating what the audience sees, not repeating it. This is from 2008, the National League Championship Series, Phillies versus Dodgers. Our program is broadcast from Philadelphia. So I'm a Phillies fan. I remember watching this game. And it's a home run call. And I'm going to just say two things about what the audience sees because they're not going to hear this in your call. But what the audience sees is a home run. The batter is Matt Stairs. He's a beefy guy with a compact swing, powerful swing. It's a tense moment. The Phillies are making a comeback in an important game. So we see this compact swing drive the ball out. And then the other thing is this game is in Dodger Stadium, Chavez Ravine, where the bleachers are relatively small and you can see the desert in the dark outside. And as the ball flies over the right field fence, you see the ball move from

light into shadow. That's what the audience sees. Let's listen to your call. Stairs rips one into the night, deep into right, way out of here. And Philadelphia gets a pinch hit, two-run shot. And the Phillies lead 7-5 in the eighth. Now, I've remembered that call for eight years because it's just a lovely piece of baseball poetry. Stairs rips one into the night as you see the ball disappear into the shadows. You know, writers have time to craft phrases like that. You've got to do it in the moment.

Is there a technique? Are there muscles that you develop for coming up with that quick, evocative turn of phrase? Well, I think the first thing is you have to be prepared. And if you're prepared, you can be relaxed. And I'm not giving you a canned answer. I've never thought about it in these terms, really. But I think if you are ready for a moment like that, and by ready, I mean you've got all the stats of stairs at your fingertips if you want to go there.

You know who's on the mound. You're aware of the game situation. And now you can just sit back and watch. So that's Dave Davies interviewing Joe Buck in 2017. And Joe Buck had just published a memoir, right, Dave? Right. So here's what I want to say about the interview. Your description of what happened with that play, your description of the ball disappearing into the shadows, you could see the desert, the dark desert. It's so much more vivid than what Joe Buck had to say. I had to listen to that tape twice before I really heard, he rips one into the night. Because it's just...

It goes by quickly. It goes by really quickly, but your description that was totally imprinted in my mind. I just saw it. You're so good at describing things, and that's why we're playing that clip. Well, you know, the thing is that I remember being impressed

by it because, you know, you and I listening to it now, and the audience now, we're not seeing the play, but when you see it, and when you see that ball go into the shadows, and you hear say, you know, you and I listening to it now in the audience now, we're not seeing the play. But when you see it and when you see that ball go into the shadows and you hear say, you know, stairs rips one into the night, it just captures exactly what happened. So it kind of took a long setup. But without that, it doesn't really get the point. I want to talk with you about some of the other jobs you have held besides being a reporter or an interviewer. Let's start with, and I think this was in Philly, you drove a taxi.

And this was in the years before Uber and Lyft. So, like, if you wanted to hire somebody to drive you, it was either a limo or a taxi. Were you ever scared? Yeah, yeah. There were a couple of times. Two guys got in the cabin at night in Philly, and one of them was talking about, there's a code, I don't remember what it is now, that you say into the radio to the dispatcher when you're in trouble and you need police. And this guy knew what the code was and he was talking about it. And he was – I think he was just messing with me. But it made me very nervous. There was another time when I picked up a woman who was quite drunk who said she needed to go to this hotel she lived in to get the money to pay

me. This was actually during the day. And the place that she took me to was a really, really funky place. It's now been demolished. I guess you might call it an SRO, I mean, single-room occupancy place. And she disappears into this place to go get the money, and I'm out there waiting. And it's not the safest of neighborhoods. So I get outside of the cab and try to lean against it like I'm a tough guy. And I'm not a tough guy. But I want to look like I'm –

I'm trying to picture this. Like don't mess with me. And she doesn't come out. She doesn't come out. So I decide I've got to go in and find her. So I go in and it's this dark place. There's this stairwell. She's on the fourth floor.

I've got to go up. It was very unnerving. The funny thing is that when I found her, she's flinging herself against this door because she says she's locked out and she's trying to break the door down because she's got to get in to get her check so we can cash that and I can get paid. So I quickly realized that it's in my interest to make sure that she gets through the door. So I said, step back. And I kicked the door in. Oh, no. Yeah. I figured she was responsible. We're going to break the door. So now I was part of the we. And I had a fairly significant fear on the meter at that point. I didn't want to just walk away from it. I would

have had to cover that. And so she goes in. She gets the check. And then the building manager comes up, attracted by the commotion. And he says, hey, what's going on here? And then the building manager comes up, attracted by the commotion, and he says, hey, what's going on here? And then she points to me and says, he knocked the door down. Anyway, I explained. Look, I explained what happened. We get the check. We got it cashed. And we ended up having a nice conversation.

Never saw her again. One of those weird experiences that can happen when you're driving a cab. You spent time as a welder in a shipyard in Philly? What was that like? I think one of the happiest days of my life was when I got laid off. It was hard work. And it was on a shipyard on a river in a bitterly cold winter. And when you're building a ship, it's all steel around

you. And it's all so freezing cold. But it was interesting work. I mean, it was interesting to learn about welding. It was interesting to see how ships are made. We worked on container ships on oil tankers. But yeah, it was not a career I wanted to have. Okay. We're going to take a break here and then we'll talk some more with my guest and fellow Fresh Air interviewer, Dave Davies. This is Fresh Air. You grew up in South Texas. Describe the neighborhood that you grew up in or the part of Texas that you grew up in. Well, Corpus Christi, it's a coastal city. It was a working class neighborhood of single story frame houses, went to public schools. Both of my parents grew up on farms. I mean they actually spent a lot of their years in rural Oklahoma. And she used to tell me they would close school in the fall so all the kids could go out and pick cotton. But anyway, they got married and made our way down to Corpus Christi, and that's where I grew up.

Am I right in saying that one of your grandfathers drove cattle? Yeah, this is a fun little story. He was one of the last participated as, he was probably about 13, in one of the last horse-driven cattle drives that went down Main Street in Lubbock, Texas. I think it's called Main Street. There's a big boulevard there. Yeah, he was, I interviewed him about this when he lived when it was 90s. And when I first started in radio, I went and did an interview with him. And he kind of knew these cowboys because he was on a farm. And a little guy like him who was a good horseman was valuable because they could ride these lighter horses, which were more nimble, which were really effective in cutting out cattle. And so he got a fair amount

of work doing that. And he went on this trail drive. I don't know if it started in Lubbock, but it went through Lubbock and somewhere up north. I don't know exactly where. But there was a story about it in the Lubbock newspaper. So yeah, that's my heritage. Yes. My connection with cattle drives is one of my favorite shows growing up was Rawhide. Yeah, exactly, which was about a cattle drive, and Clint Eastwood played the assistant. Trail boss? Trail boss, yeah, the assistant trail boss, and this was before Clint Eastwood was famous as a movie star. That's right. Yeah, and so I was in elementary school, and I just loved that show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great song. Oh, Frankie, yeah. Great song. Oh, Frankie Lane sang the theme song. That was really great. But the other thing I'm thinking of is like it must be, it must feel like such a distance between your grandfather, you know, being a cowboy in a cattle drive and your work as a city journalist. Yeah, I think to a lot of my extended family, it was just weird that you'd move out of Texas. I mean, I have cousins that I'm very fond of and never quite got that I moved up north.

But yeah, I sort of came up here and found a home in Philly and liked it. And yeah, it's such a different world. It's very odd that I spent decades covering, you know, I drove a cab in Philly. I spent decades covering politics. I know so many neighborhoods and so many politicians. And although I have great affection for Texas, I don't have the same kind of knowledge because I've been away for so long. But, yeah, completely different worlds. I think our listeners will note that you don't seem to have a Texas accent. Did you ever? Probably did.

My parents certainly did. It's funny. My mom used to use the expression, you know the expression, go jump in the lake? Yeah, sure. She would say that. Not that there were any lakes where I lived, but in Brooklyn. When she would say that, I thought she was saying, go jump in the leg, you know, the limb, because she would say, go, go jump in the leg. And I thought that. So, yeah, my parents had Texas accents.

And I remember in, I think, junior high and high school being aware that the people on television, like in the newscasters, spoke this standard English. And I kind of, I just decided to do that. I don't know. I did. And- How old were you when you decided to do that? I don't remember exactly. Probably in high school. I just kind of felt like that, you know, that's what sort of educated people sort of sounded like. If I woke you in the middle of the night, would you have a Texas accent? I doubt it. I doubt it. In fact, what's scary is occasionally

I'll hear a Philly accent creeping into me. You know, that the long O, like home becomes home. Yeah. I'm the home depot. Where did that come from? You hear something, you pick it up. Yeah, yeah.

Dave, I've had a really good time doing this. I'm really glad we did it. Yeah, you know, it's funny, Terry, you and I, we've worked on the same show for so long, but we don't work together much. We work in parallel, you know. That's exactly right. You're doing a show or I'm doing a show, so we don't actually talk that much. And either you're super busy on deadline or I'm super busy on deadline or we're both super busy on deadline. So yeah, we don't get to talk that much, which is one of the reasons I so thoroughly enjoyed this because it was just a really focused conversation with you. And I got to learn things I didn't know about you.

Thanks for asking, Terry. And before we go, I just want to say, because you've said a lot of nice things about my work, is that in the 1980s when I first came to the station, Fresh Air was a local show. But even then, everybody knew that, I mean, everybody in Philadelphia who listened, and it was a large audience in the Philly area, everybody knew what Terry Gross was doing was distinctly different, that this was something alone and apart in the world of interviewing, which is why, you know, you eventually got, with the help of the terrific Bill Simring, our station manager, got onto NPR nationally, first weekly and then daily. And then, you know, the nation embraced it as they do. And when

many years after that, I was invited to do this. It was an intimidating thing to pick up Terry Gross's microphone. And the one thing that I've done from the beginning is to really prepare very, very thoroughly for every interview because, you know, I mean, there's a standard here, right? People are used to hearing Terry and you better bring your A-game. And that's never stopped. I've gotten more comfortable with it. But the thorough preparation is really, I think, in some ways, one of the things that defines the show. And I've never given this up. So thank you for giving me a chance to be here and letting me grow into the job. It's been a really meaningful thing in my life. And I'm so glad you're still doing it.

Thank you, Dave. And we have really treasured having you on the show and continue to do so. You know, thank you for everything you've done on our show and will continue to do. Thank you, Terry. Dave Davies has been contributing interviews to Fresh Air out of political expediency and loyalty to Donald Trump. After being ousted by her party because she voted to impeach Trump after January 6th, she became one of two Republican congressmen who served on the House committee that investigated January 6th. She became one of two Republican congressmen who served on the House Committee that investigated January 6th. She's written a new memoir. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Thank you.