The ace radio interviewer plans a little something different for her live audience in Roanoke.

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Joe Eaton interviews Terry Gross about her life and her long-running NPR program "Fresh Air."

Terry Gross answers the telephone in her office at WHYY in Philadelphia much like she signs on to her popular National Public Radio talk show.

"Fresh Air."

But it's hard to tell it's her. On the phone, Gross doesn't draw out "fresh" with her signature aspirated verve, the way she says it on the air.

It is early afternoon, more than a week before Gross will travel to Roanoke for Friday's show at Jefferson Center.

Gross is explaining what she will do during her performance. People always wonder how a radio talk-show host, someone used to the privacy of a radio booth, will perform in front of a crowd, she said.

"What are you going to do, ask questions?" she said. "Ask questions and wait for someone to answer them?"

Gross has hosted "Fresh Air" for almost 30 years. The show has 4.5 million listeners a week and is the third most popular show on NPR, after "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered."

Gross said she will not interrogate the audience Friday night. Instead, she will play outtakes of interviews gone wrong, bloopers and aggressive guests -- including her interview with Monica Lewinsky in 1999 when Lewinsky stormed out of the studio in frustration, and the 2002 interview with Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, who berated Gross with sexual innuendo.

Gross said she will use the clips as jumping-off points to talk about interviewing and her life as a talk-show host.

As an interviewer of politicians, newsmakers and especially artists, writers, actors and musicians, Gross is known for her laid-back and friendly -- but probing -- style. A typical Gross interview dips way back into her guest's life.

"I like to ask them about their early development, their childhood because that's what shapes who we are as a person and in their case as an artist," she said.

The results are often stunning, as in Gross' 1997 interview with Johnny Cash. Gross asked Cash, who was suffering the early symptoms of a degenerative nerve disease, if he was shy during adolescence when his voice turned from high tenor to its low rumble.

Cash said he liked it, that he felt he was getting a "man's voice." And he went on to talk about how his mother recognized his singing gift.

"... When I was 17, 16 ... I'd sing those old gospel songs for my mother, and she said, 'Is that you?' And I said, 'Yes ma'am.' And she came over and put her arms around me and said, 'God's got his hands on you.' "

Critics of "Fresh Air" say Gross gives easy treatment to artists but puts the screws to politicians. It's true, she said.

What's most interesting about artists is their art, not their problems, she said, and they are unlikely to speak honestly about them anyway.

"Politicians are in office and they are busy legislating things that are going to affect our lives. It is going to affect whether we are at war, what the policy is on the economy," she said. "You know, George Clooney isn't going to have any say in that."

Critics also say Gross leans to the left politically on her show. Not true, Gross said, though she understands why some people might think so.

"We for instance have on a lot of guests who are gay, and we certainly don't try to balance them with homophobic guests. To some people in America that would seem like, well, that is a liberal bias."

In 1995 "Fresh Air" was dropped by WVTF Public Radio in Roanoke. It wasn't reinstated for nearly five years. In a 1995 interview, then-General Manager Steve Mills said the show was canceled because of a scheduling conflict, but he also called the show "offensive" and said it had a "hidden agenda to promote homosexuality."

Axing "Fresh Air" proved an unpopular move for the station, which reinstated the show in 2000 after Mills was removed as general manager.

Gross said she has never been to Roanoke. When asked what she wanted to see, she said WVTF.

Gross is slight, with short, cropped hair and hip plastic-framed librarian glasses. When people who know her voice from the show meet her in person, invariably they are surprised at her size.

"If you can fill up a speaker, people maybe expect that you can fill up a room, or at least fill up a chair," she said. "My feet barely touch the ground on a lot of chairs."

She does not have a public face. On the cover of her 2004 book "All I Did Was Ask," her face is hidden in the shadows, a sliver moon. That's how she likes it. It's not about her, she said. It's about the guests.

But of course "Fresh Air" is as much about Terry Gross as it is her guests. The voice, a Brooklyn accent, often rambling and stuttering, searching for the question, is familiar and unique, adored by her fans.

Beyond hard-core NPR listeners, though, Gross is best known for her on-air battles with Bill O'Reilly and Simmons, and her probing questions about gay marriage with Lynne Cheney, whose daughter is gay.

Gross grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., listening to the radio -- rock 'n' roll, not news. After college, she taught English at a rough junior high in Buffalo, N.Y. The school fired her after six weeks. She said she could not control the children.

"I had no idea how to be an authority figure and being 5 feet tall was not helping me," she recalled.

After she lost her teaching job, Gross went to graduate school at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she worked out her interview style at the college radio station. She learned by doing, she said.

"Unfortunately, there were listeners tuning in and I don't think it was too great for them," she said. "But that's what college radio was like."

After almost 30 years on "Fresh Air" Gross said it's the preparation, more than anything, that remains difficult.

For each one-hour show, Gross researches her guests, reads their work if they are an author, listens to their music if they are a musician.

However, Gross said her future is more "Fresh Air." Without radio, Gross said she doesn't know what she would have done for a living.

"I probably wouldn't be teaching junior high school English."

Terry Gross

8 p.m. Friday, Jefferson Center.

Tickets: From $25 to $40; students $10 to $25