Tell Terry Gross that his "pure idea" days are behind him: NPR

Looking back at his early career, Howard Stern remembers being "petrified" for not being able to make a living. "All the sexual antics, religious antics, racial antics – everything I talked about, everything I was doing outrageous – was meant to entertain my audience and increase my audience …" he says. "Whether you like it or not, or whether the person in the street likes it or not, I did not care as long as I grew up constantly."

Stern has finally attracted audiences of several million people in four decades of career, first on terrestrial radio and now on satellite radio. At age 65, Stern says it's not the shock of the shock that he once was. "If I had not grown up, evolved and changed … I do not know if I could still be on the radio," he admits.

Stern's new book, Howard Stern Comes Again, is a collection of some of his most memorable interviews with famous guests including Madonna, Mike Tyson, Jerry Seinfeld, Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump.

With two years of contract at SiriusXM, Stern says he's not sure of what's next. "I'm a little afraid of retirement …" he says. "It's like, every day, I did not know it – and it bothers me not to know myself well enough … I do not really know what I want and what I want to do."

For the moment, Stern is the happiest of his radio: "I think the place where I am is the perfect place," he says.

Ed. Note: This Fresh air The interview will be broadcast in two parts over two days. You can read the highlights below – edited for more length and clarity.

Highlights of the interview

On the way therapy has changed his interviews

Gross: Your approach to maintenance has changed over the years – you go further, you have more empathy. You said, when you think about the interviews you've done in the first two decades of your program, that you're moving back- [and] this therapy was a turning point for you. You started therapy what, 20 years ago? …

Back: I remember very well the first day. … What was so deep for me – and why I signed it – I sat down with the psychoanalyst, the psychiatrist, and I said, "Oh, I guess I'm going to talk to you about myself, "and I started getting into a fabulous routine that I had done several times on the radio. I would start talking about my parents and complete with impressions. … I go into this complex business and he stops me cold, looks at me, he says, "I do not find anything so funny." I was like, hey, what the hell is he talking about? … I mean, I get a lot of money to do this stuff! He says, "No, I find it rather sad, and why are you telling me stories, why do not you talk to me about something real?"

I had no idea what he was talking about. I never sat alone in a room with no human being on this planet and I really listened to it. Everything that was with me was weird and funny, and that's how my family was related.

On the way the therapy helped him focus his interviews on the guests

Back: I started thinking … Why not bring a guest here and there and have a real conversation? … and if I could let the other person shine? What if I could close my big jap and not do it? …

Everything started to change. … My policy was to be purely id … Let your brain drain every feeling and every piece of information – but what was coming out was mostly anger; it was not completely dimensional.

In therapy, I started to explore other means of communication and I am the happiest of my radio. And that does not mean that the radio show is not yet completely crazy – what it is. There is a lot of outrageous humor in things, but what I've also started to keep and protect are some things in my personal life, some things have become valuable and inaccessible. He has become a better balance.

Feel lost as a child and seek the attention and approval of his audience

Back: I grew up in what has become an entirely black community. And I was one of the few white kids, and I've never told my parents: "Well, I feel disgusted here … All my friends are gone … I'm living a problem with that. " There was not that kind of discussion. My feelings and difficulties were not on the table so I buried them. I think when I finally got on the radio and I was roaring hard and everyone was listening, I could not get enough.

There was a moment in my career where we did some research [that] One in four cars on the Long Island Expressway, located on the largest market in the United States, New York, listened to me and listened to me. And when I heard that I was deeply depressed, three of those four cars were not listening to me. … So when you want everything and that nothing satisfies you and you only want to be – in a narcissistic way – the center of the universe and the home, I was clearly a person hungry who could only believe that the home should be on me …

I now know that my father was a radio engineer and he watched these broadcasters with such reverence. He was so kind and loving to them and loved them. I said, "A-ha! So that's what you do.You go behind a microphone and everyone listens, and everyone likes you!" Well, it's a sad way of living your life because no one really loves you. They appreciate what you do … the entertainment you give them, but it is not the kind of love I was looking for.

On the trauma and depression of his mother

Back: My mother was a depressed – suicidal woman. She had a horrible life – terrible, terrible. Lost his mother at 9, [and she] was sent home. … I was raised by a traumatized woman. She had a terrible trauma and overcame her life a lot. But she became very sad at the death of her sister – who was really her only family. … and I was coming back from school and my mother was just panicked. I did not know what to do with her. I was coming back from school and she was crying. …

Gross: How was it to have a mother who put the idea of ​​suicide on the table?

Back: In my family, the words did not mean anything. … We did not have a real serious conversation. I thought it was the dramatic kind. I did not know how real it was. … You know, the sex we could talk about, the race we could talk about, the homosexuality we could talk about – you name it, we could talk about it – but it was always joking. We could talk about the news of the day in a fun way. But to really tackle something in a serious way? It was difficult. …

It's a terrible burden for a child – having to brighten up a mother. I remember having made very elaborate impressions of all the neighborhood mothers. … Not only did I print them, but I tore them up too. And my mother loved it, because it meant: she was the best mother. … What really encouraged him was: you see? I am the best mother. And I knew it on a certain level. Now, it's too much for a child to know.

On the "unleashed id" of his radio show

Back: On my radio show, there was so much sex and wild behavior. Listen, I was in my twenties, thirties, forties and all that fascinated me. … it was like punk rock. It was like, "What can I do that will scare everyone? Oh, everyone is stuck on the sex, sex, sex, sex." … I wanted to decriminalize sex. I want to continue and celebrate sex by saying, "Who cares about it? We are talking about sex. We are all animals and we all have sex."

Gross: OK, I like very much the idea of ​​celebrating sex. The part I did not like about your show talked about the size of women's breasts and the interest you wanted to have for sex with them and assign women a score of 1 to 10 – or ask clients to do it. And you have so many young men – and here I am referring to the reality of the 90s and early years – and it's as if you're teaching young men how to look women, and be really rude and judge women by the size of their breasts. This has always troubled me a lot, and I know you are scared of a lot of things when you go back into the beginning of your career. Do you have discomfort? …

Back: That was what I thought then: Hey, I'm not going to hide what men think. I will not see BS the women of my audience. … let women hear what the real guys look like. … Then I thought I was doing a public service. I thought I was saying, "Hey, guys are fools and you have to know it!" But hey, I'm a fool too – and I was a fool.

Gross: I had the impression that you were going to say, "If you want to be cool, if you want to be like Howard Stern, it's like that that we treat women," he said. that's how we talk to women. " And I found it really disturbing.

Back: I do not think I can afford to really analyze it. I was just doing my thing, and then, you know, getting older and wiser, I started to look at that, and I said, well, that troubles me. This is no longer who I am. I do not really care about all that. That does not mean that I would not be on the radio today to comment on someone who was wearing a scandalous outfit at the Met Gala or something of the sort, but that's made of ####################################################################### 39, a different way with a different approach.

And many of those things that I can not stand now. It's too hard. And if I had not changed, if I had become a 65 year old guy who adored women, it would have been pathetic and sad, and I would have ended up acting like an old man. My audience would have aged with me.

Having compulsive obsessive tendencies

Back: It was a magical thought. Let's say I was listening to your radio show and would say to myself, "Oh my God, I must be better than her." So, I tapped the radio three times over the speaker so that I would be better than you. It was my attempt to control the world. …

My world was so chaotic and so weird and really unexplained. … I did not control the notes. There is this weird kind of vague notion of who is present in the audience. Who is outside? I do not know. And they come out with a notebook, and if I do not get a certain amount of notes? I will be fired. They will not support me. And having this loss of control, I think, has overwhelmed me. I became literally paralyzed, except when I was on the air, I could ignore it but … it was hard to ignore. … So, I would think that magic would control him. … This keeps you very distracted from all your problems.

On a recent health alert

Gross: One of the things you reveal in your book is that … you had a very big fear for your health. … You had a body scan and a small shadow on your kidney, so you had to check that and get yourself operated on an exploratory basis. Everything was fine, but … did you feel that it made you think more, as if I was dying? …

Back: Oh my God. That's why I wrote the book! I did not react well although the doctor told me that [it’s a] 95% chance that you have cancer. I panicked. Want to know how unrealistic I am, again and unprepared for life? Somehow, I assumed, because my parents were 96 and 91 years old and my health was very good, that I'm entitled to it, that nothing should happen to me. …

But, man, if it does not move your reality and put you in a state of mind where you are, wow, how much time do I have left? And what am I really trying to accomplish with this time? … I paint now and I want to paint endless hours. I wish I could go back in time and start as a young child and learn to paint. I have so many things that interest me to learn and I would like to have more time. …

I suddenly realized my age. I realized that I am not invincible, that things like this are going to happen. And that also influences: Will I stay on the radio? Is that how I'm going to end my life – that I'm just going to be on the radio and not having the time to do everything I want to do? And what do I really want to do? The whole thing is amazing.

Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper, Beth Novey and Meghan Sullivan have adapted it for the Web.