Jesse Thorn

Thorn grew up in San Francisco, where he attended Discovery Center School, The Nueva School and Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he co-founded The Sound of Young America and worked as news director of the campus radio station KZSC. The Sound of Young America began as a college radio variety show featuring Thorn and two other co-hosts, Jordan Morris and Gene O'Neill. ==Career==

Near the end of 2004, Thorn began to make his show, The Sound of Young America, available as a podcast. A few months later, Thorn received a call from the director of programming at PRI, who had heard one of the podcasts and expressed interest in distributing the show. Thorn and the show were mentioned in The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and Salon.com, with Salon describing Thorn's interviewing style as combining "the civility and preparedness of Terry Gross|[Terry] Gross leavened with the good humor of Conan O'Brien|[Conan] O'Brien." Thorn's discussion of the concept of "New Sincerity" was noted in a 2007 USA Weekend feature and a 2008 scholarly article. In 2006, Thorn and former Sound of Young America co-host Jordan Morris launched another podcast, Jordan, Jesse, Go! and The Kasper Hauser Comedy Podcast. He was also a part of sketch comedy group Prank the Dean, along with Morris, Lauren Pasternak and Jim Real. Over time, The Sound of Young America (now Bullseye), which had featured a variety of segments, became more focused on interviews. Thorn has interviewed many notable personalities on his show, including Dolly Parton, Greta Gerwig, Jay Leno, Antonio Banderas, Jeff Goldblum and E-40. Thorn also interviewed Stephen Colbert as a part of iTunes's Meet the Author series. In 2011, the magazine chose him as one of the 100 most creative people in business. In 2009, Jesse helped comedian and podcaster Marc Maron to set up the microphones and software necessary to produce his WTF with Marc Maron podcast from his garage. Maron thanked Jesse again for this on the podcast's 300th episode. Jesse is also the co-producer of the public radio broadcast version of Maron's podcast. In 2012, The Sound of Young America was renamed Bullseye and now exclusively features interviews. In 2017 and 2018, Thorn released a podcast series on the art of interviewing, entitled The Turnaround. It featured interviews with interviewers on interviewing, including guests such as Dick Cavett, Katie Couric, Werner Herzog, Larry King and Terry Gross. ==Personal life==

In 2008, Thorn married Theresa Hossfeld. From 2013 until the pandemic finally prompted her to step down in spring of 2022, Theresa Thorn co-hosted the Maximum Fun podcast One Bad Mother with Biz Ellis. ==References==