Radio host and podcaster Jesse Thorn has been doing his arts and culture interview show Bullseye for 25 years now. It started out as “The Sound of Young America” on the Santa Cruz college station KZSC when Thorn and a couple of his buddies were students at UC Santa Cruz. Now Thorn’s returning to Santa Cruz to do a live Bullseye 25th anniversary show at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center. I spoke to Thorn ahead of the show, and he began by recalling his early days as a DJ at KZSC:
"There are things we did in those early days that we would never do on Bullseye these days, mostly comedy stuff. We used to talk to this record of whales that I found just to have long conversations with it. We did a lot of silly things like that, but the honest truth is that very early in the show we learned how exciting it was that we could email people whose art we admired, and they would email us back and agree to be on the phone with us for half an hour. And that feeling of elation is a feeling that I felt nine months ago when Andre 3000 from OutKast agreed to come on the show. And I’m still excited to talk to people who make art that I think is wonderful."
![Jesse Thorn and his college buddies at KAZU in the early days of their radio show. [l to r] Gene O'Neill, Jordan Morris and Jesse Th](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/3f6ebfa/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1205x1212+0+0/resize/840x844!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ff5%2F65%2Fe36ff2f2424eaa2d61072c7715b9%2Fscreenshot-2025-jordan-morris-and-gene-oneill-09-12-121052.png)
Click the audio player at the top of this story to listen to the interview or read the highlights below.
Thorn on his favorite memory of someone he's interviewed over the last 25 years:
"Maybe 12 or 13 years ago, I got a press release for a movie called Soul Power and all these incredible people are in it. Celia Cruz, James Brown, all these incredible people. And they said ‘well, we’re having a press day in Beverly Hills and one of the musicians is going to be there. His name is Bill Withers. I don’t know if you’d be interested. And I said 'yes,' and went out there with my microphone to this conference room in a hotel in Beverly Hills. Bill Withers was there. And [he] was a guy who grew up in a really poor mining town in West Virginia. And he really gave me the business. like, "why should I talk to this guy?" He’s not a man who suffered fools. And I hung in there with him because I genuinely admired him and because I’m no fool. And I just felt him turn from ‘why is this guy here?’ To, "this guy could be my nephew," you know? But that was just an incredible experience to meet a true genius of popular art and feel like he didn’t have to put up with it and he decided that I was worth it and my show was worth it. And that one felt like a really special win."
On Jesse's return to Santa Cruz with a 25th anniversary live show event at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, featuring Glynn Washington from Snap Judgement, actor Adam Scott from Severance and Big Little Lies, as well as Boots Riley, the filmmaker and rapper:
"Adam Scott is a native Santa Cruzan. So you can expect that he and I will be talking about eating Dippin' Dots on the boardwalk and that caveman that rides the tramway. It’ll just be a thicket of specifics about Santa Cruz. What you’ll see in this show is some really great conversations. We also just booked Santa Cruz’s greatest rock band The Mermen."
"So it’s a real old fashioned variety show. And mostly I think we’re going to have a good time being in a special place. It’s a special place, Santa Cruz. And I wouldn’t be where I am without it, so I’m grateful to get to go back!"
Radio host and podcaster Jesse Thorn's "Bullseye" 25th anniversary live show takes place at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz on November 1st.