I've recently listened to several Terry Gross interviews, and the David Bowie interview stands out to me as particularly bad. I think she frequently makes "educated guesses" about how her guests will respond about their thoughts, feelings, and motivations, and will have follow up questions prepared based on these anticipated responses. When she's right, things go well. When she's wrong, she just keeps plowing forward with homerun swings that completely whiff. She sometimes seems quietly incredulous that other people have different values and methods of reasoning, or that their perception of themselves does not match her research.

To be fair and not negative exclusively, I think she's very good at knowing how long to let people talk (some of this might be editing), very good at creating a "human connection" with the subjects, and reasonably good at keeping things interesting.