NPR’s Ari Shapiro shares his own stories in ‘The Best Strangers in the World’

March 16, 2023

When Ari Shapiro appears on a recent video call, the co-host of National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” is in a great mood.

“I just found out that the thrash metal band GWAR is playing a Tiny Desk Concert,” he says of the group known for its comically grotesque costumes and penchant for spraying fake blood on fans. “I pulled up a mock news article from The Hard Times, which is like The Onion, from two years ago that is making fun of the idea of GWAR doing a Tiny Desk Concert.

“Now it’s actually going to happen, so my mind is blown,” Shapiro says, laughing. “I mean, are they going to spray the NPR offices with fake blood? I’m dying to know how this is going to go down.”

Ari Shapiro, center, reports for National Public Radio from a Colombia’s border with Venezuela in 2019. His new memoir, “The Best Strangers in the World,” shares stories from his professional and personal lives alike. (Photo by Ryan Kellman/NPR)

Ari Shapiro, longtime National Public Radio reporter and host, shares stories from his professional and personal life in the new memoir “The Best Strangers in the World.” (Photo by J.J. Geiger)

Ari Shapiro, longtime National Public Radio reporter and host, shares stories from his professional and personal life in the new memoir “The Best Strangers in the World.” (Book jacket courtesy of HarperOne)

Ari Shapiro reports for National Public Radio from Zimbabwe in 2018. His new memoir, “The Best Strangers in the World,” shares stories from his professional and personal lives alike. (Photo by Claire Harbage/NPR)

National Public Radio journalist Ari Shapiro’s new memoir, “The Best Strangers in the World,” shares stories from his professional and personal lives alike. (Photo by Stephen Voss)

Ari Shapiro, left, with his older brother Dan celebrating Passover in Fargo, N.D. before the Shapiro family moved to Portland, Ore. a few years later. (Photo courtesy of Ari Shapiro)

Ari Shapiro, longtime National Public Radio reporter and host, shares stories from his professional and personal life in the new memoir “The Best Strangers in the World.” (Photo by Victor Jeffreys)

National Public Radio journalist Ari Shapiro and actor Alan Cumming perform their cabaret show “Och & Oy.” Shapiro’s new memoir, “The Best Strangers in the World,” shares stories from his professional and personal lives alike. (Photo by Emilio Madrid)

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Later, Shapiro, 44, will focus on more serious matters for “All Things Considered,” but for now, he is free to talk about his new book, “The Best Strangers in the World: Stories From a Life Spent Listening,” which arrives March 19.

In the same way that Shapiro’s day can include both the silliness of GWAR and the seriousness of “All Things Considered,” the memoir is like a house with rooms for every part of his life.

There are essays that cover his two decades at NPR in which he’s been a White House correspondent, a London correspondent and a war correspondent. There are other stories from his personal life: Meeting and marrying his husband, joining the band Pink Martini and performing an occasional cabaret act with actor Alan Cumming.

“After more than 20 years as a journalist, I started to feel like sometimes when I go out to report on stories, I put who I am in a box,” Shapiro says of his decision to write the book. “Which is appropriate, because as a journalist it’s not supposed to be about you, the reporter. But I was curious to sort of open the box and see what was inside.

So I wanted to explore the way that the stories that I’ve told over my career have shaped the person I am today,” he says. “And conversely, the way the person I am shapes the stories that I tell.

“Because while I try to be a stand-in for the listener when I’m reporting stories on the radio, I also bring my personality and my identity and my history and my experiences to my reporting. And that push-pull is always present to a lesser or greater extent.”

Q: What did it feel like to open the box and start going, ‘OK, I’m going to tell this story about my personal life now.’

A: It felt completely risky and scary and foreign and dangerous. And for all those reasons, worth doing. One throughline in my life is that I often push myself to get out of my comfort zone and try things that are unfamiliar, that I don’t know whether I will be any good at. It’s a lesson that Alan Cumming has taught me: That the things that make you uncomfortable are often the things most worth doing.

And so as I started to write the book, I had real questions in my mind about whether I would be able to fill the number of pages required of a book. Then I had some real questions about whether anybody would want to read what I wrote on the page as opposed to what I say with my voice. Reading the audiobook was a bit more of a safe space for me in that respect.

But all of those fears and all of that sense of newness and danger reaffirmed my impulse that this was something worth doing. That digging a little bit more deeply into these experiences would be fruitful and would have meaning for the audience.

Q: How did you find the balance of storytelling from work life to personal life?

A: On its best days, ‘All Things Considered’ has a balance of pain and joy, surprise and insight. I didn’t want this book to be ‘All Things Considered’ in memoir form, but I did want to capture that feeling of not knowing what’s going to be next and being pleasantly surprised with what’s around the bend.

I wanted to balance out things that felt weighty and meaningful with things that felt joyful and bubbly. That was my goal, to capture the totality of what life feels like from really difficult questions about coming out to ridiculous anecdotes about sweating too much in embarrassing places.

Q: You write about the importance of curiosity to a journalist. How have you nurtured that as a journalist and a person?

A: My parents always taught me that the more you learn about the world, the more interesting life is. In my childhood, that lesson was primarily applied to nature. Learning about birds or mushrooms or wildflowers. But in my job at NPR, I get to apply it to the entire world. So I love that I wake up every day with a certainty that by the time the workday is over, I will know about something I didn’t know when I began.

Q: Journalists often form intense connections with sources, and when the story is done, move on. Your chapter about following the stories of two refugees in Europe and the United States was an exception to that. How do you see that transient nature of people in and out of your work life?

A: There are two sides to this. I think at its darkest, this can feel vampiric. Like, I asked for your story, you give it to me, and then I walk away and make a paycheck out of it. But more often, I feel like there can be something really intimate and profound about the act of listening. Even if I’m only in someone’s life for five minutes, in that moment, when I ask them to tell me their story, and they share it with me and I really listen, there’s a kind of almost communion that is powerful and authentic and real.

There’s a human connection that is no less authentic for being transitory, and the fact that I might just be passing through these people’s lives and never see them again does not detract from the power of the act of listening.

Q: Let me shift from journalism to the performing arts. You write about joining Pink Martini and making your debut with the group at the Hollywood Bowl. Take me through that moment.

A: Well, the terrifying thing at the Hollywood Bowl, among many, is that backstage you have all of these black and white photographs of the legends who’ve done it before you. So before you go on, you’re looking at Aretha Franklin and the Beatles and Judy Garland and Jimi Hendrix standing on that stage. And then you walk out there.

The great thing about performing at night is you can’t actually see all the thousands of people, which if it’s your first time ever performing with a band, and you’re already terrified, that’s a gift. What you feel, though, is just this wave of cheering and applause. And there’s something about the Hollywood Bowl, specifically, that is so neighborly, and despite its size it feels like a backyard or an outdoor living room. It’s like nothing else that I’ve ever experienced, and just a beautiful thing to be a part of.

Q: I know that Och & Oy, your cabaret act with Alan Cumming, played the Broad Stage last year. How has it changed since it started and what’s it like to perform with Alan?

A: We don’t formally script it, but we know more or less the stories that we’re going to tell each night and the songs that we’re going to sing. The songs don’t change. But nothing’s ever exactly the same from one night to the next. It’s just me and Alan having a good time together.

I love performing with Alan so damn much. He’s just one of the most delightful people I’ve ever met, so any opportunity I get to meet up with him, it’s just the same feeling as when you were a kid and went to your friend’s house for a sleepover, where it’s like, what mischief are we going to get up tonight?

Q: There’s a chapter where you talk about reading fiction, and you quote an author on the idea that journalism usually provides answers, and fiction provides questions. Has that influenced the way you do your journalism?

A: The reason I love fiction is that it helps me understand the kind of architecture of the world as we move through it. But another thing I find so valuable about fiction, which I also try to do in my journalism, is create empathy. Fiction allows me to see the world through the eyes of somebody else who’s different from me.

And I think when I’m doing my best work as a journalist I am helping our audience view the world through the eyes of the person whose voice I am bringing to the radio, even if that person lives thousands of miles away in a country that a listener may never visit and is living through an experience that may be completely different from anything that our audience has ever lived through. My goal as a journalist is to help them understand what life looks like and feels like for that person.