Ari Shapiro’s last day as host of NPR’s All Things Considered is Friday, September 26. WPSU’s Kristine Allen spoke with Shapiro at the end of August about his quarter century at NPR.
(This conversations was recorded prior to the announcement that Penn State would shut down WPSU by June 30, 2026.)
ALLEN: Ari Shapiro, welcome.
SHAPIRO: Thank you so much for having me.
ALLEN: We are incredibly sad to hear that you're leaving NPR, of course, but we wish you the best.
SHAPIRO: Thank you. I'm a little sad to be leaving NPR, but I'm really proud of the 25 years that I've spent here and the decade that I have spent in the host chair at All Things Considered. It's a job that I always thought I would do for 10 years, and so this has been a long time coming. And it has been really lovely to hear all of the sort of outpouring of memories and well-wishers that it's a little like attending my own funeral in a good way.
ALLEN: I want to ask you about your journey at NPR, because at WPSU, it's very important to us to help student journalists at Penn State develop their skills as interns with us. And I'd say you're the poster child for an NPR intern who went on to great things. What was that like starting out?
SHAPIRO: My public radio involvement started even before my internship because when I was in high school, I volunteered at OPB in Portland, Oregon, answering phones during the pledge drive.
ALLEN: Wonderful.
SHAPIRO: I was a public radio participant from very early on. And then when I interned for Nina Totenberg right after I finished college, it was incredible because it was the end of the Clinton administration, the beginning of the Bush administration. We were covering the Supreme Court, I had not set foot in Washington, D.C. apart from a 6th grade class trip there. And suddenly I was walking the halls of Congress with somebody who was the dean of the Supreme Court press corps.
It was this amazing crash course in journalism, where every time I would transcribe one of her interviews — because back then we didn't have the automatic transcription technology we have now — I would think really closely about where she jumped in and asked a different question, or tried to move the person in a particular direction or ask something in a certain way. And I kind of learned interviewing skills from that internship, from transcribing the interviews that Nina had done.
ALLEN: Boy, I can imagine that was intense. I don't think Nina hires slackers.
SHAPIRO: I think we were a good match for each other, because very early on, she described me to somebody as a Jack Russell Terrier, where if you don't keep teaching them new skills, they'll start to chew up the furniture.
ALLEN: (laughter)
SHAPIRO: So maybe I just had the disposition and the metabolism from the very beginning for a daily news show where you really have to be able to move quickly on a lot of different topics.
ALLEN: At a time when newspapers are folding around the country, NPR stations like WPSU are keeping the local journalism flame alive. Our listeners might not be aware of how NPR and member station journalists often work closely together. And I wanted to ask you what your perspective is on that partnership?
SHAPIRO: Over the years that I have been not just a host, but also a correspondent, I have worked closely with so many different member station reporters in so many different cities.
I remember one of the very first trips, possibly the first trip I took as a host of All Things Considered, was to Tennessee reporting on a law involving pregnant women who used prescription painkillers. And I collaborated with a WPLN Nashville, Tennessee reporter on that series of stories.
And more recently, just before this election, the presidential election, I did a bunch of reporting from the swing state of Wisconsin and collaborated very closely with one of those member station reporters.
And so to have the local knowledge and the local expertise in these communities all over the country is something that is getting more and more scarce and public radio still clings to. And we're only able to do it because of listeners stepping up to support it. And that's always been true, but it's even more true now that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down and that flow of revenue is ending.
ALLEN: That is really a massive loss of funds for member stations around the country. What is your feeling now about the future of public media?
SHAPIRO: I think we'll continue to exist, and the form that we continue to exist in, the size that we continue to be, is entirely dependent on listeners and whether listeners step up. And I think in a way, this can be actually really reassuring, because there are a lot of problems right now that I think people feel unable to solve. There are a lot of things that are broken that people feel unable to fix. And this is a problem that actually has a very clear and straightforward solution. This is something that is actually very easy to fix, which is that people stepping up, contributing, supporting the journalism that they believe in, can solve this problem and can ensure the future of public media.
So I'm hopeful, I think there's a real opportunity here, but I don't think it's guaranteed.
ALLEN: I wanted to ask you about what you're going to be doing after you leave NPR. Of course, you've been doing a lot more than journalism, as many of our listeners know. You're quite a singer, and you've been doing a cabaret performance with the multi-talented Scottish actor Alan Cumming. Tell me about that and what that's like.
SHAPIRO: Well, he and I have become great friends over the years of doing this show that we created together called “Och and Oy.” He's the Scotsman, the “Och,” I'm the Jew, the “Oy,” and the two of us basically spend 90 minutes singing songs, telling stories, and making each other laugh.
(MUSIC: from the cabaret, “Och and Oy.”)
SHAPIRO: But you're right that even while I've been a host of All Things Considered, I've done lots of other things too. I wrote a memoir called “The Best Strangers in the World.” I hosted a reality competition on Netflix called “The Mole.” I toured the show with Alan Cumming, I tour with a band called Pink Martini, and I tour with my own solo cabaret show.
And so after I leave All Things Considered, I'm not giving up journalism altogether, but I also want to continue wearing a lot of different hats because I think it's fun to do things that are more serious and more entertaining, things that are short and long-term deadlines, things that are in print, on TV, on radio, or audio, whatever the case may be. And so I look forward to continuing to have that sort of mix in the future.
ALLEN: And maybe some collaboration with public radio in some way?
SHAPIRO: I'm certainly not closing the door to that. I would love to continue to be involved with public radio in some way. I leave with only goodwill and good feelings about the time that I've spent in public radio. And whether or not I am a public radio employee, I will absolutely continue being a public radio listener and supporter.
ALLEN: Ari Shapiro, thank you so much. Best wishes for your new adventure from all of us at WPSU.
SHAPIRO: Thank you.
(MUSIC: from the cabaret, “Och and Oy.”)
