Adventure 33: A Night with Ari Shapiro

For those of you who may not be NPR listeners, and wouldn't have heard this advertised every 45 minutes on KUER for the last two weeks, the white house correspondent, Ari Shapiro, came to town. He is taking a new job as the London correspondent, and before leaving the country, decided to stop in Salt Lake City for an interview with Doug Fabrizio, the host of the local show Radio West at Salt Lake Community College. 

This was a free event, but we had to get our tickets before hand to guarantee a seat. We showed up about 15 minutes early, and found a line of about 50 people at the door. By the time they opened the doors a few minutes later, the line had wound down the hallway, several hundred strong.

Once they let us in, we filled those seats!

Ready to get it started!

Doug Fabrizio came out first, and read Ari's introduction. Doug as always, at once started talking with his calm voice, and sitting back comfortably in the cushy chair, was seemingly un-phased by the energy of the audience. Turns out Ari is from Portland, which made me like him before I even saw him. There's something about Portland that changes everyone who lives there.

I have to say, Ari Shapiro is a familiar name to me as a voice I hear reporting on the station I listen to. But beyond that I knew nothing about his career, or about him really. Incidentally I discovered I follow him on Twitter. In what must have been a moment of adding every NPR name I recognized, he's in my line up. So that was a fun bonus!

A few things I learned in this hour interview:

• Ari's background is theater, and reporting on the radio brought to him everything he loved about performing on stage; sharing a story, an element of performance, and leaving an audience feeling different than they did before

• Ari is much more animated in person than he sounds on the radio
• Ari rides his bike everywhere

• Ari is Jewish
• Ari is gay
• Ari did a series of award winning stories on 'bath houses' that was considered ground breaking about the gay community

• Ari is very much a journalist. As personal topics were brought up for discussion, and the audience asked questions wanting to get a more in-depth take on controversial issues, he stayed pretty neutral and fair. The topics ranged from gay marriage to Mitt Romney, who Ari covered this last election. Though the seemingly liberal audience questions seemed to want to take him in a more opinionated direction, Ari kept it fact-based, and did not embellish. 

• Ari is a musician, he sings for Pink Martini on occasion, and from what I found online, he is very much a performer! 
• Ari very apparently has an active, and curious mind that doesn't seem to stop. He's energetic, and seems to really feed off of the energy of being on stage.

Time spent on adventure: 1.5 hours

Money spent: $0

Recommendation: 7 out of 10 adventure points!