The All Things Considered co-host brought humor, heart, and hard-earned wisdom to the University Theatre stage, sharing stories from the field and lessons for a life well-lived.
“Lead with Joy”: Ari Shapiro Shares Stories and Wisdom with Riverside
The All Things Considered co-host brought humor, heart, and hard-earned wisdom to the University Theatre stage, sharing stories from the field and lessons for a life well-lived.
Ari Shapiro, co-host of National Public Radio’s news program All Things Considered, thrilled a sold-out audience at the University of California, Riverside’s University Theatre last Monday evening with stories and advice for life.
This year’s Hays Press-Enterprise Lecturer, Shapiro started with a tribute to Riverside Press-Enterprise editor Howard H. “Tim” Hays, who started the 56-year-old tradition in collaboration with UCR. The award-winning journalist cited the vision of Hays, who funded the first lectures, as well as his son, Tom, who endowed the series in perpetuity in 1997.
Shapiro continued to lay out the theme of his talk—the tension in life between optimistic “active participation” versus pessimistic “apathetic helplessness.” What followed were ten stories of individuals who chose to embrace opportunities to contribute to making the world a better place, choices of “radical empathy.” Shapiro encountered many of these people coincidentally as he toured the world on assignment.
Ranging from Brianna Fruean, the Samoan delegate at a climate conference who challenged the other attendees to “lead with joy,” to Ali Demir, a Turkish sidewalk café owner who replaced his little outside tables with long, power-stripped tables for Syrian war refugees to plug in their cellphones to FaceTime with relatives left at home, Shapiro’s heroes chose participation over apathy.
In other stories, Shapiro focused on his interviewee. In an interview with science fiction writer and three-time Hugo Award winner N.K. Jemisin, Shapiro asked about the end of the world. Jemisin replied, “What is the apocalypse for some folks is day-to-day living for others.” In Poland, Shapiro spoke with Rabbi Michael Schudrich about his involvement with a synagogue repurposed into a center for Ukrainian refugees. Schudrich observed, “... history is important but it doesn’t dictate the future. We dictate the future.”
After about his half-hour presentation, Shapiro was joined by Alex Espinoza, UCR Professor of Creative Writing, for an hourlong Q&A session. The questions from Espinoza included a request to describe a typical day and how Shapiro gets people to open up. They moved on to diverse questions previously accumulated from the audience, ranging from the contemporary state of journalism to Shapiro’s occasional singing with the band Pink Martini.
Notably, Shapiro acknowledged the recent scrutiny of the House of Representatives on whether to sustain funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which partially funds National Public Radio and TV’s Public Broadcasting Service. He explained that those umbrella organizations only receive a small fraction of CPB funding for their budgets and would survive a complete cut. However, their member stations rely much more on CPB funding, especially those in sparsely populated rural areas, economically depressed regions, and in so-called “red” states.
What emerged from these tales and Shapiro’s digressions was a view of the world as a place of constant renewal with continuing opportunities for people to fix the broken pieces. For example, speaking about democracy, he said that for any given place and time, “Things are becoming more democratic or things are becoming less democratic.”
“My goal as a journalist is to illuminate, to help you understand.”
In short, Ari Shapiro has chosen a life of active participation—and sets a good example.
Norm Ellstrand is an emeritus Distinguished Professor of Genetics and former Director of the California Agriculture and Food Enterprise at the University of California Riverside.
