On June 2, Skokie’s Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center will start Pride Month with the program “In Conversation with Ari Shapiro and Judy Gold—Exploring Intersectionality.” This discussion, with Museum Board of Trustees member Denise Foy moderating, will highlight the intersectionality of identity and the experiences of individuals who belong to both the LGBTQ+ and Jewish communities.
Shapiro—a journalist who co-hosts NPR’s All Things Considered, but also a singer—recently talked with Windy City Times about coming out, intersectionality and advice for younger LGBTQ+ people.
NOTE: This conversation was edited for clarity and length.
Windy City Times: Before we get into the more serious stuff, let’s talk about your singing career. I believe you sang at Yale University before your career blossomed.
Ari Shapiro: Sure. I sang during undergraduate school, and did shows and choirs in high school. But when I finished college, I moved into journalism and sort of left music behind. Then, in 2008, the bandleader of Pink Martini asked if I’d sing a song on the next album. But after I went to the studio to record that song, the bandleader, Thomas, said, “I need a time for you to perform it live so why don’t you come to the Hollywood Bowl?” So my first time ever singing with the band was in front of 18,000 people; then Thomas said, “If you’re going to keep singing with us, we’re going to have to find some more songs for you.” That was about 15 years ago and I’ve been singing with the band ever since.
And I’ve gone on to do some other projects, too. I have a cabaret show with Alan Cumming [“Och & Oy!”] and now I have my own solo cabaret that I’m launching this summer. So it’s fun to have multiple forms of self-expression that are complementary but not necessarily overlapping.
WCT: So do you feel that singing adds to your life as a journalist? How do they relate?
Shapiro: They’re different ways of storytelling. They’re different ways of connecting with an audience. They’re different approaches to building empathy and helping people, ideally, understand the world a little differently.
WCT: I read your bio. I think if the average person read it, that person would say that you’re very accomplished—but life hasn’t necessarily been easy. When you grew up, did you feel like an outsider?
Shapiro: Well, as I describe in my memoir [The Best Strangers in the World], I was one of two Jewish kids at my elementary school in Fargo, North Dakota—the other being my older brother. Then my family moved to Portland, Oregon, and I came out when I was 16; I was the only out kid at my high school. In that sense, I was at my school doing a version of what I do now as a journalist—and what I mean is that I would take something that was abstract and foreign to people around me and make it seem a little less strange, real and nuanced.
The realization I had when I got into journalism was that the translation and interpretation that I did as the Jewish kid in my elementary school and the gay teenager at my high school were things I could do, as a journalist, with groups that I have no personal connection to beyond my journalistic curiosity.
WCT: You covered the 2014 Gaza War. What are the main differences between what happened then and what’s happening now?
Shapiro: Oh, the biggest difference is scale. This is a much bigger, longer and bloodier conflict—and that defines everything that follows.
WCT: And that includes what’s happening here. I don’t remember campus protests in 2014. Why do you think all the antisemitism is happening in this country?
Shapiro: I did a segment on NPR recently—and it was also on the podcast Consider This—where I talked with two Jewish journalists, Julia Ioffe and Franklin Foer, about this. And I think it was helpful to put it in the context of the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” march, where people were chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” In 2018, there was the Tree of Life [synagogue] shooting in Pittsburgh. And so, this trend started long before this war and, certainly, it has continued and grown during the war—but this was not something that began on Oct. 7.
WCT: And do you think the election of Donald Trump is connected to the growth?
Shapiro: I don’t think it helped that he equivocated the marchers in Charlottesville when he said there were good people on both sides. But it’s always hard to tell whether a politician like Donald Trump is the cause or the symptom.
WCT: Regarding the June 2 event on intersectionality, why do you feel this conversation is needed?
Shapiro: I think it’s always helpful to build empathy and try to help people see the world through the eyes of someone who’s different from themselves. It’s something I’ve done my whole life, both through personal stories like in my memoir or cabaret show, or through the stories of other people, like the ones I tell on All Things Considered every day. We live in this world where very strong forces—from social-media algorithms to political parties—push us to see people who are different from ourselves as enemies. And the kinds of conversations and close listening that can build empathy are helpful antidotes to some of those trends.
WCT: For you, what is it like to be part of the LGBTQ+ community in today’s America?
Shapiro: I think it’s hard for fish to see the water they swim in. But being part of a marginalized group helps me to see the rest of the world in a slightly different way that allows me to perceive some of the structures of society that otherwise might be invisible. I write about this in my memoir when I talk about the idea of the “view from nowhere” [a term for objectivity]—how that was always a fallacy. But I’m not sure I would’ve noticed it was a fallacy unless I was a person who sits somewhere, and I now realize that we all sit somewhere.
My identities as a man, as an American and as a white person [are as relevant] to the way I move through the world as my identities as a queer or Jewish person. When I’m reporting in northern Iraq in the war against ISIS, my identity as an American is front and center. When I’m reporting from Zimbabwe on a presidential election, my identity as a white person is front and center. And there are times when my identities as a queer or Jewish person feels more salient but, generally speaking, the fact that I’m gay allows me to perceive that weave of the fabric in a slightly more vivid way.