Name: Why Work Spouses Can Be a Secret Weapon | Engagement Party
Uploaded: 2026-03-05T16:28:07.000Z
Duration: 26 min 22 s
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Modal verbs - A2

How do you define work wife, work husband, work spouse?

Which my own husband hadn't figured out yet.

And I've got another special episode of the Assignment for you.

I was at the podcast festival known as On Air Fest that was in Brooklyn just last week.

And for this, I knew I wanted to bring along a friend because we're going to talk about work spouses.

And mine for a very long time was Ari Shapiro of npr.

So we talk about our careers, media, of course, what makes for a good work spouse.

It was a fun conversation, so stick with us.

Adi Cornish and Ari Shapiro, come on out.

Back in January, I asked Ari to come on the Assignment because, honestly, January was a lot, y'.

I needed somebody that I could have a conversation with about the stories I was missing, right?

These, like, cultural stories that I wanted to talk about.

And we had a reference point because for all the years that Audie and I were All Things Considered hosts together, you heard us on the radio being very serious.

And during the eight minute segment about Syria, when our mics are off, we would cackle about the latest thing that we had found on Reddit or on Instagram or whatever was bubbling up in the culture.

And we never really got to laugh like that with each other and finish each other's sentences on the radio in quite that way.

So that was kind of the goal of the engagement party.

I don't think it's gonna work out the way you like.

So the reason why I wanted to talk to Ari here at on airfest is because, first of all, I've been here a couple times, and

And second, I think that he's just exited from NPR just a few months ago.

Which, as it turns out, in cable news time is actually 25 years.

And so we wanted to talk about this kind of what it means to pivot and what it means to, like, collaborate.

I think the moment we are in is so overwhelmingly defined by transformation, and

yet, when I look back at our career in journalism, I think this era of journalism has been For a few decades.

And I have to say, I think I'm looking a bit more Andersonian, distinguished.

The thing is, when you were at a place like npr, and

this is related, there was a little bit of cosplaying as the previous generation of anchors.

Trying to sound like Robert Siegel or something like that, trying to sound like Susan Stamberg.

I was mentored by Robert Siegel against his will.

And it really meant that you were constantly.

Instead of trying to be yourself, which that generation got to do when they started in the 70s, we were trying to be them, which is why we weren't cracking those jokes on air.

I left before you, but you were there long enough to become the distinguished host.

I saw over the years that I was at npr, both NPR and the media landscape more broadly transform into a place where, first, there were fewer barriers to entry, and

second, as a result, there were more voices in the mix.

I remember the moment that Robert Krulwich and Jad Abumrab created Radiolab.

And it was like, oh, that's a different way to sound, doing audio storytelling.

And then that was the different way to sound.

Until one day, a thousand different voices popped up, each one attracting different audiences, each one, Each one inventing different ways to sound.

And as somebody who was in the kind of ivory tower of npr, I feel like that gave me a little more freedom.

And I wonder whether you felt this way, too.

To be myself and to sound less like what I thought an NPR host should sound like and more just sound like Ari Shapiro, whatever that might mean.

I felt the restrictions of it more acutely because I was looking around and being like, guys, there's like a tsunami out there of content and people and talent, and

And it's interesting because now that I'm in television, I'm in a way watching the same thing happen.

Well, back during NPR days, people would be like, podcast, who listens to that?

And it was like, that's not ever going to be as big as what we do.

And then I go on and like a 12 year old has a podcast, Right?

And I'm like, I think you guys need to, like, think about this a little differently.

So in a way, I feel there's a little bit of a back to the future.

I started making journalism before social media existed.

But I remember a moment when I was in coastal Turkey covering the Syrian refugee crisis.

At this point in my life, I was a foreign correspondent.

London was my home base, but I traveled the world.

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Why Work Spouses Can Be a Secret Weapon | Engagement Party

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