Noah Adams, Longtime Voice of NPR’s ‘All Things Considered,’ Dies at 84

(TodayViralUSA) — Noah Adams, the writer and broadcaster who hosted NPR’s flagship evening newsmagazine “All Things Considered” for 18 years and became one of public radio’s defining storytellers, has died. He was 84.

Adams died Friday at his home in Yellow Springs, Ohio, his wife, Neenah Ellis, told NPR.

From production assistant to host

Born in Kentucky, Adams drifted through a series of jobs, including construction work and selling cars, before landing in radio. In 1972 he began working at the public radio station at the University of Kentucky, and three years later he applied for a production assistant job on “All Things Considered,” joining NPR when the network was still young.

As host, he guided listeners through major national stories, including Ronald Reagan’s landslide election victories, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But colleagues said his journalism shone brightest in the long, quiet features he reported from trains and small towns, steering away from officials and toward ordinary people.

“He was always observing,” said Melissa Block, who produced pieces with Adams before hosting the program herself. “Somehow, when we came back, he would capture the character of a place or a person or a town in the most vivid, rich, simple language.”

An influence on a generation

Ira Glass, who worked with Adams as a young producer, has repeatedly cited his interviewing style as an inspiration for the tone of “This American Life,” according to NPR. Glass recalled a 1987 interview with an 8-year-old girl whose parents had divorced, in which Adams put her at ease by first chatting about dogs, calling it “the fastest, most efficient warm up of a child.”

Adams left “All Things Considered” in 1987 to launch a variety show in Minnesota meant to succeed Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion.” The program did not last, and he returned to the newsmagazine two years later, hosting alongside Robert Siegel and Linda Wertheimer.

“Noah was a voice for our going to rural America, doing stories about what was happening in small towns far from the Interstate 95 corridor,” Siegel said.

Books and a landmark documentary

Adams wrote five books, among them “Piano Lessons” (1996), a memoir of learning the piano at 51; “Far Appalachia: Following the New River North” (2001); and “The Flyers: In Search of Wilbur & Orville Wright” (2003).

Siegel and others pointed to the 1981 radio documentary “Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown,” built from hours of audio recorded by cult leader Jim Jones, as a high point of his work. Adams made it with producer Deb Amos and author James Reston Jr., narrating it as a fictional composite survivor of the cult, an experimental choice that drew controversy at the time.