The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

by Ari Shapiro

I found a career where I could perform those acts of translation, and be a liaison, for groups to which I had no personal connection beyond my journalistic interest. My microphone and headset served as a snorkel and mask. When I strapped them on, I could enter colorful

Every news organization keeps a long list of people who could die at any moment. Movie stars, politicians, musicians, athletes, and other towering figures from earlier generations are all on the list. Often, obituaries are written long before the celebrity takes that last breath. But beat reporters covering arts or politics generally don’t want to spend their time reporting stories that could sit on a shelf gathering dust for years.

Jewish tradition states that no matter how rich or poor you are, there are two things that everyone gets exactly the same, with no signifiers of class or wealth: everyone gets buried in a simple wooden casket, and everyone gets married with a plain gold wedding band.

Suddenly the flak jacket and helmet that had made me feel so secure an hour ago just made me feel inept, like a dumb Western interloper trying to inure himself against the reality he was witnessing.

The most successful Facebook ad that Russian trolls purchased in 2016 reached well over a million people. It was called “Back the Badge,” described as a “Community of people who support our brave Police Officers.” The Internet Research Agency, a troll farm in Saint Petersburg, Russia, paid eighteen hundred dollars for it. The most popular Texas secession page on Facebook, which had more followers than the official Texas Democratic and Republican Facebook pages combined, was a Russian front. It was called Heart of Texas, and by the time Facebook took it down, it had a quarter million followers.

I often tell journalism students that if they finish a reporting project with exactly the story they had set out to find, something has gone wrong.

of journalists aspired to was never actually from nowhere.