Noah Adams, a longtime host of NPR news program \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d and a journalist known for his gentle voice and genuine curiosity, has died. He was 84.<\/p>\n
Adams died Oct. 16 at his home in Yellow Springs, Ohio, according to NPR<\/a>. The cause was complications of a benign brain tumor removed eight years ago, his wife and longtime NPR news producer Neenah Ellis told the New York Times<\/a>. <\/p>\n A host of the weekday edition of \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d for 18 years, Adams helped cover major news events and produced segments from his travels around the country, talking to everyday people, often in small rural towns. <\/p>\n \u201cHe never liked talking to people who he knew had preprogrammed things to say,\u201d Melissa Block, a former \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d host who\u2019d previously worked as a producer for Adams, said in NPR\u2019s segment announcing his death. \u201cHe wanted people who were genuinely speaking from their heart and with conviction and sincerity.\u201d <\/p>\n Born on Sept. 15, 1942, in Ashland, Ky., Adams joined NPR in the mid-1970s after working various jobs including as a DJ and in construction in and around his hometown. A college dropout, Adams was inspired to start working in public radio after encountering \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d as a listener.<\/p>\n He was introduced to the program by a colleague shortly after it debuted in 1971. He told The Times in 2002<\/a> that he remembered thinking, \u201cThat sounds conversational, that they intend for me to be listening, that I\u2019m smart enough to be listening,\u201d when he first heard the show.<\/p>\n After working at the University of Kentucky\u2019s public radio station, he applied for a job at NPR. He was hired as a production assistant on \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d in 1975 before becoming a weekend co-host for the show in 1978. He moved to the weekday show in 1982. <\/p>\n Susan Stamberg, Adams\u2019 \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d co-host from 1982 to 1987 who died last year, described him as \u201cthe most genuine, uncontrived voice in broadcasting\u201d in the foreword of his 1992 book about his work on the program. <\/p>\n \u201cThe conviction shines through the words he writes, and the quiet and very powerful way in which he speaks,\u201d she wrote, according to Current<\/a>. \u201cHe is a quiet, careful man, a craftsman in his work, his seriousness softened by a twinkle in his eye, an occasional goofy grin, and the daffodils he\u2019ll bring into the studio on an especially tense or stuffy day.\u201d<\/p>\n Adams mentioned the camaraderie with his colleagues and one-on-one interviews as among the things he would miss when he left his job as host of \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d for a second and final time in 2002. <\/p>\n These interviews, which often turned into \u201ca conversation that\u2019s so quiet and so slow,\u201d were the \u201ckind of conversation [that] cannot be accomplished on anything but radio,\u201d he told The Times. <\/p>\n Among Adams\u2019 signature audio work is the 1981 radio documentary \u201cFather Cares: The Last of Jonestown<\/a>,\u201d as well as a series of interviews<\/a> with Tom DeBaggio, a man living with Alzheimer\u2019s disease, and an interview with Betsy Walter<\/a>, an 8-year-old girl whose parents had gotten divorced. Adams wrote a number of books, including \u201cPiano Lessons: Music, Love, and True Adventures,\u201d which chronicled Adams\u2019 quest to learn how to play the piano<\/a> in his 50s, and \u201cThe Flyers: In Search of Wilbur and Orville Wright.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cHe has a writer\u2019s eye, and I think you hear that when he\u2019s on the air,\u201d Robert Siegel, Adams\u2019 \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d co-host, said in 2002. \u201cAnd he takes sound very seriously. When you combine writing with sound, you can create extraordinary radio.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Noah Adams, a longtime host of NPR news program \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d and a journalist known for his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[24264,195876,48025,47246,6227,48,52,51,7036,47,50,49,195872,10278,195873,147653,66560,1860,4610,195874,195875],"class_list":["post-507252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-book","tag-careful-man","tag-conviction","tag-everyday-people","tag-host","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-last-year","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-noah-adams","tag-npr","tag-one-on-one-interview","tag-piano-lessons","tag-segment","tag-show","tag-thing","tag-various-job","tag-weekend-co-host"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}