Ari Shapiro has been one of the hosts of NPR’s flagship afternoon newsmagazine All Things Considered since 2015. Before that, he also held the reporting titles of NPR’s Justice, White House, and International Correspondent throughout his career. Outside of his award-wining work on air, Shapiro also wrote a memoir, The Best Strangers In the World, and performs a cabaret with Tony Award winner Alan Cumming.
Clearly, Shapiro likes to stay busy. So, when he’s not in the host chair he is out reporting in the field, which is what recently brought him to Milwaukee to highlight Wisconsinites ahead of the presidential election as a part of NPR’s We, The Voters project.
"I love the Great Lakes region," says Shapiro. "I've done a lot of reporting trip to Ohio and to Michigan over the years, I haven't spent as much time in Wisconsin. I've been to the state a number of times, but I haven't done as much reporting here so I'm really looking forward to digging deep and spending a week getting to know people."
Being one of four All Things Considered hosts, Shapiro enjoys the mixed schedule that allows him to be involved in several types of projects. "I will be hosting the radio show for two weeks, I'll be hosting a podcast Consider This for one week, and I'll have an assignment week for one week a month, which is what this is for me," he explains.
Far before his NPR career, Shapiro grew up as a "back seat listener." "I used to joke that the All Things Considered theme music gave me a Pavlovian reaction because my mother was always cooking dinner when All Things Considered came on, so I associated ATC's theme with eating," he jokingly recalls.
"I've always loved the storytelling aspect of it, I love pursuing my curiosity," Shapiro adds. "I love that every day I wake up knowing that I will learn about something over the course of the day that I didn't know about; that I get to ask people who are doing the most important work in their field, whatever that field might be, questions that might be totally basic and ignorant and I just get to learn what they know and that's a fringe benefit of my job. I just feel very lucky to get to do that."
Shapiro's first job in NPR was an internship with NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg after college. Not only did he learn simply from watching Totenberg while exploring the people and places of Washington D.C., but Shapiro deeply appreciated spending time with one of the central people who made their own footprint in hard news at NPR.
"[They] found a home for the kind of hard news reporting that they wanted to do when the main networks were not hiring women to do hard news," he notes. "So I look up to those people because they sort of shaped the journalism field to make space for themselves in a way that I think I, and others who have come after me, have also continued to do. And journalism is not static - journalism evolves and we can help shape it through the work that we do."
Of all the topics Shapiro has covered, one subject in particular remains a favorite since he started — food.
"Here's the thing about food, no matter where you are in history, where you are in the world, where you are in the spectrum of wealth, class, any variable does not matter - food is there," he explains. "And so by looking at the world through the lens of food you can tell stories about things that might feel distant and unrelatable that become more accessible because everybody can relate to and enjoy and share food."
Outside of being a reporter and host at NPR, Shapiro also hosts the Netflix reality TV show The Mole, and sings with Pink Martini in studio and on tour. While he enjoys working in radio, Shapiro says its important to keep up with other fun and engaging activities outside of the world of news.
“[My outside gigs are all] related to listening and storytelling and connecting with an audience, yes. But above and beyond all that they're things that I really enjoy doing and hopefully that comes across," he says.
