All Things Considered

Host & Senior Producer

As WABE's local host of "All Things Considered," I hope to take listeners on a daily journey to better understand the place we call home and the people with whom we share it.

I'm a Kentucky native and started my public radio career at WKMS in Murray, Kentucky. In 2007 I moved to Atlanta to work on a PhD, and a year later I accepted a job at WABE. At the time there were just four of us in the newsroom, a far cry from the current 25+!
Over the years I've sat down with a president, watched an Ebola outbreak unfold before my eyes in Africa, and uncovered stories that were catalysts for changing laws. In the process, I've won more than two dozen first-place local, regional and national awards. I'm deeply humbled and grateful to be a part of this community and this station.

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Ari Shapiro has been one of the hosts of All Things Considered, NPR’s award-winning afternoon newsmagazine, since 2015. During his first two years on the program, listenership to All Things Considered grew at an unprecedented rate, with more people tuning in during a typical quarter-hour than any other program on the radio.

Shapiro has reported from above the Arctic Circle and aboard Air Force One. He has covered wars in Iraq, Ukraine, and Israel, and he has filed stories from dozens of countries and most of the 50 states.

Shapiro spent two years as NPR’s International Correspondent based in London, traveling the world to cover a wide range of topics for NPR’s news programs. His overseas move came after four years as NPR’s White House Correspondent during President Barack Obama’s first and second terms. Shapiro also embedded with the campaign of Republican Mitt Romney for the duration of the 2012 presidential race. He was NPR’s Justice Correspondent for five years during the George W. Bush Administration, covering debates over surveillance, detention and interrogation in the years after Sept. 11.

Shapiro’s reporting has been consistently recognized by his peers. He has won two national Edward R. Murrow awards; one for his reporting on the life and death of Breonna Taylor, and another for his coverage of the Trump Administration’s asylum policies on the US-Mexico border. The Columbia Journalism Review honored him with a laurel for his investigation into disability benefits for injured American veterans. The American Bar Association awarded him the Silver Gavel for exposing the failures of Louisiana’s detention system after Hurricane Katrina. He was the first recipient of the American Judges’ Association American Gavel Award for his work on U.S. courts and the American justice system. And at age 25, Shapiro won the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize for an investigation of methamphetamine use and HIV transmission.

An occasional singer, Shapiro makes frequent guest appearances with the “little orchestra” Pink Martini, whose recent albums feature several of his contributions, in multiple languages. Since his debut at the Hollywood Bowl in 2009, Shapiro has performed live at many of the world’s most storied venues, including Carnegie Hall in New York, The Royal Albert Hall in London and L’Olympia in Paris. In 2019 he created the show “Och and Oy” with Tony Award winner Alan Cumming, and they continue to tour the country with it.

Shapiro was born in Fargo, North Dakota, and grew up in Portland, Oregon. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale. He began his journalism career as an intern for NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg, who has also occasionally been known to sing in public.

Mary Louise Kelly is a co-host of All Things Considered, NPR’s award-winning afternoon newsmagazine.

Previously, she spent a decade as national security correspondent for NPR News, and she’s kept that focus in her role as anchor. That’s meant taking All Things Considered to Russia, North Korea, and beyond (including live coverage from Helsinki, for the infamous Trump-Putin summit). Her past reporting has tracked the CIA and other spy agencies, terrorism, wars, and rising nuclear powers. Kelly’s assignments have found her deep in interviews at the Khyber Pass, at mosques in Hamburg, and in grimy Belfast bars.

Kelly first launched NPR’s intelligence beat in 2004. After one particularly tough trip to Baghdad — so tough she wrote an essay about it for Newsweek — she decided to try trading the spy beat for spy fiction. Her debut espionage novel, Anonymous Sources, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2013. It’s a tale of journalists, spies, and Pakistan’s nuclear security. Her second novel, The Bullet, followed in 2015.

Kelly’s writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Washingtonian, The Atlantic, and other publications. She has lectured at Harvard and Stanford, and taught a course on national security and journalism at Georgetown University. In addition to her NPR work, Kelly serves as a contributing editor at The Atlantic, moderating newsmaker interviews at forums from Aspen to Abu Dhabi.

A Georgia native, Kelly’s first job was pounding the streets as a political reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 1996, she made the leap to broadcasting, joining the team that launched BBC/Public Radio International’s The World. The following year, Kelly moved to London to work as a producer for CNN and as a senior producer, host, and reporter for the BBC World Service.

Kelly graduated from Harvard University in 1993 with degrees in government, French language, and literature. Two years later, she completed a master’s degree in European studies at Cambridge University in England.