Ari Shapiro Joins CNN, Launches Podcast With Audie Cornish

CNN has hired former NPR host Ari Shapiro as a contributor, the network said on Wednesday, reuniting him with his former radio colleague and “All Things Considered” co-host Audie Cornish.

Shapiro will appear across CNN’s linear network and its digital programming. He and Cornish, another NPR alum who joined the network in 2022, will also host a new video podcast, “Engagement Party,” that will chronicle elements of culture and ideas they’re both obsessed with.

The podcast will premiere on May 22. The show was born out of a segment on Cornish’s CNN podcast “The Assignment,” where she and Shapiro would discuss their favorite bits of culture. Past segments include a conversation about the gay hockey drama “Heated Rivalry” and whether the concept of “work spouses” is real.

Shapiro left NPR in October after nearly 25 years. He had worked as a justice correspondent during the George W. Bush administration, a White House correspondent covering the Barack Obama administration and an international correspondent based in London.

He ended his tenure at the radio network as the co-host of “All Things Considered,” NPR’s flagship evening news broadcast, for a decade, along with the podcast “Consider This.” Scott Detrow replaced Shapiro on “All Things Considered.”

“As I start the next chapter of my own professional evolution, I can’t imagine an organization more uniquely prepared to deliver the kind of illumination, understanding, and joy that I have treasured my entire life — and will continue to depend on as a listener,” he said in the note announcing his departure last year.

 Shapiro also hosted the reality competition “The Mole” on Netflix in 2024, a year after his memoir “The Best Strangers in the World” debuted. Shapiro has won three Edward R. Murrow awards for reports on the connection between climate change, migration and far-right political leaders; the life and death of Breonna Taylor, who was killed by Kentucky police in 2020; and his coverage of the Trump administration’s asylum policies along the Southern border.

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