Who Is Ari Shapiro, New Host of ‘The Mole’?

For its second season, The Mole is getting a new emcee. Netflix announced that the reality competition series will return for a new three-week event, beginning on June 28, with new episodes dropping weekly through July 12. And this time, the host of the season will be journalist Ari Shapiro.

So what should fans know about Shapiro?

He manifested his role as The Mole host in a podcast.

While appearing on Bowen Yang’s podcast Las Culturistas in March 2023, the subject of the show came up, and the SNL star suggested Shapiro would be a good fit for the gig, Shapiro was effusive in his excitement over that idea. Fast forward to now, and that is one dream that has come true.

 

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He’s a seasoned journalist.

For starters, even if you don’t recognize his face, his voice might be pretty familiar because he is a radio journalist and host of National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

Before becoming the show’s headliner in 2015 (the first to do so before the age of 30), he spent more than a decade working behind the scenes and, eventually, as a field reporter covering the White House starting in 2010 and as a correspondent based in London.

He’s highly decorated for his professional achievements.

Shapiro graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a degree in English. He has won several awards in the course of his career, including recognitions from the American Bar Association, the American Judges Association, and the Columbia Journalism Review, along with three national Edward R. Murrow awards, the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Portland (incidentally, the same university his mother is a former communications professor at).

He has some fascinating side hustles, too.

In addition to serving as the host of NPR’s flagship show, he also hosts a podcast called Consider This, often sings guest vocals for the band Pink Martini, and co-created a cabaret show (alongside The Traitors host Alan Cumming, no less) called Och & Oy! A Considered Cabaret.

 

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He’s also an author. His memoir The Best Strangers in the World: Stories From a Life Spent Listening hit shelves in 2023.

He’s been married for more than 20 years.

Shapiro has been married to Michael Gottlieb, an attorney who worked for the Obama White House, since 2004.

 

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He is a champion of LGBTQ+ rights.

Upon winning the Journalist of the Year prize from NLGJA, the network of LGBTQ+ journalists, Shapiro wrote that the award, “reminds me how lucky I am that I’ve never had to weigh the potential costs of being out of work.”

“That’s a credit not only to my colleagues at NPR but also to generations of people before me who fought to make journalism a more inclusive business.”