Published: March 2010
Ari Daniel Shapiro ’01 is a biological oceanographer turned storyteller—an independent producer of radio and multimedia science pieces whose reporting on topics ranging from Indonesia’s depleted mangrove forests to the elephant seals of California has been featured on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition and All Things Considered, WGBH’s The World, and WNYC’s Radio Lab.
Shapiro’s radio career began in 2007, about a year before he finished his Ph.D. studies at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, when he started producing one-minute profiles of Cape Cod scientists for Atlantic Public Media, a Cape-based public broadcasting provider. That work soon led to longer stories about far-flung creatures of the natural world, including the killer whales off the coast of Scotland and the wrens of Costa Rica. “The human voice is the oldest tool for storytelling,” Shapiro recently told Science Careers magazine. “This makes radio a very sophisticated medium for telling rich, layered stories.”
- Science Careers magazine, in its December 11, 2009, issue, traces Shapiro’s career, from undergraduate intern at NOVA to independent radio producer.
- “Restoring Indonesia’s mangroves,” from The World, August 4, 2009
- “For Seals On Facebook, ‘It’s Complicated’,” from All Things Considered, March 6, 2009
- “Killer Whales: The Allure Of The Search,” from Weekend Edition Sunday, January 25, 2009
- Ari Daniel Shapiro’s website
