Beautiful People 2010: Ari Shapiro

Ari Shapiro must have a clone. No one man could have so many talents and be in so many places at once. One moment he's chatting about Attorney General Eric Holder and the terrorist trials on National Public Radio; the next he's jetting off to New York to catch Elaine Stritch at the Carlyle Hotel or Hawaii to perform loungey songs with his favorite band, Pink Martini (he can be heard on their latest album Splendor in the Grass, and is basically an honorary member at this point). If there's a parkour event in Washington, D.C. -- where he shares a town house with his husband in the trendy neighborhood of 14th and U -- he's there. That is, when he's not waking up at 2:30 a.m. to fill in as the host of Morning Edition. "I try to remain engaged and stimulated on many different fronts, and maintain a balance between an intellectual and an artistic life," the 32-year-old explains. "That way you don't get burnt-out on one thing."

He won't have to worry about that for a while. He's about to embark on a new adventure, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. After five years as a Justice Department correspondent (he's the youngest NPR reporter to receive correspondent status), he's been promoted to the White House beat. "I am excited about looking at how the White House deals with issues like Guantanamo detainees and national security policies, in contrast to the Justice Department. Surely there is coordination there, but the two parts of the government come at it from different angles," he says.

His career at the public radio station started in 2000, when shortly after graduating from Yale, Shapiro landed an internship with Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg and moved up the ranks faster than Anderson Cooper's hair turned gray. It didn't hurt that growing up in Portland his parents' radio dial was always turned to NPR. "My mother would make dinner every night during All Things Considered. It got to a point where the theme music made me salivate."

Ari wears a blazer by Dolce & Gabbana and shirt and tie by Michael Bastian

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