About Latitudes

Latitudes is an occasional hour-long global affairs radio show that takes you into the lives of everyday people around the world. Stories feature people who are finding constructive solutions to some of life’s toughest challenges.

The program features on-the-ground reporting by a vast international network of correspondents. We also train local reporters around the globe, who take us inside their communities.

Latitudes is produced and distributed by WAMU 88.5, the National Public Radio affiliate for the greater Washington DC region.

Our hosts

Sabri Ben-Achour is an award-winning journalist working with WAMU 88.5 since 2008. As WAMU’s Environment Reporter, Sabri explores everything from Chesapeake Bay cleanup policy to the evolutionary origins of music.  Sabri’s reporting has also been featured on NPR, Marketplace, and The World. He received a Masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. Born in France to parents from Tunisia and New Zealand, he is an avid traveler whose wanderings have taken him to places as varied as the misty jungles of Panama to rebel controlled frontiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. When Sabri is not traversing the globe, he teaches pottery, exhibits ceramic artwork, and once moonlighted as an underwear model. 

Hosts, Fall 2011

Rachel Louise Snyder is the bestselling author of Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade (WW Norton). She is also the host and executive producer of the weekly public radio program The Global Guru, which uncovers mysteries of global culture around the world. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Travel & Leisure, The New Republic and Slate, among others, and she received a 2006 Overseas Press Award for her work on the public radio show This American Life. Snyder lived in London for two years, before moving to Cambodia for an accidental six, and recently relocated to Washington, D.C., where she is an assistant professor of literature in the MFA program at American University.

Gwen Thompkins is a writer in New Orleans and a veteran of public radio. From 2006 to 2010, she was National Public Radio's East Africa correspondent. She also worked for ten years as the senior editor of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. Most recently, Thompkins was a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

 

 

About the Latitudes production team…

Beverley Abel started her career as a documentary producer for the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK. When she moved to the US in 1990, she fell in love with public radio, and has worked in radio ever since. She started as an announcer and producer at North Carolina Public Radio WUNC, where she helped create the daily talk show “The State of Things.” Most recently she was the senior producer for the World Vision Report. She has won numerous awards for her work. When she's not travelling, she lives in Chapel Hill, NC with her husband and three (almost grown up) children.

Before coming to Latitudes, Leda Hartman was the assignment editor for the World Vision Report -- recruiting and assigning a network of more than 100 reporters worldwide, tracking production, editing scripts, traveling vicariously, and functioning as general traffic cop and mother hen. She has also been a longtime contributing reporter for a number of nationally broadcast public radio shows, and is the winner of many national awards.

Andrea Wenzel is a public radio producer, editor, and media development consultant. She came to WAMU to launch Latitudes via Kabul, Afghanistan where she worked with the BBC World Service Trust on educational radio projects. Prior to that Andrea spent nearly a decade at WBEZ Chicago Public Radio. She received a Fall 2011 International Reporting Project Fellowship and her features and documentaries have been broadcast on a number of national and international outlets. Andrea has found great satisfaction working with, and learning from, community-based journalists in Afghanistan, Ghana, Iraq, Sri Lanka, and numerous global communities in the U.S.