NPR’s International Correspondent Frank Langfitt will discuss how he tells the story of epic change through individual lives from Africa to Asia and now Britain. He will also talk about how —in the pandemic era—global connections and cooperation are more important than ever.

Frank Langfitt now covers the UK, Ireland and other stories in Europe. Langfitt arrived in the UK a week before the 2016 Brexit vote and has been busy ever since covering the political fall-out along with terrorism and the coronavirus pandemic.

Previously, Langfitt spent five years as NPR’s correspondent in Shanghai, where he drove a free taxi around the city for a series on a changing China as seen through the eyes of ordinary people. He expanded his reporting into a book, The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China (Public Affairs, Hachette).

Before moving to Shanghai, Langfitt was NPR’s East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi. He reported from Sudan, covered the civil war in Somalia, and interviewed imprisoned Somali pirates, who insisted they were just misunderstood fishermen.

Langfitt spent some of his early years in journalism in Hazard, Kentucky (pop 5,000), where he covered the state’s Appalachian coalfields for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Prior to becoming a reporter, Langfitt dug latrines in Mexico and drove a taxi in his hometown of Philadelphia. Langfitt is a graduate of Princeton and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.