Kat Lonsdorf
Kat Lonsdorf is a Middle East reporter currently based in Tel Aviv.
Originally from a small town in Wisconsin, Kat attended Occidental College in Los Angeles where she majored in Diplomacy and World Affairs. She joined NPR in 2016 after earning her Masters in Journalism from Medill at Northwestern University.
Lonsdorf has produced and reported for NPR around the world, including in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Japan, Kenya, Ukraine, Georgia, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. In 2020, she was NPR's Above the Fray Fellow, reporting out a series of stories looking at clean up and recovery efforts in Fukushima, Japan after the nuclear disaster in 2011. That series made her a finalist for the Livingston Award for international reporting. She's also won both a Gracie and an Edward R Murrow award for her work.
Before she came to NPR, she was a full-time bartender in downtown Los Angeles, and also hosted and produced an education travel video series for kids called Project Explorer where she filmed in 14 countries across five continents. Lonsdorf has lived in both Japan and Jordan, and speaks Japanese and conversational Arabic. She's currently trying to learn Hebrew in the evenings. [Copyright 2025 NPR]
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The Chang'e-5 mission will attempt to bring back rock and soil samples from a previously unexplored part of the moon, helping scientists better understand its volcanic history. -
Amid a second wave of coronavirus infections, many European countries are introducing curfews and lockdowns. -
Pacific Gas and Electric Company announced a public safety power shutoff over the weekend as some of the strongest winds and driest conditions of this year's fire season sweep through the region. -
Run by a South Korean woman, the Cosmos Karaoke Bar in Namie, Japan, is a haven for residents who've come back to live in a town that was evacuated and fell into decay after the 2011 nuclear disaster. -
After losing trust in official information, the Japanese public took it upon themselves to learn to measure for radioactive matter. Nearly a decade after the nuclear disaster, they're still testing. -
After people evacuated their homes following a nuclear disaster in the Japanese prefecture, nature started to reclaim the space. The humans are trying to return, but it's an uneasy coexistence. -
The Fukushima nuclear disaster put much of Japan's nuclear power program on hold. Nearly a decade later, the energy-poor country is grappling with how to power one of the world's largest economies.
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After the nuclear catastrophe, the nation's investment in renewable energy soared. Many of those affected in Fukushima started production. But Japan is pushing fossil fuels, causing climate concerns. -
Two Japanese towns that host the Fukushima nuclear power plant stood to gain a lot from the promises of nuclear power. But after one of the worst nuclear disasters, it's clear how much they've lost.
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Fukushima was forever changed by a nuclear disaster in 2011. What does recovery mean for the region? It's an answer filled with resilience, reinvention and regret.
