Catherine Shen
Host, Where We LiveCatherine is the Host of Connecticut Public’s morning talk show and podcast, Where We Live. Catherine and the WWL team focus on going beyond the headlines to bring in meaningful conversations that put Connecticut in context.
Before her current position, Catherine was Connecticut Public’s education reporter for just over a year. She covered a variety of stories like student mental health, childcare shortages, and teacher burnout. She joined Connecticut Public's newsroom in 2021. The Los Angeles native came to CT Public after a decade of print and digital reporting across the country.
She started her journalism career in the Los Angeles fashion scene. While that was an exciting time, Catherine ultimately needed to get back to her news roots. She was soon traipsing all across California’s Central Coast as a freelance news reporter for several newspapers, where she broke stories about local government, law enforcement, and education. She also covered crime, healthcare, business, as well as arts and culture.
After finding herself on the East Coast, she continued reporting in New Jersey, covering a mix of academic news, nonprofit projects, and human feature stories both off and on camera. Then she moved to Connecticut and started reporting for the New Britain Herald, where she won several Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists awards for her coverage on the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice movements, and police accountability.
Catherine received an undergraduate degree in broadcast journalism from Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication. While an undergraduate student, she was a reporter for the university newspaper and its student-run television station, Cable 8 News. She’s also a proud member of the Asian American Journalism Society.
In her downtime, she tries her best to catch up on her reading list but often fails due to a variety of distractions, including reorganizing her bookshelves, scavenging library book sales, and thinking about reading books.
Catherine can be reached at cshen@ctpublic.org and follow her on Twitter at @catshenwnpr.
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A new flu variant is wreaking havoc across the United States. Today, we learn more about this variant, and hear from local physicians on what you can do to protect yourself and your family from the virus. -
This hour, Marc Brackett, founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, talks about why managing our emotions might be the most important skill we ever learn. -
Amid a difficult divorce, New Haven author Anelise Chen received the same text over and over again from her mother: “clam down!” This typo inspired her into a journey of healing. Today, she joins us to talk about her memoir "Clam Down: A Metamorphosis." -
Today, we close out the year with some of our favorite author conversations from 2025. We hear from Connecticut authors Wally Lamb and Ocean Vuong. -
What meal brings you back to childhood? This hour, two local children's authors share how their young protagonists find meaning in the kitchen, using food as a tool to explore culture, loss and belonging. -
Cat Shen has been hosting Where We Live long enough for the show to use a fork, and yet very little is known about her. In this hour, technical producer and partner-in-mischief Dylan Reyes sits down with Cat to get the inside scoop on the reporter turned host. -
This hour, bestselling author and Connecticut native Elizabeth Gilbert joins us to share the story behind her new memoir, "All the Way to the River." -
How does gun violence, and the threat of it, affect us as a society and as individuals? -
Tuesday is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth. This hour, we celebrate the beloved author's work, and look at why her six novels have endured for centuries. -
This hour, we move from Victorian spiritualism to Connecticut stages. We trace the history of Christmas ghosts and why they feel so different from Halloween spirits.
