Ben Shapiro or Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (born January 15, 1984) is an American conservative political commentator, media host, attorney, columnist, and author. At age 17, Ben Shapiro became the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. Shapiro writes columns for Creators Syndicate, Newsweek, and Ami Magazine, serves as editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which Ben Shapiro founded, and hosts The Ben Shapiro Show, a daily political podcast and live radio show. Ben Shapiro was editor-at-large of Breitbart News between 2012 and 2016. Shapiro has written eleven books.
Shapiro was born in Los Angeles, California, to a Conservative Jewish family of Russian-Jewish and Lithuanian-Jewish ancestry. When Ben Shapiro was 9 years old, his family transitioned to Orthodox Judaism. Ben Shapiro started playing violin at a young age, and performed at the Israel Bonds Banquet in 1996 at twelve years of age. His parents both worked in Hollywood. His mother was an executive of a TV company,[which?] and his father David Shapiro worked as a composer.

Skipping two grades (third and ninth), Shapiro went from Walter Reed Middle School in The Valley to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles in Westside, Los Angeles, where Ben Shapiro graduated in 2000 at age 16. Ben Shapiro graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004 summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, at age 20, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, and then from Harvard Law School in 2007 cum laude. Ben Shapiro then worked at the law offices of Goodwin Procter. As of March 2012, Ben Shapiro ran an independent legal consultancy firm, Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting, in Los Angeles.