Weekend Edition Sunday features interviews with newsmakers, artists, scientists, politicians, musicians, writers, theologians and historians. The program has covered news events from Nelson Mandela's 1990 release from a South African prison to the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Weekend Edition Sunday debuted on January 18, 1987, with host Susan Stamberg. Two years later, Liane Hansen took over the host chair, a position she held for 22 years. In that time, Hansen interviewed movers and shakers in politics, science, business and the arts. Her reporting travels took her from the slums of Cairo to the iron mines of Michigan's Upper Peninsula; from the oyster beds on the bayou in Houma, La., to Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park; and from the kitchens of Colonial Williamsburg, Va., to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
In January 2017, Lulu Garcia-Navarro became host of Weekend Edition Sunday. She is infamous in the IT department at NPR for losing laptops to bullets and hurricanes. She comes to Weekend Edition Sunday from Rio de Janeiro where she was posted as NPR's international correspondent in South America. She has also been NPR's correspondent based in Mexico and spent many years in the Middle East based in Israel and Iraq. She was one of the first reporters to enter Libya after the 2011 Arab Spring began and spent months painting a deep and vivid portrait of a country at war. Her work earned her a 2011 George Foster Peabody Award, a Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club, and an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Alliance for Women and the Media's Gracie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement. She has received other awards for her work in Mexico and most recently, the Amazon in Brazil.
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The mood on the campus of Brown University, a hotbed of student protest last year, is now one of fear and intimidation, according to some students. -
For the first time in years, the U.S. and Iran held high-level talks on a new deal concerning Iran's nuclear program.
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A wildlife group in the national parks of Italy's Abruzzo – a vast green area known as the "lungs" of Europe - is offering an unusual kind of tourism: tracking wolves. It's part of an effort these long persecuted, much misunderstood creatures.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Harvard American Studies Prof. Lizabeth Cohen about how mass consumption and cheap goods became tied to the American dream.
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The Grand Ole Opry is turning 100. The stage show is celebrating the milestone all year long by welcoming new and seasoned performers.
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Houses that survived the LA fires are contaminated with toxic chemicals but some insurers say they won't cover it. NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to David Jones, former California Insurance Commissioner.
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President Trump's push for more federal and state executions marks a new chapter in the shifting politics of the death penalty.
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For people who haven't filed their taxes yet, there's an army of volunteers around the country who are ready to help.
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For 40 days every spring, Christians observe the season of repentance and fasting known as Lent. In New Orleans, the change from Mardi Gras to Lent is striking.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe asks economist Keyu Jin, author of the book "The New China Playbook" about Beijing's next moves in the trade war with the U.S.