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 2012, Rachel Martin began hosting the program. Previously she served as NPR National Security Correspondent and was part of the team that launched NPR's experimental morning news show, The Bryant Park Project. She has also been the NPR religion correspondent and foreign correspondent based in Berlin.
Every week listeners tune in to hear a unique blend of news, features and the regularly scheduled puzzle segment with Puzzlemaster Will Shortz, the crossword puzzle editor of The New York Times.
-
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe asks Sevda Alizadeh, who performs as Sevdaliza, about her new album, "Heroina."
-
Charles Norman Shay died Dec. 3 at age 101. He was a citizen of the Penobscot Nation who saved fellow soldiers storming Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944.
-
Some Philadelphians are cheesed off at the Michelin restaurant ratings team for an honor bestowed on some local cheesesteak restaurants.
-
Why do the works of Jane Austen still hold so much appeal 250 years after her birth? We ask members of the Jane Austen Society of North America as well as writers Sandra Cisneros and Brandon Taylor.
-
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to Bank of America Institute's David Tinsley about what the data reveals about affordability in the U.S. as the Federal Reserve approaches its final meeting of 2025.
-
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe asks Republican strategist Liam Donovan, head of the consulting and public affairs firm Targeted Victory, how deep current disagreements in the GOP Congressional caucus are.
-
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to Jimmy Story, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, about the American military buildup in the region and pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
-
Residents of the growing town of Eagle, Idaho, are encountering a nuisance usually associated with big cities: swarms of rats. In Eagle that includes the acrobatic roof rat.
-
Forty-four death row inmates across the U.S. have been executed this year, reaching a level not seen in more than a decade.
-
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Katie Bindley about Waymo self-driving vehicles and recent changes to how assertively they navigate traffic.