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.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with Emerson Sprick, an economist with the Bipartisan Policy Center, about potential solutions for keeping Social Security solvent.
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A profile of a small frontline newspaper that has been reporting on Ukrainian POWs released from captivity in Russia.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe plays the puzzle with KQED listener Michael Kahan of Mountain View, Calif., and Puzzlemaster Will Shortz.
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We look at President Biden's response to Israel's escalated military operation in the town of Rafah, in southern Gaza, where over a million Palestinians are sheltering.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with David Thomas, president of Morehouse College, about preparations — and controversy — ahead of President Joe Biden's commencement address there next weekend.
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Hundreds of Native American tribes are getting money from lawsuit settlements with opioid companies. Some are investing the new funds in traditional healing practices to treat addiction.
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Playwright Paula Vogel is known not just for her work on Broadway — but for the generations of famous playwrights whose careers she has nurtured. Mother Play is about her own mother.
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Over some five decades, Corman filled America's drive-ins with hundreds of low-budget movies. Many of Hollywood's most respected directors have at least one Corman picture buried in their resumes.
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Restaurant earnings and pricing tell us the economy is still troubled by inflation but not badly enough for consumers to give up eating out.
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A wave of political assassinations has swept across Mexico during this election season. One candidate was violently killed on her first day of campaigning.