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.
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Ringgold, who died April 12, portrayed themes of Black life and culture through her quilts, paintings, dolls and books. Her work was exhibited in many major museums. Originally broadcast in 1991.
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Alua Arthur helps people plan for death. A big part of her work is helping them reconcile the lives they lived with the lives they might have wanted. Her memoir is called Briefly Perfectly Human.
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Rushdie was onstage at a literary event in 2022 when he was attacked by a man in the audience: "Dying in the company of strangers — that was what was going through my mind." His new book is Knife.
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Growing up, when Diarra Kilpatrick watched murder mystery shows with her grandmother, she never saw Black women driving the narrative. She seeks to change that in her new new BET+ series.
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Scott plays con man Tom Ripley in the Netflix adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Maureen Corrigan reviews Lionel Shriver's Mania. Nancy Nichols is the author of Women Behind the Wheel.
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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is out. We listen back to archival interviews with film historian Rudy Behlmer about the original 1933 King Kong and with Steve Ryfle about the original 1954 Godzilla.
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This ambitious thriller comes across as an empty stunt — a democracy dystopia that sidesteps the politics of the present moment. But Kirsten Dunst is excellent as a battle scarred photojournalist.
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A new HBO series based on Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel takes a surreal look at the Vietnam war, the costs of colonialism and the disillusionments of revolution and immigration.
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Atlantic journalist Stephanie McCrummen says foreign interests are acquiring territory in Northern Tanzania, effectively displacing indigenous cattle-herders from their traditional grazing lands.
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Franklin is worth watching — not only for what it reveals about how the U.S. won independence from England then – but also about the complexities of war, and international politics now.