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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Often called the mother of neo-soul, Ndegeocello doesn't see herself that way. On her new album Synonym, she's turning familiar songs inside out, from the Human League to Bob Dylan.
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Ali plays a devout Muslim who also happens to be an assassin in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. After the loss of her two sons, Li says words fell short. Her new novel is Music Against the Night. -
Saint, who died Oct. 6, studied at the Actors Studio and was best known for her roles in On the Waterfront and the Hitchcock film North by Northwest. Originally broadcast in 2000.
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After the death of her 5-year-old daughter from leukemia, Rice wrote her 1976 novel as a way to process her grief. It would go on to become an international bestseller. Originally broadcast in 1990.
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Fielder's film offers a portrait of the disgraced entrepreneur shortly before she began an 11-year prison sentence in 2023. You Can See Everything is full of surprises and strange rabbit holes. -
The Atlantic writer Josh Tyrangiel says Musk and Bezos each want to colonize the moon, mine its resources and launch thousands more satellites. He says their only real competition is each other.
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As polar ice melts in the Arctic, shipping lanes are opening up, making the region a new zone of superpower competition. Writer Rana Foroohar explains the stakes in Sea Change. -
The Two Saddest Kitchens is a comic conversation between Roz Chast and Jason Adam Katzenstein. Book critic Maureen Corrigan says it made her laugh and feel better about her own (lack of) cooking.
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Li won a Pulitzer for her memoir about the suicides of her two sons. In her new novel, Music Against the Night, she writes about two young prodigies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. -
Rosalind Eleazar plays a once-successful Hollywood actor whose career has taken a downward turn in a film that takes viewers to bleaker places than they might anticipate.
