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.
-
Speaker Mike Johnson pushes military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan through the House, plus a measure on TikTok.
-
The jury is now selected and oral statements begin Monday in the hush money criminal trial of former President Donald Trump.
-
Another huge patch of seaweed from the Sargasso Sea is floating towards Caribbean and South Florida beaches. Scientists are trying to predict where and when it will reach the shore.
-
The two major party presidential candidates are very well known, but millions of dollars are still being spent on ads to try to persuade voters. (Story first aired on Morning Edition on April 18.)
-
Delays in military aid have cost Ukraine's forces lives, time, and territory. Passage yesterday of nearly 61 billion dollars in US funding has Ukrainians relieved, but uncertain about the future.
-
Marjane Satrapi, author of "Persepolis," collaborates with others on a new graphic novel about Iran's "Women, Life, Freedom" protest movement.
-
The voluntary industry guidelines come amid a dramatic rise in accidental pediatric ingestions of melatonin. At the same time, more and more kids are using melatonin on purpose as a sleep aid.
-
Among the themes of Passover is freedom from captivity. For many Jews this year, the holiday brings up the pain of knowledge that hostages are still captive after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
-
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group about Iran's objectives in launching what Tehran said was a retaliatory drone and missile strike against Israel.
-
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with the Brookings Institution's Natan Sachs about how Israel's possible responses to the overnight attack by hundreds of Iranian drones and missiles.