Weekend Edition Sunday is NPR's Sunday morning news magazine, carried by 794 public radio stations nationwide. Every week, the show 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 crisis in Ukraine.
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. Recent hosts include Audie Cornish (2011–2012), Rachel Martin (2012–2016) and Lulu Garcia-Navarro (2017–2021.)
In 2022, Ayesha Rascoe was named the host of Weekend Edition Sunday, and she will transition to that role March 27. Rascoe is currently a White House correspondent for NPR. She is covering her third presidential administration. Her White House coverage has included a number of high profile foreign trips, including President Trump's 2019 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, and President Obama's final NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland in 2016. As a part of the White House team, she's also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast.
Prior to joining NPR, Rascoe covered the White House for Reuters, chronicling Obama's final year in office and the early days of the Trump administration. Rascoe began her reporting career at Reuters, covering energy and environmental policy news, such as the 2010 BP oil spill and the U.S. response to the Fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011. She also spent a year covering energy legal issues and court cases. She graduated from Howard University in 2007 with a B.A. in journalism.
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President Trump took to social media Saturday and said the U.S. and Iran are close to deal on ending the war. But the president didn't offer details and it's not yet clear where Iran stands.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Dennis Carroll, PhD. about the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda and how funding cuts to USAID have affected the response.
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Texas' runoff primary elections are Tuesday. The race generating the most attention – and money – is the Texas Republican U.S. Senate primary between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. President Trump finally waded into the race last week and endorsed Paxton, even as ballots were already cast.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks to Alison Willmore, a film critic for New York magazine and Vulture, about the highlights of this year's Cannes Film Festival in France.
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Numerous purveyors are reporting an abrupt explosion in popularity of the peak '90s toy known as the hacky sack after recent viral social media videos, triggering shortages.
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The Trump administration is set to repeal a decades-old conservation mandate known as the Roadless Rule, opening up millions of acres of national forests for more logging.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe plays the puzzle with W-U-N-C listener Thomas Hirschman of Durham, North Carolina. and Puzzlemaster Will Shortz. -
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to Ariane Tabatabaithe, Public Service Fellow at Lawfare, about where things stand on a potential deal between the U.S. and Iran on ending the war.
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Pope Leo plans to release an encyclical on "safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence." NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks to University of Notre Dame professor Meghan Sullivan.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to Bloomberg reporter Jonathan Randles about a legal battle that's left over 8 million comic books sitting in a Mississippi warehouse.
