Insightful, entertaining, and provocative programming with some of the most respected names in public broadcasting.
Topics
Public Interest Stories, Public Radio, Bob Edwards, Jim Lehrer
In the Studio at XM Public Radio
Bob Edwards
Host
Bob Edwards is the host of the Bob Edwards Show, the flagship program on XM Public Radio - XM 133. It's an original weekday morning program which features in-depth interviews with newsmakers, journalists, entertainers, and other compelling figures. Prior to joining XM Satellite Radio, Edwards hosted National Public Radio's (NPR) Morning Edition for 24 and a half years, attracting more than 13 million listeners weekly.
Bob Edwards has won the duPont-Columbia Award for radio journalism, the George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting, and the Edward R. Murrow Award for outstanding contributions to public radio. In November of 2004, Edwards was inducted into the national Radio Hall of Fame.
Go to the Bob Edwards Show for more information »
Garrison Keillor
Host, Producer
Garrison Keillor is the host and writer of A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer's Almanac heard on public radio stations across the country and the author of more than a dozen books, including Lake Wobegon Days, The Book of Guys, Love Me, and Homegrown Democrat. He was born in Anoka, Minnesota, in 1942 and graduated from the University of Minnesota. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and daughter. He has two grandsons. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and the Episcopal church.
Prairie Home
Kai Ryssdal
Host
Before becoming the host of Marketplace, Kai Ryssdal was a reporter and substitute host for The California Report, a news and information program distributed to public radio stations throughout California by KQED-FM. He covered business and the economy, state politics, criminal justice, capital punishment and agriculture for the program. His work there won first place awards from the Radio and Television News Directors Association and the national Public Radio News Directors Association. After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, Kai spent eight years in the United States Navy, first flying from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, and then as a Pentagon staff officer. Before his career in public radio, he was a member of the United States Foreign Service and served in Ottawa, Canada, and Beijing, China.
Marketplace
Ira Glass
Host
Ira Glass is the host and producer of Chicago Public Radio's This American Life.
Glass began his career in public radio as an intern at National Public Radio's network headquarters in Washington in 1978. He was 19 years old. Since then, he has worked on nearly every NPR network news program and done virtually every production job: He has been a tape cutter, newscast writer, desk assistant, editor, and producer and fill-in host.
This American Life premiered in Chicago in November 1995 and went into full national distribution in June of 1996. Public Radio International became the show's distributor in June of 1997 and quickly doubled the number of stations carrying it. It's now heard on over 470 public radio stations. The program has won the highest broadcasting honors, the Peabody and duPont-Columbia awards.
Nick Spitzer
Host
Nick Spitzer is a scholar, documentary producer, and program host known for his informed and witty style in presenting American cultures and communities to audiences from Carnegie Hall to the National Mall, from American Public Media to PBS.
He spent a decade at the Smithsonian and has recently returned to Louisiana where he had previously served as the State Folklorist. Currently the Zemurray Professor of Folklore and Cultural Conservation at the University of New Orleans' College of Urban and Public Affairs, Spitzer is known to public radio audiences nationwide for his award-winning Folk Masters series from Wolf Trap, cultural features on All Things Considered and as artistic director of the annual American Roots Fourth of July.
With his background in documentary media, American culture and "underground" progressive radio, Spitzer is well positioned to bring new audiences to the music and musicians he loves through American Routes.
Lynne Rossetto-Kasper
Host
Lynne Rossetto Kasper's The Splendid Table was named "1999 Best National Radio Show on Food" by the James Beard Foundation, and "2000 Best National Syndicated Talk Show" by American Women in Radio and Television. Scripps Howard News Service distributes Lynne's advice column, "Ask The Splendid Table." Her first cookbook, The Splendid Table is the only book to achieve the food world's twin crown, The Cookbook of the Year Award from both the Julia Child/IACP and James Beard Awards. Her The Italian Country Table was named one of the best books of 1999 by Cook's Illustrated magazine. Lynne has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Food & Wine magazine and Bon Appetít. Named "One of the 12 Best Cooking Teachers in America" by The James Beard Foundation, she also lectures on food and culture in Europe and America.
The Splendid Table
Michael Feldman
Host
Michael Feldman is an American original — a "20-year overnight sensation" as he puts it. Most of what Feldman has to say he expresses in a laconic monologue or short comic asides. The youngest of four boys (two are physicians, and one is an attorney), Feldman credits his family with fine-tuning his sense of the world and his ability to express it briefly. He says his dad "always gave me the kind of insightful fatherly advice that took him years of experience and wisdom to learn, but often only a few seconds to tell me."
After working eight years as a teacher, he eventually grew tired of correcting student papers and decided he needed a change. He drove a cab and became a volunteer DJ on Madison's WORT-FM, hosting "Thanks for Calling," a program that he describes as "a call-in for the bedridden, the elderly and the updatable." Feldman's ability to put his audience in a feel-good, relaxed mood led WORT-FM to give him his own show, "The Breakfast Special," which was broadcast live from a greasy spoon called Dolly's Fine Foods five mornings a week.
Feldman moved to Wisconsin Public Radio in 1985 and began "Whad'Ya Know?" The show immediately attracted both critical acclaim and a loyal coast-to-coast audience. Subsequently, he wrote three "highly praised and widely ignored" books: the autobiographical"Whad'Ya Know?," published in 1991; "Whad'Ya Knowledge?," published in 1993; "Thanks for the Memos" in 1995, a compilation of actual memos sent in by his listeners; and most recently "Glad You Asked." He has also released six compact discs, in cooperation with Nimbus Records, titled "Whad'Ya Know? About the Classics."
Kurt Anderson
Host
Kurt Andersen is author of the novel "Turn of the Century" (Random House, 1999), which the "New York Times" called "wickedly satirical," "outrageously funny" and "the most un-clichéd novel imaginable," and which the "Wall Street Journal" called a "smart, funny and excruciatingly deft portrait of our age."
Now at work on his second novel, Andersen is also a co-founder of Inside.com and "Inside" magazine, publications covering the culture industries in the digital age. He has been a columnist for "The New Yorker" and was editor-in-chief of both "New York" and "Spy" magazines, the latter of which he co-founded.
Andersen began his career in journalism at "Time," where he was an award-winning writer on national affairs and criminal justice, and then for eight years the magazine's architecture and design critic. Returning in 1993 as editor-at-large, he wrote a weekly column on culture and the media. His journalism and essays have also appeared in the "New York Times,""The Atlantic Monthly," "Rolling Stone," "'Vanity Fair," "Architectural Digest" and "Architectural Record, among other publications. As a commentator, he appears regularly on "The Charlie Rose Show," CNN and MSNBC.
During the 1990s, Andersen was writer and executive producer of two prime-time specials for NBC, starring Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and created and produced pilots for ABC, NBC, and NBC News. He is co-author of "Loose Lips," an off-Broadway theatrical revue that had long runs in New York and Los Angeles.
Andersen graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and lives with his wife and daughters in New York City.
Tavis Smiley
Host
Some would say that an exclusive interview with the president of the United States, during one of the most controversial scandals to ever hit the White House, is the interview of a lifetime. Others would say interviewing Fidel Castro in the wake of unprecedented U.S. sanctions relief, or the conversation with Pope John Paul II was the most significant.
"Time" selected Smiley as one of America's 50 most promising young leaders. "Newsweek" profiled him as one of the "20 people changing how Americans get their news" and dubbed him one of the nation's "captains of the airwaves."
With his late-night television talk show, "Tavis Smiley" on PBS and his earlier radio show "The Tavis Smiley Show," Smiley was the first American ever to simultaneously host signature talk shows on both PBS and NPR. Smiley's television show continues, and he returned to public radio with "The Tavis Smiley Show" in association with Public Radio International (PRI). In partnership with PBS and PRI, he created two "All-American Presidential Forums," groundbreaking initiatives held in 2007 at historically black colleges — the Democratic forum at Howard University and the Republican forum at Morgan State University.
Texas Southern University honored Smiley with the opening of The Tavis Smiley School of Communications and The Tavis Smiley Center for Professional Media Studies, making him the youngest African American to ever have a professional school and center named after him on a college or university campus. Smiley cemented his commitment to TSU with a $1 million gift to the Center.
The mission of his nonprofit organization — Tavis Smiley Foundation — is to enlighten, encourage and empower black youth. Tavis Smiley Presents, a subsidiary of The Smiley Group Inc., brings ideas and people together through symposiums, seminars, forums and town hall meetings. One of 10 children, Smiley is single and lives in Los Angeles. In his spare time, he enjoys a good game of Scrabble with friends.
Bill Radke and Desiree Cooper
Hosts
Bill Radke
Bill Radke brings a long and distinguished career to Weekend America. Most recently, Bill was the creator, writer and host of Rewind, a weekly news satire program broadcast by KUOW-FM in Seattle. Radke began his radio career at KUOW in 1986 while a student at the University of Washington. After graduating from school, he hosted a news magazine at WMFE in Orlando, Florida. He later returned to Seattle as a KUOW reporter and Morning Edition host and eventually became the station's news director. A winner of the Seattle International Stand-Up Comedy Competition, he wrote a weekly news and humor column for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In 2003 Radke added author to his accomplishments with his first book, Seattle, from Sasquatch Books.
Desiree Cooper
Award-winning journalist Desiree Cooper will joined Bill Radke as co-host of Weekend America. Cooper is a popular columnist at the Detroit Free Press who has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She has contributed national commentaries to NPR's All Things Considered and has appeared frequently on Detroit-area radio and television. Cooper was born in Itazuke, Japan, and has lived in seven U.S. states. She graduated magna cum laude in journalism and economics from the University of Maryland and received her law degree from the University of Virginia . Her experiences and education give her broad perspectives that she will bring to Weekend America every week.
Dick Gordon
Host
Dick Gordon used to host public radio's The Connection. Before that he was a war correspondent and regular fill-in host for the CBC's national radio program, This Morning. He has also been a Parliamentary reporter, Moscow correspondent and South Asia correspondent for both radio and television.
The Story
Warren Olney
Host
Warren Olney is host and executive producer of "To the Point" Since June 1992, Olney also has been host and executive producer of KCRW/Santa Monica's signature daily news/public affairs program, "Which Way, LA?," honored with nearly 40 national, regional and local awards for broadcast excellence since its inception.
Olney is a veteran broadcast journalist. Concurrent with his hosting duties on "Which Way, LA?," from June 1999 to September 2000, he served as co-anchor of KCET-TV's "Life & Times Tonight," a nightly public affairs show.
He is the only person to have been twice named "Broadcast Journalist of the Year" — for his work in both radio and television — by the Society of Professional Journalists, Los Angeles. He is the recipient of Emmy Awards for reporting and anchoring, and Golden Mikes for investigative reporting.
Olney was a television news reporter and anchor from 1966 to 1991, working in Washington, D.C., Sacramento and Los Angeles. Throughout his career, he covered local, state and national politics, including presidential primaries, nominating conventions and inaugurals, and superpower summit meetings in Washington and Geneva. He also served as a print reporter for the Sacramento Bee (CA) and the Newport News Daily Press (VA). Olney's interviews, book reviews, articles, and columns have appeared in the "Los Angeles Times," the "Village Voice," "Los Angeles Magazine" and "California Journal," among other publications. Olney also developed and taught Broadcast Journalism, a laboratory course for graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Southern California from 1976 to 1982. As an actor, Olney has appeared in numerous feature films, including "Crimson Tide" and "The Fisher King."
Olney received his BA in English, magna cum laude, from Amherst College (MA) and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He has four children and five grandchildren. He is married to Marsha Temple, attorney at law.
Robin Young
Host
Robin Young brings over 25 years of eclectic broadcast experience to her role as host of "Here and Now." She is a Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker and has been a correspondent for the Discovery Channel, CBS and ABC, and for several years was substitute host and correspondent for the "Today" show on NBC.
Young may be best known to the Boston audience for her part in launching the popular "Evening Magazine" on WBZ-TV in the mid-'70s, and for her television profiles on WNEV-TV in the mid-'80s. For the past decade, she's also been producing and directing documentaries.
Lisa Mullins
Host
Lisa Mullins became chief anchor of the international radio news magazine PRI's "The World" in 1998. Since then, the program has doubled its audience and won critical acclaim for coverage of the war on terrorism and its implications worldwide. She has covered major news events around the United States and produced reports from mainland China, Hong Kong, Albania, Italy, Mexico, Slovakia and Northern Ireland.
During her years anchoring "The World," Mullins has conducted more than 4,000 interviews with international newsmakers, including U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Public radio program directors nationwide have praised Mullins as one of the best announcers in the public radio system. She received the bronze award for Best Network Anchor in the New York Festival's international radio competition, and "Boston Magazine" honored her with its Best Radio Voice award. In May 2005, she received an honorary Doctorate of Journalism from Simmons College in Boston.