Ayesha Rascoe
Ayesha Rascoe is the host of Weekend Edition Sunday and the weekend host of Up First. As host of the morning news magazine show, she interviews newsmakers, entertainers, politicians and more about the stories that everyone is talking about or that everyone should be talking about.
Rascoe is also the editor of HBCU Made: A Celebration of the Black College Experience, a book of essays about the impact of historically Black colleges and universities. Rascoe is an alumnae of Howard University, an HBCU in Washington, D.C.
Known for her southern roots and signature wit, Rascoe has been a mainstay on NPR's programs since joining the outlet in 2018.
Prior to her role as host, Rascoe was a White House Correspondent. She covered three presidential administrations, gaining a reputation for her sharp questioning in the White House briefing room. Rascoe's reporting 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 was also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast.
She's also guest hosted NPR's It's Been a Minute podcast and radio show and been a frequent guest on Pop Culture Happy Hour.
Before joining NPR, Rascoe spent the first decade of her career at Reuters, rising from a news assistant to an energy reporter to eventually covering the White House. While at Reuters, Rascoe covered some of the biggest energy and environmental stories of the past decade, including 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.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe asks University of Southampton's Thomas Dekeyser about worries AI is becoming fatally out of control.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with New York Magazine critic Alison Willmore about what's playing at the Toronto International Film Festival.
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Following the midterm convention in Dallas, President Trump's $5,000 campaign promise has generated attention, but not belief. And, Vice President JD Vance characterizes Democrats as extremists.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with environmentalist Bill McKibben and public relations specialist Frank Maisano about opposition to industrial development projects like fracking and data centers.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe asks New York Law School's Heather Cucolo about the insanity defense and how often such defenses are successful.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with filmmaker Adam Wingard, whose latest film is the action thriller "Onslaught."
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The Metropolitan Opera has reimagined a version of Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" set at Coney Island in the 1950s. Live snakes were auditioned and a large boa constrictor named Princess has been cast.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with professor Jeremy Stoddard of the University of Wisconsin about how to teach the September 11th attacks to middle and high school students.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with Shifa Saltagi Safadi about her novel-in-verse for young people, "Sisters Alone." It's about the relationship between two girls who've lost their mother.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe asks science reporter Joe Palca about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will have a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble Space Telescope.