The Faces of NPR
Ira Glass (This American Life)
As host of This American Life, Ira Glass has worked with a who’s who of America’s intelligentsia, from Junot Diaz and Michael Chabon to Lydia Davis and the late David Foster Wallace. Glass is arguably the most easily recognizable radio personality, with his horn-rimmed glasses and shock of hair, and his show attracts around 1.8 million listeners from more than 500 stations weekly.
By Nancy Updike.
Kurt Andersen (Studio 360)
A co-founder of Spy magazine with Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Kurt Andersen surveys the pop-culture landscape on his weekly, Peabody-award-winning show, Studio 360, produced by Public Radio International and WNYC.
From MarcoAntonio.com.
Michel Martin (Tell Me More)
Michel Martin has been the host of Tell Me More since its inception, in 2007. Broadcast daily from Washington, D.C., Martin’s one-hour series touches on politics, race, family, and international issues, among other subjects.
By Stephen Voss/© NPR 2007.
Garrison Keillor (A Prairie Home Companion)
Garrison Keillor’s nutty variety show, A Prairie Home Companion, started at Macalester College, in St. Paul, Minnesota, in August 1974. The show now broadcasts from St. Paul’s Fitzgerald Theater (named after St. Paul native F. Scott Fitzgerald), unless Keillor is out taping at the Minnesota State Fair, in the Canadian backwoods, or at some other equally absurd locale.
By Andrew Harrer/American Public Media.
**Tom and Ray Magliozzi (Car Talk) **
Click and Clack (nés Tom and Ray Magliozzi) started Car Talk on Boston’s WBUR Radio in 1977—10 years later, the show went national. Every week, the brothers field questions—which usually feature callers mimicking the sound their car is making—and answer with a mechanic’s eye and a comedian’s wit.
By Richard Howard/© NPR.
Leonard Lopate (The Leonard Lopate Show)
Before starting The Leonard Lopate Show, in 1985, Leonard Lopate studied painting with Mark Rothko and worked in marketing. His show, broadcast daily from noon to two p.m. by New York’s WNYC, covers everything from jazz standards to the newest culinary trends.
From MarcoAntonio.com.
Terry Gross (Fresh Air)
Started in 1975 as a daily interview-and-music program on Philadelphia’s WHYY, Gross’s Fresh Air is now a nationally broadcast, one-hour show. In a world of cable-TV hotheads and armchair pundits, Terry Gross grills the world’s leaders, writers, musicians, and actors with tough, measured questions.
By Will Ryan/© NPR.
Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep (Morning Edition)
After the original host of Morning Edition, Bob Edwards, was forced out after 24 years, in 2004, Renee Montagne—a former host of* All Things Considered*—and Steve Inskeep took the helm of the most widely heard radio news program in the United States. Morning Edition airs weekdays from five to seven a.m., with Inskeep broadcasting from NPR headquarters, in Washington, D.C., and Montagne from NPR West, in Culver City, California.
Left, by Sandy Huffaker/© NPR 2006; right, By Debbie Accame/© NPR 2003.
Diane Rehm (The Diane Rehm Show)
A veteran of public radio since 1973, Diane Rehm started on WAMU’s midday talk show Kaleidoscope, in 1979 which changed its name to The Diane Rehm Show. Rehm has interviewed the world’s movers and shakers for an audience of more than 2.1 million a week since.
From Glogau Photography/© NPR.
Tom Ashbrook (On Point)
Previously a foreign correspondent and newspaper editor, Tom Ashbrook came to On Point in the wake of 9/11. His show, broadcast daily from 10 a.m. to noon from WBUR Boston, covers everything from the newest books and music to the war in Afghanistan and legislative battles on Capitol Hill.
By Jesse Costa/WBUR.
Peter Sagal and Carl Kasell (Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!)
Recorded in front of a live audience in Chicago’s Chase Auditorium, Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! host Peter Sagal and official judge and scorekeeper Carl Kasell quiz Americans on the news every week. But they can’t do it alone—the duo is joined by three panelists, from P. J. O’Rourke to Paula Poundstone.
By Antony Nagelmann/© NPR 2004.
Bob Boilen (All Songs Considered)
Bob Boilen started All Songs Considered as a Web-only show in January 2000. Ten years later, All Songs Considered is the heart and soul of NPR Music, with its own blog, an annual NPR music SXSW showcase in Austin, Texas, and a 24-hour-music Internet-radio channel.
From NPR.
Michele Norris, Melissa Block, and Robert Siegel (All Things Considered)
The current hosts of NPR’s daily two-hour news program All Things Considered joined the 39-year-old show at varying times: senior host Robert Siegel in 1987, Michele Norris in 2002, and Melissa Block in 2003. The show has won some of broadcast journalism’s highest honors, including a Peabody and an Overseas Press Club award.
By Steven Voss/© NPR 2007 (Norris); by Steve Barrett/© NPR 2004 (Block, Siegel).