Now Playing

Loading streams...

Podcasts & RSS Feeds

All Things ConsideredRSS
All ContentRSS
View all podcasts & RSS feeds

All Things Considered

Weekdays 4:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Melissa Block, Michele Norris, Robert Siegel, Audie Cornish

Since its debut in 1971, this afternoon radio newsmagazine has delivered in-depth reporting and transformed the way listeners understand current events and view the world. Heard by more than 11 million people on over 600 radio stations each week, All Things Considered is one of the most popular programs in America. Every weekday, hosts Melissa Block, Michele Norris, and Robert Siegel present two hours of breaking news mixed with compelling analysis, insightful commentaries, interviews, and special - sometimes quirky - features. Andrea Seabrook hosts a one-hour edition of the program on Saturday and Sunday.

More information at All Things Considered.

Local Host(s): 
Matthew Jensen
Genre: 
News/Talk
Composer ID: 
5187cb7ee1c8a892ebf233e7|5187cb66e1c8a892ebf2339a

Pages

Why Music Matters
3:05 pm
Sun July 1, 2012

Breaking Records To A Velvet Underground Beat

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Shaun Botterill / Getty Images
Christian Niccum and Dan Joye at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler, Canada.
Credit Shaun Botterill / Getty Images
Christian Niccum and Dan Joye at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler, Canada.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By NPR Staff

Weekends on All Things Considered continues its "Why Music Matters" series with Olympic luger Christian Niccum. Niccum says music was the key to one of his first accomplishments in the sport.

"I was 15 years old, in Berchtesgaden in Germany," he says. "It's the oldest artificial luge track in the world, and it's also the most difficult."

Daunted by the course's many sharp turns, Niccum turned to something borrowed for inspiration.

Read more
Latin America
3:02 pm
Sun July 1, 2012

Mexico Votes On Presidential Election

Share
E-mail
Comments
By

Originally published on Sun July 1, 2012 3:05 pm

Transcript

LAURA SULLIVAN, HOST:

It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Laura Sullivan.

Voters in Mexico are headed to the polls today to elect a new president. If public opinion polls are correct, the candidate of the PRI party is poised to win. This is the party that ruled the country with a strong arm for most of the 20th century before being ousted from power 12 years ago.

Read more
Music Interviews
2:30 pm
Sun July 1, 2012

Bobby Womack: 'God Must Still Have A Purpose For Me'

Credit Jamie-James Medina / Courtesy of the artist
Bobby Womack's latest album, The Bravest Man in the Universe, came out June 12.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Sun July 1, 2012 3:05 pm

"We had two shows that night," says Bobby Womack, recounting a recent concert in Houston. "It was a small theater, about 5- or 6,000 people. The second show, I was just out of it; they had to take me to the hospital."

It was a serious scare for the 68-year-old singer-songwriter — who has also lived through drug addiction and the deaths of two sons — and it didn't end that night.

Read more
Author Interviews
2:03 pm
Sun July 1, 2012

The Complex 'Tapestry' of Michelle Obama's Ancestry

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Barack Obama Campaign
Fraser and Marian Shields Robinson raised their children, Craig and Michelle, in Chicago, but their family's ancestry can be traced back to pre-abolition Georgia.
Credit Barack Obama Campaign
The Shield and Robinson lines met in 1959 in Chicago, where Fraser and Marian Shields Robinson married and raised their children, Craig and Michelle.
Credit Courtesy of Jewell Barclay
The first lady's maternal great-great-grandfather Dolphus Shields (seated) was born to Melvinia Shields. After emancipation, he settled his family in Birmingham, Ala., where he stayed until his death in 1950.
Credit Courtesy of Francesca Gray
Obama's paternal grandfather, Fraser Robinson Jr., fought in World War II and spoke Gullah, a language that emerged on the South Carolina coast during slavery.
Credit Damon Wood
DNA tests have shown that Joan Tribble, the great-great-granddaughter of Melvinia Shields' owner, and the first lady are distantly related.
Credit The White House / Getty Images
Michelle Obama's family was part of American history long before she, Malia, Sasha and Barack Obama moved into the White House.
Credit Courtesy of HarperCollins
Rachel Swarns reconstructs Michelle Obama's family tree in her book American Tapestry. (Click here for a closer look.)
Credit Scott Robinson /
Author Rachel Swarns has been a reporter for The New York Times since 1995. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and their two children.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Mon July 2, 2012 8:17 am

When Michelle Obama's great-great-great grandmother was 8 years old, her life underwent a dramatic change.

Melvinia Shields was a slave who grew up at a South Carolina estate with a relatively large community of slaves she knew well. But then she was moved to a small farm in northern Georgia where she was one of only three slaves; most white people in the area didn't own any.

Read more
Pop Culture
12:08 pm
Sun July 1, 2012

It's Not Tatooine, But Luke Can Call It Home Again

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Mark Dermul
Construction Begins at the Lars Homestead
Credit Mark Dermul
The Lars Homestead, Luke Skywalker's boyhood home, has been repaired by fans.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Mon July 2, 2012 9:28 am

Mark Dermul is a serious Star Wars fan. He was just 7 years old in 1977 when the original movie hit the theaters. As soon as the huge Star Destroyer flew across the opening scene, he was hooked.

"It hasn't left me," he says. At 42, Dermul now guides tours throughout North Africa, visiting sites that were featured in the blockbuster films.

On one 2010 trip back to planet Tatooine — OK, Tunisia — he and his tour group noticed that Luke Skywalker's boyhood home was decaying. They jumped into hyperspace — OK, the Internet — to save it.

Read more
Movies I've Seen A Million Times
10:47 am
Sun July 1, 2012

The Movie Elizabeth Banks Has 'Seen A Million Times'

Next imagePrevious image
Credit The Kobal Collection
John Travolta and Samuel Jackson in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction [THE KOBAL COLLECTION/MIRAMAX/BUENA VISTA].
Credit Matt Sayles / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Actress Elizabeth Banks (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Sun July 1, 2012 3:05 pm

Read more
Environment
3:56 pm
Sat June 30, 2012

The Trickiness Of Tracking Severe Weather

Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Weekends on All Things Considered guest host Laura Sullivan talks with Heidi Cullen, chief climatologist at Climate Central, a non-profit science journalism organization in Princeton, New Jersey. They discuss wildfires and extreme heat in the Midwest this week and how these climate conditions are tracked by Earth-observing satellites.

Around the Nation
3:56 pm
Sat June 30, 2012

Watergate: All The President's Men, But Women Too

Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Transcript

LAURA SULLIVAN, HOST:

A story now about women overlooked by history. This month marks the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, dramatized in the 1976 movie "All the President's Men."

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (as Character) Woodward.

ROBERT REDFORD: (as Bob Woodward) Yeah?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (as Character) There's been a break-in at the Democratic headquarters. There's been an arrest.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (as Character) Local Democratic headquarters, yeah.

Read more
Author Interviews
3:16 pm
Sat June 30, 2012

'Billy Lynn' A Full-Bore Tale Of Wartime Iraq

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Al Messerschmidt / Getty Images
Ben Fountain sets his new novel in Texas Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys from 1971 to 2008.
Credit Thorne Anderson /
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is the first novel by Ben Fountain, whose earlier work includes the short story collection Brief Interviews With Che Guevara.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Mon July 2, 2012 8:19 am

Billy Lynn is a 19-year-old college dropout living in the small Texas town where he grew up. After he's arrested for trashing the car of his sister's ex, he's given two choices: face jail time or enlist in the Army.

He chooses the Army. And Iraq.

Author Ben Fountain's debut novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, is the story of what happens to Lynn after he joins Bravo Company in the early years of the Iraq war.

Read more
Around the Nation
3:13 pm
Sat June 30, 2012

Synthetic 'Bath Salts' An Evolving Problem For DEA

Credit Brian Peterson / Minneapolis Star Tribune
Use of synthetic "bath salts," compounds sold legally but used as a controlled substance, has been on the rise since 2010.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Mon July 2, 2012 5:22 am

One night a little more than two years ago, a 24-year-old man was rushed into the emergency room at Tulane University Medical Center in Louisiana. He was extremely agitated and hallucinating.

Dr. Corey Hebert figured the man was on drugs, probably PCP or a stimulant. But a few minutes later, the man became paranoid.

"He started doing some self-mutilating actions [and] was pulling out his eyebrows and eyelashes," Hebert tells weekends on All Things Considered host Laura Sullivan.

Read more

Pages