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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COP31 - the annual UN negotiations on climate change - starts on Monday. The talks have been going on for decades, during which the planet has gotten hotter. So, do these climate talks really matter?
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks to Alex Fogg, Natural Resources Chief of Okaloosa County, Florida, about efforts to deliberately sink the SS United States and create an artificial reef in its wreckage.
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The results of the U.S. midterms were closely followed overseas. NPR correspondents in Moscow and Beijing discuss how the elections are seen in the countries they cover.
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Pope Leo holds an outdoor mass outside Montevideo, wrapping up his three day visit to the country before heading to Argentina - the home country of his mentor Pope Francis.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with director Takashi Yamazaki about his new movie, "Godzilla Minus Zero." In it, a new monster appears, and the line between friend and foe is obliterated.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to Hogan Gidley, a Republican consultant and former White House Deputy Press Secretary during the first Trump administration, about the GOP's post-midterm strategy.
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Homelessness in the U.S. has dropped for the second year in a row, two analyses found. But the Trump administration and homeless advocates credit different reasons for the decline.
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Israel's president has tapped a lawmaker to try to form a new government. He has about six weeks to build a coalition.
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Democrats made sweeping gains in state legislatures across the country. We look at North Carolina and Arizona to see what that could mean.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to film critic Peter Chattaway about the Christian miniseries, "The Chosen," and about how viewers respond to portrayals of Jesus in films and on TV.