Susan Stamberg
Nationally renowned broadcast journalist Susan Stamberg is a special correspondent for NPR.
Stamberg is the first woman to anchor a national nightly news program, and has won every major award in broadcasting. She has been inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the Radio Hall of Fame. An NPR "founding mother," Stamberg has been on staff since the network began in 1971.
Beginning in 1972, Stamberg served as co-host of NPR's award-winning newsmagazine All Things Considered for 14 years. She then hosted Weekend Edition Sunday, and now reports on cultural issues for Morning Edition and Weekend Edition Saturday.
One of the most popular broadcasters in public radio, Stamberg is well known for her conversational style, intelligence, and knack for finding an interesting story. Her interviewing has been called "fresh," "friendly, down-to-earth," and (by novelist E.L. Doctorow) "the closest thing to an enlightened humanist on the radio." Her thousands of interviews include conversations with Laura Bush, Billy Crystal, Rosa Parks, Dave Brubeck, and Luciano Pavarotti.
Prior to joining NPR, she served as producer, program director, and general manager of NPR Member Station WAMU-FM/Washington, DC. Stamberg is the author of two books, and co-editor of a third. Talk: NPR's Susan Stamberg Considers All Things, chronicles her two decades with NPR. Her first book, Every Night at Five: Susan Stamberg's All Things Considered Book, was published in 1982 by Pantheon. Stamberg also co-edited The Wedding Cake in the Middle of the Road, published in 1992 by W. W. Norton. That collection grew out of a series of stories Stamberg commissioned for Weekend Edition Sunday.
In addition to her Hall of Fame inductions, other recognitions include the Armstrong and duPont Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Ohio State University's Golden Anniversary Director's Award, and the Distinguished Broadcaster Award from the American Women in Radio and Television.
A native of New York City, Stamberg earned a bachelor's degree from Barnard College, and has been awarded numerous honorary degrees including a Doctor of Humane Letters from Dartmouth College. She is a Fellow of Silliman College, Yale University, and has served on the boards of the PEN/Faulkner Fiction Award Foundation and the National Arts Journalism Program based at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Stamberg has hosted a number of series on PBS, moderated three Fred Rogers television specials for adults, served as commentator, guest or co-host on various commercial TV programs, and appeared as a narrator in performance with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra. Her voice appeared on Broadway in the Wendy Wasserstein play An American Daughter.
Her late husband Louis Stamberg had his career with the State Department's agency for international development. Her son, Josh Stamberg, an actor, appears in various television series, films, and plays.
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It's tradition: Every year, Susan Stamberg sneaks her mother-in-law's relish recipe onto the air. This year, she's also recommending another recipe, too — from actor and food writer Madhur Jaffrey. -
The painting known as "Whistler's Mother" is on display in Philadelphia for the first time in nearly 150 years. It's one of the best-known paintings in the world — and it has a backstory.
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Susan Stamberg, one of NPR's "founding mothers," pays a visit to a painting of another famous mother at the Philadelphia Museum of Art: James Abbott McNeill Whistler's 1871 oil on canvas.
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NPR's special correspondent Susan Stamberg visits with curator John Troutman at the Smithsonian exhibit "Entertainment Nation."
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In Chita: A Memoir, Rivera recounts her career originating roles in major Broadway shows. Now 90, Rivera remembers West Side Story from the beginning: "I was there at the first flicker of the skirt!"
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The Oscars will be handed out on Sunday. Ahead of this year's Academy Awards, we visit the Hollywood Museum in Los Angeles, a chance to browse through movie artifacts from years gone by.
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LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, a museum in Los Angeles, is honoring the Latin American roots of chocolate. The exhibition is called: The Legacy of Cacao.
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An exhibition of illuminated manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum explores how Jesus' mother was portrayed before Renaissance artists painted her with golden curls, perfect skin and blue eyes.
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Turkey and cranberries were linked in print for the first time in a 1796 cookbook. Not long after, (give or take 180+ years), Susan Stamberg began sharing her family's cranberry relish recipe on NPR.
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Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Pablo Picasso painted these portraits more than 75 years apart. But there's a clear connection between the two — and you can now see them on display together.
