Cokie Roberts a Morning Edition contributor.

At NPR she previously served as the congressional correspondent for more than 10 years. In addition to her work for NPR, Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News, providing analysis for all network news programming.

From 1996-2002 she and Sam Donaldson co-anchored the weekly ABC interview program This Week. In her more than forty years in broadcasting, she has won countless awards, including three Emmys. She has been inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame, and was cited by the American Women in Radio and Television as one of the fifty greatest women in the history of broadcasting.

In addition to her appearances on the airwaves, Roberts, along with her husband, Steven V. Roberts, writes a weekly column syndicated in newspapers around the country by United Media. The Roberts are also contributing editors to USA Weekend Magazine, and together they wrote From this Day Forward, an account of their more than 40 year marriage and other marriages in American history. The book immediately went onto The New York Times bestseller list, following Roberts' number one bestseller, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, an account of women's roles and relationships throughout American history. Roberts histories of women in America's founding era --Founding Mothers, published in 2004 and Ladies of Liberty in 2008, also became instant bestsellers.

Cokie Roberts holds more than twenty honorary degrees, serves on the boards of several non-profit institutions and on the President's Commission on Service and Civic Participation. This year the Library of Congress named her a "Living Legend," one of the very few Americans to have attained that honor. She is the mother of two and grandmother of six.

Elizabeth Shogren is an NPR News Science Desk correspondent focused on covering environment and energy issues and news.

Since she came to NPR in 2005, Shogren's reporting has covered everything from the damage caused by the BP oil spill on the ecology of the Gulf Coast, to the persistence of industrial toxic air pollution as seen by the legacy of Tonawanda Coke near Buffalo, to the impact of climate change on American icons like grizzly bears.

Prior to NPR, Shogren spent 14 years as a reporter on a variety of beats at The Los Angeles Times, including four years reporting on environmental issues in Washington, D.C., and across the country. While working from the paper's Washington bureau, from 1993-2000, Shogren covered the White House, Congress, social policy, money and politics, and presidential campaigns. During that time, Shogren was given the opportunity to travel abroad on short-term foreign reporting assignments, including the Kosovo crisis in 1999, the Bosnian war in 1996, and Russian elections in 1993 and 1996. Before joining the Washington bureau, Shogren was based in Moscow where she covered the breakup of the Soviet Union and the rise of democracy in Russia for the newspaper.

Beginning in 1988, Shogren worked as a freelance reporter based in Moscow, publishing in a variety of newspapers and magazines, including Newsweek, The Dallas Morning News, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post. During that time, she covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution in Prague.

Shogren's career in journalism began in the wire services. She worked for the Associated Press in Chicago and at United Press International in Albany, NY.

Throughout Shogren's career she has received numerous awards and honors including as a finalist for the 2011 Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting, the National Wildlife Federation National Conservation Achievement Award, the Meade Prize for coverage of air pollution and she was an IRE finalist. She is a member of Sigma Delta Chi and the Society of Professional Journalist.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Russian studies at the University of Virginia, Shogren went on to receive a Master of Science in journalism from Columbia University.

Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities
4:02 am
Mon November 7, 2011

Secret 'Watch List' Reveals Failure To Curb Toxic Air

Credit David Gilkey / NPR
The Continental Carbon plant sits on the southern outskirts of Ponca City, Okla. Until August, the plant was on an internal EPA "watch list," for violating rules of the Clean Air Act.

Originally published on Thu November 10, 2011 1:02 pm

Part 1 of a four-part series, Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities

The system Congress set up 21 years ago to clean up toxic air pollution still leaves many communities exposed to risky concentrations of benzene, formaldehyde, mercury and many other hazardous chemicals.

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Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities
4:00 am
Mon November 7, 2011

Powdery Pollution Coats Oklahoma Town

Part two of a four-part series, Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities

Karen Howe couldn't believe her luck. As a single mom working a minimum-wage job and living with two kids in a crowded one-bedroom apartment in Ponca City, Okla., she was desperate for a three-bedroom house and a lawn.

Howe, a member of the Ponca Tribe, was offered tribal housing in a small, tree-lined subdivision of 11 homes on the southern, rural edge of the city.

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Analysis
3:00 am
Mon November 7, 2011

Politics In The News

In less than two months, the first caucuses and primaries of the 2012 presidential election season will be held. And in just under two weeks, a congressional Supercommittee is due to deliver one-point-two trillion dollars in cuts and revenue to reduce the deficit.

Asia
3:00 am
Mon November 7, 2011

U.S. Urges Pakistan To Nudge Haqqani Millitants Toward Peace

Washington is no longer demanding that Pakistan launch a military offensive against the Haqqani network which is based along the Afghan border. Instead, the U.S. wants Pakistan to supply intelligence on the militants and get them to the negotiating table.

NPR Story
3:00 am
Mon November 7, 2011

2 Penn State Officials Step Down Amid Child Sex Abuse Scandal

Two top Penn State officials charged with covering up allegations of a child sex abuse scandal have stepped down after Sunday's emergency meeting of the university's Board of Trustees. Former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was charged over the weekend with sexually abusing eight boys over 15 years.

NPR Story
3:00 am
Mon November 7, 2011

Greek Prime Minister Papandreou To Step Down

Originally published on Mon November 7, 2011 5:43 am

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

The political drama in Greece now turns to who will govern that economically troubled country. Prime Minister George Papandreou has vowed to the opposition's demand that he step down to make way for a coalition government. The idea is that a government of national unity can steer Greece through austerity measures and save a bailout deal that's widely seen as the country's last chance. The new premiere is expected to be named today. Joanna Kakissis joined us from Athens with the latest. Good morning.

: Good morning.

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Jeff Lunden is a freelance arts reporter and producer whose stories have been heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, as well as on other public radio programs.

Lunden contributed several segments to the Peabody Award-winning series The NPR 100, and was producer of the NPR Music series Discoveries at Walt Disney Concert Hall, hosted by Renee Montagne. He has produced more than a dozen documentaries on musical theater and Tin Pan Alley for NPR — most recently A Place for Us: Fifty Years of West Side Story.

Other documentaries have profiled George and Ira Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, Harold Arlen and Jule Styne. Lunden has won several awards, including the Gold Medal from the New York Festival International Radio Broadcasting Awards and a CPB Award.

Lunden is also a theater composer. He wrote the score for the musical adaptation of Arthur Kopit's Wings (book and lyrics by Arthur Perlman), which won the 1994 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical. Other works include Another Midsummer Night, Once on a Summer's Day and adaptations of The Little Prince and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for Theatreworks/USA.

Lunden is currently working with Perlman on an adaptation of Swift as Desire, a novel of magic realism from Like Water for Chocolate author Laura Esquivel. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Arts & Life
11:01 pm
Sun November 6, 2011

At Arena Stage, A Million-Dollar Toast To Playwrights

A reporter once asked the late playwright Robert Anderson, author of I Never Sang for My Father, if he could make a living writing for the theater. His reply: "You can make a killing, but not a living."

True enough: For the playwright who hasn't had a hit on Broadway, making a living can be tough. But Arena Stage, a major theater in Washington, D.C., wants to change all that.

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