Like many pioneers before it, All Things Considered has moved west. On Saturdays and Sundays, the show will air from NPR studios in Culver City, Calif., with a new host, Arun Rath.
Rath has worked in public media for years as a reporter, producer and editor. He even started his career as an intern at NPR's Talk of the Nation. This new hosting gig is his dream job, he says.
Maintaining its focus as a national show, All Things Considered will have a new perspective on the weekends. From Los Angeles, the show will be looking at the country in a different way and amplifying diverse voices. There's even new theme music.
For Rath's first broadcast as host, he takes a tour of the West, speaking with NPR's Mandalit Del Barco from the streets of Los Angeles, Martin Kaste from the Seattle waterfront, Ted Robbins on the Tucson Mountains of Arizona and Wade Goodwyn in football-loving Texas.
Here are highlights of their advice for Rath, and you can hear their full welcome in the audio at the top of this page:
Mandalit Del Barco In Los Angeles:
"You can find everything here in L.A. Everyone is youthful, no matter what their age. You can surf, you can legally smoke pot, do the latest yoga craze. We've got great food, great weather, and, Arun, there is no shortage of news. It's a really fun place to be a journalist."
Martin Kaste In Seattle:
"The thing you need to understand about this region is that it's not all Portlandia. In fact, there's a pretty stark division here, from west to east. So, for example, here in Seattle, the mayor's race right now is a bitter struggle between two liberal Democrats. But if you drive an hour over the Cascade Mountains, a funny thing happens. First, it stops raining. And second, the politics shifts red."
Ted Robbins In Arizona:
"Standing in the sunshine at the top of Gates Pass in the Tucson Mountains, turn one way and there's civilization: homes, stores, offices and air-conditioning.
"Turn the other, and there's a fantastic landscape. Thousands of giant saguaro cacti — the ones with the arms — dot the mountainsides in front of me. It's the classic Sonoran Desert picture."
Wade Goodwyn In Texas:
"Texas is the land of stalwart conservative politicians. To borrow a phrase from our freshman U.S. senator, you're not going to find a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys governing the Lone Star State, no sir."
"But hell, this is Texas, and we all know what's really important in life: Not politics — college football!"
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