Arun Rath
Beginning in October 2015, Arun Rath assumed a new role as a shared correspondent for NPR and Boston-based public broadcaster WGBH News. He is based in the WGBH newsroom and his time is divided between filing national stories for NPR and local stories for WGBH News.
In this role, Rath's reporting beat covers the science of learning, exploring how the brain functions – how we experience emotions, making errors or boredom – and how we respond to different styles of learning. The beat dovetails well with several of WGBH News' core regional coverage areas, bolstering its reporting on higher education (On Campus), innovation (Innovation Hub) and science (Living Lab from WGBH and WCAI in Woods Hole on Cape Cod).
Previously he served as weekend host of All Things Considered. In that role, every Saturday and Sunday, Rath and the All Things Considered team offered an hour-long exploration of compelling stories, along with in-depth interviews, breaking news, cultural reviews and reports from NPR bureaus throughout the U.S. and around the world.
Over his career, Rath has distinguished himself in public media as a reporter, producer and editor, including time as a senior reporter for the PBS series Frontline and The World® on WGBH Boston. He began his journalism career as an NPR intern at an NPR call-in program called Talk of the Nation, eventually joining the staff and becoming the show's director after working on several NPR News programs during the 1990s. In 2000, he became senior producer for NPR's On the Media, produced by WNYC, where he was part of a team that tripled its audience and won a Peabody Award. He spent 2005 as senior editor at the culture and arts show Studio 360 from PRI and WNYC. Rath moved to television in 2005 to report and manage radio partnerships for Frontline; he also reports on culture and music for the PBS series Sound Tracks. At Frontline and The World®, Rath specialized in national security and military justice. He reported and produced three films for Frontline, the latest being an investigation of alleged war crimes committed by U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq.
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The Potato Chip Lady, aka Myrtle Young, died in August of this year. She was 90. Young became famous after showing her collection of unusually shaped chips to Tonight Show host Johnny Carson in 1987.
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NPR's Arun Rath presents the work of a few musicians who died in 2014 but didn't get enough recognition, including a rockabilly forefather, an Indian mandolin player and a leading Texas bluesman.
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Half a century ago, the saxophonist and his band stepped into the studio to lay down the tracks of what would become his most important statement: The "love supreme" in the title refers to God's love.
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In Los Angeles, more than a thousand people sleep on the street in cardboard boxes and tents — just a mile away from City Hall. Many want to fix Skid Row, but how to do it is extremely controversial. -
If her Prince-assisted '80s hits are all you know of Sheila Escovedo, you're missing half the story. NPR's Arun Rath speaks with the drummer, singer and bandleader and dives in to her early history. -
It's been a grim Easter Sunday in South Korea as the death toll continues to rise from the ferry disaster that left nearly 300 passengers, many of them high school students, dead or missing.
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Inflation and food shortages continue to spark violence in Venezuela. Dozens of people have been arrested, and protests renewed on Saturday. Reporter Girish Gupta explains the situation in Caracas.
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On the 80th birthday of Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki — whose music helped make The Shining so terrifying — NPR's Arun Rath considers how the classical music of Penderecki's generation has been shaped by real-life horror. -
This coming week, Disney Hall celebrates its 10th anniversary. NPR's Arun Rath speaks with conductor and music director Gustavo Dudamel, as well as other figures from the Los Angeles classical scene, about the highlights since then. -
Composer Phillip Glass, director Robert Wilson and choreographer Lucinda Childs discuss their epic modern opera, which is being staged for the first time in two decades.
