Robert Siegel
Prior to his retirement, Robert Siegel was the senior host of NPR's award-winning evening newsmagazine All Things Considered. With 40 years of experience working in radio news, Siegel hosted the country's most-listened-to, afternoon-drive-time news radio program and reported on stories and happenings all over the globe, and reported from a variety of locations across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. He signed off in his final broadcast of All Things Considered on January 5, 2018.
In 2010, Siegel was recognized by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with the John Chancellor Award. Siegel has been honored with three Silver Batons from Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University, first in 1984 for All Things Considered's coverage of peace movements in East and West Germany. He shared in NPR's 1996 Silver Baton Award for "The Changing of the Guard: The Republican Revolution," for coverage of the first 100 days of the 104th Congress. He was part of the NPR team that won a Silver Baton for the network's coverage of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province, China.
Other awards Siegel has earned include a 1997 American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award for the two-part documentary, "Murder, Punishment, and Parole in Alabama" and the National Mental Health Association's 1991 Mental Health Award for his interviews conducted on the streets of New York in an All Things Considered story, "The Mentally Ill Homeless."
Siegel joined NPR in December 1976 as a newscaster and became an editor the following year. In 1979, Siegel became NPR's first staffer based overseas when he was chosen to open NPR's London bureau, where he worked as senior editor until 1983. After London, Siegel served for four years as director of the News and Information Department, overseeing production of NPR's newsmagazines All Things Considered and Morning Edition, as well as special events and other news programming. During his tenure, NPR launched its popular Saturday and Sunday newsmagazine Weekend Edition. He became host of All Things Considered in 1987.
Before coming to NPR, Siegel worked for WRVR Radio in New York City as a reporter, host and news director. He was part of the WRVR team honored with an Armstrong Award for the series, "Rockefeller's Drug Law." Prior to WRVR, he was morning news reporter and telephone talk show host for WGLI Radio in Babylon, New York.
A graduate of New York's Stuyvesant High School and Columbia University, Siegel began his career in radio at Columbia's radio station, WKCR-FM. As a student he anchored coverage of the 1968 Columbia demonstrations and contributed to the work that earned the station an award from the Writers Guild of America East.
Siegel was the editor of The NPR Interviews 1994, The NPR Interviews 1995 and The NPR Interviews 1996, compilations of NPR's most popular radio conversations from each year.
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The American Music Center has commissioned six composers to write original compositions for its phone system. The idea is to make sitting on hold a more stimulating experience, and create new venues for electroacoustic composers. Robert Siegel talks with Joanne Cossa, the executive director of the American Music Center.
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Robert Siegel talks with actress Eva Marie Saint, and her husband, producer/director Jeffrey Hayden. Saint and Hayden talk about the recent death of Hollywood screenwriter Ernest Lehman. Saint co-starred in North by Northwest which Lehman wrote, and she and her husband were close friends of Lehman's.
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Robert Siegel talks with Bruce Nussbaum, editorial page editor of Business Week, about the magazine's annual Best Product Design issue. The 2005 winners include a sleek update on training wheels, the iPod shuffle and a toilet design that "recasts the whole concept of the toilet."
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Robert Siegel talks with Norwegian Jazz Pianist Tord Gustavsen about the art of jazz improvisation and his new album The Ground.
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Robert Siegel talks with a tenor who used to do more than sing for a living. Before becoming an opera singer, Carl Tanner drove a truck. He also made his living as a bounty hunter. But it wasn't his calling. So Tanner is now singing the role of Samson in the Washington National Opera's production of Samson and Dalila.
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Robert Siegel talks about the history of beer with Tom Standage, technology editor at The Economist. A History of the World in Six Glasses is Standage's new book that traces the history of civilization through beer, wine, distilled spirits, coffee, tea and coca cola. Beer was first produced at the end of the ice age and became popular with the Sumarians.
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A new exhibit in the National Gallery of Art explores painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's relationship to Montmartre, the Paris district that drew artists and bohemians in the late 19th century.
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Robert Siegel talks with Edward Moss, the Michael Jackson impersonator playing the defendant in the E! cable network's daily reenactment of highlights from the Jackson trial. He talks about getting into makeup -- and character -- to portray Jackson, who he has been impersonating for the past decade.
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Palestinian filmmaker Hanna Elias is dubbing the epic film about the Indian leader into Arabic -- with the hope of bringing the movie's message of non-violence to the Middle East.
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Israeli director Eran Riklis' new film looks at the Middle East conflict through the story of a family divided by political borders -- and a wedding of sadness, not celebration.