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Susan Stamberg, iconic Jewish ‘founding mother’ of NPR, dies at 87
When Susan Stamberg first sat behind the microphone to host a newfangled broadcasting venture called National Public Radio, in 1972, some board members had a concern: She sounded too Jewish.
Though that wasn’t quite how they tended to phrase it, recalled a colleague. Instead, NPR board members feared that the “All Things Considered” co-host was “too New York” for Midwest audiences.
“Besides being a woman, the Jewish element was another aspect,” Jack Mitchell, an early producer on the daily afternoon program, told NPR. “Here is somebody whose name is Stamberg. She had an obvious New York accent. Made no bones about it… And the president of NPR asked that I not put her in there for those — because of the complaints from managers.”
Stamberg went on the air anyway, and quickly became a defining personality for the nonprofit radio network. In subsequent decades, as NPR turned into a cultural juggernaut, Stamberg and her “New York” personality became something of its unofficial mascot. In the elevators of NPR’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, her voice guides visitors from floor to floor.
Stamberg died Thursday at age 87, leaving behind years of her bubbly conversations and an annual, love-it-or-hate-it recipe for her family’s “cranberry relish.”
As one of NPR’s “founding mothers” in the 1970s, she helped shape the network’s personality: warm, liberal-leaning, and — along with or laying the groundwork for fellow longtime marquee names like Nina Totenberg, Ira Flatow, Terri Gross and Robert Siegel — unmistakably, culturally Jewish. In later years, long after her retirement from regular on-air duties, Stamberg would still pop up to read the winners of NPR’s annual “Hanukkah Lights” short-story contest.
“I am very sociologically Jewish. Very ethnically Jewish, although not in an observant way. There are a lot of people like me,” Stamberg told the Jewish Women’s Archive in 2011, adding that she willingly participated in Torah study with her son Josh — today an actor — when he was becoming a bar mitzvah at her husband’s request. “I feel deeply Jewish and I deeply identify with my Jewishness, but it doesn’t need a formal affiliation for me.”
Born Susan Levitt in Newark in 1938, she was a child of Manhattan’s culturally Jewish scene. Stamberg grew up without regular Jewish observance, though she told the Jewish Women’s Archive she was part of a confirmation class at Temple Rodeph Sholem, the Reform synagogue on the Upper West Side. Her father, a staunch Zionist, raised money for the Weizmann Institute, the research institute founded in 1934 in Rehovot. She earned an English literature degree at Barnard College, the first in her family to go to college.
She married Louis Stamberg, who became a longtime USAID staffer, and the duo moved to Washington, D.C. Susan recalled that her husband, whose father founded a congregation in Allentown, Pennsylvania, grew up “where being Jewish was really an issue.” Her father-in-law “was insistent that we, too, join a temple in Washington. I said, ‘Well, Why?’” she recalled in 2011. “That’s how I came to know that the entire world was not Jewish like the world in which I had grown up.”
After stints at WAMU, the local public radio station, and for Voice of America in India, Stamberg initially joined NPR, after its founding by an act of Congress in 1971, to cut tape for radio interviews. When “All Things Considered” launched in 1972 she became its co-host and thus also the first woman to anchor a broadcast news program, in her colleagues’ estimation — overcoming considerable sexism from both the network’s listeners and executives.
Stamberg only held the anchor post for a few years, soon pivoting to the cultural correspondent stories she would become known for. She took on other hosting duties, too, including for “Weekend Edition,” where she introduced the show’s trademark Sunday puzzles and first brought on the guests who would become the mega-popular program “Car Talk.”
“I think all of that is very Jewish, the telling of stories, but also the seeking of opinions and also being open to the range of opinions that are out there,” Stamberg would tell the Jewish Women’s Archive about her work.
Laughing, she added, “I also feel that sometimes mine’s right. I think that’s very Jewish, too.”
Stamberg is survived by her son and two granddaughters.
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Trump Says Gas Prices May Remain High Through November Midterm Election
U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters while Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio look on, as they attend a meeting with oil industry executives, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the price of oil and gasoline may remain high through November’s midterm elections, a rare acknowledgement of the potential political fallout from his decision to attack Iran six weeks ago.
“It could be, or the same, or maybe a little bit higher, but it should be around the same,” Trump, who is in Miami for the weekend, told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo” when asked whether the cost of oil and gas would be lower by the fall.
The average price for regular gas at US service stations has exceeded $4 per gallon for most of April, according to data from GasBuddy. Trump’s comments on Sunday came after weeks of asserting that the spike in prices is a short-term phenomenon, though his top advisers are cognizant of the war’s economic impacts, officials have said.
Earlier on Sunday, Trump announced on social media that the US Navy would blockade the Strait of Hormuz and intercept any ship that paid a crossing fee to Iran, after marathon talks between the US and Iran in Pakistan over the weekend did not yield a peace deal.
“No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Any US blockade is likely to add more uncertainty to the eventual resolution of the conflict, which is currently subject to a tenuous two-week ceasefire. The new tactic is in response to Iran’s own closure of the strait’s critical shipping lanes, which has caused global oil prices to skyrocket about 50%.
UNPOPULAR WAR HITS TRUMP’S APPROVAL
The war began on February 28, when the US launched a joint bombing campaign with Israel against Iran. The scope quickly expanded as Iran and its allies attacked nearby countries, while Israel targeted Hezbollah with massive strikes in Lebanon.
The war has buffeted global financial markets and caused thousands of civilian deaths, mostly in Iran and Lebanon.
Trump’s political standing at home has suffered, with polls showing the war is unpopular among most Americans, who are frustrated by rising gasoline prices.
The president’s approval rating has hit the lowest levels of his second term in office, raising concern among Republicans that his party is poised to lose control of Congress in the midterm elections. A Democratic majority in either chamber could launch investigations into the Trump administration while blocking much of his legislative agenda.
US Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned the strategy behind Trump’s planned blockade.
“I don’t understand how blockading the strait is going to somehow push the Iranians into opening it,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
In a separate appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Warner said the blockade would not undermine Iranian control of the waterway.
“The Iranians have hundreds of speedboats where they can still mine the strait or put bombs against tankers in closing the strait,” he said. “How is that going to ever bring down gas prices?”
Although Trump has repeatedly said that the war would be over soon, Republican US Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday that achieving US aims in Iran “could take a long time.”
“It’s going to be a long-term project,” said Johnson, who was not asked about Trump’s proposed blockade. “I never thought this would be easy.”
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Israel’s Ben-Gvir Visits Flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound
Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir walks inside the Knesset, in Jerusalem, Oct. 13, 2025. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Pool via REUTERS
Israel’s far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem on Sunday, saying he was seeking greater access for Jewish worshipers and drawing condemnation from Jordan and the Palestinians.
The compound in Jerusalem’s walled Old City is one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East. Known to Jews as Temple Mount, it is the most sacred site in Judaism and is Islam’s third-holiest site.
Under a delicate, decades-old arrangement with Muslim authorities, it is administered by a Jordanian religious foundation and Jews can visit but may not pray there.
Suggestions that Israel would alter the rules have sparked outrage among Muslims and ignited violence in the past.
“Today, I feel like the owner here,” National Security Minister Ben-Gvir said in a video filmed at the site and distributed by his office. “There is still more to do, more to improve. I keep pushing the Prime Minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) to do more and more — we must keep rising higher and higher.”
A statement from the Jordanian foreign ministry said it considered Ben-Gvir’s visit to be a violation of the status quo agreement at the site and “a desecration of its sanctity, a condemnable escalation and an unacceptable provocation.”
The office of Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said such actions could further destabilize the region.
Ben-Gvir’s spokesman said the minister was seeking greater access and prayer permits for Jewish visitors. He also said that Ben-Gvir had prayed at the site.
There was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office. Previous such visits and statements by Ben-Gvir have prompted Netanyahu announcements saying that there is no change in Israel’s policy of keeping the status quo.
Muslim, Christian and Jewish sites, including Al-Aqsa had been largely closed to the public during the Iran war. There was no immediate sign of unrest on Sunday after Ben-Gvir’s visit.
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Netanyahu Visits Troops Fighting Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Aug. 10, 2025. Photo: ABIR SULTAN/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli forces operating in southern Lebanon on Sunday as military operations against Hezbollah-linked targets continue.
Netanyahu toured forward positions alongside Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, Eyal Zamir, and Northern Command Commander Rafi Milo, meeting troops and receiving operational briefings from commanders on the ground.
Speaking to soldiers, Netanyahu praised their performance and said operations in the Lebanese security zone were ongoing.
“The war continues, including within the security zone in Lebanon,” he said, adding that Israeli forces were working to prevent infiltration attempts and neutralize threats such as anti-tank fire and missiles.
He described the northern campaign as part of a broader regional struggle involving Iran and its allies, saying Israel’s adversaries were now “fighting for their survival” following sustained Israeli military pressure.