NPR international correspondent Kelly McEvers  will be the featured speaker at a special event sponsored by KGOU and the OU College of International Studies.

McEvers will be joined by Joshua Landis, an expert on Syrian history and politics, and Samer Shehata, a noted scholar on Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood, both professors at OU's College of International Studies. "Reporting on the Middle East: Syria and Egypt After the Arab Spring," will be at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History's Kerr Auditorium on Wednesday, Oct. 2 at 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Based in NPR's Beirut and Baghdad bureaus, McEvers has covered the Middle East for NPR since 2010. She traveled undercover to follow Arab uprisings in places where brutal crackdowns quickly followed the early euphoria of protests -- Bahrain, Yemen and Syria. For her efforts, McEvers was awarded the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia award, the Peabody Award, the Gracie Award and an Overseas Press Club citation. Join us for this exciting discussion!

 

Kelly McEvers braved gunfire, explosions and tear gas to "get the story" during the turbulent Arab Spring. Friends and colleagues doing the same work were kidnapped or even killed. And yet, public radio producer Jay Allison says making a documentary about her experiences is one of the braver things McEvers has ever done.

Her own gripping story, an intimate portrait of the sacrifices war correspondents and their families make -- and the sometimes dangerous allure of the job -- is told in a one-hour documentary, Diary of a Bad Year: A War Correspondent's Dilemma. KGOU re-broadcasts the documentary on this week's Sunday Radio Matinee, Sept. 29 at 12 noon.

 

KGOU's evening and weekend schedules are getting a few minor changes as of Oct. 1:

• We're offering Radiolab at an additional time, Tuesdays at 8 p.m., a repeat of the Saturday morning program.
• World Views will gain another airing for those who can't listen on Friday afternoons; each week's half-hour program will be repeated Saturdays at 6:00 a.m. 
• Jazz at Lincoln Center returns to the Friday night line-up at 10 p.m., beginning Oct. 4.

These changes will make for a stronger schedule overall, with more opportunities to listen. As always, we welcome your feedback at programming@kgou.org.

 

Backstage Jazz resumes its inaugural season with an all-new show this week, Sept. 27 at 9 p.m., featuring Justin Echols interviewed and recorded live at this past year's Jazz in June festival in Norman.

Then at 10, KGOU brings you a special presentation of highlights from this year's Newport Jazz Festival. It's two hours of great music including a celebration of Wayne Shorter's 80th birthday with Herbie Hancock and the Wayne Shorter Quartet; three distinctly different groups with New Orleans roots; Joshua Redman; Gregory Porter (pictured); and more. Get a preview at NPR Music.

 

When we browse the Internet, when we text our friends, when we buy prescription medicine at the pharmacy, we create a digital portrait of who we are. The question is, should we care? And who can really gather that information? NPR's Daniel Zwerdling explores the intimate details that we reveal about ourselves in the digital world. The weeklong series airs beginning Monday, Sept. 30 on All Things Considered.

 

When fall arrives, we think of crisp apples ready to harvest -- at least, that's what food writer Nicole Spiridakis thinks of. And she thinks of the king of all baking apples, the Gravenstein. See her scrumptious recipes for applesauce, muffins, cake, a tart, and more apple-y goodness at the Kitchen Window.