Rachel Martin
Rachel Martin is the co-creator and host of Wild Card, an interview game show about life's biggest questions. She invites notable guests to play a card game that lets them open up about the memories, insights, and beliefs that have shaped their lives.
Martin spent six years as a host of Morning Edition, and was the founding host of NPR's award-winning morning news podcast Up First. She previously hosted Weekend Edition Sunday.
She served as National Security Correspondent for NPR, where she covered both defense and intelligence issues, and also worked as a NPR foreign correspondent, where she covered the London terrorist attacks, issues surrounding immigration and shifting cultural identities in Europe.
Martin worked extensively in Afghanistan, covering the reconstruction effort after the U.S. invasion and the country's first democratic presidential election. She also reported from Iraq, where she covered U.S. military operations and the strategic alliance between Sunni sheiks and the U.S. military in Anbar province. She traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2015 to report on women's rights, and in 2022, she reported from Ukraine's border with Belarus in the leadup to the Russian war.
Martin was part of the team that launched NPR's experimental morning news show, The Bryant Park Project, a live two-hour daily multimedia program that she co-hosted with Alison Stewart and Mike Pesca.
Martin also previously served as NPR's religion correspondent. Her piece on Islam in America was awarded "Best Radio Feature" by the Religion News Writers Association in 2007. In 2011, her story on racial discrimination in Hollywood won a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and her series on the effects of the opioid epidemic on children won a Gracie award in 2019.
She started her career at public radio station KQED in San Francisco as a producer and reporter.
She holds an undergraduate degree in political science and an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., and a Master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University.
She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, two sons and dog named Lola F. Bear, Esq.
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In an interview on NPR's Wild Card podcast, Melinda French Gates reacts to her ex-husband, Bill Gates, being mentioned in the most recent release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. -
Erykah Badu opens up on Wild Card about wanting to live in a space shuttle, how music is the undertone to her life, and whether there's more to reality than we can see or touch. -
Margaret Atwood knows that she scares people. She opens up about that perception and also reflects on the bad advice she's received in her career and how she takes vengeance. -
Bowen Yang talks to Wild Card about his proudest moment as a kid, hard truths from Tina Fey and why he thinks there's more to reality than we can see or touch. -
Jack Antonoff has seemingly cracked the code for producing hit albums, winning Grammys for his work with artists like Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift. But for his own writing, he leans into the unknown. -
After my parents died, it felt like I had been robbed. I sat down with my brother and sister to talk about how losing our mom and dad made us think about religion and our own spirituality. -
Comedian Duncan Trussell speaks on the value of transcendent experiences and how he thinks about life after death. -
A professor of Jewish history at UCLA has tried to stake out some middle ground, where Jews and Palestinians on campus could safely stand and grieve for one another. -
Experts refer to "climate grief." Terry Tempest Williams explains what this feels like to someone who has spent their life thinking about our psychic and spiritual connection to the natural world. -
Rob Delaney found out his youngest son Henry had brain cancer. This is a story about the saddest of places life can take you, but it's also about the biggest of loves and how to scrape up bits of joy.
