Today, Explained, Vox's daily explainer podcast, is coming to NHPR's broadcast lineup.
Starting Monday, April 4, Today, Explained, will air weekday evenings at 8:30 pm. This will replace the rebroadcast of Marketplace, which can still be heard each weekday at 6:30 pm following All Things Considered and on demand on the NHPR mobile app.
This marks the return of former Morning Edition host Noel King to NHPR's airwaves. King left NPR to become co-host and editorial director of Today, Explained, and is helping to set the show's direction on a new chapter of growth, developing special series, reporting ambitious stories, and more. King partners with Today, Explained co-host and Vox Audio creative director Sean Rameswaram; the two share hosting duties.
Every weekday, King and Rameswaram take on one essential news story that defines our moment, and bring listeners the context they need to understand it. Through on the ground reporting, discussions with journalists, academics, policymakers, and more, the Today, Explained team helps us understand every story and why it matters.
NHPR will be among a group of public radio stations joining the national launch of the podcast as a radio program. Today, Explained will air after The Daily, combining two of the most popular daily podcasts into one hour of evening programming.
Today, Explained looks beyond its own newsroom to find the best sources and guests to tell each story. Sometimes that’s a Vox journalist with expertise on the topic, but often it’s a journalist from another news organization, or a local public radio reporter, or a person on the ground living the story themselves.
Today, Explained is the winner of the 2021 Webby Award for Best News & Politics Podcast and the Podcast Academy’s Ambies Award for Best News Podcast. The show has been featured in The Atlantic, Vulture, Reader’s Digest and more.
Host bios
Sean Rameswaram (@rameswaram) is the creative director of Vox Audio and the host of Vox’s daily news podcast Today, Explained. In this role, Rameswaram has upended assumptions about daily news podcasting, leaning into Vox’s focus on explanation and clarity and adding personality and often humor, with the odd original song from time to time. As creative director, Rameswaram has worked to expand Today, Explained's style into new projects, including the weekly science show Unexplainable.
Rameswaram co-created and launched Today, Explained in 2018. The show was named “Best News Podcast” in the inaugural Podcast Academy Ambie Awards, and at the 2021 Webby Awards. Before joining Vox, Rameswaram was a correspondent for WNYC’s Radiolab series More Perfect, where he produced deeply reported features on guns in America, gerrymandering, and other urgent constitutional questions. Earlier, he was a reporter for PRI’s Studio 360 and the host of Studio 360’s Sideshow podcast and CBC's Podcast Playlist.
Noel King (@NoelKing) is editorial director and host of Today, Explained, Vox’s flagship daily news podcast. In addition to hosting the show, King, who joined Vox earlier this year, will help set Today, Explained's direction as it embarks on a new chapter of growth, developing special series, reporting ambitious stories, and more.
King joined Vox from NPR, where she was a co-host of Morning Edition and Up First. She was part of a team of NPR journalists who won an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2020 for their reporting along the US/Mexico border on the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy. She also received a Gracie Award in 2021 for her reporting from Minneapolis after George Floyd’s murder, and was honored by the Radio Hall of Fame in 2020 as “One to Watch.” Outside of Morning Edition, King has held a range of roles in radio, including stints as a correspondent at Planet Money, a producer at The Takeaway, and a reporter at Marketplace. She has reported on a range of issues, from the U.S.’s 2021 election to the Arab Spring.
King is a graduate of Brown University with a degree in American Civilization.