Simone Popperl
Simone Popperl is an editor for NPR's Morning Edition and Up First. She joined the network in March 2019, and since then has pitched and edited stories on everything from the legacy of burn pits in Iraq, to never-ending "infrastructure week," to California towns grappling with climate change, to American alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin's ascendance to the top of her sport. She led Noel King's reporting on the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Steve Inskeep's reporting from swing states in the lead up to the 2020 Presidential Election, and Leila Fadel's field reporting from Kentucky on the end of Roe v. Wade.
In the first months of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, she helped edit NPR's evening live show "The National Conversation" that brought experts on air to answer listeners' urgent questions about the major disruptions to American life wrought by the novel pathogen.
Popperl received a Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine for research about how sinkholes in the Dead Sea basin are changing the lives of geologists, environmentalists, tourists, industrialists and local residents in Jordan, the West Bank and Israel. She's a founding member of the Middle East Environmental Worlds Working Group, and has edited and published ethnographic research in a variety of university presses.
-
NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Kate Davis about her new album Fish Bowl, which is told from the perspective of a dimension-hopping protagonist named FiBo. -
American alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin has broken the career record for most World Cup race wins. She has now won more races than any other skier in history, of any gender. -
NPR's A Martinez talks to psychologist Jelena Kecmanovic, who specializes in tween and teens and social media use, about TikTok's changes that are meant to help teens limit their screen time. -
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries insists the looming debt ceiling crisis will be resolved without his party submitting to demands by Republicans who want to tie government spending cuts to a debt limit hike.
-
How did West Virginia become one of the world's leaders in delivering COVID-19 vaccines? One piece of the story starts with a striking photograph in the local paper. -
The same electronic systems used to record when patients get a physical or go to the ER are also used to log data when coronavirus vaccines are given. But the systems don't share information easily. -
The documentary series, an adaptation of Hirway's popular podcast, asks musicians including Alicia Keys and R.E.M to tell the step-by-step story of how a song was created. -
NPR's Noel King checks in with John J. Lennon, an inmate at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, about the impact COVID-19 has had on prison life six months into the pandemic. -
Both the Trump and Biden campaigns are competing for voters in key swing states like Pennsylvania. But is either of the major parties trying to engage Black voters in cities like Pittsburgh? -
Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, says the Trump administration is creating the conditions for domestic extremism to flourish in the U.S.
