Neda Ulaby
Neda Ulaby reports on arts, entertainment, and cultural trends for NPR's Arts Desk.
Scouring the various and often overlapping worlds of art, music, television, film, new media and literature, Ulaby's stories reflect political and economic realities, cultural issues, obsessions and transitions.
A twenty-year veteran of NPR, Ulaby started as a temporary production assistant on the cultural desk, opening mail, booking interviews and cutting tape with razor blades. Over the years, she's also worked as a producer and editor and won a Gracie award from the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation for hosting a podcast of NPR's best arts stories.
Ulaby also hosted the Emmy-award winning public television series Arab American Stories in 2012 and earned a 2019 Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan. She's also been chosen for fellowships at the Getty Arts Journalism Program at USC Annenberg and the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism.
Before coming to NPR, Ulaby worked as managing editor of Chicago's Windy City Times and co-hosted a local radio program, What's Coming Out at the Movies. A former doctoral student in English literature, Ulaby has contributed to academic journals and taught classes in the humanities at the University of Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University and at high schools serving at-risk students.
Ulaby worked as an intern for the features desk of the Topeka Capital-Journal after graduating from Bryn Mawr College. But her first appearance in print was when she was only four days old. She was pictured on the front page of the New York Times, as a refugee, when she and her parents were evacuated from Amman, Jordan, during the conflict known as Black September.
-
What happens when Steven Spielberg's idealism and Stephen King's cynicism combine in a CBS TV series? Under the Dome may be packed with sci-fi what-ifs, but beneath its mysteries is a small American town working out some very familiar human problems. -
NPR's Neda Ulaby investigates a trend in toys that sounds awfully familiar: Manufacturers are finding new ways to get kids interested in playing with blocks, both real and virtual. -
Netflix and Dreamworks Animation have announced an exclusive deal to develop animated kids' shows based on Dreamworks Animation's characters.
-
Neda Ulaby looks at a new summer drama about foster families, which — perhaps surprisingly — strikes real foster kids as getting a lot of things right. -
Brands that found their original audiences in traditional, old-media platforms are finding ways to keep going in the world of new media. -
What happens when fans stop talking about a show that used to be their favorite? Take American Idol, for example. Last week's finale was way down from last year's finale. It was the first time a finale did not reach the 20-million mark.
-
Subscription services — like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus — attract customers with two kinds of programming. They all have a lot of movies and TV shows, but they have a few things that you can't see anywhere else. For example, the fight among video- streaming services for Downton Abbey has been intense.
-
Broadcast TV used to have bigger stars, bigger audiences and bigger budgets. Cable shows were edgier, with more sex and violence than the broadcasters dared show. In the last few seasons, though, cable ratings have improved and broadcast shows have taken more risks. What's going on on TV? -
While the quality of TVs and technology seems to be at an all-time high, the devices we use to access the living room screen are as confusing as ever. But tablets and apps offer hope of simplifying the process of finding shows to watch — and even interacting with other viewers. -
"People who live in cities have become more isolated than ever," says the 71-year-old architect based in Tokyo. "I would like to use architecture to create bonds between people." Ito has designed stadiums, libraries, parks, theaters, homes and more in his four-decade career. -
With its mission to tell stories from underrepresented perspectives, Cinereach has supported more than 100 movies, including Beasts of the Southern Wild and The Queen of Versailles. -
NPR's Neda Ulaby takes a stroll through Toy Fair, an industry event where adults get to preview acres of new toys.
