Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Later in the program, we will hear more from some of the folks attending the inauguration ceremonies.

This year, the presidential inaugural events coincide with the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Host Michel Martin speaks with scholar Clayborne Carson, about how Dr. King may have viewed the historic challenges facing President Obama.

Hope and change were two of the watch words of President Obama's first presidential campaign. As he begins a second term, Tell Me More speaks with people gathered in the nation's capital about what they think the next four years will be about.

In the new Fox TV series The Following, Kevin Bacon plays a former FBI agent asked to help apprehend an escaped serial killer he once put behind bars. The show is from Kevin Williamson, who also created the Scream horror-movie franchise.

Today, Richard Blanco became the fifth poet to read at the inauguration of a United States president.

The rapper Lupe Fiasco was escorted off the stage at an unofficial inaugural ball in Washington, last night.

As Politico reports, the Grammy-nominated rapper stayed on the anti-war song "Words I Never Said" for 30 minutes. Video posted by Now This News shows Fiasco dropping lines critical of President Obama, before the lights go off and men in black suits escort him off the stage.

The remarks of President Obama, as released by The White House and prepared for delivery:

Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:

A group of women traveled 18 hours by train from Chicago to Washington, D.C., for Inauguration Day. We hear about why they and others decided to attend this year's festivities, which fall on Martin Luther King Day.