Mary Louise Kelly
Mary Louise Kelly is a co-host of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning afternoon newsmagazine.
Previously, she spent a decade as national security correspondent for NPR News, and she's kept that focus in her role as anchor. That's meant taking All Things Considered to Russia, North Korea, and beyond (including live coverage from Helsinki, for the infamous Trump-Putin summit). Her past reporting has tracked the CIA and other spy agencies, terrorism, wars, and rising nuclear powers. Kelly's assignments have found her deep in interviews at the Khyber Pass, at mosques in Hamburg, and in grimy Belfast bars.
Kelly first launched NPR's intelligence beat in 2004. After one particularly tough trip to Baghdad — so tough she wrote an essay about it for Newsweek — she decided to try trading the spy beat for spy fiction. Her debut espionage novel, Anonymous Sources, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2013. It's a tale of journalists, spies, and Pakistan's nuclear security. Her second novel, The Bullet, followed in 2015.
Kelly's writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Washingtonian, The Atlantic, and other publications. She has lectured at Harvard and Stanford, and taught a course on national security and journalism at Georgetown University. In addition to her NPR work, Kelly serves as a contributing editor at The Atlantic, moderating newsmaker interviews at forums from Aspen to Abu Dhabi.
A Georgia native, Kelly's first job was pounding the streets as a political reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 1996, she made the leap to broadcasting, joining the team that launched BBC/Public Radio International's The World. The following year, Kelly moved to London to work as a producer for CNN and as a senior producer, host, and reporter for the BBC World Service.
Kelly graduated from Harvard University in 1993 with degrees in government, French language, and literature. Two years later, she completed a master's degree in European studies at Cambridge University in England.
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Journalist and writer Michele Norris is exploring the significance of the family kitchen in her new podcast, Your Mama's Kitchen. -
Huda Akram is a doctor based in Benghazi, Libya, whose family hails from Derna. She spoke to NPR on Wednesday, describing the harrowing scenes and what is happening now. -
Cindy McCain, the U.N. World Food Programme's executive director, has been tasked with closing the giant hole in the budget. -
For a second time in a little over a month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared to freeze up while taking questions a press conference, raising questions about his health.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Biden's domestic policy advisor, Neera Tanden, about the administration's plan to lower the price of certain prescription drugs under Medicare.
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Donald Trump is the front-runner in the Republican presidential primary. And with a healthy lead in the polls, he's skipping the first Republican presidential debate on Wednesday. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Dr. Kristina M. Deligiannidis, principal investigator on the clinical trials that led to the FDA approval of the first at-home oral postpartum depression pill.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with actor Richard E. Grant about his memoir Pocketful of Happiness and how he has dealt with the grief of losing his wife to cancer after 38 years together.
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SAG-AFTRA, the union representing some of Hollywood's biggest stars, is set to go on strike Thursday. Barring a last-minute breakthrough in talks, it could be the latest strike to shake up Hollywood.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Dr. Kalhan, a pulmonologist at Northwestern Medicine, about the impact of wildfire smoke in Chicago, which claimed the world's worst air quality earlier this week.
