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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The nation's most senior military officer has retired. He talks to All Things Considered about Donald Trump, democracy, and whether the U.S. military has been politicized. -
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. -
The missing submersible is equipped with several mechanisms that can bring it back to the surface during an emergency, according to a former passenger. -
Kim Hyun-woo used to work for North Korea's top intelligence agency. He defected to South Korea in 2014 and is now on his first-ever visit to the United States. -
The nonpartisan Covid Crisis Group has released its investigative report, titled "Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report." This is what it found. -
It's been more than five months since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody, which sparked mass protests in Iran. But part of what fueled them was a sense of economic desperation. -
Following protests and crackdowns over the past five months, authorities held events to mark the 1979 Revolution this week. They show Iranians have mixed feelings about their nation. -
In an interview with NPR in Tehran, Iran's foreign minister dismisses the protests that have spread in the wake of Mahsa Amini's death, saying "nothing important had happened." -
An associate professor at the prestigious Wharton School is not only allowing his students to use ChatGPT, they are required to.
