Steve Inskeep
Steve Inskeep is a host of NPR's Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First.
Known for interviews with presidents and Congressional leaders, Inskeep has a passion for stories of the less famous: Pennsylvania truck drivers, Kentucky coal miners, U.S.-Mexico border detainees, Yemeni refugees, California firefighters, American soldiers.
Since joining Morning Edition in 2004, Inskeep has hosted the program from New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, Cairo, and Beijing; investigated Iraqi police in Baghdad; and received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for "The Price of African Oil," on conflict in Nigeria. He has taken listeners on a 2,428-mile journey along the U.S.-Mexico border, and 2,700 miles across North Africa. He is a repeat visitor to Iran and has covered wars in Syria and Yemen.
Inskeep says Morning Edition works to "slow down the news," making sense of fast-moving events. A prime example came during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when Inskeep and NPR's Michele Norris conducted "The York Project," groundbreaking conversations about race, which received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for excellence.
Inskeep was hired by NPR in 1996. His first full-time assignment was the 1996 presidential primary in New Hampshire. He went on to cover the Pentagon, the Senate, and the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he covered the war in Afghanistan, turmoil in Pakistan, and the war in Iraq. In 2003, he received a National Headliner Award for investigating a military raid gone wrong in Afghanistan. He has twice been part of NPR News teams awarded the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for coverage of Iraq.
On days of bad news, Inskeep is inspired by the Langston Hughes book, Laughing to Keep From Crying. Of hosting Morning Edition during the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, he told Nuvo magazine when "the whole world seemed to be falling apart, it was especially important for me ... to be amused, even if I had to be cynically amused, about the things that were going wrong. Laughter is a sign that you're not defeated."
Inskeep is the author of Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi, a 2011 book on one of the world's great megacities. He is also author of Jacksonland, a history of President Andrew Jackson's long-running conflict with John Ross, a Cherokee chief who resisted the removal of Indians from the eastern United States in the 1830s.
He has been a guest on numerous TV programs including ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports, CNN's Inside Politics and the PBS Newshour. He has written for publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic.
A native of Carmel, Indiana, Inskeep is a graduate of Morehead State University in Kentucky.
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The SS United States, a record-breaking 1950s ocean liner, may soon sail from Philadelphia to the Gulf. NPR explored this ship, a relic of the grand liners that once connected North America with Europe. -
NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to America First Policy Institute spokesman Marc Lotter about President-elect Trump's Cabinet picks and policies. The group has been advising the incoming administration. -
Steve Inskeep speaks with Sen. Chris Murphy about how the Democratic Party rebuilds after its election loss. -
President-elect Trump promised to close the Department of Education. We asked several education policy experts what the impacts of doing so would mean for students and the country. -
Andrew Selee of the Migration Policy Institute tells NPR that President-elect Donald Trump could begin his focus on newer arrivals and other immigrants on shaky legal grounds. -
The most famous battle of the Civil War took place just outside of Gettysburg. Morning Edition stopped by the historic site to hear about the cautionary tale as the election cycle nears its end. -
In a conversation with Morning Edition, Joe Kahn, executive editor of The New York Times, discussed the danger to free press under Trump and critiques of his newsroom from both the left and the right. -
Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, tells Morning Edition that disaster response after Helene is not political and that the agency has the funding it needs. -
Poland's foreign minister Radosław Sikorski talks to Morning Edition about the right-wing Law and Justice Party losing power, democracy, and support for Ukraine. -
Tony Blair's On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century is the political leadership guide he says he would have wanted in 1997, at the start of his 10-year tenure as British prime minister.
