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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An associate professor at the prestigious Wharton School is not only allowing his students to use ChatGPT, they are required to. -
A new book draws from a broad range of research to explain the power of apologies, why we don't always get good ones, and the best way to tell someone you're sorry.
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Jealousy. Power struggles. Political infighting. This week's shake-up of Putin's top commanders in charge of Russia's invasion in Ukraine have it all, according to some security experts.
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Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba details the so-called ceasefire, the options he believes Vladimir Putin has left, and what counts as a victory for Ukraine from here on.
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As a bomb cyclone hits California this week and dumps massive amounts of water on the state, some people are asking: why can't we save the water for times when we desperately need it?
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with former National Intelligence Council officer for Iran Heather Williams about the psychological consequences intelligence officers experience after traumatic events.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with journalist Emily Sohn about her National Geographic article on the connection between COVID infections and sleep disturbances.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Kaiser Health News Correspondent Lauren Weber about her investigation into the thousands of public health workers in the U.S. who lost their jobs recently.
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The banjo playing, acting and writer extraordinaire decided to tell his story in a new way: collaborating on his illustrated memoir, Number One is Walking with New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with economist Emily Oster about her Atlantic article, "Let's Declare a Pandemic Amnesty" and her call for grace.
