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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A new study shows that swear words across languages may have more in common than previously thought. Many of them tend to leave out the same sounds.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with New York University Associate Professor Azadeh Moaveni about the state of Iran's protests and the alleged removal of the morality police.
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Poet Mary Norbert Korte left her life as a nun in the 1960s to pursue dual passions for beat poetry and the preservation of California's redwood forests. She died in November at age 88.
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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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"Carol of the Bells" is a Christmas staple in the U.S., but it was written by a Ukrainian composer and first came to the U.S. 100 years ago — when Ukrainians were fighting for freedom.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks to ESPN host and analyst Luis Miguel Echegaray about the latest round of matches in the World Cup and what to expect from the U.S. team Saturday.
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Bats have an impressive vocal range of up to seven octaves. To make their low-frequency calls, researchers say bats use the same trick as death metal growlers and throat singers.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Rep. Katherine Clark on her election as House Minority Whip.
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History is made as the first all-female referee team officiates the World Cup match between Costa Rica and Germany.
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If you take a peek at the World Cup sidelines, you'll notice there's kind of a fashion show going on. Soccer managers are bringing their best looks to the field.