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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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Phil Bryant, the former governor of Mississippi, who signed a bill that bans abortions after 15 weeks.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Eliana Johnson and Washington Post politics reporter Amber Phillips about the overturning of Roe and developments on gun laws.
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PFAS are all around us, so how do we navigate a world filled with harmful chemicals? We speak to an expert who guides us through what PFAS are, why they're a problem, and what can be done about them. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Cecilia Rouse, who chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers, about Biden calling on Congress to suspend the federal gas tax.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, about the latest Jan. 6 hearings.
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In her new film, Thompson portrays a widow who reckons with her own sexual discovery in an experience she calls "irresistibly delicious."
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Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head more than a decade ago, but this week threw out the first pitch at Fenway Park as part of its Gun Violence Awareness Day.
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American democracy is more vulnerable today than it was on January 6 because the "big lie" that Donald Trump won the 2020 election has spread, says Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
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Ten years ago, the Obama administration announced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with DACA recipients Diana Pliego and Esder Chong about the past decade.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot more than a decade ago, about whether efforts for gun control may go differently this time due to recent mass shootings.
