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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North Carolina has a tradition of divided government, and the competition between the two parties over things like DEI, gun laws, and transgender care heated up this week.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Kit Miyamoto, an engineer specializing in disaster recovery, about U.S. readiness following the major earthquake off the Pacific coast of Russia.
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The suspect in the recent New York City shooting had a note in his pocket, which claimed he has chronic traumatic encephalopathy. But that neurological condition can only be diagnosed with an autopsy.
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In an effort to change the conversation following its CEO getting caught at a Coldplay concert with the head of HR, Astronomer hired actress Gwyneth Paltrow to make an ad. Was it a successful PR move?
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The EU and the U.S. finally have a preliminary trade agreement. What do Europeans think of it? NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with EU ambassador to the United States Jovita Neliupšiene.
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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been making big changes to federal vaccine policies. Many medical experts are concerned the administration will further limit vaccine access.
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NPR Music's 2025 Tiny Desk Contest yielded thousands of entries, including some standouts in the pop and rock categories.
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President Trump took time to tour the headquarters of the Federal Reserve on Thursday -- part of a pressure campaign on its chair Jerome Powell.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Travis View, co-host of the QAA podcast, about how information about Jeffrey Epstein became the issue to drive a wedge in the MAGA base.
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The Short Wave team talks about spider origins, why the odds of having a girl or a boy aren't 50-50, and what the Orion constellation reveals about the life cycles of stars.