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.
-
Striking Hollywood writers reach a tentative deal with studios. If the government shuts down, what impact would that have on the economy? One in four inmate deaths happens in the same federal prison.
-
Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he is making an effort to answer any legitimate questions concerning his administration and its conduct during the war in Ukraine. -
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that additional foreign aid is necessary to beat back Russia's ambitions to expand across Europe.
-
The New York icons whose songs pulled rock inside out (and whose breakup was nearly as legendary) gather for the first time in years to discuss their rereleased concert film, Stop Making Sense.
-
Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that more foreign aid is necessary to beat back Vladimir Putin's ambitions to expand Russia's influence across Europe.
-
People in Birmingham, Ala., are gathering to remember the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church 60 years ago. The bombing, which killed four girls, helped to spur passage of the Civil Rights Act.
-
The UAW launches a historic strike against the Big 3 automakers. Florida's health department touts its own COVID booster recommendations. The death toll soars to 11,300 from flooding in Libya.
-
A look inside the Central African nation of Gabon, after the fall of a political dynasty that ruled the country for over half a century. Gabon is the latest African country taken over by the military.
-
Bipartisan negotiators like Romney are rare, and his departure could lead to a more divisive Senate. He's the only Senate Republican to twice vote to convict ex-president Trump in impeachment trials.
-
Newly disclosed evidence revealed an apparent conflict of interest for Biden adviser Anita Dunn, when she consulted for an Illinois politician facing #MeToo related allegations in 2018.
