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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Before the Soviet period, "Russian food had color," says Vladimir Mukhin of Moscow's world-famous White Rabbit restaurant. He aims to honor those flavors, as well as locally source his ingredients. -
When Russians head to the polls to vote for president on Sunday, thousands of election observers will be watching for fraud. The head of an election watchdog group in Moscow and a woman who blew the whistle on election fraud in 2011 talk about what it means to watch the election.
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President Trump has nominated Gina Haspel, a 33-year veteran of the CIA, to lead the agency. Before she can begin that role, she must first be approved by the Senate.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Steve Coll, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, about his new book, Directorate S: The C.I.A and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016. The book picks up the narrative of the CIA from where Coll's previous book Ghost Wars left off.
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The famous fossil calls the Chicago Field Museum home and is moving from the main exhibit hall to a private suite on the second floor. -
Rachael Denhollander was the first woman to file a criminal complaint against former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. She will be the last survivor to speak at his sentencing hearing in Michigan.
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Winter — and the ongoing conflict — makes life even more miserable for the millions who've fled. One sign of hope: Interest from the public, says one aid official, is "remarkable." -
Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas speaks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about the deadly mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
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Barry Blitt's new book features some of the cartoonist's most memorable and merciless work, including his 2008 drawing of Barack and Michelle Obama fist-bumping in the Oval Office. -
Ursula Wilder is a CIA psychologist who counsels spies heading to or returning home from hostile environments. But how do you provide mental health services to patients who are professionally trained in the art of deception?
