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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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.
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The State Department has shuttered the team involved in South China Sea security, getting rid of the top experts on the subject, at a time the administration says security in the region is a priority. NPR talked to several members of the team who were fired, who say there's no one to replace them.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Tim Podlogar, who researches exercise metabolism, about how elite cyclists consume thousands of calories each day to compete in the Tour de France.
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NPR Music's 2025 Tiny Desk Contest got more than 7,000 entries, including some standouts in the folk and country genres.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with mycologist Aishwarya Veerabahu about the rapid spread of golden oyster mushrooms across North America. It's the subject of a new study authored by Veerabahu.
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As Trump supporters continue to demand answers in the Epstein case, today the DOJ requested to question jailed Epstein associate Ghislane Maxwell.
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The man convicted in the 1979 killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz in New York City has had his conviction thrown out. A jury convicted Pedro Hernandez following his confession in the notorious abduction.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Rep. Seth Moulton, Democrat from Massachusetts, about President Trump's recent social media post about Afghan refugees in the United Arab Emirates.