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 speaks with Barbara McQuade, professor at University of Michigan Law School and a former U.S. attorney, about the unsealing of former President Donald Trump's search warrant.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Debra Tice. Her son Austin Tice, an American freelance journalist, was detained in Syria and disappeared a decade ago on Sunday.
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Lt. Col. Chris Richardella was one of the officers leading the U.S. Marine Corps at the Kabul airport when the Taliban took over. In the second of a two-part conversation, he recounts what followed.
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Former President Trump was supposed to testify under oath, facing questions from New York's attorney general. That and the Mar-a-Lago search barely scratch the surface of the legal headaches he faces.
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Lt. Col. Chris Richardella was one of the officers leading the U.S. Marine Corps at the airport when the Taliban took Kabul in 2021. In the first of a two-part conversation, he recounts that day.
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Recently retired General Frank McKenzie reflects on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, who bears responsibility for the way it unfolded, and how the U.S. "lost track" of why it was in the country. -
In 2001, author and journalist Ahmed Rashid wrote the definitive account of the Taliban and its origins. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly now speaks with Rashid, a year after the Taliban re-took Afghanistan.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with retired Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of CENTCOM, about the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan, to the Taliban one year later.
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Jake Sullivan, the president's national security adviser, discusses the war in Ukraine, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan and the U.S. drone strike that took out al-Qaida's leader.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with writer and audiobook narrator Julia Whelan about what it was like bringing her own profession to the pages of her new novel Thank You For Listening.
