Michele Skalicky talked with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly, journalist and host of ATC, on Wednesday, September 10, 2025.
Mary Louise, you recently launched the new podcast Sources and Methods. Anyone can create a podcast, but this one focuses on national security issues and is hosted by you — a former national security correspondent for NPR news, as well as a panel of NPR's top correspondents. Please explain to those who don't know your background and even those who do, why you're uniquely qualified to host this.
Kelly: Oh, well, that's — I don't know about uniquely qualified, but I will say I'm deeply, deeply interested and excited about it. I have always been a foreign policy national security junkie. I launched my career in broadcast reporting for the BBC out of London and traveling all over and doing breaking news out of Belfast and out of all over Europe for them. And then when I moved to NPR, launched The Intelligence Beat for us, I think it was 2003, 2004. So it's, you know, 20 plus years ago now. And the idea was we didn't have somebody full time covering national security. We were doing it ad hoc out of the Pentagon and people covering Capitol Hill, and people covering the White House and people covering the State Department. And the idea was, you know, these are agencies that do not give you a hard pass. You can't go wander around the way you can on Capitol Hill if you cover Congress, do not have a directory where you can look up people's names and titles, and there's their phone extension. Almost never put out press releases or do press briefings. So you're really starting at zero to figure out what are they doing? And I didn't have any sources when I started and worked really hard to get some. And then have those sources lead to others and start figuring out, finding my footing on the national security beat.
I have loved doing that. I still love doing it. I still host All Things Considered every day, which is obviously considering all the things, but I tend to hog and scoop up for myself a lot of the the international and national security interviews. So that has been my path to this, and I've continued to take All Things Considered out into the world and host from Iran and North Korea and Ukraine and Russia and Israel and the West Bank, all over. So the idea was that national security matters to us, that it can feel very abstract and far away, and wars happening halfway around the world — what does that matter to me? Is there a way to lean into that and let our reporters take you out on their beats and share with you how they get the story? What questions are on their mind? How many hoops they have to jump through just to get the interview that you hear sounding polished and edited and lovely on Morning Edition or All Things Considered but that was maybe not so lovely to try to get there and sort it all out. So the idea is we're curious about a lot of things. We're just going to kick it around every Thursday and let people listen in.
So kind of the story behind the story, it sounds like, but you're going to be picking some current national security issues. How do you decide what what issues are the the ones that you should be focusing on that week?
Kelly: So it's really, you know, every — like I can't tell you exactly what is going to be on the program on Thursday of this week, because we're still figuring that out because there's so much news breaking every day. There will be some weeks where I think it sorts itself out. For example, next week, I obviously can't predict what will be going on in every pocket of the world, but I can tell you that President Trump is going to be overseas. He will be in London for his second state visit, which is a newsy visit before it even starts, because there has never been an American president invited for a second official state visit to the UK. This is unprecedented, and there's a lot for them to talk about, so we're going to be there. I will be anchoring the podcast from there next week, hopefully with our London correspondent, one of our White House correspondents who will be in the pool and on the plane with President Trump. So we'll be focusing on that. We'll see what else the news gods deliver up in the meantime. There are going to be other weeks where there's so much going on, frankly, that it's trying to figure out, here are three, four stories. Maybe we'll touch a little bit on all of them. Maybe if we have a reporter who's on the ground, you know, in a particular place where something is happening, let's prioritize that one. And let's (have), for example, you know, our Moscow correspondent, weigh in on how things look from his perch in Moscow and compare that to how do things look from one of our national security reporter here in Washington's perches in a week that there's major Ukraine diplomacy or war developments going on. So that's the way we're thinking about it, is it's a shifting target, but it's not going to be breaking news. It's going to be you getting to listen in on our team kicking around 'here's how we get the story. Here's the reporting we're doing. Here's some of the things that are sparking our curiosity this week.'
And you know, I think that's so important to kind of know the process. I hear people say it's difficult to know what news sources they can trust these days. Why is NPR a trustworthy source for news about national security and other issues?
Kelly: I think it goes back to the centrality of the reporting. This is not former officials. This is not armchair analysts sitting around telling you what they think about something, their opinions. This is our reporter saying, 'this is what I saw today. I am in this place. This is what it looked like. This is what I heard. This is what the person who I bought my coffee from this morning told me. This is, you know, what I heard at the hospital on the front lines. This is what I saw firsthand.' I think that matters, you know, because it is true that there's so much distrust of our media and so much, you know, debate over a common set of facts. So let's present the facts, let people listen and make up their own minds what they want to think about it.
Which is what I've always loved about NPR. America's position in the world appears to be changing. I mean, for example, the leaders of China, India and Russia came together at a recent summit and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to be pretty chummy with Vladimir Putin. Why is this significant, and why should U.S. citizens be concerned and and be informed about national security, especially now?
Kelly: Yeah, well, you're talking about this big powwow of — it was a couple of dozen global leaders last week in Beijing, hosted by President Xi of China. You're right. Modi was there, also the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. It was the first time we have seen Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin and President Xi of China side by side. The U.S. wasn't there. So we tackled that on the podcast last week. We had Tom Bowman, our Pentagon correspondent, who' described he's seen a lot of military parades in his day. He talked about what he was detecting at this one. And then we had our longtime Beijing correspondent, Anthony Kuhn, who is now based in Seoul, weighing in on how does this look from Asia? How does this look from China's perspective? What was the messaging there? What is the political military calculus that President Xi was making in convening this. U.S. isn't there. What kind of alliances are developing among America's rivals and adversaries? And they were, because they're talking about — Tom Bowman was saying, look, I called a couple of longtime sources on Capitol Hill, one in the House, one in the Senate. He was sharing that — Anthony Kuhn was sharing how that squares or doesn't with reporting that he's doing in Asia. And so my hope is that what we'll be doing is sharing here are here are some facts. Here's the questions that are on our mind. Here's our reporting building on my colleagues reporting to help you make sense of this thing that is far away, can feel very separate from our daily lives here in America, but which is very much impacting America's national security and our feeling safe here in the United States today and in the years to come.
National security, obviously, is a heavy topic. Are there lighthearted moments in Sources & Methods?
Kelly: Oh, I hope so. We do a fun — I said on air last week, it's my favorite segment of the show so far called OSNIT, Open Source Intelligence, meaning this is information that's publicly available. It's out there. Anyone can see it, but you might not if you weren't looking for it. Kind of a little bit of, you know, national security, water cooler, chit chat. And we've had some great, very funny moments. For example, just to bring it home, Anthony on last week's podcast was describing that big military parade in Beijing and saying, one thing you might not have noticed is that when President Xi rolls down the street, there are two cars. And I said, right, you know, because it's a decoy to protect him so you don't know what he's in. He was like, well, maybe. But actually it's because there it's a Chinese made vehicle. They're not entirely confident that it's not going to break down. So they always send a backup. And he said, when you watch when you watch President Xi moving around going forward, watch for the second car. It is always there. And he knew that because he interviewed one of the engineers of this vehicle many years ago. That's the kind of — it's a little detail. It doesn't, it's not great diplomatic stakes, but it helps humanize and bring home like, I have never been in a military parade in China, but I have definitely worried that my car might not make it and that I should probably rotate the tires.
It's a lot of institutional knowledge there too, that really comes into play and makes for great reporting and great storytelling. Thank you, Mary Louise, so much for talking to me. I really appreciate it.
Kelly: Michele, the pleasure was mine. Thanks for having me.
