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.
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When the Taliban took power nearly a year ago, many Afghan women found their rights had changed — as well as their status among male co-workers. How work has changed for women in Afghanistan.
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Once a mortal threat, the Taliban have let Afghanistan's leading news channel stand. But every day is a struggle for the journalists who still work there. -
When the Taliban reclaimed Kabul last August, the U.S.-backed government collapsed and hundreds of thousands of Afghans fled the country. Former president Hamid Karzai was not one of them.
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On the day a U.S. drone strike killed the leader of al-Qaida in Afghanistan, NPR sat down for an interview with the man in charge of the country's defense.
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Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed by a drone strike in Afghanistan carried out by the U.S. on July 30, according to President Biden. The Taliban has not confirmed that al-Zawahiri was killed.
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The U.S. says it killed the leader of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was considered a planner of 9/11. President Biden told the nation this evening that the U.S. operation unfolded over some months.
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Sri Lanka has been struggling to buy essential imports such as fuel and medicine, and feed its population. The new president has numerous challenges ahead of him.
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Sri Lanka's Parliament chooses a new president. New Mexico firefighters have nearly contained a historic wildfire. And, Netflix says it lost nearly 1 million subscribers between April and June.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin travels to Iran. Northern Europe is bracing for unusually high temperatures this week. And for the first time since 2015, the ATF has a permanent director.
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The report details the botched police response to the elementary school shooting in May. The analysis found nearly 400 officers converged on the scene but no one led a unified response.
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A Texas House report issues blame for failures in Uvalde. Steve Bannon goes on trial Monday for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 panel. Ukraine's president fires two top officials.
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President Zelensky on Sunday abruptly fired two top officials — the spy chief and the top prosecutor — after an investigation found dozens of employees in those departments collaborated with Russia.
