
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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Congress returns to Capitol Hill after August recess, Brazil's ex-president faces coup trial, the latest on the devastating earthquake in eastern Afghanistan.
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NPR asks Katherine Carey, deputy head of the United Nation's Office of Humanitarian Affairs in Afghanistan, about relief efforts following the massive earthquake in eastern Afghanistan.
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NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., about the looming government shutdown and President Trump's use of pocket rescission.
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Former heads of the Centers for Disease Control say they're alarmed at the Trump administration's public health leadership. NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Richard Besser, former acting CDC director.
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The Russia and Ukraine peace process has stalled and there is no deal in sight. But European leaders are nonetheless working to come up with ways to help secure Ukraine if and when a deal is made.
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European leaders work to find ways to secure Ukraine if peace deal struck, China's Xi hosts Putin and Modi at high-profile summit, how workers are doing in the second Trump administration.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping is hosting a high-profile summit with leaders from Russia, North Korea and India gathering among others in a challenge to U.S. influence.
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NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with Kelefa Sanneh, a music critic writing for The New Yorker, about his essay "How Music Criticism Lost Its Edge."
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President Trump campaigned on a promise to give American workers a renaissance. On this Labor Day, NPR checks in on how that promise is going.
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Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook will fight President Trump to stay in her position, DNC chair says he's tired of Democrats bringing "pencil to a knife fight", Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are engaged.