After a quarter-century inside NPR’s newsroom, Mary Louise Kelly is stepping down as host of All Things Considered. Kelly made the announcement on social media, but will continue to contribute stories after a brief break. She is also leaving the podcast Sources & Methods.
Kelly started at NPR in 2001 as a senior supervising editor for All Things Considered and later reported as the network’s national security correspondent. Sources & Methods, a weekly national security podcast, launched in 2025.
Sacha Pfeiffer, a correspondent on NPR’s investigations team, will become acting host of All Things Considered. In August 2025, NPR named Scott Detrow the full-time weekday host of All Things Considered as Ari Shapiro departed.
Kelly wrote, “What a joy to have gotten to do so much of what I hoped to do…NPR has dispatched me all over the world, to interview presidents and prime ministers, to cover protests and peace deals, elections and wars. The stories that stick with me now are of ordinary people living through extraordinary events. Of leaning across a beat-up kitchen table, listening as strangers pour tea and pour out their stories, asking us please, to bear witness and to tell the world. We have. We will.”
