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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The New York icons whose songs pulled rock inside out (and whose breakup was nearly as legendary) gather for the first time in years to discuss their rereleased concert film, Stop Making Sense. -
NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Paul McCartney about his book of photographs from the time the Beatles first visited the United States. -
Rock & Roll Hall of Famer John Mellencamp returns with his first album of original songs in five years, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack. -
As part of NPR's 50th anniversary, we're looking back at other cultural milestones of 1971. That year The Doors released their final album L.A. Woman — and the band's lead singer Jim Morrison died. -
The United States wasn't ready for the pandemic "and we have a lot of work to do to get better prepared for the next one," says Dr. Anne Schuchat, who is retiring after 33 years at the agency. -
Dr. Sumit Ray, critical care chief at a New Delhi hospital, is on the front lines of India's growing COVID-19 crisis. "As a system in different parts of the country, we have collapsed," he says. -
Dr. Scott Gottlieb doesn't expect enough demand for the vaccine much beyond 160 million Americans. But he says there may eventually be enough immunity to curb the spread of the coronavirus. -
A year ago, as the pandemic began, fitness instructor Joe Wicks started a daily exercise class for kids on YouTube. The videos became popular with kids and their parents. Now the series is ending. -
The 168 school desks make up an exhibit called "Pandemic Classroom." Each of the seats represents 1 million children living in countries where schools have been closed for almost a year. -
Virologist Marion Koopmans was part of a WHO team that reconstructed the early coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. She talked with NPR about her team's investigation.
