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.
-
Internal documents from TikTok that were reviewed by NPR indicate that company executives knew about the harm the app could cause young people. We talk to a researcher about what that harm looks like.
-
Examining presidential campaign rhetoric. Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin faces tight reelection race. Drone attack by Hezbollah on an Israeli army training base killed four Israeli soldiers.
-
NPR's Steve Inskeep asks Daniel Byman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies about what Israeli retaliation to an Iranian missile attack could look like.
-
Milton battered the state with high winds, storm surge and torrential rains. At least a dozen deaths have been attributed to the storm, and millions of homes and businesses are without power.
-
Former President Donald Trump will visit Aurora, Colorado -- a city he has falsely described as overrun by migrant crime and gangs.
-
Kentucky is one of 14 states to sue TikTok for failing to protect kids on the app. Kentucky Public Radio and NPR have reviewed dozens of pages of the lawsuit that were blacked out from public view.
-
What does Tesla’s robotaxi reveal tell us about the company, and the autonomous ride-hailing industry at large?
-
NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks to Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, about how the Iran-backed militant and political group got its start in the 1980s.
-
Lawyers for NPR and several other media outlets will argue in court Friday that rescinded plea deals being kept secret in the 9/11 case should be made public.
-
Lawsuit documents reveal what TikTok executives know about app’s effect on teens. Cleanup is underway in Florida after Hurricane Milton. SpaceX accused of running afoul of environmental regulations.