You probably know Mary Louise Kelly’s voice as the co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered. But you may not know that the veteran journalist has faced her fair share of challenges – from discovering she had severe hearing loss at 40 to making an agonizing choice between work and motherhood while reporting from a Black Hawk helicopter over Baghdad.

In this episode, recorded live at the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival, Sophie dives deep with the former national security correspondent, whose tales from the front lines are almost as exciting as her tales of falling madly in love in her fifties. Here are her songs:

Debbie Gibson - Only in My Dreams
James Baskett - Zip a Dee Doo Dah
Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion
Oasis - Champagne Supernova
Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten
Ylvis - The Fox What Does The Fox Say
Bellamy Brothers - Let Your Love Flow
Tracy Chapman - Give Me One Reason

Mary Louise Kelly: NPR host, war reporter, mother … spy novelist?