Neal Conan

Award winning journalist Neal Conan hosts Talk of the Nation, the national news-talk call-in show from NPR News. Conan brings decades of news and radio experience to the program, which reaches 3.4 million listeners per week on more than 330 NPR member stations. The program features the popular Political Junkie segment on Wednesdays, with the irrepressible Ken Rudin.

A familiar voice, Conan joined NPR in 1977, and worked as a reporter based in New York, Washington and London. He served as NPR's Bureau Chief in both New York and London and anchored live coverage of many live events, including national political conventions, confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees and a presidential impeachment. For five years, he hosted Weekly Edition: The Best of NPR News. Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Conan played a major role as an anchor of NPR's continuous live coverage, a role he reprised during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2004, he hosted the first radio-only presidential candidates' debate since 1948.

On the other side of the microphone, Conan has also served as editor, producer, and executive producer of NPR's flagship evening newsmagazine, All Things Considered and, at various times, acted as NPR's foreign editor, managing editor, and news director.

Conan's awards include a Major Armstrong award for his coverage of the Iran-Iraq War, a prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award as part of NPR's coverage of the Gulf War, another duPont and a George Foster Peabody Award for his part in NPR's Coverage of Sept. 11 and yet another duPont for NPR's coverage of the war in Iraq. During his time at All Things Considered, the program won numerous awards, including the Washington Journalism Review's Best in the Business award.

During the 2000 baseball season, Conan took a leave of absence from NPR News to work as the play-by-play announcer for the Aberdeen Arsenal of the independent Atlantic League. He filed a series of commentaries about life on the fringe of professional sports for Morning Edition and later wrote a book about his experiences, Play By Play: Baseball, Radio and Life in the Last Chance League.

Conan tours nationally with Ensemble Galilei as the narrator and host of A Universe of Dreams, which features images from the Hubble Space Telescope, and First Person: Seeing America, which features selected images from the photography collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Conan was born in Beirut, Lebanon.