From its base in Nairobi, Conley traveled across the African continent, covering events and filing stories for NBC News and its affiliated programs such as The Huntley-Brinkley Report.

[4][5] As described in an article by Hal Klopper for the Fall 2006 newsletter of the Carnegie Corporation of New York:[4] The inaugural broadcast included a report on a 26-year-old woman's attempts to deal with heroin addiction; a report from Ames, Iowa, on a novel means of supplementing business at a barbershop (shaving women's legs); a discussion with two NPR reporters and a correspondent from the Christian Science Monitor regarding that day's massive protest in Washington, D.C. against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War; the reading of three antiwar poems; and a conversation between the poet Allen Ginsberg and his father about the legality of drugs.

The show began, though, with a remarkable and dramatic 20-minute sound montage of the demonstration in Washington introduced by All Things Considered's first host, former New York Times staff member and NBC correspondent Robert Conley.In 2016 that first show of All Things Considered, hosted by Conley, was inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress[7] for its "cultural, artistic and historical importance to American society and the nation's audio heritage.

With an emphasis on "interpretation, investigative reporting on public affairs, the world of ideas and the arts," in the words of programming head Bill Siemering, "All Things Considered" aimed to give voice to diverse segments of American society in a relaxed, conversational mode.

The first broadcast, however, featuring recorded excerpts from a huge antiwar protest in the nation's capital that took place the same day, was "raw, visceral, and took listeners to the heart of America's agonies over the war in Vietnam," remembered Susan Stamberg, an NPR staffer at the time, who became a co-host of the show the following year.