Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi
Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi reports and produces for Planet Money, telling stories that creatively explore and explain the workings of the global economy. He's a sucker for a good supply chain mystery — from toilet paper to foster puppies to specialty pastas. He's drawn to tales of unintended consequences, like the time a well-intentioned chemistry professor unwittingly helped unleash a global market for synthetic drugs, or what happened when the U.S. Patent Office started granting patents on human genes. And he's always on the lookout for economic principles at work in unexpected places, like the tactics comedians use to protect their intellectual property (a.k.a. jokes).
He's reported from Iceland on the dramatic crash of the country's budget airline, from Denmark on the global trade for human sperm, and from Germany on the country's (uncannily familiar) obsession with returning the things they buy online. He also produced Planet Money's 2020 Murrow-award-winning collaboration with the NPR Ed Desk, the show's audiobook rendition of the Great Gatsby, as well as collaborative episodes with Pro Publica, and Gimlet Media's How to Save A Planet.
Horowitz-Ghazi hails from Santa Fe, New Mexico, studied history at Reed College, and got his start in radio at Oregon Public Broadcasting. He was selected as a 2014 AIR New Voices Scholar and a 2019 Arthur F. Burns Fellow. He previously worked with Michel Martin's team at All Things Considered, where he produced breaking news and feature stories, led film coverage, and directed the live broadcast.
At All Things Considered, Horowitz-Ghazi reported on how a national clown scare affected professional clowns, who was behind of a wave of succulent poaching on the California coastline, what happens to a musician's legacy after they die, and why his hometown burns a giant human effigy every year. He also pitched and produced "Brave New Workers," a series of profiles on people adapting to the changing economy, and has interviewed coal miners, rock climbers, coyote hunters, porn stars, cowboys, truck drivers, drone pilots, Carrie Brownstein, Werner Herzog, and George R.R. Martin, among many others. In his free time, he enjoys riding bicycles, playing squash (middlingly), and sleeping out of doors.
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Jeff Runions has spent almost four decades in the trucking industry. Now, he's helping drive the industry's shift toward automation, as a test driver for a self-driving trucking company. -
Ajmal Faqiri came to the U.S. on a Special Immigrant Visa after working as a interpreter and translator for the U.S. military in his home country of Afghanistan. Now, he works the gig economy. -
Sunita Williams was the second female commander of the International Space Station. Now, she says her new job working with private companies to develop space technologies feels like a new frontier. -
Directors Chapman and Maclain Way explore the Rajneeshees — a cult behind the largest U.S. act of bioterrorism — in their new Netflix documentary mini-series, Wild Wild Country. -
Musician Mac DeMarco has garnered the image of an impish pop-rock troubadour, but many of the songs on last year's This Old Dogtackle his conflicted relationship with the father he never knew. -
Liz Stepansky decided to become teacher to follow in the footsteps of her parents. But the profession was not what she had expected based on their experiences a generation earlier. -
When former helicopter pilot Tony Zimlich retired from a 20-year military career, he worried about his civilian job prospects. Then he discovered the burgeoning world of commercial drone work. -
With his 1966 documentary The Endless Summer, surfer-filmmaker Bruce Brown created one of the most iconic expressions of the joy of surfing. Brown died this week at the age of 80.
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Frances Glessner Lee is known to many as the "mother of forensic science" for her work training policemen in crime scene investigation in the 1940s and 50s using uncanny dollhouse crime scenes. -
Director Julie Taymor took an unconventional tack in adapting the animated film for the big stage. Even 20 years on, she finds the musical's social themes evolve and resonate with audiences worldwide.
