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Guy Raz

Guy Raz is the host, co-creator, and editorial director of three NPR programs, including two of its most popular ones: TED Radio Hour and How I Built This.Both shows are heard by more than 14 million people each month around the world. He is also the creator and co-host of NPR's first-ever podcast for kids, Wow In The World.

TED Radio Hour is a co-production of NPR and TED that takes listeners on a journey through the world of ideas. Each week, the world's greatest thinkers, scientists, artists, and visionaries join Raz for an exploration into the common experiences that make us human. The TED Radio Hour asks questions like "Why do we have the capacity to imagine?" "What animates us?" "What does it mean to live in the Anthropocene?" It is also the fastest-growing NPR radio program in history and the third most-downloaded podcast in America.

How I Built This is a podcast about the greatest innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. Each episode is a narrative journey marked by triumphs, failures, serendipity, and insight — told by the founders of some of the world's best-known companies and brands. In 2016, it was named one of the top ten podcasts of the year by iTunes, and Inc Magazine called it "the best podcast to take on the new year."

Wow in the Worldis a show about science, wonder, discovery and the amazing things happening in our world. It's for kids ages 5-10 and marks NPR's first-ever foray into children's programming. The Guardian called it "a kids podcast with plenty for parents, too!"

In 2017, Raz became the first person in the history of podcasting to have three shows in the top 20 on the Apple Podcast charts.

Previously, Raz was weekend host of NPR News' signature afternoon newsmagazine All Things Considered. During his tenure, he transformed the sound and format of the program, introducing the now-signature "cover story" and creating the popular "Three-Minute Fiction" writing contest.

Raz joined NPR in 1997 as an intern for All Things Considered and has worked virtually every job in the newsroom from temporary production assistant to breaking news anchor. His first job was the assistant to NPR's legendary news analyst Daniel Schorr.

In 2000, at the age of 25, Raz was made NPR's Berlin bureau chief where he covered Eastern Europe and the Balkans. During his six years abroad, Raz covered everything from wars and conflict zones to sports and entertainment. He reported from more than 40 countries including the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Macedonia, and the ongoing conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Raz also served as NPR's bureau chief in London, and between 2004-2006 he left NPR to work in television as CNN's Jerusalem correspondent. During this time, Raz chronicled everything from the rise of Hamas as a political power to the incapacitation of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. In 2006, Raz returned to NPR to serve as defense correspondent where he covered the Pentagon and the US military.

For his reporting from Iraq, Raz was awarded both the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Daniel Schorr Journalism prize. His reporting has contributed to two duPont awards and one Peabody awarded to NPR. He's been a finalist for the Livingston Award four times. He's won the National Headliner Award and an NABJ award, in addition to many others. In 2008, he spent a year as a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard University where he studied classical history.

As a host and correspondent, Raz has interviewed and profiled more than 6,000 people including Christopher Hitchens, Condoleezza Rice, Jimmy Carter, Shimon Peres, General David Petraeus, Al Gore, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Eminem, Taylor Swift, and many, many others.

Raz has anchored live coverage on some of the biggest stories in recent years, including the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Newtown School Shootings, and the 2012 presidential election.

He has also served as a Ferris professor of journalism at Princeton University, a Shapiro fellow at George Washington University, and an adjunct professor of journalism at Georgetown.

Most importantly, Guy is a father. He's performed in DC children's theater as the narrator in "Cat in the Hat." He helped design the local playground in his neighborhood. And Guy is also known as the "Cokie Roberts for the 4-8-year-old crowd" as the news analyst for the Breakfast Blast Newscast on Kids Place Live on SiriusXM radio. You can catch his updates each Friday morning. His work on the Breakfast Blast Newscast was named "Best Children's Radio Program" of 2016 by the New York Festivals World's Best Radio Programs.

Guy is also an avid cyclist who commutes to work on his bike year-round. From early April to late September, you can find him at Nationals Park watching baseball.

  • This past week was a challenging one for the Mitt Romney campaign. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz speaks to Noam Scheiber of The New Republic about whether pro-GOP superPACs could eventually throw more support behind House and Senate candidates in order to hedge against a Romney loss. But Jonathan Collegio, communications director for American Crossroads — one of the largest GOP PACs — says his group is far from that eventuality.
  • South Korean rapper PSY has been a big star in the world of Korean pop music for years. But the video for his latest single, Gangnam Style, launched him to global stardom. Today, he's number one on iTunes and shares a manager with Justin Bieber, but he still wants to record music in his native language.
  • In Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?, Pastor Brian McLaren explores the tension between religions and attempts to imagine a conversation between the most important figures in Western theology.
  • Young boys idolize him. Old men stop him on the bus to tell him they want to "come back" as him. He's actor Jonathan Goldsmith, and he is "The Most Interesting Man in the World" — or at least he plays him on TV.
  • Actor-writer-director Jon Favreau could watch Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets a million times. "As a young boy being able to see an R-rated violent movie with language in it was exciting," he says, "but what I didn't realize as I was younger was that I was watching a master filmmaker."
  • Mitt Romney announced Saturday that his running mate is Paul Ryan, a Republican Congressman from Wisconsin. The two men launched a multi-day, multi-state bus tour Saturday morning. Host Guy Raz talks with NPR's Ari Shapiro, who's traveling with the Romney campaign.
  • Mitt Romney's newly announced running mate, Paul Ryan, has long subscribed to the objectivist philosophies of novelist Ayn Rand. Host Guy Raz speaks with James Fallows of The Atlantic about how that approach to public policy will play with voters.
  • Democrats have announced that San Antonio mayor Julian Castro will be the keynote speaker at that party's convention. In the past, that role has served as a platform for bigger things. Political scientist Costas Panagopoulos, who studies party conventions, was at that 2004 Democratic convention when the then-unknown Barack Obama dazzled the delegates. He talks to host Guy Raz about what makes a great keynote speaker.
  • Senior Romney adviser and former Republican Minnesota congressman Vin Weber talks to host Guy Raz about the strategy behind the selection of Paul Ryan, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's choice for vice president.
  • Rep. Paul Ryan brings sizzle to the GOP ticket that conservatives love. But he also adds some risk because the heart of Ryan's plan calls for dramatic changes to the nation's largest government health programs, Medicare and Medicaid. NPR's Julie Rovner talks to host Guy Raz about what those changes could mean for the campaign and the country, should they win.