Guy Raz

Guy Raz (born November 9, 1975) is an American journalist and podcaster. He is the former host of National Public Radio's Weekend All Things Considered and the TED Radio Hour.

Education
Raz graduated from Brandeis University in 1996. He received his master's degree in history from Cambridge University in the UK. In 2008, Raz spent a year as a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard University where he studied classical history.

Career
In 1997, at the age of 22, Raz joined NPR as an intern for NPR's afternoon news program All Things Considered.

In 1998, he served as personal research assistant to former "Murrow Boy" NPR Senior News analyst Daniel Schorr.

He then served as a general assignment reporter, covering the 2000 presidential primaries and the story behind the famous Doors song "Light My Fire" where he interviewed all surviving members of the band.

Raz also wrote for other publications during this time, mainly for the Washington City Paper, during the tenure of editor David Carr as well as The Washington Post, among others.

In 1999, he was awarded a Burns Fellowship to Germany to embark on a 2-month reporting assignment. His reporting would win the Burns Award for distinguished writing. In the summer of 2000, Raz reported from Germany as a RIAS Berlin fellow. His work on German "Leitkultur" was awarded the RIAS Berlin Award.

In mid-2000, Raz was appointed NPR's Berlin bureau chief. He covered Eastern Europe and the Balkans including the conflicts in Kosovo, Macedonia and Afghanistan. In 2002, he became NPR's London bureau chief. While in London, Raz covered stories across Europe and the Middle East including the Iraq War where he spent more than 6 months in 2003 and 2004.

During his time at CNN, Raz covered the death of Yasser Arafat, the rise of Hamas, Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, and the incapacitation of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Following the 2 years working for CNN, Raz returned to NPR, working as the defense correspondent, covering the Pentagon and the US military.[3]

During his time at the Pentagon, Raz was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Daniel Schorr Prize for his 3-part series on military-medical evacuations from Iraq.

In 2009, after a sabbatical year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, Raz became the weekend host of All Things Considered. He is widely credited with transforming Weekend All Things Considered when he took over as host in 2009. He created a weekly "cover story" and the popular segment "Three Minute Fiction." He created a weekly podcast of this show which was the first time an NPR newsmagazine became a podcast.[3] Raz hosted Weekend All Things Considered from 2009 to 2012. In December 2012, he stepped down from that position in order to expand the TED Radio Hour into a new weekly program to air on NPR beginning in March 2013.[5][6]

It is one of the most-downloaded podcasts in the United States. Raz announced he was stepping down from hosting the podcast at the end of 2019.

2016–present: How I Built This
In September 2016, Raz started hosting a new podcast on NPR, called How I Built This about entrepreneurship. In 2017, it became one of the 20 most-downloaded podcasts in the United States. The first episode featured the founder of Spanx, Sara Blakely.

In May 2017, Raz created NPR's first-ever children's program. The podcast, Wow in the World, was co-created with award-winning children's host Mindy Thomas. Raz and Thomas also created a children's production company, Tinkercast, which produces Wow in the World.

In 2019, Raz became the host of the Luminary Podcast "Wisdom from the Top." According to Luminary Podcasts "From Guy Raz comes a chance to slide your chair into boardrooms, C-suites, and the quarters of top brass. Wisdom From the Top brings listeners into conversations with the leaders helming today’s most powerful corporations and organizations, offering direct access to the secrets, mistakes, regrets, and wins that define modern leadership."

In 2022, Raz launched The Great Creators, a podcast produced by Built-It Productions and distributed by Amazon Music/Wondery. The show features conversations about creativity with celebrated actors, musicians, comedians and other performers.

Awards and achievements
In 2016, he became the first podcast creator to simultaneously have three shows in the Apple Podcast chart's Top 20 shows.

At age 25, he became the youngest overseas-based bureau chief for NPR, first in Berlin, then London and the Pentagon. He also served as CNN's correspondent in Jerusalem from 2004–2006.

Personal life
Raz was born in West Covina, California and lived in Washington D.C., with his wife, Hannah Raz, who is an attorney, and their two children. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area. He is a Jewish-American.