It’s common knowledge that Russian intelligence agents use poison as a political weapon, but how much do we know about South Africa’s fraught and frightening history of poisonings and accusations of poisoning? Award-winning author Imraan Coovadia’s new book delves into our country’s tox.
Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi is a host and reporter 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).
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 m