Global multimedia journalist and producer

Hello! I am a journalist. I write, report, make audio stories and produce audio.

I now work as a reporter at KUNM, a radio station in beautiful northern New Mexico.

Over the past two years I've been covering the biggest wildfire the state has ever had and its aftermath for KUNM and for national NPR. The station won a regional Murrow Award for my continuing coverage including pieces about how rural areas affected by the fire are at risk of losing a way of life that has sustained them for centuries and which has deep Hispanic and Native roots. This one is about the race to prevent flooding on burn scars - even while the fire is still burning. This one is about the US Forest Service using even more prescribed fire - even though the fires here began as prescribed fires that got out of hand.

In 2023, I covered a huge Medicaid scam in Arizona which lured hundreds or thousands of Native people into rehab programs which were often unsafe and exploitative. I also covered tribal groups who found themselves at odds over whether to prioritize economic development by supporting fossil fuel extraction over preservation of historic Native lands. And I looked into what it means that NM is the only state not to pay its lawmakers. 

I used to be an international correspondent and worked for a decade in the Middle East, including as a correspondent for NPR. I covered much of the war against ISIS and the euphoria and fallout of the Arab Spring.

Here’s a piece where I met a bunch of the Iraqi security forces who ran away from Mosul and let ISIS take it, and ask them why they did that.  This one’s about what it’s like being a pop star in Iraq. This is about some hero monks who rescued manuscripts from ISIS.  This about the bombardment of Gaza and how it hit some historic mosques, which were also the heart of communities.

After that, I did a mix of reporting and podcast production, in news and in features. I’m still interested in the Middle East but also worked in Latin America and on Hispanic issues in the US.

I was a senior producer at The Economist’s flagship daily podcast, The Intelligence. I worked on a podcast series about artificial intelligence for the Financial Times and I made several things for the Guardian’s Today in Focus like this very funny episode with Marina Hyde. I went to a seaside resort in Albania and interviewed new Afghan refugees there for this FT project.  I made a podcast episode for Kerning Cultures about the Islamic roots of Latin American design.

I made a piece from Ciudad Juárez, for the BBC, about how asylum-seekers sent from the US to Mexico are getting jobs and starting businesses. And another for NPR about how Cali, Colombia is the capital of salsa - if you don’t dance, you don’t date - but the music isn’t from there. It came from New York and its popularity owes a lot to music-loving drug bosses. And from New Mexico, I made a piece for The Economist tracing the tale of Spanish conquistadores, as their statues came tumbling down.

In Guatemala,  I participated in an IWMF fellowship and made a story about how migration and deportation transformed one tiny village, for NPR. Also for NPR, I covered the abortion referendum in Ireland.

I’ve worked in print for The Economist, the Washington Post, The National (UAE) and many others. I was a Stern Fellow in 2011 and shortlisted for a Livingston Award in 2017 for my work on Syria.

And here's some work from earlier in my career:

I went to Iraq for the Washington Post in 2012 and wrote about how angry and alienated the Sunnis were.

And I chewed qat in Yemen and told the Economist how the industry works.

I went to Algeria – I love Algeria – for The National, and wrote about the Kasbah where the Battle of Algiers was fought, and then later about an Algerian orchestra. And when I was in Timbuktu after it was taken back from al Qaeda by French and Malian forces, I wrote about how the people resisted the jihadis.

Thanks Aya Salih for the image, in Babylon, Iraq.