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Reema Khrais

Host and Reporter

SHORT BIO

Reema Khrais is the host of the Marketplace podcast, “This is Uncomfortable,” a narrative show about life and how money messes with it.

Reema first joined Marketplace in 2016 as a general assignment reporter where she covered everything from immigration and education to retail and employment. In the summer of 2018, she was selected as an ICFJ Bringing the World Home Fellow and traveled to Turkey to report on the economic lives of Syrian refugees for Marketplace. Prior to that, she covered education policy for North Carolina Public Radio as the station’s Fletcher Fellow. Reema got her start in audio as an NPR Kroc Fellow, which included a reporting stint at WNYC. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is fluent in Arabic.

She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where she spends her free time hiking, making ceramics and spoiling her orange cat.

Latest Stories (219)

The creative force behind a viral corporate TikTok account

Jan 17, 2022
Duolingo’s social media coordinator on their big green owl, the “Wendy’s effect” and changing the voice of brands online.
Thanks to its Gen Z social media coordinator and big green owl, the official TikTok account for language learning company Duolingo recently blew up.
Photo Illustration by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Former restauranteur manages challenges with sauce business venture

Dec 24, 2021
Kiki Aranita turned to focus efforts on growing the Poi Dog Sauces brand after she decided to close her Philadelphia restaurant during the pandemic.
After closing her Philadelphia restaurant, Kiki Aranita launched a sauce company called Poi Dog Sauces.
Poi Dog

Being single in the U.S. comes at a cost

Dec 22, 2021
Author Anne Helen Petersen compares being single in the United States to living in a hostile climate like the Arctic.
"Nearly 40% of the population is either single or a single parent, and the ways in which people are falling through these social safety nets” demonstrates the need for change, said author Anne Helen Petersen.
Leon Neal via Getty Images

The return-to-office industry is booming

Dec 22, 2021
A flood of return-to-office consultants are rushing to fill the void of expertise created by pandemic uncertainty.
Companies are spending millions for advice on bringing employees back to offices says Matthew Boyle, a senior reporter for Bloomberg.
Ina Fassenbender/AFP via Getty Images

Did department stores train people to be difficult customers?

Aug 13, 2021
Amanda Mull, a staff writer at The Atlantic, argues that department stores had a hand in building class consciousness.
Customers shop at Macys department store in New York on Black Friday, Nov. 27, 2020.
Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images

COVID closed Philadelphia's Poi Dog, but the sauces and recipes remain

Aug 12, 2021
Kiki Aranita closed her restaurant after the city shut down. A year later, she's still making Hawaiian food and building the brand.
Poi Dog, Kiki Aranita's former Hawaiian restaurant. She continues her career in food and  her efforts to build the Poi Dog brand.
Photo courtesy Kiki Aranita

The dates on food labels may not mean what you think they mean

Aug 11, 2021
Vox writer Alissa Wilkinson explains the history behind food label dates, and how the "expiration date" concept is a costly misunderstanding.
A produce worker stocks shelves at a supermarket in Washington, D.C.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

How the pandemic affected one paramedic's career

Jul 19, 2021
With the pandemic forcing school and daycare closures around the country, children are spending more time at home — and women are bearing the brunt of that.
Women’s labor force participation fell to 56.2% in June, the lowest levels since 1988, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

How one small business owner kept all his employees with revenue down 70%

Jan 18, 2021
Drew Dalzell, president of Diablo Sound in Los Angeles, took on half a million dollars in debt to keep his business afloat and staff working.
Angela Weiss/Getty Images

How Black Americans have been blocked from voting throughout U.S. history

A conversation with Gilda R. Daniels, author of “Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America.”
Various labor unions and progressive organizations protest on Capitol Hill Sept. 16, 2015, calling for the restoration of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court.
PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images