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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 (218)

Mobile merger greenlight more likely now

Sep 21, 2017
Sprint and T-Mobile have tried to merge before, but federal regulators nixed the plan. The business climate under Trump may smooth the way for a deal. Click the audio player above to hear the full story.

New phones often mean new accessories

Sep 15, 2017
Retailers love it when new smart phones come out. People buy billions of dollars worth of cases, cables, and more. Click the audio player above to hear the full story.

Irma won’t dampen Florida's tourism industry long term

Sep 12, 2017
Florida’s tourism business is worth more than $100 billion, and Hurricane Irma has put a dent in it. Even as some major theme parks re-open and airlines resume flights this week, some destinations face long roads to recovery, and workers will suffer from lost wages and tips. Click the audio player above to hear the […]

How Latinos are transforming the economy of a small rural town

Sep 8, 2017
Immigrants drawn by jobs at the local meat-packing plant are making their mark in business and politics.
Norma Corral, an immigrant from Mexico, worked at Cargill's beef processing plant in Schuyler, Nebraska for a decade before opening up her business, Paleteria Oasis, in downtown.
Daisy Palacios/Marketplace

In Nebraska, immigrants work hard-to-fill jobs in meatpacking industry

Sep 8, 2017
The nation's food supply chain could collapse without immigrant labor.
Chuck Folken is the owner of Folken Feed Yards, a livestock feed farm in Leigh, Nebraska.
Daisy Palacios/Marketplace

Federal flood insurance program nears its limit in time and money

Aug 29, 2017
Harvey’s damage taxes an already debt-ridden program.
A person waits to be rescued from his flooded home yesterday after Houston was inundated with rain from Hurricane Harvey.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Harvey adds to the mounting debt of federal disaster aid

Aug 29, 2017
As the devastation continues to mount in Texas, so does the heavy debt owed by the National Flood Insurance Program. The program, which is managed by FEMA, already borrowed nearly $25 billion, most of it to cover claims from Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy. The program was supposed to effectively manage the cost of flood […]

St. Louis’ minimum wage is dropping today

Aug 28, 2017
Starting today, more than 30,000 workers in St. Louis could see their paychecks shrink. The city’s minimum wage is dropping from $10 an hour to $7.70. That’s because of a new state law that says cities can’t set a higher minimum wage than the state. Click the audio player above to hear the full story.

The NFL looks to China for a few hundred million fans

Aug 24, 2017
The NFL this week said it was partnering with Chinese tech giant Tencent — which attracts more than a billion users to its platforms, including social network WeChat — to build its base of football fans in China as U.S. audiences decline.  Click the audio player above to hear the full story.

What happens to your house when you get deported?

Aug 10, 2017
Most undocumented immigrants who are deported are Latino men with jobs. That has a ripple effect on housing.
 Immigrant services staffer Lorely Peche (C), speaks with immigrant parents fearing deportation on March 25, 2017 in Stamford, Connecticut. 
John Moore/Getty Images