OUR LOONEY PLANET

Born: California
Family: My father hailed from Minnesota, my mother from New England. Alone among their siblings, they ended up moving as far away from their hometowns as they possibly could and still remain on the continent. I’m essentially 100% German from my father’s side, and thoroughly entangled European mutt on my mother’s side.

My road to Our Looney Planet

For decades now, I’ve had parallel threads of work as a documentary film editor, radio broadcaster, theatrical sound designer, and “experimental” (read: unlistenable) musician. I was the main/series editor on the Emmy-winning series Have You Heard From Johannesburg, and the most recent films I’ve cut include Democracy Noir and the short film Post Atlantic. I am the resident sound designer for the Bay Area new play theatre company Central Works, having designed for nearly 80 world premiere plays to date, as well as dozens of other productions up and down Northern California. I’ve been broadcasting on Berkeley’s KALX radio 90.7fm for three decades and counting, both as a dj and as a producer/host for the interview programs Artsinreview, Film Close-Ups, and Women Hold Up Half The Sky. In amongst all of that, I perform and record under the umbrella moniker of Thomas Carnacki (frequently in concert with other like-minded sonic eccentrics), with the most recent of several releases being the sibling albums of Cadavre Iaolé and Rencontre Fortuite. Carnacki music has appeared in HBO films, internationally-touring dance pieces, theatre pieces, and the occasional uneasy dream. I spend a not-insignificant amount of time being trapped under a cat (though still not enough for my liking.)

Having worked near Justine for a number of years, it was probably inevitable that we’d finally land on a project together, and I’m dead chuffed (as Ian probably wouldn’t say) that this is that project. I have traveled as far South as Cape Town, as far north as Östersund, and from Bangkok to Helsinki, with innumerable stops in between.

Born: Sierra Nevada foothills, California, USA
Family: My great-grandparents immigrated to San Francisco from Sicily at the turn of the 20th century and the family has stayed in California ever since.

My road to Our Looney Planet

After college, I fell into documentary film post-production—and never found a reason to leave. For more than 20 years, I’ve worn a lot of post-production hats: associate producer, assistant editor, archival researcher, webmaster, and general “sure, I can do that” problem-solver. Based mostly in Berkeley, I have been embedded in the local documentary community for years, so when the opportunity to join the Our Looney Planet team came along, I didn’t hesitate.

Born: Bonn, Germany
Family: All German.

My road to Our Looney Planet

I always knew that life would lead me out of my sleepy home town, but the travel bug didn’t bite until I went on an exchange year to the U.S. at the age of 16 and met a bunch of exchange students from South America. What fun, what exuberance! I couldn’t wait to join in.

My gap year saw me arriving in Buenos Aires with a hardshell suitcase, a hastily arranged work experience at the news agency EFE, and a post it note with the phone number of a friend of a friend. My patchy Spanish proved a problem with EFE, but I swiftly picked up a job teaching English as a foreign language.

It was my first experience of falling on my feet in foreign lands. Curious to travel, but scared to do so on my own, I ventured on my first overland South America trip with my intrepid boyfriend who introduced me to the road less travelled. It inspired me to study Anthropology in London, which in turn helped me get my first job in tv, producing mainly historic documentaries (including a fair number of WW2 productions). After many years of taking jobs mainly because they allowed me to see the world, I finally landed a producing gig with Globe Trekker that took me to places as varied as the South of France, Syria, Nigeria and Papua New Guinea. I’ve travelled lots before and after, and have worked on a great many productions for the BBC, Channel 4, the Discovery Channel, etc., but working with the GlobeTrekker team has always ranked top of the list; there are few who know to share the wonder of the world in quite the same way, and I couldn’t be happier to be part of the team once again.

Born: Bogotá, Colombia
Family: My parents were both born in Bogotá, Colombia. My dad’s family is from Bogotá and my mom’s family is from Medellín.

My road to Our Looney Planet

I am a bilingual journalist and documentary filmmaker. My work spans from Colombia to the United States. I’ve covered rural communities, survivors of armed conflict, and the Latinx community in the USA.

Prior to getting my master’s degree in journalism from the UC Berkeley, I studied political science and international relations. As a journalist in Colombia, I spent many years interviewing survivors and the families of victims who endured the 60-year armed conflict between the FARC and the government. Currently I am a 2025 fellow at Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program: My investigative work uses data to examine corporate environmental practices, climate justice, and police misconduct.

While reporting local stories, from the northern island of San Andrés to the southern region of the Colombian Amazon, I discovered that what I love most about my work is connecting with people from diverse backgrounds, traditions, and beliefs.

It’s this curiosity, a genuine desire to understand local communities, and listen to the conversations that arise in them, that led me to Our Looney Planet.

Learn more at The UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

Family: My parents.  Well.  My parents and grandparents on both sides were US born.  You'd have to go back to my great grandparents -  Father’s side from Germany and Ireland.  Mother's side - English and Scottish.  Some of them actually travelled across the USA to Oregon in a covered wagon and they kept a journal to prove it!

My road to Our Looney Planet

From the age of about 8 I kind knew there was more to life than the suburbs of Washington D.C., but it was on a year of college study abroad in Florence, Italy, that my passion for travel and art was irrepressibly ignited. After graduation, I moved to the UK to attend the London International Film School, and made my first drama short, Highway Hotel, inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper. Yes, it was kind of pretentious, but it allowed me to pursue a TV career in the UK, where I managed to get in on the ‘new thing’, directing music videos. Bizarrely, despite knowing nothing about heavy metal, I managed to direct videos for bands like Black Sabbath and Dr. & The Medics, including for the number one hit single Spirit In The Sky (sorry, had to get a plug in there) and produce news stories for a still fledgling MTV, which opened the door to UK broadcast television.

It was an exciting time of experimental TV, and I was lucky enough to direct shows for the UK’s new ‘iconoclastic’ Channel 4, which allowed me to work with many fascinating cultural figures of the day, including Germaine Greer, Erica Jong, Miles Copeland and Bishop Desmond Tutu. It was a revelation and inspired me to explore life through short documentaries for Channel 4’s ground-breaking, OUT series; like Skin Complex, which looked at the use of Skinhead imagery among gay sub-cultures. Around that time, I was lucky enough to meet Ian Cross who was developing a ‘new kind of travel series’ and ended up directing over 20 episodes of Lonely Planet and Globe Trekker, and countless spin offs. From that first series in 1994 to its final 20th anniversary ‘’round the world’ series in 2014, I’ve filmed with many of the show’s presenters including of course Justine Shapiro and Ian Wright, in locations as varied as Syria, Paraguay, Northern India, Southern Italy, the Eastern Caribbean, Bangladesh, Borneo, San Francisco, Botswana and Namibia and even the most remote inhabited place on earth – Easter Island.

Since then, I have continued to travel and direct a wide range of film and tv, from hard hitting documentaries about the IRA to celebrity driven travel, comedy and drama, but I could never forget or match the extraordinary, life enhancing, mind expanding experience of working on Globe Trekker. It changed my perspective on everything and turned out to be a precious and indelible training ground for living. I never wanted it to end so when I heard about Justine and Ian’s new podcast Our Looney Planet I couldn’t wait to get involved.

Born: Cambridge, UK
Family: My mother is from Sri Lanka and my father from Zambia. They met in Sri Lanka and later moved to the UK which is where I was born and grew up. 

My Road to Our Looney Planet

The story goes that back in the 1950s my father went to teach at the University of Kandy which is where he set eyes on my mother. It was apparently love at first sight and they were married 6 months later. So, the idea of Sri Lanka and the East was always full of romance for me. It did not disappoint. Memories of early childhood trips to Sri Lanka and India include stepping into what felt like a solid wall of heavy, tropical heat as soon as you got off the plane, biting into fresh mangos (nothing has ever been quite as delicious) and the terror I felt when I met oversized flying cockroaches for the first time. It was intense! Fast forward to my 20s and I was working as a TV producer in London when I got a call offering me a job producing the Globe Trekker guide to the Deep South with Ian. I could not say yes fast enough. A few weeks later I landed at Atlanta airport, picked up a hire car (having never actually driven a car since I passed my test) and set off on a road trip that took me around Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. It was both terrifying and exhilarating and so much fun. I met, amongst others, a blues singing barber, multiple Elvis impersonators, a snake handling preacher, and a Tuskegee airman. Shows in Cambodia, Venezuela, India and England followed and it was hard to fathom that I was being paid to travel to exotic corners of the world to ferret out brilliant places you wouldn't necessarily find in a guide book. And after I hung up my GT boots, I never stopped seeking out those brilliant places. My friends still hit me up for the extensive travel plans I make when I go on holiday that will tell you in precise details where to get the best negroni, where to find the most beautiful beach with the least people, the very best flea markets and the quirkiest museums and festivals. Old habits die hard. Now I live in California and recently reconnected with Justine (long story) and I'm thrilled to be back working with her and the team and am excited to contribute to whatever comes next.

Born: Fresno, California. USA
Family: I'm white-American on my dad's side (mainly Hungarian & Norwegian but there's a lot of other European stuff from what I hear), and Japanese on my mom's side.

My road to Our Looney Planet

I spent a few years immediately after high school working whatever jobs I could, in restaurants, warehouses, etc. but that was not fulfilling. I started going to school for child development, but after working at an overcrowded day-care I realized that wasn't for me either. I had always loved the arts and had been creative growing up, but I never considered it a viable career path. You know, everyone always talks about the starving artist trope. But I gave it some thought and figured the field of video and multimedia was technical enough to find steady work, but still a path to express my creativity. I had an amazing education at Berkeley City College with my film professor Kelly Whalen, and before you know it I was landing editing opportunities. I'm still in school, currently at San Francisco State University to expand my creative knowledge, but I'm having a blast here at Our Looney Planet editing fun and worldly videos.

Born: Seattle, WA
Family: My paternal great-grandparents immigrated to New Mexico from Abruzzo, Italy, and my French immigrant maternal great-grandparents had spent a generation or two in Canada before making their way to the states by way of Maine. My father was born in New Mexico, my mother in Ohio.

My road to Our Looney Planet

I grew up in rural Colorado, in a town four hours and a mountain range from any major city, and I have seasonal allergies. As such, popular local activities like hiking, mountain biking, and rock climbing were torture, so I had to develop different [see: indoor] interests. Writing was one of them, which evolved into screenwriting and filmmaking near the end of college getting my BA in Creative Writing in Oregon, at which time I moved to New York City (great for the first year, progressively harder every year after) to pursue my MFA in Writing and Producing for Television. While in New York, I fell in love with independent filmmaking, and the collaborative nature of that form of creativity. I made a zombie web series, an absurdist mental health web series, a short film about anxiety and my own recently discovered asexuality, and a short horror film about capitalism and multi-level marketing schemes.

I've dabbled on the edges of the traditional film industry as a digital community manager, social media strategist, crowdfunding consultant, and educator, working for start ups as well as grad programs as well as more recognizable studios. I traveled the world (Budapest, Antwerp, Rome, Paris) for speech and debate in college, then the country (Chicago, D.C., Bay City, Detroit, Denver, and more) as a workshop leader for indie filmmakers. I met the folks at Our Looney Planet as a result of six years working in crowdfunding and audience building, introduced by a colleague, and this indoor kid can't wait to travel the world with them in their vodcast.

Born: North London, England
Family: My parents are both English, my dad from Essex and my mum from Cambridge. My dad’s parents are from Cornwall and London. On my mum’s side, I’ve got more English blood and then a touch of Sri Lankan, from my mum’s mum.

My road to Our Looney Planet

I was born in North London and spent the first ten years of my life there, developing my penchant for charity shops and digestive biscuits. My parents met in London, working in television, for which I can thank for my first job post-graduation at Our Looney Planet, amongst other things. They both worked on Globe Trekker episodes in the late 1990’s and regaled me with tales from filming in Venezuela, Cambodia, and India, fostering a curiosity and love of travel early on. In 2014, my parents, two siblings and I all moved to Los Angeles, after my dad got a job on a show which would be cancelled the day we arrived. Thankfully, he kept finding more work and I spent the remainder of my upbringing in LA. I quickly grew to love the city, starkly different to London but with a totally unique and spectacular landscape, history and, of course, weather. After four years in Northern California for university, I came to appreciate the milder climate and tight-knit community Berkeley provided. I graduated from UC Berkeley in the spring with a major in American Studies, a Frankensteined department that brings together American literature, theory, history and popular culture. When my mum mentioned an old friend and colleague of her’s was living in Berkeley and working on an updated look at Globe Trekker, I instantly wanted to be involved. Thankfully Justine had a use for me and now, I’m living in San Francisco and excited to be helping out in the office with logging, filming videos and learning about the production process.

Born: I was born in Chicago, IL, USA
Family: My mother was born in Chicago. My father was born in Chicago. My maternal grandmother is from Iran and grandfather was born in Chicago. My paternal grandmother is from Poland and my grandfather is from Ukraine.

My road to Our Looney Planet

After beginning my career as a CPA, I moved into producing film and video as well as photography, now I'm returning to my roots as an accountant and taking on bookkeeping roles. My experience in both worlds allows me insight into the accounting needs of creative projects.