The Ferriss-UC Berkeley Journalism Fellowships

Berkeley, California
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Izzy Bloom is a reporter at KQED public radio and the producer of Political Breakdown. Izzy has reported longform audio stories about the Indigenous land back movement for The California Report Magazine and heritage language loss for NPR’s Code Switch, for which she was a finalist at the Third Coast International Audio Festival. For the fellowship, Izzy is reporting on how psychedelics can treat mental health conditions.

New York, New York
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Saugat Bolakhe is a science writer based in New York City. He writes around the themes of everything in life sciences, biotech, and environment. He has written for The Atlantic, Wired, Scientific American, Nature, Science News, The Xylom, Quanta Magazine, New Scientist, EOS, Knowable Magazine, and other publications. In 2024, he was also recognized with the Science Journalism award from the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology. He has a BS in Zoology from Tribhuvan University, Nepal and an MA in science journalism from Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. He also manages an international community of early career science journalists at The Open Notebook, a journalism non-profit dedicated to help health and science journalists improve their craft. For the fellowship, he is reporting about the mystic and cult following surrounding mad honey, which is harvested from the Himalayan cliffs of Nepal.

Washington, D.C.
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Christina Cala is the senior producer of Code Switch, NPR’s show about race and identity. She’s fascinated by stories about Latinx communities, migration, identity and language. Her work has also been featured on All Things Considered, TED Radio Hour, Life Kit, It’s Been a Minute, and Popular Science. Her 2019 immigration reporting on President Trump’s asylum crackdown won a Murrow Award. Her reporting on the fight around Lakota language revitalization won a Gracie Award. For the fellowship, Christina is reporting on the rising popularity of Ayahuasca in Colombia, and whether that is a threat or a boon for the Inga and Kamentsá tribes who offer the plant medicine.

New York, New York
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CD Goette-Luciak is an investigative journalist who’s written for The Washington Post, the Miami Herald, The Guardian, Vox and NPR. He is an Investigative Reporting Fellow for the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University and received an Overseas Press Club Foundation Fellowship to report for the Los Angeles Times from Mexico. Fluent in English, Spanish, and German, he has covered stories in every country in the Americas, reporting on democracy, migration, climate change, human rights, organized crime and corruption. He previously worked as a reporter for the Latin America Advisor and Radio La Ciudadana, and was the Senior Latin America and Caribbean Analyst for the IDB Group in Washington, D.C. He received a Master’s in Public Policy and a B.A. in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia, where he was a Jefferson Scholar.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia
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Leila Goldstein is a journalist covering stories across Southeast Asia. Her work has been published by NPR, The Guardian, BBC, Marketplace and The World. She has covered the return of looted Cambodian relics, a landmark environmental rights lawsuit in Thailand, and the trafficking of Indonesian citizens in the illegal organ trade. As a 2024 Longworth Media Fellow, she covered the impact of U.S. solar tariffs on the global solar manufacturing supply chain, from Vietnam to Ohio. For the fellowship, she is reporting on the expansion of ketamine production and trafficking in Southeast Asia.

Brooklyn, New York
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Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi is a host and reporter for NPR’s Planet Money, telling stories that creatively explain the workings of the global economy. His work often explores the financial and cultural architecture of consumerism, from corporate returns policies to subscription services to new forms of consumer credit. He’s also drawn to tales of unintended consequences, like the time a well-intentioned chemistry professor unwittingly helped unleash a global market for synthetic drugs, what happened when the U.S. Patent Office started granting patents on human genes, or how the internet cookie became a tool of mass surveillance. And he’s interested in the places where the market economy meets the natural world, from the story of how manatees got addicted to fossil fuels, to the fight over one of the most valuable lobster fisheries in the world, to the tale of the orphaned baby squirrel that became a social media celebrity, then a political martyr, and finally inspired a cryptocurrency worth billions of dollars. For the fellowship, he’s reporting on the world of psychedelic churches.

Brooklyn, New York
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Manisha Krishnan is an Emmy award-winning journalist and senior culture editor at WIRED. A former senior reporter for VICE News, she has been publishing groundbreaking drug reporting for a decade. She embedded with a fentanyl dealer to investigate deadly new synthetic drugs in the VICE News Tonight documentary Beyond Fentanyl, which won a 2023 Emmy for outstanding health coverage. Her work on a highly-addictive legal supplement known as “gas station heroin” won a New York Press Club award and has been used to change policy. 

Manisha has also published documentaries and feature stories on the rise of psychedelic churches in the U.S., a Black community using magic mushrooms to heal from racism, and Silicon Valley workers embracing kambo—a purge-inducing frog poison used by Amazonian tribes. Her fellowship will focus on a burgeoning frontier of psychedelic therapy: using psychedelics to treat drug addiction. Manisha is from Vancouver, Canada and now lives in New York City.

Austin, Texas
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Andrew Logan is a screenwriter, producer, and journalist based in Austin. As a screenwriter, he co-wrote Chappaquiddick, a political thriller that chronicles the true story of the infamous Ted Kennedy scandal, starring Jason Clarke, Kate Mara, Ed Helms, and Bruce Dern. The script was listed on the prestigious Black List in 2015, and in 2017, Andrew was named on Variety’s 10 Screenwriters to Watch list. Additionally, Andrew has produced several independent films that have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and South by Southwest. His journalism has appeared in Texas Monthly,the Texas Observer, and other outlets.

Oakland, California
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Adreanna Rodriguez is an independent journalist and producer based in Oakland, California. As a Hunkpapa Lakota/Chicana woman, her research, podcasts, and documentaries focus on issues of social and climate justice for Indigenous communities, as well as femme stories. While employed at VICE, she was an Ida B. Wells fellow through Type Investigations, where her feature audio story “Roe Was Never Enough,” was a finalist for a Third Coast International Audio award and the recipient of a Gracie Award. In 2024 she completed a yearlong investigation with Audible, among several other independently produced audio stories for clients like PRX and LWC Studios. Adreanna holds a M.A. in Visual Anthropology from San Francisco State University and a Graduate Certificate in Documentary Studies from the Maine College of Art.  For the fellowship, Adreanna will be covering the use of sacramental peyote within Native American communities.

New York, New York
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Sammie Seamon is a freelance journalist and MFA candidate in Literary Reportage at the NYU Arthur J. Carter Journalism Institute. Currently based in New York City by way of Austin, Texas, she often reports in Spanish-speaking communities and contributes bilingually to Molino Informativo in the Bronx, NY. For the fellowship, she is writing for the Guardian US on the use of psychedelics for the treatment of cluster headache, an incredibly painful neurological disorder that lacks a pharmaceutical solution, and how patients are still advocating for and contributing to psychedelic research.

Austin, Texas
@robinberghaus.bsky.social, @RobinPBerghaus

Robin writes feature stories and produces documentaries that engage the public about advances in science, health, medicine, and technology. Her projects have shown at international film festivals, on PBS, and as part of Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Science on Screen. Robin serves as a speaker and production consultant for organizations and universities, and as a film envoy for American Film Showcase. She holds a BS in biology from Boston College, and an MFA in film production from Boston University. For the fellowship, Robin is working on an audio project on psychedelics in Texas.

Vancouver, Canada
@matthabusby, @matthamundo

Mattha Busby is a freelance journalist. He worked as a news reporter at the Guardian in London from 2017 to 2021 after winning an award for a series on the gambling industry before moving to Mexico. There, he interviewed Maria Sabina’s family on her legacy, visited the town that banned Coca-Cola and documented 4/20 in Oaxaca City just after authorities approved public cannabis consumption. He has also written for TIME, the Times of London, the Observer, the Intercept, VICE, DoubleBlind and Men’s Health. In 2022, Thames & Hudson published a slim volume authored by Mattha titled, ‘Should All Drugs Be Legalized?’. His podcast Uncharted Territory unpacks the pro-psychedelics culture shift. For the fellowship, Mattha is working on a story about war trauma and psychedelics.

Los Angeles, California
@_rachelcarlson

Rachel Carlson is a writer and producer at NPR, where she works on the science podcast, Short Wave. A recent graduate in cognitive neuroscience and literature at Brown University, she studied the intersections between the human brain and storytelling. She’s fascinated by the ways our neurons are shaped by language, writing and experience. During college, she also did research on the science behind ketamine therapy, including barriers to access and patient experiences receiving the drug for treatment-resistant depression. For the fellowship, Rachel is reporting on the science and philosophy of “tripless” psychedelic-like drugs. 

Albany, California
@marshall_anne

Anne Marshall-Chalmers is an investigative reporter with The War Horse focusing on the health of veterans, active-duty service members, and their families. Prior to The War Horse, her work appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Atlas Obscura, Mother Jones, Inside Climate News, NPR, Civil Eats, Cal Matters, and other publications. For the fellowship, Marshall-Chalmers will investigate the unusual and underground ways veterans have accessed psychedelic therapy to help with lingering trauma.

Culver City, California
Instagram @meghanmccarron

Meghan McCarron is an award-winning freelance journalist focused on the intersection of food and culture, which has led her to cover everything from the history of Tex-Mex to the 2020 Presidential race to the rise of luxury psilocybin chocolates. She’s written for The New York Times, Bon Appetit, the Los Angeles Times, and spent nearly a decade on staff at Eater as an editor and correspondent. For the fellowship, she will explore how legalization may change how psilocybin mushrooms are bred, and the challenges small cultivators face with the rise of Big Mushroom.

Portland, Oregon
@mirkdrop

Sarah “Shay” Mirk (they/she) is a graphic journalist, editor, and teacher. For six years, Shay was a contributing editor at comics publication The Nib, where projects she worked on won both Eisner and Ignatz awards. They are the author of several books, including Guantanamo Voices, an illustrated oral history of Guantanamo Bay prison, which Kirkus called “extraordinary… an eye-opening, damning indictment of one of America’s worst trespasses.” They are a zine-maker and cartoonist whose comics have been featured in The New Yorker, Bitch, and NPR. Her book on the craft of making nonfiction comics, Making Nonfiction Comics: A Field Guide to Graphic Journalism (co-written with Eleri Harris), will debut from Abrams ComicsArts in 2025. For 2023-2024, Shay is the Applied Cartooning Fellow at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. She is white, nonbinary, and queer. For their fellowship, Shay is working on a series of cartoons about people’s psychedelic experiences.

Albuquerque, New Mexico
@cecilianowell

Cecilia Nowell is a freelance reporter focused on health equity stories in the Americas. Her work has been published by The Guardian, KFF Health News, The Nation, New York Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and others. In 2022, she was recognized as a Livingston Award finalist in national reporting for her coverage of a California mother serving an 11-year prison sentence after a stillbirth, and in 2023, she reported on reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare deserts as a grantee with the Inaugural Journalism & Women Symposium Health Journalism Fellowship. For the fellowship, she will report on attempts to treat opioid use disorder with psychedelics.

Brooklyn, New York
@erinlschumaker

Erin Schumaker reports on the future of health care for POLITICO. Previously she was Business Insider’s science editor, where her team covered space, climate, extreme weather and discoveries. Prior to that, she reported on the Covid-19 pandemic for ABC News, including the trends driving infections and the struggles of safety-net hospitals. She was also a reporter at HuffPost, where she covered the opioid crisis and gun violence as public health challenges. For her fellowship, Erin will be writing about the Washington decision-makers hashing out the future of psychedelics policy. 

Baltimore, Maryland
@haleemakshah

Haleema Shah is a journalist with a decade of experience making podcasts and radio shows. She is currently a senior producer and reporter for Vox’s news program Today, Explained. As a lover of history, her work draws heavily on archival footage and oral history to explore how the past informs our present. For the fellowship, she is reporting on the early use of psychedelics in psychotherapy before they were restricted as dangerous drugs, and how those discoveries might be applied in today’s radically different mental health landscape.

Las Vegas, Nevada
@DoctorYasmin

Seema Yasmin is an Emmy award-winning journalist, author and poet whose writing appears in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, WIRED and Scientific American. She trained in medicine at the University of Cambridge and in journalism at the University of Toronto. She is the author of eight books including a poetry collection, children’s picture book and a YA novel. For the fellowship, Seema is exploring psychedelic chaplaincy and the shifting permissibility of psychedelics in medicine, religion and law.