John Rabe

Host, Off-Ramp

John Rabe was born in 1966 in Detroit. He moved to Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, on the Canadian border, in 1969. Rabe's first radio job was at WLXX, a small station named for the Soo Locks. He started as DJ on weekend nights, and two years later was hosting morning "drive," as the senior on-air staff member -- at 18 years old! Rabe's first public radio job was covering city and county government for WKAR in East Lansing. (He crashed the station car his first month on the job.) After graduating from Michigan State University with an English degree, he moved to Fort Myers, Florida, to host Morning Edition at what was then WSFP-FM. Inexplicably, three years later, WHYY in Philadelphia hired him to do mornings. There, Rabe learned to love live radio from Neil Tickner and Mark Vogelzang, to whom he is eternally grateful. But mornings are a grind, and after two years, he went to Minnesota Public Radio, where he, variously, hosted All Things Considered and a call-in show, produced the documentary Walking Out of History, about Ernest Shackleton's Endurance voyage, and reported. Six years later, MPR partnered with KPCC in Pasadena, and, sick of cold and snow, Rabe moved West. Rabe's been at KPCC for going on seven years. After hosting All Things Considered and reporting on health care and housing issues, he's very excited to create a show that will let him combine anchoring with field reporting.

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