Robert Smith
Robert Smith is a host for NPR's Planet Money where he tells stories about how the global economy is affecting our lives.
If that sounds a little dry, then you've never heard . The team specializes in making economic reporting funny, engaging and understandable. Planet Money has been known to set economic indicators to music, use superheroes to explain central banks, and even buy a toxic asset just to figure it out.
Smith admits that he has no special background in finance or math, just a curiosity about how money works. That kind of curiosity has driven Smith for his 20 years in radio.
Before joining Planet Money, Smith was the New York correspondent for NPR. He was responsible for covering all the mayhem and beauty that makes it the greatest city on Earth. Smith reported on the rebuilding of Ground Zero, the stunning landing of US Air flight 1549 in the Hudson River and the dysfunctional world of New York politics. He specialized in features about the overlooked joys of urban living: puddles, billboards, ice cream trucks, street musicians, drunks and obsessives.
When New York was strangely quiet, Smith pitched in covering the big national stories. He traveled with presidential campaigns, tracked the recovery of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and reported from the BP oil spill.
Before his New York City gig, Smith worked for public radio stations in Seattle (KUOW), Salt Lake City (KUER) and Portland (KBOO). He's been an editor, a host, a news director and just about any other job you can think of in broadcasting. Smith also lectures on the dark arts of radio at universities and conferences. He trains fellow reporters how to sneak humor and action into even the dullest stories on tight deadlines.
Smith started in broadcasting playing music at KPCW in his hometown of Park City, Utah. Although the low-power radio station at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, likes to claim him as its own.
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The Planet Money team discovered an old superhero languishing in the public domain, a superhero that seems perfect for a radio network. Could NPR rescue him?
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To figure out why evergreens are so costly this year, the Planet Money team decided to get into the tree business. NPR shares what they've found.
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What happens when a country decides to sell its water then hits a drought? Our Planet Money team takes us to a country in Africa that might have given away its most valuable resource.
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Argentina is paying up. After a lengthy legal battle that could change how countries borrow money, Argentina has come to a settlement with its most stalwart creditors.
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Hedgehogs are starting to disappear from the English countryside, threatened by cars, garbage and even fences. But now there's a campaign to save one of England's favorite animals.
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A new law in the United Kingdom aims to help people trapped in an abusive marriage, even without physical abuse. The legislation makes it illegal for spouses to psychologically bully their partners.
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Same Christmas dinner as last year? You're doing it wrong. In 17th-century Britain, Christmas dinner was a lavish, experimental, 12-day drunken affair. Think Mardi Gras with snow. -
When Magic: The Gathering became a hit, its creators faced a surprising problem. -
The penny occupies a strange spot in our economy — it's worth almost nothing. Our Planet Money Team goes on an expedition through the streets of Manhattan to find something they can buy for one cent.
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The U.S. and Europe have different car safety standards. Some of them are small while others are more dramatic. All car makers agree that the different standards are a pain. So why the difference?
