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 Planet Money. 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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High housing costs are encouraging Londoners to build down instead of up. They're digging out basements to create underground mansions. This story originally aired on Jan. 4, 2016 on Morning Edition.
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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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The high cost of housing is encouraging Londoners to build down instead of up. They're digging out basements to create underground mansions — often to neighbors' dismay.
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Some controlling or coercive behavior is now a crime there. Domestic abuse could include stalking your spouse online or restricting access to family and friends. -
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. -
Why Aren't Auto Safety Standards Universal?Why do the U.S. and Europe have different safety standards? Every country feels like it knows the best way to protect motorists. (This piece initially aired on April 30, 2014 on Morning Edition.)
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Not too long ago, a New York taxi medallion was worth more than a million dollars. Gene Friedman managed to buy more than 1,000. But that was before Uber, and now people like Friedman face bankruptcy.
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Some Greeks Are Finding Opportunity Amid Their Economy's UncertaintyIn Greece, not all the smart, young people are leaving. Some are using the crisis as an opportunity to start a new business — including one woman who want to make trucking in Greece more efficient.
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The Six Million Dollar Man TV show is being rebooted. Mark Wahlberg will star in the movie remake: The Six Billion Dollar Man. We Examine why the inflated number, and what the number should really be.
