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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Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards and Howard Dean campaign in Wisconsin in advance of Tuesday's primary. While neither candidate calls Wisconsin a "must win" state, both are hoping to establish momentum and overtake frontrunner John Kerry. NPR's Robert Smith.
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The New York Subway system is designed to move millions of people quickly and efficiently. But on any given Friday afternoon, trombonist Alex Lo Dico and his jazz band can bring commuters to a complete halt. The subways have been Lo Dico's stage for two decades now, and his philosophy is "swing 'til you drop." NPR's Robert Smith has the first in a summer series of street musician profiles.
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Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide falls short in his bid to win horse racing's Triple Crown, finishing third in the Belmont Stakes. The gelding led for much of the race, but was overtaken down the stretch by Empire Maker and Ten Most Wanted. Hear NPR's Steve Inskeep and NPR's Robert Smith.
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American journalist Michael Kelly dies in a reported Humvee accident near Baghdad. Kelly, an editor-at-large with The Atlantic Monthly and columnist for The Washington Post, was embedded with the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division. Kelly is the first American reporter to die in the war. NPR's Robert Smith reports.
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Humor has always been an important way of easing tensions during times of crisis. NPR's Robert Smith looks at the role of comedy in wartime.
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NPR's Robert Smith looks at how preliminary reports of an uprising by Iraqi citizens in Basra yesterday quickly grew to a prominent position in the news coverage of the war despite a lack of details to back up those reports.
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Western states are at the top of the list for hunger. The loss of traditional jobs, high cost of living and remoteness of many rural communities all are part of the reason. NPR's Robert Smith reports.