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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Our series on hobbies continues with an old favorite: the barbecue grill. Charcoal and meat seems to bring out the fanatic in some people. Robert Smith visits a group of devoted grillers.
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The world-renowned chefs and bakers of the "tiny" food world spend countless hours making tiny meals. And you can't even eat them. In our series on hobbies, Robert Smith looks at cuisine through a magnifying glass.
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Bernard Ebbers, the former CEO of Worldcom, is sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in what authorities call the largest accounting fraud in U.S. history. Ebbers, 63, was found guilty on charges of securities and reporting fraud. He is expected to appeal.
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A virtual race begins tonight on the Internet. It's a race among Web designers to see who can send out the most contagious e-mail. "Contagious media" are all those little amateur videos, singing computer animations and e-mail hoaxes that your friends send you. The contagious media showdown follows a conference in New York about the science of goofy stuff on the Web.
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New Yorkers reflect on the life and lessons of Pope John Paul II. Included among the memories: his ability to forgive his would-be assassin, the strength of his convictions and his often-repeated entreaty: "don't be afraid."
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This weekend marks two years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. As part of NPR's series The Span of War, NPR's Robert Smith looks at how the curriculum has changed at West Point since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the war in Iraq. There's greater emphasis now on counter-terrorism.
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Today's West Point cadets are the first generation of students to enroll at the academy in wartime since the Vietnam era. The U.S. Army is adapting its training techniques to reflect lessons learned from the war in Iraq.
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Spooked advertisers are steering their more controversial ads away from the Super Bowl and featuring them online. While the broadcast line-up will include family-friendly spots with patriotic themes and the Muppets, the Internet has become the destination for those seeking edgier advertising.
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NPR's Robert Smith reports on the rise of "podcasts" -- amateur music and talk shows created by the users of Apple's popular iPod personal music devices and other digital music players. Whole "shows" of music and talk can be downloaded from the Internet to individual players automatically, and some of the show hosts have become celebrities among the burgeoning podcast audience.
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Our series on popular college courses continues with a class at the Juilliard School that teaches young musicians and artists how to avoid one of their biggest fears: choking under pressure during a performance. NPR's Robert Smith reports.
