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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Karen McDonough of Quincy, Mass., was enjoying her tea one morning in the dining room when she saw something odd outside her window: a group of people gathering on her lawn. A man with a clipboard told her that her home no longer belonged to her. It didn't matter that she'd been paying her mortgage for 17 years and was current on it. She was a nurse with a good job and had raised her kids there. But this was a foreclosure sale, and she was going to lose her house. McDonough had fallen victim to what's called a zombie second mortgage. Homeowners think these loans are long dead. But then the loans come back to life because they get bought up, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, by debt collectors that then move to collect and foreclose on people's homes. On today's episode: An NPR investigation reveals the practice to be widespread. Also, what are zombie mortgages? Is all this legal? And is there any way for homeowners to fight the zombies? You can read more about zombie second mortgages online at: npr.org/zombie This episode was hosted by Chris Arnold and Robert Smith. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Jess Jiang with help from Bob Little. And it was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Robert Rodriguez with an assist from Patrick Murray. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. -
Congress has neglected to do the basic work of keeping the economy running. Today, we look at three time bombs they're sitting on: The federal budget, the debt ceiling, and DREAMers. -
Economists don't look for jobs in the same way the rest of us do. They are way too rational. They have a system that looks a lot like speed dating.
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NPR's Planet Money team explores why Irish bars look so similar all over the world and what happens when you take an authentic national experience and turn it into an export.
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After buying 100 barrels of crude oil and delivering it to a pipeline, NPR's Planet Money team goes to a refinery to see it turned into gasoline.
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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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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.
