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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Four men are indicted in New York City for allegedly stealing body parts from a Brooklyn funeral home and selling them for transplants. Prosecutors allege that they made millions of dollars by selling tissue samples without permission from the families.
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U.S. authorities say the release of a new audiotape from Osama bin Laden, threatening new attacks in the United States, will not prompt an increase in the terror-threat level. The al Qaeda leader also makes a vague reference to a truce offer on the tape, which Vice President Cheney and other officials dismissed.
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New York City is increasing security on its subways after receiving what Mayor Mike Bloomberg calls a specific threat to mass transit in the coming days. At a press conference Thursday, he made note of an unusual "level of specificity" and said the threat originated overseas.
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The head of New Orleans' police department, Eddie Compass, has resigned. This weekend, he announced that 249 officers, or about 15 percent of the force, are absent without leave after the hurricanes. A special tribunal will determine who has deserted and who has legitimate absences from work.
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Rain and storm surge from Hurricane Rita have sent water over and through breaches in patched levees around New Orleans. The lower Ninth Ward, which was completely flooded by Hurricane Katrina, is once again under water.
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Hurricane Rita gains strength as it moves across the Gulf of Mexico on a path toward Texas, prompting mandatory evacuation orders for much of the Texas coast. But its path may mean New Orleans experiences only rain and wind. Even so, the city continues its evacuation.
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Mayor Ray Nagin suspends his ambitious plan to reopen parts of New Orleans. He said he was concerned about the threat from Tropical Storm Rita, now moving west toward the Gulf of Mexico. The mayor was also under pressure from federal officials who say the city is still unsafe.
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The Fire Department of New York releases oral histories and audio from Sept. 11, 2001. Crowded radio frequencies may explain in part why firefighters stayed in the north tower of the World Trade Center 29 minutes after the south tower fell.
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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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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."