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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In a rematch of the finals at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the U.S. and Canadian men's ice hockey teams met in the semifinals at Sochi. And the result was the same: Canada won.
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It's a busy day in Sochi: At the rink, the Russian men's hockey team was knocked out and the U.S. men's team faces the Czech Republic, while at the track, the U.S. women hope to medal in bobsledding.
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The Olympic event was all-male until 2002. Often, the "brakemen" are plucked off a land sport, like track and field. "It's not like you get a tutorial or something, or you grow up doing bobsled," says American Aja Evans. -
U.S. men competed in bobsledding on Monday, pinning their hopes on Steve Holcomb, who has medaled before. Holcomb entered competition as the top bobsled racer in the world this year, and he and Steven Langton won a bronze medal in the two-man bobsled event. They weren't the only points of interest on the track this year: A Russian team won gold, and the Jamaican team attracted plenty of attention, as well.
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Among the highlights of the weekend at the Winter Olympics: The U.S. men's hockey team faces off with the Russians on Saturday. Ice and sparks are expected to fly.
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American skeleton racer Noelle Pikus-Pace took silver in Sochi on Friday. The medal was the first for the U.S. in the event since the Salt Lake City games in 2002, when Americans got the gold and silver.
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The U.S. and Russian men's hockey teams played at the same time on Thursday. The teams will meet on the ice Saturday, when they will renew a storied rivalry that includes such historic games as the Miracle on Ice.
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The American snowboarder failed in his quest to win a third Olympic gold medal in halfpipe, but there's a new star - the Russian-born, Swiss athlete known as "I-Pod."
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The 2014 Winter Olympics officially opened Friday with a ceremony celebrating Russian culture and introducing Olympic athletes from around the world. NPR's Robert Smith was at the ceremony in Sochi and joins us to recount the pomp and pitfalls on display.
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The first day of competition at the Sochi Olympics took place Thursday on the slopestyle course, as snowboarders took part in qualifying runs. Crowds tangled with logistical issues, but for the most part, the day was a success.
