Stacey Vanek Smith
Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.
Prior to coming to NPR, Smith worked for Marketplace, where she was a correspondent and fill-in host. While there, Smith was part of a collaboration with The New York Times, where she explored the relationship between money and marriage. She was also part of Marketplace's live shows, where she produced a series of pieces on getting her data mined.
Smith is a native of Idaho and grew up working on her parents' cattle ranch. She is a graduate of Princeton University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in comparative literature and creative writing. She also holds a master's in broadcast journalism from Columbia University.
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China is testing a new plan to make it easier for citizens do business, but also to help them trust each other more. It's called the social credit score.
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Companies make mistakes, and it turns out there are expensive and inexpensive ways to apologize for them. NPR's Planet Money's looks a study that finds out how apologies really work.
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A new fad in cryptocurrencies involves cartoon-like cat images that sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Understanding this craze is a way to understand the potential — and risks — of cryptocurrency's latest evolution.
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Despite low unemployment, the United States economy isn't in the clear. The personal savings rate and real wages, which are waged adjusted for inflation, are not as good as they could be.
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Movie Pass — which lets people go see one movie per day for $10 a month — has new competition. AMC theatres is now offering three special format movies a week for a set monthly price. But Movie Pass has always had competition from Netflix. The question really is do you want to go out or stay in tonight?
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Dollar for dollar, California is the biggest agriculture economy in the country. And lately, farmers in the state have been struggling with a new problem: A shortage of workers during harvest season.
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Many tech companies keep customers buying by constantly updating their products with new features. So then, why hasn't the graphing calculator changed much over the last few decades?
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NewsWhen an American rubber band company found itself losing out to foreign competition, it went in search of protection from the U.S. government. Its experience serves as a study in how a tariff comes to be.
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NewsOur usernames and passwords, to all kinds of websites, are for sale on the dark web. Some, like bank account passwords, are obviously valuable. But hackers can extract money from this information in all kinds of creative ways.
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A Russian campaign aimed to spend a million dollars a month to destabilize American democracy. But the money didn't pay for sophisticated hackers. Instead, it bought Facebook ads and Twitter accounts.