David Kestenbaum
David Kestenbaum is a correspondent for NPR, covering science, energy issues and, most recently, the global economy for NPR's multimedia project Planet Money. David has been a science correspondent for NPR since 1999. He came to journalism the usual way — by getting a Ph.D. in physics first.
In his years at NPR, David has covered science's discoveries and its darker side, including the Northeast blackout, the anthrax attacks and the collapse of the New Orleans levees. He has also reported on energy issues, particularly nuclear and climate change.
David has won awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
David worked briefly on the show This American Life, and set up a radio journalism program in Cambodia on a Fulbright fellowship. He also teaches a journalism class at Johns Hopkins University.
David holds a bachelor's of science degree in physics from Yale University and a doctorate in physics from Harvard University.
-
It's hard to find anything in a store that costs 1 penny. There is one place where people still dream of 1 cent sales: the Internet. NPR's planet money team reports on the value of the virtual penny.
-
You can trace 4,000 years of economic growth through the history of light. The ways we got from a candle, made from of animal fat, to the LED lights we have today tell a lot about our modern economy.
-
Buying insurance doesn't always feel like it makes economic sense, especially for young healthy people. So why are they still willing to pay? -
Nearly 2,000 new top-level Internet domains are becoming available. Which are the most popular so far? And what will become of .com?
-
For decades, the Supreme Court ruled that laws regulating things like wages and working conditions were unconstitutional. That changed during the Great Depression, when one of the justices switched sides, paving the way for the Fair Labor Standards Act.
-
Decades ago, amid fears of rapid population growth, a biologist and an economist made a bet about how many people the planet could sustain. Global population is now estimated to top 7.1 billion. So who won the famous bet?
-
Clothes donated to charity in the U.S. often wind up for sale in African markets. Here's the story of one shirt that started out at a bat mitzvah in Michigan and wound up in a market in Nairobi.
-
The U.S. exports a billion pounds of used clothes every year. Much of that winds up in used clothing markets in sub-Saharan Africa. -
"This little baby — what my wife used to call my 'pretend money project' — is really going mainstream," says the chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation. -
Two Nobel laureates disagree on a basic economic question: Is it possible to reliably spot bubbles before they burst?
