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.
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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Two Nobel laureates disagree on a basic economic question: Is it possible to reliably spot bubbles before they burst?
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Kenyans who received money with no strings attached started businesses and bought food for their kids, according to a new study. They didn't spend it on alcohol or cigarettes.
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Whatever happens to a the global economy, one thing is clear: If the U.S. defaults, people all over the world who have loaned the government money won't get paid on time.
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Peter Higgs just won a Nobel Prize for his research on a theory involving a particle that bears his name. How did that come to be? The unexpected answer came in the mail 16 years ago.
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With online health-insurance markets set to open this week, it's still unclear whether healthy people will sign up. Yet the success of the program depends on them.
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There are no strings attached. People can spend the money on whatever they want, and they never have to pay it back.
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On Wednesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release new statistics on the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the second quarter. The main number — the total value of all goods and services produced in the United States — will be about 3 percent bigger than it would have been. It won't be bigger because of a change in the economy, but rather a change in accounting.