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Graham Smith

  • NPR

Graham Smith is a senior producer for NPR's All Things Considered.

Every day his responsibilities range from investigation and research, production, field recording, running the program, reporting, and photography.

Smith has worked all over the United States. Overseas Smith has worked in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he produced award-winning coverage of an IED attack and its aftermath in Kandahar.

After joining NPR in December 2002, Smith spent six years as supervising senior producer for NPR's All Things Considered. Before NPR, Smith was the senior producer and director on The Connection and Here and Now, programs produced by WBUR, an NPR Member Station in Boston. He served as director of the Christian Science Monitor's Monitor Radio from 1995-1997.

During the course of his career, Smith has received many accolades including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism award and the Edward R Murrow Investigative Reporting award for his work with Youth Radio. Smith also received the Edward R. Murrow award for Hard News for his work in Afghanistan, the George Foster Peabody award for work with Youth Radio, and he was a Pew Gatekeeper Fellow.

Smith studied English and history at the University of New Hampshire.

The Prostitutes Are Not Happy. Neither Are Brides. Sex, Love And Ebola

By • Dec 31, 2014

Wedding dress rentals are way down. Condoms are no longer a hot item. And prostitutes are having trouble finding customers.

Blame it all on Ebola.

With at least 300 new cases a week in Sierra Leone, the virus is altering practically every aspect of life. And life, well, life includes love and sex. Even illicit sex.

So we wanted to find out how the epidemic has impacted these more ... intimate facets of daily experience for residents of the capital, Freetown.

Hissing And Sighing: The Lament Of Sex Workers In Sierra Leone

By • Nov 26, 2014

When a man drives by the strip at Lumley Beach in downtown Freetown at night, he'll probably hear a sharp hiss. That's not an unusual sound in Sierra Leone. People hiss instead of whistling — to get your attention, to call for the bill at a restaurant, to buy a bottle of water on the street.

But the hissing along a stretch of beachfront road at Lumley Beach has a different purpose. It's the sound prostitutes make, and they've perfected the hiss. That's why they're called serpents.

U.S. Pacifies An Afghan Village, But Will It Stay That Way?

By • Jun 28, 2013

When my NPR colleague Tom Bowman and I visited the southern Afghan district of Arghandab in the fall of 2009, we headed out on patrol with the U.S. Stryker battalion. We soon found ourselves in the middle of a firefight. A U.S. vehicle was blown up and two Americans were killed in an attack that was all too common at the time.

Thomas Jefferson's Vegetable Garden: A Thing Of Beauty And Science

By • May 10, 2012

When you listen to All Things Considered host Melissa Block's story about Thomas Jefferson's garden, you'll hear how he cared about putting peas on the table and sharing seeds with his friends. He also set loftier goals for his vegetable garden: Monticello's south-facing expanse was a living laboratory for a lifelong tinkerer and almost obsessive record keeper. Jefferson was, in many ways, a crop scientist.

The Osprey: Good Reviews, But A Costly Program

By • Oct 24, 2011

Over three decades, the U.S. has spent billions of dollars and lost 30 lives creating a unique aircraft, the Osprey, which lifts off like a helicopter and flies like a plane.

After all these problems, the Marines are now using them widely in Afghanistan, and the Osprey is getting excellent reviews.

But the aircraft now faces another question: Because it's so expensive, should the Osprey program be slashed as the Pentagon looks for cuts?