Adam Davidson

Adam Davidson Profile

Co-founder and co-host of NPR and This American Life’s podcast Planet Money, Adam Davidson is known for his humorous, clear, and organized presentation of economic issues. His radio documentary “The Giant Pool of Money” has been praised as the most understandable and entertaining media piece on the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.

Prior to his role as a business journalist, Davidson served as an international correspondent covering many major stories at the time including the war in Iraq, the Haiti earthquake, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the Paris riots. Davidson brought unique angles and depth to his reporting through his application of basic business knowledge, which he utilized to understand the motives of the people and organizations involved in the situations that he covered.

Davidson has won nearly every existing award in the industry of radio journalism, including the Peabody, Dupont-Columbia, and the Polk. He writes the weekly column “It’s the Economy” for The New York Times Magazine and has written for various other platforms like Harper’s and GQ.

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  Adam Davidson is co-founder and co-host of Planet Money, a co-production of NPR and This American Life. He also writes the weekly “It’s the Economy” column for The New York Times Magazine.

  His work has won several major awards including the Peabody, DuPont-Columbia, and the Polk. His radio documentary on the housing crisis, “The Giant Pool of Money,” which he co-reported and produced with Alex Blumberg, was named one of the top ten works of journalism of the decade by the Arthur L. Carter of Journalism Institute at New York University. It was widely recognized as the clearest and most entertaining explanation of the roots of the financial crisis in any media.

  Davidson and Blumberg took the lessons they learned crafting “The Giant Pool of Money” to create Planet Money. In two weekly podcasts, a blog, and regular features on Morning Edition, All Things Considered and This American Life, Planet Money helps listeners understand how dramatic economic change is impacting their lives. Planet Money also proves, every day, that substantive, intelligent economic reporting can be funny, engaging, and accessible to the non-expert.

  Before Planet Money, Davidson was International Business and Economics Correspondent for NPR. He traveled around the world to cover the global economy and pitched in during crises, such as reporting from Indonesia’s Banda Aceh just after the tsunami, New Orleans post-Katrina, and Paris during the youth riots.

  Prior to coming to NPR, Davidson was Middle East correspondent for PRI’s Marketplace. He spent a year in Baghdad, Iraq, from 2003 to 2004, producing award-winning reports on corruption in the US occupation.

  Davidson has also written for The Atlantic, Harper’s, GQ, Rolling Stone, and many other magazines. He has a degree in the history of religion from the University of Chicago.