Robert Smith: Test one two three. Mike’s calling Soon.

Robert Smith: Hello. How’s Go? Hey,

Robert Smith: doing good. I’m just laughing at your at your WhatsApp photo cleanly shaved, cleanly shaved. A few years younger, I imagine

Mike Williams: New York has been described as the epicentre off this pandemic. At the time I’m recording this, over 300,000 covert 19 cases have been reported in New York state on possibly 20,000 deaths,

Mike Williams: 20,000 deaths.

Mike Williams: You know, saying a number like that twice for impact to let it sink in. That’s a trick, Robert Smith told me. Roberts, a reporter’s reporter. Okay, some serious craft going on with this guy. I first saw him talk about storytelling in 2012 and he has been in a podcast called Planet Money for a long time. You’ve probably heard of it

Mike Williams: today. Robert is taking us inside New York City, and you’ll find out why money doesn’t actually help much during a pandemic. E.

Robert Smith: I was going to go up to the roof because you know it’s bed time here, and I have a family and we have a small apartment. But the roof is just like it’s this nightmare sounding. They says all these air conditioner units that for some reason or on and there’s all these sirens because we live close to hospital and there’s the highly often the distance. And for some reason it just sounded

Robert Smith: very ominous. And I didn’t want to present sort of an ominous view. No,

Robert Smith: right now, it’s not that ominous from my roof. It sounds like a hellscape are

Mike Williams: going to be honest, it from the outside. It sort of seems pretty scary with what I’m hearing is going on there in New York City.

Robert Smith: Yeah, I mean the facts are scary right on DH. It’s very scary for health care workers and obviously people afflicted by this. But it’s weird because at the same time

Robert Smith: people are out walking. There was, ah, marching band that came down our street today, this evening for no meal, apparent reason. It was just they were playing

Robert Smith: Stand by me, the old Benny King song, Yeah, and in a marching band. Everyone came to the window and cheered them on, and they just proceeded down the block.

Robert Smith: That’s cool.

Robert Smith: Yeah, so you know, it’s like any disaster. I suppose it’s like when you had the fire’s out there and everyone’s like is it a horror show Every moment you’re like No, it’s bad.

Robert Smith: But life goes on and

Robert Smith: people still have fun And still kids playing in the playing in the street And there was ah lightsaber battle before, before the march through two brothers dressed in like Darth Maul Or I don’t I don’t know. One of these were they weren’t dark robes and they had, like, fake light Sabres, and they fought each other in the street.

Robert Smith: I don’t know why. Because that’s that’s the thing is because we’re all staying inside. I don’t know the backstory of anything. Normally I’m the guy who would be like, Hey, what’s going on? Here are your marching man, who are you? But now they come into my field of vision and then they move on.

Mike Williams: You just gotta let those curiosities go.

Mike Williams: Absolutely. How long have you been in New York?

Robert Smith: I got here on

Robert Smith: 2003 April 2003. So I guess that’s 17 years now,

Robert Smith: which is the longest ever lived anyplace. I don’t really think of myself as a New Yorker, but I guess I am by default. Now

Mike Williams: what do you think of yourself as?

Robert Smith: That’s interesting. I was born in Canada. I mostly grew up in Utah. So if I had to, like,

Robert Smith: decide quickly, I would say I’m a Utah boy, Mountain kid.

Mike Williams: I always forget that you’re from Canada. How does that play with your identity? Because I know there’s a lot of kind of identity stuff between Americans and Canadians.

Robert Smith: You know, it doesn’t come. It doesn’t come up very often, I have to say. Although I was stressed out last week and people said, for some reason my Canadian accent was coming out a little bit. I was I was all sorry. I was like, Oh, I’m sorry. And they’re like, Sorry, Who are you? You’ve been in this country for decades,

Robert Smith: so yeah, it’s mostly Ah, secret. A secret thing that we keep in the back of our mind, waiting for waiting for the call. Right?

Mike Williams: So it pops out every now and then.

Robert Smith: E guess under stress, right? It’s like those people get an accent when they drink.

Robert Smith: I don’t know. I don’t know what it was. There was a lot of stress last week, but but that was just, you know,

Robert Smith: trying to do a job that requires peace and quiet

Robert Smith: in an apartment building where every single person staying home

Robert Smith: is difficult.

Mike Williams: How is your apartment set up? And how you finding that?

Robert Smith: You know it’s not bad. Every everyone sort of sticks to their own space. I have two daughters about teenagers are there in remote school

Robert Smith: in their own rooms. And I set up a recording studio in the bunk bed, which I can’t go to right now because the kids were in the book

Robert Smith: and,

Robert Smith: yeah, we all stay as far apart as possible and don’t really talk during the day, even though we silently pass each other in the back of the

Robert Smith: zoom video. But

Robert Smith: But, yeah, I think that’s that’s good. I mean, we were friends who have who have much smaller kids, and

Robert Smith: it’s really hard. It’s really hard to keep them focused on remote school, and they’re constantly

Robert Smith: saying, Mom, Mom, Dad, Dad! So our kids want to pretend this isn’t happening because they’re teenagers trapped with their parents 24 hours a day.

Mike Williams: Was that just a nor Ganic thing that happened, or did you guys talk about an action plan for how you would cope where you wouldn’t sort of interact much during the day.

Robert Smith: No, I don’t think it’s an action plan. It was kind of like

Robert Smith: I think it was an animal thing that everyone retreated to their own corner.

Robert Smith: Now that I think about it,

Robert Smith: I think we’re as physically far from each other.

Robert Smith: You during the day as is humanly possible, I am shoved against one end of the building. My wife’s at the other end of the building, and the girls have found nooks. So it’s sort of it’s, You know, it’s funny, because in New York one of the nice things about New York is we live very close to each other. I mean as you well know. And

Robert Smith: there is this kind of way where you pretend you don’t have neighbours and they’re not there because you’ll look up the window sometimes and there will be someone

Robert Smith: you know just getting out of the shower three feet away, across an air shaft or something. But there’s a There’s a New York urban living thing where you just pretend that they don’t exist and they don’t pretend you don’t exist, Okay? You don’t wave, you don’t make eye contact. That would be against the rules.

Robert Smith: And you just you have to do that because you’re living so tightly. So maybe maybe that’s helped with the family where you just

Robert Smith: you just pretend you’re in your own world and they pretend the same thing, and it works up now.

Mike Williams: Okay.

Mike Williams: Was there a point where you realised this whole thing is riel on? It’s happening. And you need to do something about it.

Robert Smith: This whole thing. Meaning that this virus thing is going to happen. And it’s really

Mike Williams: was there a moment where you went? Whoa. Okay, this is going to hit. And this is serious. And this is happening.

Robert Smith: Yes, yes, I do remember the moment it was about three weeks ago and I was riding the subway to work and obviously we’ve at this point

Robert Smith: 3.5 weeks ago, we had talked about Well, should we work from home or whatever when we should make it? A few more days with the radio studio and I was in the subway

Robert Smith: and

Robert Smith: everyone just had this this tense look on their face and then somebody would cough on the subway

Robert Smith: and everyone would look over at the person coughing and you were suddenly aware of how close everyone was to you, which I try to never do, because, you know, it’s that same New York figure. You’re pretending you’re not pressed up against someone, and people are coughing and sneezing and everyone’s looking terrified. And I’m just counting the number of stops.

Robert Smith: And I think that was the last day I took the subway. I was just like, This’s

Robert Smith: if the stress alone and everyone is just stressed out of their minds trying to pretend that this isn’t happening. And that was the last day I went to work. Last day it was on the subway and pretty much for New York. That’s when

Robert Smith: New York came to the decision around the same time.

Robert Smith: We’re not doing this. We’ll just stand home.

Robert Smith: But yeah, that’s the stress is bad. Like you know, it sze weird. It is weird to get stressed out because some runner comes up alongside alongside you four feet away and everyone’s just constantly plotting their way down the sidewalk so you don’t come within six feet of anyone else.

Robert Smith: Yeah, it’s a heavy level stress

Mike Williams: has that anxiety manifested itself in

Mike Williams: some other ways. As Well, I mean, you mentioned the accent, but any other things you’ve noticed about people’s behaviour?

Robert Smith: Well, I am cleaning.

Robert Smith: I am cleaning at a level I have never record clean that,

Robert Smith: and it’s it’s

Robert Smith: It’s not It’s not. It’s not funny. My gets terrifying because it’s it’s like I put on eye guards and gloves and I make him a bleach solution. And I started one into the apartment, and it’s just like every knob and and every fall soldier and the handles of toothbrushes. And then I bleach the bleach container, which is weird, but I’m like, Well, what if somebody touched the bleach containers? Then you have to bleach the bleach container, which is probably a level that I don’t need. But I just I’ve just so obsessive about it and I do it. I do it every day, and I just like,

Robert Smith: clean the whole house and even though we’re pretty much stuck inside and all breathing each other’s

Robert Smith: breaths and sort of thing, but I just can’t stop myself. So

Robert Smith: that’s what I do for fun. You know how you might

Mike Williams: e Well, I didn’t went on at that level where you come home from the shops and you clean your shopping. We’re not at that level. So and I had forgotten about that, that you would be in that zone where I had thought you meant you were cleaning as a way to just keep everything tidy. Because I know in our house we’ve kept ing super tidy, and we’ve got the carpet clean properly. And also because we’re spending a lot of time there as well. But cleaning for the sake of a cz part of your anxiety, eh? You normally a sort of tidy person if I can put it that way.

Robert Smith: No, I mean, I’m somewhat I’m somewhat organised, but this is a level I was you know, I would touch the bar, the subway, and then I would go eat food with that same hand. You know, it was not I was that a germophobe or anything, but no, I know when we shop, I come back and I got a dirty zone clean zone, and every item is bleached. And then if we can, we wait three days. It’s, you know, and and I got to say you know this. I don’t recommend this. This is not I don’t think this is doing any good. Except

Robert Smith: it’s just a measure of control. I think I like I feel calmer when I do it. So

Robert Smith: So what’s the scene there? Things have not the last. The last I checked in with Australia, people were shooting each other over toilet paper, but yeah, but that’s about as much as we heard before it became preoccupied with our own news.

Mike Williams: Yeah, Yeah, well, you know, that was that was weird. And then since that time people started stockpiling things and the shops just started running out of pastor and soups and then medicine. And And I thought of you, actually, because I thought, What if there’s a run on the banks? I guess we’re at now is the shock is sort of wearing off, and people are figuring out the world at the moment that their new world working from home. There’s a big push on flattening the curve. And it seems like

Mike Williams: you know the messages at the moment are Australia’s gotto got a handle on it,

Mike Williams: but the big thing he was cruise ships in Harbour City we had thiss cruise ships go where these people will let off a cruise ship, and the cruise ship had it and several people have died. And then all those people then jumped on a plane and went back to their cities around Australia. So the cruise ships is the big thing, and they’re investigating that. Yeah,

Mike Williams: yet the moment we’re hanging in and since doing this project, I just sort of

Mike Williams: turned off the news and just started to limit my news intake because there was a moment for a while there that was just sort of glued to it. And I was going to ask you, is someone who

Mike Williams: consumes a lot of news? How have you gone with with that? Just because this has moved so fast?

Robert Smith: Yes, it’s funny. I do have on. There’s a syriza press conferences that happen all day long that I just sort of play in the background. There’s the New York City mayor. And then there’s the governor of the State of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and obviously the president Trump press conferences, the vice president, pence press conferences, and if you total them up, that’s probably like six hours a day. It’s just like this drone in the background and, you know, I mean cover business economics. I’m tryingto like narrow in on how things are doing. You know, it’s it’s funny because it’s

Robert Smith: it is terrifying, just from an economic point of view. So that does distract me from the medical issues. It’s funny because in some ways, like you were mentioning a run on the banks,

Robert Smith: making money and protecting the banks is actually the easiest part of this whole situation. And that happened almost immediately.

Robert Smith: Money, it turns out, is the thing of which we have most of short. We’re short on everything else. It’s funny, right? We’re short on all these medical supplies. We’re short of temper. Where we’re short of space is to do our work and live and tow walk on the sidewalk. But money. There’s so much money being sent into the United States and the world economy, and it’s funny because it doesn’t do that much good, right? This’s going to change a lot of things about the way we think about business in the world. You know, where you’re just like, wow, even money doesn’t work. Normally, money is here is the last is the last chance to do something right. You’re just like, Okay, let’s pour a little it. Let’s throw money at the problem.

Robert Smith: This was the first thing they did was throw money at the problem, and it turns out that doesn’t really help things. So

Robert Smith: but maybe in the future, maybe, maybe soon, right?

Mike Williams: I saw a comment about America that because America can’t

Mike Williams: provide these essential resource is and

Mike Williams: the comment was that America is a failed state. And at the same time. Trump’s approval rating is going well. What’s the what’s the word on the ground about?

Mike Williams: About how people are thinking about America

Robert Smith: in terms of the politics. If you hated Trump before you hate him more now, if you supported Trump, you still support him. The politics seems frozen in an odd way. I think people are having

Robert Smith: questions about America right now because

Robert Smith: because you hear a lot of like, wait a minute. I thought we were the greatest country on the face of the earth. Why don’t we just make a lot of ventilators? Well, it’s more complicated than that. You’re like, OK, why don’t we just pay everyone to stay home Well, it’s more complicated than that. And they’re seeing what those of us who have covered this for a long time know which is, which is. The United States is

Robert Smith: part of this huge global machine, right? It’s not. There’s very few things that we make from beginning to end,

Robert Smith: and everything is supply. Chain and parts arrived just in time, and you can’t. You can’t get anything done. Nothing you own or make is made by one person or one company. You need everything in your life. You need 100 people to come together or 100 nations to come together sometimes to make that happen. And we’ve made it so invisible. We made it so invisible that you don’t you don’t appreciate it until

Robert Smith: anything disrupts this and you’re just like, Wait a minute, why can’t we do it? Well, we can’t do it because

Robert Smith: it’s super complicated. The most simple things in the world

Robert Smith: the eggs in the grocery store are complicated. It takes so much to get them there on time that we’ve forgotten about. So I think people are coming to realise that America may still be greatest, most powerful country on the face of the Earth. But

Robert Smith: but man like we’re just we’re just so close.

Robert Smith: Everything falling apart at all times e.

Robert Smith: And I don’t think it’s just our problem, you know, that’s That’s the world these days, and I don’t know. I go back and forth between thinking like That’s terrifying, but it’s also like there’s something kind of beautiful that we’ve managed to pull it off for this long,

Robert Smith: right? Like like you’re just like, Wow, a lot of things go right every day

Robert Smith: to get me my my breakfast or my newspaper or, you know, a T shirt or anything in my life, like so many things have to go right, and I never appreciated them.

Robert Smith: You worried?

Robert Smith: I’m a little worried.

Mike Williams: I’m a

Robert Smith: little worried,

Robert Smith: like we’re covering now. Ah, planet money. We’re doing a piece about small businesses and

Robert Smith: and I don’t know, it’s It’s terrifying. You think of United States is giant corporations, which is true, but a vast amount of our economy is small. Tiny businesses under 100 people. Someone put their life savings into something, a restaurant or a little manufacturing firm or, you know, a destination wedding person. I was talking to a wedding planner essentially, and you forget that like small businesses are always like $4 away from bankruptcy, right? It’s just like it’s a flow of cash in a flow of cash out, and

Robert Smith: I don’t know what they’re going to deal like. It’s

Robert Smith: There’s money coming from the federal government, but

Robert Smith: I don’t know a lot of these places. We’ll shut down. There’s just there’s just no backstop for which is which. Like, that’s why I admire business people and they take these chances. But to have them all failed at once,

Robert Smith: like that’s what that’s That’s what scares me. I think, Well, I think we’ll deal with the virus. But

Robert Smith: the massive failure of business I don’t know that that worries me.

Mike Williams: I mean, we got a similar thing here with a lot of small businesses, and

Mike Williams: that was the thing that caught me off guard was within two weeks within a very short amount of time, it became clear that

Mike Williams: this isn’t gonna work. Within two weeks, businesses were drying up. That’s the head room they had. But even even big companies as well here in Australia, the airline virgin, they’ve said, you know, we’ve got six months.

Mike Williams: And then we’re going to have to fold even the big companies as well.

Robert Smith: Well, I think we think of we think of business

Robert Smith: as a thing with your business is a thing, right? Oh, that’s a restaurant. It’s a It’s a space and there’s food and there’s chairs and you know those people who work there. But we figure it. It’s like a thing in the world, like a like a brick Owen object.

Robert Smith: But more and more, I’m realising that all all businesses are a flow. You know its relationships with the people who work for you. It’s relationships with your customers, its relationships with your suppliers. The money comes in, the money goes out things on credit. It’s just like a perpetual motion machine.

Robert Smith: And if you stop it, the thing is still there. You know, the chairs were still there. The computers are still the space is still there.

Robert Smith: But like the life is gone, you know. How do you How do you restart it? I I don’t know.

Mike Williams: Money is fiction. Businesses a flow.

Robert Smith: Things were getting deep. Things were getting deep here late at night in here.

Mike Williams: E don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know.

Robert Smith: Someone so much money and so little flow.

Mike Williams: You’ve covered other disasters.

Mike Williams: How does thiss order comparing your career of the challenge? How you cover it, how you think about

Robert Smith: it? That’s interesting.

Mike Williams: Maybe we should cover. You know what you’ve done? You were there during Sandy.

Robert Smith: Oh, yeah. I’ve covered hurricanes. Tornadoes, which are terrifying wildfires, earthquakes, various man made disasters, Plane crashes.

Robert Smith: You know, the recovery from 9 11 terrorist attacks.

Robert Smith: Yeah, I’ve covered just about all of them. And,

Robert Smith: you know, there’s just there’s obviously nothing that’s worldwide

Robert Smith: like this. So that’s Ah, that’s Ah, that’s a sobering thing. And And I guess there’s also like

Robert Smith: when I know when you normally cover a disaster, there’s the bad thing over there.

Robert Smith: And then there’s the place where it’s fine where you are. And then you try and get close to the bad thing, but not too close to the bad thing. Yeah, you just get as close as you feel comfortable with and is close to tell the storey and then you go back. Teo works fine.

Robert Smith: So here, like like I don’t know, is the bad thing is everywhere. And yes, it’s centred in the hospitals. But, you know, we’re under strict rules not to like,

Robert Smith: you know, some people are going into hospitals. I am not.

Robert Smith: So it’s all these sort of after effects and the fear and things that might happen

Robert Smith: for other disasters, like they’re sometimes scary, But they’re also like there’s rules to them. And I never like, felt lost right. Like there’s a thing happening. You turn on the microphone and you pretty much described the thing that’s happening.

Robert Smith: And this one. I don’t know it Sze everywhere, But you know, it’s nowhere. It’s very strange.

Robert Smith: This is so weird. And radio.

Robert Smith: I realised that, like 60 70% of the work we do is trying to convince someone to care about something right like you, like you’re like you’re in. You’re interested in something like, you know, for me, it’s the Federal Reserve creation of money for you. It’s a sausage sizzle, and everyone else thinks it’s stupid. And so you spend all your time energy going. No, no, no. This is This is so important and this is amazing, and this is You have to listen to this. That’s like, that’s the job,

Robert Smith: and we don’t have to do that anymore because everybody is interested in focused on this topic. And there’s just too many storey ideas for us, like we’re just covering a CZ many things as we can as quickly as possible. And you just don’t have to spend a lot of time going like Well, you know, thiss virus may turn out to be very important. Eso So in some ways, like we’re all super busy and we’re working hard, it’s stressful. But in some ways the job is easier because things happen every day. And then we talk about what happened.

Robert Smith: Yeah, that’s interesting. I will stay on the good side of things. Every place I went where there was a disaster, people were still

Robert Smith: trying to live a normal life and laughing. And there was moments of joy and inspiration and definitely seeing that in this too. Right? There’s still that, like

Robert Smith: it’s not unrelenting sadness.

Robert Smith: That’s great. That’s good. Yeah, yeah,

Mike Williams: I’m glad you mentioned that. I’m gonna hold onto that. Take the winds at the moment.

Mike Williams: Yeah. Yeah. It’s been weird to document something when you can’t go outside. And at times I don’t know if you felt this but I have gone outside, and I’ve seen some people still working

Mike Williams: council workers still doing things. And I just have this feeling of, um I just being gassed. Let here what is this, Really? Is this happening when you get that sort of conflict? Have you speak you’re talking about?

Robert Smith: Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Robert Smith: Right. Because it’s like it’s all those young adult novels that we read where you know, some sort of weird, repressive government tells you there’s something to be afraid of outside and everybody’s afraid of it. But there’s the young heroes, like, Wait a minute.

Robert Smith: There’s nothing wrong with this. Fine.

Mike Williams: Yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s kind of why I’m doing this project. I’m just checking. Just checking is really happening. You’re not,

Robert Smith: You’re not. You’re not crazy. It appears to really be happening.

Mike Williams: Okay, Thank you for being a friend. Robert Smith. You know, there was this cool moment during that chat where I thought to myself,

Mike Williams: Is this what it feels like to be in a planet Money episode on? Then I wondered if Robert was thinking Is this what it must feel like to be in a sausage sizzle documentary? I hope so.

Mike Williams: e mentioned Virgin in that discussion. And since we had this chat, Virgin Australia have gone into administration. Virgin of bankrupt

Mike Williams: planet money is an incredible podcast. One of the best. If whatever reason, you haven’t heard it yet. It’s a must. Listen, especially some of the work they’re doing right now. Robert, I want to thank you for that work. I want to thank you for your time. And I hope you (coughs) excuse may stay safe. Not Corona. Calm down something in my throat. Everybody relax.