Karen Duffin
Karen Duffin (she/her) is a co-host and reporter for Planet Money, NPR's award-winning podcast that finds creative, entertaining ways to make sense of the big, complicated forces that move our economy. She joined the team in March 2018.
Before that, she was a producer at This American Life. She also worked for several years as an independent producer, reporting stories for shows like Radiolab, More Perfect, Reply All, The Moth, Pop-Up Magazine, On the Media, and others. Karen has also been a Moth story coach and mainstage storyteller, and has taught radio at the Columbia, NYU, and CUNY Graduate Schools of Journalism.
Her stories blend in-depth reporting with narrative storytelling about everything from the death penalty to the world's largest treehouse, America's first major interrogation program, the Patriot Act, and San Francisco's "Spider-Man" burglar.
Before becoming a journalist, Karen spent several years as a speechwriter, working in more than 20 countries.
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More and more digital billboards are popping up around the U.S. Many are tracking us through our cell phones — similar to what happens online. Here's a close look at one in Times Square.
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How much does where you live affect your shot at the American Dream? An overlooked government program from the nineties tried to answer that question. Recently, it has been getting new attention.
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When Iraqi photojournalist Kamaran Najm was kidnapped by ISIS in 2014, his journalist friends and his conservative religious family had to work together to try to find him.
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Bad policing can get expensive when it leads to lawsuits and settlements. For smaller cities, that can lead to serious pressure to change things from the people who help foot the bill: insurers.
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There's an entire, powerful industry pushing behind the scenes for better police behavior--not with protests or picket signs, but spreadsheets and actuaries. -
A Norwegian plane that made an emergency landing in Iran is stranded, due to unintended effects of U.S. sanctions. The plane needs new engine parts, but importing them is prohibited by the sanctions.
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On today's show, we follow a commercial flight that made an emergency landing in Iran last December. And we discover that landing in Iran would be easy. Getting out – much, much harder. -
On today's show we answer questions about silver dollars, Venmo, and Brexit. Why? Because you asked! -
Hackers are an expensive headache for companies. But there might be a simple economic fix. -
Many websites make a business of posting mugshots, then charging those people to take them down, but it's hard to stop. The reasons have to do with how First Amendment freedoms are protected.
