Robert Smith

speaker

2,515 appearances 7 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 26 Aug

Robert Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 4.

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We have no grades, so our our graduation speakers were chosen from the people who wrote into the show.

Every week we've asked you to tell us something clever from a country you're in or have visited that we could maybe steal and bring back to the US.

And so many of you responded.

We picked our favorites, and they will be this year's graduation salutatorian, valedictorian, econo.

whatever else they call it.

First up, a listener from Japan with a clever lesson in the private use of public spaces.

What is that I hear behind you, Lang?

I called up Lang because he wrote in with an amazing fact.

For the most part, there is no street parking in Tokyo.

I live in New York City, so it is a constant battle to try to find a spot on the curb to park a two-ton piece of metal, especially for free.

But in the narrow streets of Tokyo, they've mostly banned it.

There's no on street parking.

No on street parking.

There's no place to park my car in front of my place.

No.

So most of the streets you seem to be saying in Tokyo are for driving.

If there is a street, there is somebody driving on it, there's no room to put a car.

Now there are a lot of old cities with narrow medieval streets where parking is almost impossible.

Although if you've been to Europe, they will try to park anywhere they can.

In Tokyo, the amazing economic part of this is not just the lack of parking, but how the government deals with people who want to buy a car.

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