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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Planet Money · The continent nobody owns & everyone benefits from (Summer School) · 26 Aug 2026 podcast

And we will get to that in just a moment.

But before we do, I want to go back and just talk about this concept of Antarctica.

Who owns

I look this up.

It is my understanding that the treaty says that Antarctica is reserved for peaceful purposes and scientific research.

Forty-six countries have signed it.

It's officially shared territory, no military bases or mining companies.

But how exactly is this enforced?

What would happen if a rogue country, and and some countries do have old claims on the territory, what would happen if if a rogue country decided they wanted to build a golf resort or a strip mining operation?

Can can anyone stop them?

I'm sort of amazed.

It feels like something out of the nineteen fifties when this treaty was signed.

You're talking about trust and and cooperation and gentle nudges.

It doesn't seem like there's many places anymore in the world, and maybe this is my view from the United States, where those things still exist.

There's enough trust to to manage something that is immensely valuable.

We will return with our professor in a moment, and we will visit this strange world of trust and cooperation.

We'll take you inside McMurdo Station, the largest human settlement and scientific base on Antarctica.

We had a listener write in who actually worked there in commerce for money, perhaps the only business person on the ice.

We'll also have our professor return and give us a tally of the economic impact of the seventh continent.

It's a lot.

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