The Radio Lab podcast is re-running HV’s “City X” by Jonathan Mitchell, which da Lab rats describe as:

A history of the modern shopping mall through perspectives of people living in a real, yet unnamed, city. Using a sound rich audio mosaic of observations and ruminations, all scored to Muzak, the universal mall experience comes to life, for better or for worse.

“TitleOfMP3″ (25:17 mp3):

[Mr. Massett explains why the media explanations of the mortgage crisis explain nothing.]

When the US credit markets began to blow up last year, every newspaper in the country served up two explanations for the mess: “sub-prime mortgage” and “collaterized debt obligation,” or “CDO.”

A sub-prime mortgage sounds bad on the face of it, so no problem there. But CDO has no obvious meaning. Only a few days ago I watched an NPR journalist try to figure it out from the words themselves (”let’s see, ‘collateralized’ refers to ‘collateral,’ so there must be a thing like a house or a car someplace, and ‘debt’ means, well, debt, and an ‘obligation’ means, um, you have to do something, right?”) The usual fudge is to drape the riddle with adjectives like “opaque,” “complex,” and “hard to understand,” as if these were explanatory principles. The phrase “complex and opaque financial instruments known as CDO’s” doesn’t tell you anything, really, but at least it sounds bad. Dern near as bad as a sub-prime mortgage. Moving right along, in other news…

The trouble is CDO’s were never meant for the average investor, or the average journalist. They are Wall Street inventions designed for the big players, investment banks like Citi or Merill or Bear Sterns. To understand them you have to think like an investment bank. This is no harder than thinking like a Martian.

In The Observer, Simon Napier-Bell, manager of bands from the Yardbirds to Wham!, details a history of adversarial relationships between musicians and their record labels: “The life and crimes of the music biz:”

‘Systematic thievery,’ said the Dixie Chicks in their writ against Sony. ‘Intentionally fraudulent,’ claimed US music lawyer Don Engel.

via WFMU’s blog.

Now here’s how to sell some stuff: HEMA - online winkelen. Takes about a minute for the party to start, so give it a little time.

Annie Leonard spent a decade researching where our consumer stuff comes from, how its made, who it effects, and where it ends up. Among the results is a 20min. video, The Story of Stuff (also in chapters on YouTube), made by Free Range Studios, the same folk who exposed The Meatrix.

via Puddles of Thought.

Anyone interested in anything related to starting and managing a successful radio series needs to read The Program Doctor’s Manifesto in The Transom Review: Jim Russell.

You’ve heard a Ninja explain podcasts, why not an 88 year-old granma on mashups– “Now, before we get our freak on, we need to match up our beats.” (found at WFMU’s BOTB):

Mad props and prunes to DJ Sue Teller (viral marketer?); check out her-space.

A couple weekends ago NPR bestowed the title of The Most Captivating Voice in the World to Iris Lettieri, the announcer at Rio de Janeiro’s international airport. Her “voice is so seductive that travelers have been known to miss their flights just to listen to her.” Here’s a clip from (lang: Portuguese) Iris’ website: