It's no secret that I'm a real podcast junkie, with there being a little under a hundred of them currently in my iTunes playlist (but with many of those updating only weekly or sometimes even monthly, making it not nearly as chaotic a situation as it sounds at first); and some of the ones I look forward to the most are the rash of them put out on Friday afternoons, most of them recaps of that week's world events and designed to be slowly listened to on the weekends during spare moments. One of these, for example, is the instantly addictive The Dinner Party Download, originating from KPCC in southern California but distributed nationally through American Public Media, essentially a side project of the usually staid economic program "Marketplace" that was cooked up by two of their artsier staff members, Rico Gagliano and Brendan Francis Newman; it essentially promises to deliver the information that will help you impress everyone at whatever dinner party you might be attending that weekend, and with the sections of the show even named after typical parts of an average dinner party. So for "small talk," for example, the two run around the KPCC offices with a field recorder, getting reporters to dish up the strangest news item they heard that week; and then for the "cocktails," they relate an interesting item from history that occurred that week, then interview a hipster bartender either in person or by phone who has invented a drink to honor that historical item. And on and on it goes, serving up by the end news, jokes, trivia, and even a major interview with someone interesting each week as well, all in a tidy 15 to 20 minutes.

In fact, the best compliment I can pay TDPD is to confess that I plan on one day stealing their idea for CCLaP's own podcast, once I finally own a physical space for the center and can run around with a portable recorder during the week doing what they do; because that's what's mainly so fun about it, that you feel like you're a part of a goofy little group of friends all having fun on a Friday when you listen to it, gabbing and laughing about all the strange things that happened around you that week. It's a wonderful little way to end the week, a show that could easily be produced by just about any community center out there, and is something I encourage all cultural organizations to think about doing themselves, if they've been stuck recently for ideas of what to do with their own theoretical podcast.