Alabama, wow… Listen and despair. But then listen to act 2. Unrelated, but very funny.

Great Planet Money podcast on why lard fell out of favor.

RadioLab’s mind-blowing piece on ragtime pianist Bob Milne:

In this short, a neurologist issues a dare to a ragtime piano player and a famous conductor. When the two men face off in an fMRI machine, the challenge is so unimaginably difficult that one man instantly gives up. But the other achieves a musical feat that ought to be impossible.

Absolutely worth the 20 minute listen.

Fun Fresh Air interview with legendary stuntman Hal Needham. I have a new appreciation and respect for all kinds of stunts, but especially horse stunts. That’s on top of the appreciation and respect I already had! Definitely check out the Little Big Man stagecoach scene, and you can see the White Lightning barge jump that almost went very wrong at 7:34 of this video.

I have been listening to The Moth podcast for a little while now, and I love it. So far these are my favorites:

• Sherman “O.T.” Powell: Cocktails in Attica
• Christian McBride: The Gig
• Matteson Perry & Jeff Simmermon: GrandSLAM Stories
• Anthony Griffith: Best of Times, Worst of Times

Warning: the first three are fun and entertaining but that last one is absolutely heart-rending.

Fascinating Planet Money podcast on why the Tappan Zee Bridge in NYC is built in the wrong place (over one of the widest points on the Hudson River, at much greater expense than narrower points a few miles south, and to the detriment of the long-term health of the bridge).

Great, politically interesting Fresh Air interview with Fareed Zakaria, What Does A ‘Post-American World’ Look Like?

Ran into this recently, with a buddy of mine recommending an old Fresh Air episode that didn’t show up on the list of available episodes in iTunes. I wanted to get it on my iPod in with the other Fresh Air podcasts, rather than dumping it into the “music” folder (which would have worked, if you aren’t compulsive about where things go).

Download and install an MP3 tag editor that can view/edit extended tags. I use Mp3tag.

Download the old podcast you want, and open it in Mp3tag. Pick “extended tags” and create the following tags:

PODCAST = 1
PODCASTDESC = episode name
PODCASTID = episode URL
PODCASTURL = podcast subscription URL

You can look at the extended tags for an existing podcast to see sample values.

Save the tags, and then drag and drop the podcast into iTunes. It should appear where it belongs.

2010 winner of the Best Visual Illusion of the Year:

Robert Krulwich has more.

Why Can’t We Walk Straight?

Love this: Words. I just started listening to Radiolab, great stuff. (thx avital)

Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror nicely summarizes a great episode of This American Life, Ruining It for the Rest of Us. Conventional wisdom says that group dynamics trump the individual, but sociology professor Will Felps’ work suggests one bad apple can be surprisingly damaging. In his experiments, groups with one bad apple were up to 30-40% less effective than the untainted bushels.