01/11/11 Marketplace from APM: Marketplace

GM wants to buy back financing arm; Mixed feelings over Harlem's gentrification; The Big Book: In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race That Took it Down; Despite economic outlook, we're still fascinated by the super-rich; BP report recommends stricter safety measures; For-profit schools are struggling; Freakonomics: Should we pay for our trash?; How BP got 'In Too Deep'; Goldman Sachs promises more transparency. Listen to the podcast.

01/10/11 Marketplace from APM: Marketplace

Governor announces California's tight budget plan; Growing coffee in China's tea country; SLIDESHOW: Growing coffee in China's tea country; The price behind the choices we make; Cupcakes go to Wall Street; Should GDP measure happiness?; New bank fees are aimed at lower income customers; Can Verizon's network handle all the new iPhone users?; How much did the Fed make?; The Big Book: The Price of Everything. Listen to the podcast.

Jake Nickell and Threadless

The Santa Cruz Sentinel recently covered the recent book by Jake Nickell:

"Threadless" is the how-to book for crowdsourcing T-shirt designs. In it, Jake Nickell tells the story of his own amazingly successful company, Threadless, which he and co-founder Jacob DeHart started in 2000 with $1,000 in seed money. Without omitting the missteps and growing pains, Nickell describes how Threadless.com has grown in 10 years to become what Inc. magazine hailed in 2008 as "the most innovative small company in America." What makes Threadless a truly innovative company is the level of involvement of its online community. Designers upload their T-shirt designs to the Threadless website, where members of the community comment, critique and score them on a scale of 0 to 5. "Typically, a score of 3.0 and above [is] a great score," Nickell explains in the book. "But it's not just high scores that get printed. Sometimes we look for controversial designs that get a ton of zeros and a ton of fives."

See that Sentinel piece here. Jake Nickell was a guest on American Public Media's Marketplace recently:

NICKELL: An artist submits a design. It gets scored by our community of about 1.5 million people and the top scoring designs we actually print and sell. We pay the artist $2,000 and a $500 gift certificate and then royalties on reprint fees. And we come out with six to nine new designs every single week. Last year we paid over $1.5 million out to artists. RYSSDAL: So the business term, the nomenclature for this, is crowd-sourcing, right? You go out and you get these people to submit and then you crowd-source the evaluation. Did that come organically from your start in that online art community?

See that webpage here. Download that podcast here.

"Who's winning in the global race to economic recovery?" from APM's Marketplace

JOHNSON: No I think it's a very bad idea. You don't have a lot of fiscal space. You should ve using it to stimulate the economy in a more effective way. The structure of these tax cuts is just lining us up for exactly the same kind of stress test from financial markets. When they're done with Europe and some European countries have passed and can be regarded as an alternative safe-haven, those financial markets will turn again the United States. And in fact we've thrown caution to the wind in terms of our deficit and the increase in debt you get from these tax cuts. That will be held against us by those very same markets.

View the APM Marketplace story, here. Download the podcast here. See also: Starting over in Eastern Europe: Entrepreneurship and Economic Renewal,

"To give or not to give: It's all about the brain" from APM's Marketplace

JONAH LEHRER: The first thing to note about giving away money is that it feels really good. For instance, several brain scanning experiments demonstrate that donating to a worthy cause leads to activation in the dopamine reward pathway. It's the same part of the brain that's turned on when we have sex, or eat a slice of chocolate cake. In fact, there is typically more "reward-related" activity when we donate money than we receive an equivalent amount. Giving is literally better than getting, at least from the perspective of the brain. But this generosity comes with a catch. Yes, we have altruistic instincts. Still, these instincts come with some real blind spots. Consider the work of Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon. He told undergraduates about a starving child named Rokia -- she lived in a crumbling refugee camp in Africa. His students acted with impressive generosity. They saw her emaciated body and haunting brown eyes and they donated, on average, about $2.50 to Save the Children.

View the Marketplace webpage of the story, here. Download the podcast here. See also: Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Decisive Moment, the, Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average, (PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTIST)PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTIST BY LEHRER, JONAH[AUTHOR]Paperback{Proust Was a Neuroscientist} on 2008

"Kinect will be more than a video game system" from APM's Marketplace

The Kinect video game system is selling like crazy. 2.5 million units have already been sold, according to Microsoft, and five million are expected to sell between now and Christmas. It's going to be very significant to the video game industry but the technology of the controller-less controller could mean a lot to the world outside of gaming as well. Heather Chaplin is an assistant professor of journalism at The New School and author of the acclaimed book, "Smartbomb: The Quest for Art Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution." She says while the military used to be the source for breakthrough innovations, those eureka moments have shifted to the private sector, and the military watches it carefully. She joins us to describe the possibility of Kinect being used in a war zone.

View the Marketplace feature webpage on this story, here. Download the podcast of this show here.

11/29/10 Marketplace from APM: Marketplace

The Big Book: Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People; Amy Sedaris on 'Crafting for Poor People'; How to make a rusty nail wind chime; A little spending on science may mean big payout; Credit unions don't want too much money; Federal workers may not see pay raises for two years; Keeping countries in check at U.N. climate summit; Punishing private investors may delay economy recovery; Getting the facts directly from the Black Friday crowd; On mailing champagne flutes

Download the podcast, show here. See also: Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, The Book of Liz, The Party Dress Book: How to Sew the Best Dress in the Room

"Freakonomics: Do wine experts or prices matter?" - from APM's Marketplace

DUBNER: That is a wonderful theory and sometimes it works -- in wine, it doesn't. Now there's a group of academic researchers that publishes the Journal of Wine Economics. I am not making this up. And there's a paper called, "Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?" It's based on a big study of 6,000 blind tastings, all kinds of people, all kinds of price points of wine. The conclusion was this: people enjoyed the more expensive wines slightly less.

View the APM Marketplace webpage on this particular story, here. Download the podcast for this Marketplace episode, here. See also: Choosing My Religion: A Memoir of a Family Beyond Belief (P.S.), SuperFreakonomics, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, SuperFreakonomics, Illustrated edition

"Wide gaps in well-being across the U.S." from APM's Marketplace

BROOKE: You can see over here on the left that even in this sort of Class C strip mall everything's open. There isn't an empty storefront there that I can see. No, I can't see a single one. This contrast is documented by a group called the American Human Development Project. It's been looking at income, longevity, and education in congressional districts across the U.S. as part of its new assessment of well-being called "The Measure of America." The group calculates that in terms of well-being people in the Ninth District of southwest Virginia are 20 years behind the national average. The richer, healthier, more educated Northerners are where the country will be decades from now. Crossing Virginia is like taking a time machine from the past to the future. Sarah Burd-Sharps is the report's co-author. SARAH BURD-SHARPS: We're trying to get people to recognize that having groups falling badly behind in this country is not good for those groups themselves, but it's also really bad for our competitiveness and for our future. In Virginia, a child born today in the poor district is likely to die eight years before a child born in the richer district. In the north, typical household income is more than double, $51,000 compared to $21,000 a year.

View the APM Marketplace full feature story, here. Download the podcast here. See also: The Measure of America, 2010-2011: Mapping Risks and Resilience

11/17/10 Marketplace from APM: Marketplace

REICH: Tax cuts for the rest of us; LETTERS: Healthy eating, the Bush tax cuts; This old house may be the greener one; Would a foreclosure fund work?; BOOK EXCERPT: "Dealings" by Felix Rohatyn; Tech companies taking chances with new ventures; A power broker and his 'Dealings'; Economic growth is necessary to cut national debt; GM gets ready to go public.

Download the podcast here. See also: Dealings: A Political and Financial Life, Bold Endeavors: How Our Government Built America, and Why It Must Rebuild Now, The twenty-year century: Essays on economics and public finance, King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone

"Banks that support communities" from APM's Marketplace

Economic analyst David Korten is author of the book "Agenda for a New Economy." KORTEN: A bank that offers real financial services is very different than a predator bank that is basically trying to extract as much wealth as possible out of the community. Note that Bremer is a for-profit bank. So far, not so weird. But listen to its structure: 8 percent of Bremer is owned by its employees -- its tellers, loan officers, security guards. And the other 92 percent of the bank is owned by -- get this -- a charity. The Bremer Charitable Foundation takes profits and gives them back to the communities the bank serves as grants. There were about $23 million in Bremer grants last year, including $35,000 to Community of Care, a North Dakota non-profit that helps older people like Louise Flemmer get to a doctor's appointments.

View the APM Marketplace feature story here. Download this episode of APM Marketplace here. See also: When Corporations Rule the World, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, The Post Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, Globalizing Civil Society (Open Media Pamphlet Series, 4)

11/08/10 Marketplace from APM: Marketplace

BOOK EXCERPT: 'Sunset Park: A Novel'; The rough road ahead for young people; Supreme Court to rule on arbitration clauses, class-action lawsuits; The easier, safer rides of the future; E-books, music... and diapers?; Need another distraction? Social networking in your browser; The fall of the American consumer; Happy Birthday (cake), Mr. President.

Download the podcast here. See also: Invisible, The Invention of Solitude, The New York Trilogy (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

11/05/10 Marketplace from APM: Marketplace

TEXT OF INTERVIEW KAI RYSSDAL: Hurricane Toma is delivering yet more trouble to Haiti today. Officials in Port-au-Prince say three people have died in the storm. It's just the latest in a year of tragedies for the country. There was January's devastating earthquake and the recent cholera outbreak a couple weeks ago as well. Haitian-born novelist Edwidge Danticat lives in New York City now. Her new book, "Create Dangerously," is about that life as an immigrant and an expatriate writer and what it's like to make art out of a country in chaos. Today on our series Art of Money -- what artists and other see when they look at the economy -- the culture of Haiti. Its music, its literature and its paintings, and what that all means to the Haitian people, and how they get by. When we spoke, I asked Edwidge Danticat to describe what it is like when people see Haiti for the first time. EDWIDGE DANTICAT: You know, when you take a group of students and they get there at the airport, it's almost suddenly tehnicolor because it's art everywhere -- the tap-taps, the transportation...

The full transcript of the show can be found here. The podcast can also be found here. See also: Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (The Toni Morrison Lecture Series), Haiti Noir (Akashic Noir), An excerpt from a lecture "Create dangerously": Given at the University of Uppsala in December 1957, Eight Days

10/25/10 Marketplace from APM: Marketplace

Making the candidate's message clear; BOOK EXCERPT: 'Stealing the Mystic Lamb'; The most wanted stolen art in history; Farewell, Sony Walkman; SLIDESHOW: The most wanted stolen art in history; Jobs of the Future: Middle class struggles with changing job market; TRIVIA: What do you know about the middle class?; What's your Job Future?; State university faculty, degree programs on chopping block; Big rig trucks may be subject to fuel efficiency standards; The pros and cons of a foreclosure moratorium.

Download the podcast here. See also: Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece, The Art Thief: A Novel, Stealing the Mystic Lamb, Art and Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World

"Question: Is $250,000 rich?" from APM's Marketplace

TED KLONTZ: Ben Franklin said, he asked the question who is rich? And he answered that by saying he who is content. And then he asked the question, who's that? And he said nobody. That's Ted Klontz. He's a financial psychologist and author of "Mind Over Money." Through today's show we'll be hearing from him and from Robert Frank, who writes the wealth report blog for the Wall Street Journal. We started with Frank and the question: Is $250,000 rich?

Download the podcast here. View the APM Marketplace feature story here. See also: The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge: 5 Principles to Transform Your Relationship with Money, The Ten Commandments for Extraordinary Relationships, Wired for Wealth: Change the Money Mindsets That Keep You Trapped and Unleash Your Wealth Potential

10/13/10 Marketplace from APM: Marketplace

Read chapter one of Elmore Leonard's newest book "Djibouti," published by Harper Collins. The novel follows an award-winning documentary filmmaker to the Horn of Africa to film Somali pirates at work. As of today, there are 21 ships being held by pirates off the coast of Somalia. That's the stretch of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean leading into and out of the Suez Canal, so it's a pretty busy piece of water. About 22,000 ships cross it every year. Billions of dollars worth of cargo. Hundreds of billions of dollars, quite possibly. Tempting targets for people with guns, boats and little to lose. The Somali pirates are the focus of the main character, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, in Elmore Leonard's new book "Djibouti." Kai Ryssdal spoke to Leonard about the book. They also talk about why he's drawn to bad guys (they're not all bad, especially if they're played by George Clooney) and why he probably won't write a crime novel about Wall Street anytime soon.

Listen to the show, here. Read the excerpt here.

"A look back at TARP" from APM's Marketplace

Jonathan Alter is the author of the new political book "The Promise." JONATHAN ALTER: Barack Obama told me in an interview that he knew that it would be toxic politically for him to back the TARP bailouts, but he also knew that it was necessary to prevent a depression. Even the House Republican Leader John Boehner, who now decries TARP, pleaded with his members to vote for it. JOHN BOEHNER: If I didn't think we were on the brink of an economic disaster, it would be the easiest thing in the world to me to say no to this. But I believe the risk in not acting is much higher than the risk in acting. But Congress wasn't swayed, and voted TARP down at first. By the time a package was passed, buying up mortgages would have been too time-consuming. So the government decided to temporarily pump money directly into the banks. And Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics says that turned out to be a slam-dunk success.

Download the podcast here. See the full APM Marketplace feature story here. See also: The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War, Charlie Rose with Mark Halperin & Jonathan Alter; Robert Altman & Neve Campbell; Orlando Bagwell & Noland Walker (January 16, 2004)

"What you should and shouldn't drink" from APM's Marketplace

Dave Zinczenko is the editor in chief of Men's Health magazine. He's also the author of the latest installment of the "Eat This, Not That!" series, called "Drink This, Not That!" Dave, welcome to the program. DAVID ZINCZENKO: Kai, it's great to be here. RYSSDAL: Any big surprises in this book, Dave? ZINCZENKO: I mean, how about a vitaminwater with as much sugar as two Good Humor Eclair bars? That's what you get with a Snapple Antioxidant Water. RYSSDAL: See, that's crazy. ZINCZENKO: It's a lot. Traditional Lobsterita -- this is a margarita Red Lobster with a twist -- I mean, this is the equivalent of having two Wendy's quarter-pound singles. RYSSDAL: I read some great statistic in a letter from the editor that you wrote in Men's Health not too long ago: American men drink 460 more calories per day than they did 20, 30 something years ago.

Download the podcast show here. View the full feature story here. See also: Cook This, Not That!: Kitchen Survival Guide, Eat This Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution, Eat This, Not That! 2011: Thousands of easy food swaps that can save you 10, 20, 30 pounds--or more!, Cook This, Not That! Easy & Awesome 350-Calorie Meals, Eat This Not That! Restaurant Survival Guide: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution