Quick: What's a collateralized debt obligation?

As has become obvious over the last couple of weeks, many smart Wall Street types don't know the answer to questions like this one. Never mind that a whole slew of complicated investments are sending the nation's economy over a cliff.

But the folks at "Marketplace," the daily public-radio news show, aren't intimidated. A few days ago, they explained collateralized debt obligations with the help of the metaphor of a pyramid of champagne glasses. Complete with sound effects, two reporters described how the investments were supposed to work (money -- or champagne -- trickles down) and what actually happened (some of the champagne got replaced with, well, "Mad Dog 20/20").

It's business news … but it's also amusing. At the same time.

It almost doesn't compute.

"We work at that aspect of the show," said Kai Ryssdal, the host of the afternoon version of "Marketplace," heard locally on KPBS-FM. "We try to make it listenable, fun, accessible and entertaining in a lot of ways. That's a very conscious effort."

"Marketplace" has been around for about 20 years and now attracts around 9 million listeners a week to its morning, afternoon and

weekend shows. While it's impossible to know for sure until ratings come out in a few months, it seems likely that it may have even more listeners now that the economy is falling apart and people are paying attention.

"It's an incredibly important moment for the economy, for business journalism and for the show," said Ryssdal, who's been the show's host since 2005. "It's vitally important and essential that people understand (this story)."

Ryssdal -- his father is from Norway, hence the unusual name -- said the show purposely stays away from the CNBC-style nitty-gritty of bid-ask ratios, put options and oil inventories.

"People don't tune in to us expecting to hear up-and-down volume on the Dow. They turn to us for the larger picture, the background."

Still, the show often has to explain complicated topics, especially nowadays.

"The mechanics of this story are the hard part," Ryssdal said. "They're so esoteric and complicated, boxed up and separated

from normal finance."

Even during such complicated and high-tension times, "Marketplace" still manages to keep its wry tone, one that's more reminiscent of the BBC than public radio. (When the stock market goes up, Ryssdal recites "the numbers" as the peppy song "We're in the Money" plays in the background; a poor stock-market performance means a few riffs from "Stormy Weather.")

Among the show's staff, "there are no MBAs, no economic PhDs," Ryssdal said. "We're not interested in business news for the sake of business news. It's about why it matters for everybody else."

Ryssdal, who works in Los Angeles and is married with four young children, said the show will devote more time to monitoring the

effects of the economic collapse on ordinary Americans. (A little more on Ryssdal: He's a former Navy pilot, Pentagon staff officer and

member of the U.S. Foreign Service. Before joining the afternoon edition of "Marketplace," he hosted "Marketplace Morning Report" for four years.)

Two "Marketplace" reporters have been on a road trip, traveling the country and interviewing everyone from the mayor of Salt Lake City to the owner of a soul-food restaurant in North Carolina. Ryssdal will join them in St. Louis later this week.

The economic troubles "just matter so deeply," Ryssdal said. "It's so visceral. If you take the $700 billion bailout, that number just grabs people by the gut and makes people pay attention. It's about what's at risk and at play if things get substantially worse."

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There's a brewing brouhaha over a new ratings system that some critics think will hurt stations geared toward minorities.

At issue are Portable People Meters, pagerlike devices that track the radio stations people listen to and send the data to the Arbitron ratings service. (Arbitron provides the ratings that tell radio stations how well they're doing at reaching listeners. Good ratings mean higher advertising rates; poor ratings could spell the end of a station's format.)

Arbitron says the meters work well and will give it a better handle on the ratings than the antiquated current system, which requires randomly chosen listeners to write down what they listen to in a diary. The company is dumping diaries and adopting the meter system in several radio markets, including Los Angeles and Riverside-San Bernardino. (San Diego is scheduled to switch over in 2009.)

But owners of radio stations that appeal to minorities have been worried since some of their stations performed poorly in initial meter-based ratings reports. They claim Arbitron doesn't do a good job of reaching black and Latino listeners. In defense of the minority stations, the New York state attorney general's office has decided to take on Arbitron and its people meters.

Arbitron, in response, filed a lawsuit on Monday asking the state to mind its own business and butt out.

Randy Dotinga wonders what's worse than the Great Depression. The Greatest Depression? E-mail him at NCTimesRadio@aol.com.