Welcome to the dinner party download.

This is your icebreaker.

Here's what I heard the other day.

This man walks into a butcher store, right?

And he goes with the butcher,

and he goes to the butcher,

and the butcher looks at him, yeah, I'm a gambling man.

And the guy, guys, all right, well, I bet you $50,

you can't touch that meat up there hanging from the hook.

And the butcher says, no, I'm not going to bet on that. The guy says, what, I thought you were a gambling man?

And the butcher says, yeah, but the stakes are too high.

I'm Brendan Nuneum.

I'm Rico Gagliano, and from 89.3 KPCC in Los Angeles, this is the dinner party download,

the show that gives you talking points and bomm most to help you win your next dinner party.

This week's Icebreaker came from Chad Brown. He's a DJ known around the world as the Lonesome Cowboy.

Thanks, Chad.

And later, we'll be talking with our guest of honor, Kevin Barnes, of revered indie band of Montreal.

But first, as with any dinner party, we start off with Small Talk.

You're going to be talking about the week's news at this weekend's party. Who better to tell

you which news is worth bringing up than the people who report it? So as usual, we took a stroll

around the Marketplace offices and spoke to some public radio superstars.

Renita Jablonski, Marketplace Reporter, an occasional host for the morning report.

...