Welcome to the dinner party download.

This is your icebreaker.

Here's a joke.

Two sausages are laying in a pan together,

and one sausage looks at the other sausage and goes,

Oh my God, it's getting hot in here,

and the other sausages looks at him and goes,

Holy crap, a talking sausage!

I'm Brendan Francis Nuneum.

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

the show that helps you win your next dinner party.

Our icebreaker this week came from Buckdown, frontman for the funk rock circus called The Mutator.

Later, we'll be talking with our guest of honor, award-winning author Sarah Swinian

Beinam.

But first, how about a little small talk?

All right, Rico, to sum up the headlines this week, a bunch of powerful people met in

Washington to help stimulate the U.S. economy, a bunch of powerful economic leaders

met in Davos, Switzerland to stimulate the world economy, and everyone else met with their

career counselor down at their local unemployment office.

But the folks at your dinner party will surely know all that, hopefully not too intimately.

So we asked our colleagues at Marketplace to tell us about some stories your guests won't

know. Patty Hirsch, senior editor here at Marketplace to tell us about some stories your guests won't know.

...