Welcome to the dinner party download. This is your icebreaker.

Okay, here's a joke. So a pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel sticking out of his pants,

and the bartender says, what's up with that steering wheel sticking out of your pants?

And he says, arg, it's driving me nuts.

I'm Brendan Noonam.

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 bamos to help you win your next dinner party.

This week's Icebreaker came from our guest of honor, Aaron Aitz, of the band, Iran.

We'll be speaking

with him later, 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 office and spoke to our colleagues at Public Radio's

business show, Marketplace.

Stacey Vanek-Smith, senior reporter for Marketplace, what is your story of the week?

Basically, Disney and Verizon are teaming up to offer this application on your cell phone

where you could use your cell phone inside the park to check

and see if there's a long line at Space Mountain or see if you could make reservations at the

pizza place inside the park. But there's sort of this sinister angle that Disney will like track you

wherever you go. Sort of a big brother Mickey Mouse kind of a thing. What is it about Disney that is simultaneously so happy and also just so demonic and evil?

Remember they opened up that strange planned community that they had all these weird rules,

like you couldn't park your car out on the street and you had to trim your lawn.

And there's a very fine line between fascism and fun.

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