It's the sound of Young America. I'm Jesse Thorn as we record this on a Friday afternoon. It's been just about

24 hours since the news broke across the world that Michael Jackson, one of popular music's greatest performers,

frankly of all time, passed away at the age of 50. Joining me to talk a little bit about Michael Jackson's life,

his music and his legacy are two talented music journalists, Oliver Wang from the Fantastic Soul Music Blog Soul Sides,

also a professor at Cal State Long Beach, right Oliver?

That's right.

And Jay Smooth, host of WBAI in New York's The Underground Railroad, proprietor of hiphopmusic.com

and the host of the popular video podcast, The Ill Doctrine. Jay, welcome to the show.

Yes sir, good afternoon.

It's great to have you as always, both of you guys. Let's talk a little bit about the moment that you found out

and how you felt about it, Oliver. You're out here on the west coast like me.

What were the circumstances in which you found out that Michael had passed?

I was working in a cafe down at Long Beach and was Wi-Fi'd in and was just keeping track of my email.

And even though I was going to be writing, was doing a little surfing on the side and started to see the new stories trickle out.

I mean, the first thing was that he had had a heart attack. It wasn't clear how serious it was.

Then by about at say four o'clock or so, the first sort of confirmations were coming out that he had passed.

What about you, Jay, out there in New York City?

I was probably like many people, both watching cable news and obsessively twittering.

So I was observing the contrast between how old the new media were handling the story,

which I'm sure will be an interesting conversation to revisit a little later on.

But as I was watching that go down, the waves of grief hit me much quicker than I expected to.

I've seen a lot of people say that they were surprised by how deeply it impacted them.

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