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KAI RYSSDAL: Every other Friday at the end of the program we take a break from the big economic news of the week. And we send Rico Gagliano and Brendan Newnam out to ask the Marketplace staff what they would really like to talk about. News that might have escaped your notice. Something you might like to bring up at a dinner party.
Rico Gagliano: Jeremy Hobson, New York reporter, what story are you going to be talking about this weekend?
Jeremy Hobson: Well, Air New Zealand has come up with the first ever matchmaking flight in the world.
Gagliano: Really. Flying from where to where?
Hobson: From Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand. And singles will be on this flight and they can mingle and then do whatever comes next.
Gagliano: It doesn’t seem that they thought this one through.
Hobson: Thirteen hours. What if you get seated next to somebody you don’t want to hang out with?
Gagliano: For one thing, and conversely, you know, doing the walk of shame is bad enough. Try doing it on an airplane.
Hobson: That’s right.
Brendan Newman: Phyllis Owens, commentary editor of Marketplace, what story are you going to be talking about this weekend?
Phyllis Owens: Well a lot more Americans are going to be saying, “What’s it all aboot?”
Newman: What are you talking about?
Owens: A lot of students are going to Canada to go to college.
Newman: Why?
Owens: Great universities, great campuses and a whole lot cheaper.
Newman: You know, I always thought of Canada as college anyway.
Owens: OK.
Newman: Because in Canada you just, you know, they like beer, they like donuts and they have free health care and they don’t have to worry about the future.
Newnam: And pot’s basically legal.
Gagliano: Stacey Vanek-Smith, senior reporter. What story are going to be talking about this weekend?
STACEY Vanek-Smith: Well, the British courts have been wrestling with the question of whether or not Pringles is a potato chip.
Gagliano: Weird. Who cares?
Vanek-Smith: They care, because in Britain they charge a tax on potato chips, which would mean that Pringles would owe them a couple hundred million dollars. Pringles is actually saying that they’re not a potato chip, because they’re only actually 42 percent potato.
Gagliano: By which measure, my couch has higher potato content than Pringles.
Vanek-Smith: Don’t move it to England.
Ryssdal: That is just the briefest taste of Rico and Brendan’s podcast. It is called The Dinner Party Download.
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