This American Life did a terrific show on the origins on the subprime mortgage crisis, which is available for free as streaming audio here.  If you haven’t already listened to this, you really need to.

This week, they’ve followed up with “Another Frightening Show about the Economy.”  It’s not as earthshaking as the first, but it also explains a few key events going on.  (Free mp3 download.)

I’ve also been listening to the Planet Money podcast, which has been focusing on explaining the ins and outs of the current financial crisis.  What I like about this show is that they assume that their listeners are intelligent and informed enough to understand detailed explanations about the economy, but they don’t presume that you understand economic jargon.  So, for example, when a guest today talked about monetary and fiscal policy, they made him back up, and got him to say, “Okay, monetary policy:  that’s how you set interest rates, which the fed does by controlling the supply of money.  Fiscal policy:  how much you tax and how much you spend,” before going on to explain how all that related to the problems at hand.  If you want to understand, on daily basis, things like why European governments and markets are responding differently than US markets, this is a great show to listen to.