We love The Sound of Young America, Jesse Thorn's podcast and radio show delivering smart, unadorned interviews with important and eclectic figures in modern artistic culture. Recently Thorn had on Dave Thompkins, whose new book "How To Wreck a Nice Beach" traces the history of the now-ubiquitous vocoder from it's origins as a cryptography device in WWII to just about every rap and pop album in 2008 (bet you never knew FDR and Henry Kissinger used that shit!).
TSOYA's embeddable Flash player is acting like a shit, so listen to the Thompkins interview here.