If you, like me, had doubts Pakistan could ever put itself on the map in the jazz world, have a listen to Sachal Orchestra. Based in the Pakistani city of Lahore, Sachal Orchestra is causing some excitement in the world of jazz – and turning around itsr own fortunes at the same time.

For years, classical musicians in Pakistan have faced tough times. In addition to the issues everyone else in the country is facing, their profession all but died.

Most had been making music for the Pakistani film industry, but the increasing influence of religion in Pakistan and the easy availability of Indian movies, meant the industry collapsed.

Izzat Majeed, a UK-based entrepeneur, and jazz-lover, proudly showed us around the state of the art Sachal Studios where Sachal Orchestra records. It was his idea to bring back together Pakistan’s master musicians.

“When I started there were very few of them actually practicing, they were devastated and they were eeking out a living,” Majeed said.

Now the Sachal Orchestra is sparking something of a revival. Their version of “Take Five,” has led the original artist Dave Brubeck to call it “the most interesting rendition of the track he’s ever heard.”

Sachal Orchestra has released their first album, “Sachal Jazz,” with interpretations of tracks like “The Girl from Ipanema” and “Misty,” and of course “Take Five.” It’s causing something of a buzz.

“If we carry on like this we’ll achieve more and more,” cellist Ghulam Abbas said. “Our situation will just get better and we’ll be able attract a new generation to this music.”

It’s not just livelihoods this project’s given but hope for the future and a space for these musicians to express themselves at an otherwise difficult time for them and their country.

Of course it’s also provided some great music.

The severity of the quake, and now the radiation threat, are challenging just about every facet of life in the affected areas. Here’s one challenge: how do you explain the situation at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Station to children? Video artist Kazuko Hachiya has made an anime about this. His solution is to use the universal kid language of…bodily emissions. So in his anime, Nuclear Reactor Boy is unwell and flatulent. But he’s not — like his colleague in Chernobyl — actually pooping. Doctors/nuclear scientists give him medicine (boron and seawater) to cool him down and keep him from pooping. But in case he does poop, we can rest assured: he’s wearing a diaper. See the video here. Or a nice Scottish English version of it here.

This reminds me of one of my daughter’s favorite books, also out of Japan: Everyone Poops . It’s written by one of the country’s best-loved children’s authors and illustrators, Taro Gomi. There’s no plot, just a broad range of pooping practises. Endlessly entertaining.

In France, the government is battling newspapers and online outlets over probes into the practices of some politicians. OK, so that happens everywhere to a certain degree. But France, unlike many other Western democracies doesn’t have much of a tradition of investigative or muckracking journalism. The news media is, in the words of one journalist, too deferential to French politicians. But now, there are new online investigative players, led by Rue89, which has in turn enboldened some of the older news organizations. Investigative probes have uncovered corruption and embarrassed the Sarkozy government The politicians are pushing back. The government was recently charged with using the French Secret Service against the venerable daily, Le Monde. And Rue89 is currently the target of five separate lawsuits.

Last thing in the pod: American brewers are reviving a centuries-old type of beer, Russian Imperial Stout. Despite the name, this was originally an 18th century British-brewed beer, which was then exported to Russia. American brewers are borrowing some of the the notorious figures from Russian history to name their new brews: The Portsmouth Brewery in Portsmouth, NH once a year offers Kate the Great. The North Coast Brewing Co. in Fort Bragg, Calif. has been brewing Old Rasputin stout for 15 years. See a video and a slide show here.

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• Photos: Wikicommons, Portsmouth Brewery.

Writer Dave Tompkins will tell you how it really went down in this week’s pod (For one thing, Afrika Bambaataa was seven years old when Churchill died). Tompkins’ book tells the the story of the vocoder, from World War Two-era voice scrambler to Hip Hop toy. Along the way, it was used to give voice to daleks, the mortal enemies of British TV sci-fi hero Doctor Who. You may laugh, but for my generation of Brits, who grew up on Doctor Who, daleks were way scarier than Darth Vader. And just like Darth Vader, it was all about the voice.

Also in the pod: English teachers in South Korea don’t come cheap. Schools often have to fly them in from abroad, and then house them. The Hagjeong Primary School in Daegu is trying a cheaper alternative: a robot. The rotund yellow and white device — think of it as a benign dalek — is hooked up via teleconference to the Philippines, where an English teacher conducts the class through a video monitor. (I don’t know whether the robot’s “face,” a picture of a female, is a photo of the outsourced Philippino teacher, or just a generic image). The students like the robot and its teaching style, though it may be many years before its effectiveness can be measured. Check out this video.

Press freedoms ebb and flow around the world. We ran a report recently on the improved situation in Tunisia. In China, authorities relaxed limits on the foreign reporters before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Now, with the uprisings in the Middle East and a would-be uprising in China, many foreign reporters are hounded, even roughed up, by the Chinese government. We check in with our correspondent Mary Kay Magistad.

Finally, the “marketing genius” who transformed the fortunes of the German herb-and-spice flavored digestif, Jägermeister. This was a drink originally marketed to German hunters (Jägermeister means senior forester or gamekeeper). But how many German hunters are there? Company executive Günter Mast decided a rebranding was in order. The rest is barely-remembered history, an alcoholic haze of campus parties, fuelled by mixed drinks with names like the Jägerbomb, the Mexican Afterburner and the Dead Rabbit.

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Photos: Wikicommons,  Jason Strother

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October 16, 2009
Listen to Clark Boyd’s follow up to “What on your iPod?”

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Here are the artists and tracks Clark chose:

Featured artists and tracks:

1) Jarabedepalo — “La Flaca,” both the original and the new version from the album Orquesta Reciclando

2) O’funk’illo — Fiesta/Siesta from the album En El Planeta Aseituna

3) Los Delinquentes — Cicatrizando from the album Bienvenidos a la Epoca Iconoclasta