Much has been reported in recent years about payday loans and the huge fees and sky-high interest charges that borrowers can rack up if they use such services.

And though their demise has been predicted, they live on.

In this special World Cafe broadcast, we explore a side of Portland, Ore. with The Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy.

Hailing from New York, acoustic pop sensation Julia Nunes got her start posting videos on YouTube in 2006, playing covers from idols such as The Beatles, Ben Folds and The Beach Boys.

"I've figured out that there are more of them when it's a payday," photographer Alejandro Cartagena writes to me from Monterrey, Mexico, where he is based.

More carpoolers, that is — the subject of his latest project, which started somewhat accidentally. Cartagena was commissioned by a group of researchers about usage of a Monterrey street. "I wanted to see the car in the context of the street and the urbanscape," he explains. "That took me to find higher points of view, where I found these workers."

Geoff Nunberg, the linguist contributor on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, is the author of the book The Years of Talking Dangerously.

"My choice of words was not the best," Rush Limbaugh said in his apology. That's the standard formula for these things — you apologize not for what you said but for the way you said it.

Anyone who's visited an aquarium or watched "Flipper" reruns knows how happy those dolphins look when they score a nice fat fish. But they might not be tasting that fish at all.

That's the news from a study from researchers who tested the DNA of wild animals to see if they could taste sweet, bitter, and umami (or savory) flavor.

Our friend Liz Halloran reports that Mitt Romney "might just win in the South" today as Republicans go to the polls in Alabama and Mississippi to pick between the four remaining candidates for the GOP presidential nomination.

As she writes:

Hip replacements can do a lot of good, but they don't last forever.

To lower the failure rates of artificial hips, particularly in younger people, doctors have tried using metal-on-metal hip joints with larger heads.

But those metal-on-metal hips, which were supposed to be more durable, have their own problems.

Lucy Worsley works as the chief curator in several palatial buildings in London, including Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace and the Tower of London. In contrast, she lives in what she calls a "normal, boring modern flat."