One of the problems with the mortgage mess that is still slowing the nation's economic recovery is that so few of us regular homeowners understand how everything went so bad so fast. I mean, I cover this stuff for a living, and it confuses the heck out of me, too.

You can't rely on the mainstream media to help you understand the mortgage meltdown, either. That's understandable. Newspapers cover news as it happens. Their stories usually don't have enough space to go in-depth into why something happened.

But there is a place where you can learn everything you ever wanted to know — and then some — about mortgage loans, bad lending practices, subprime mortgages and the reasons why the mortgage industry went so wrong: It's NPR, of course.

For those who don't know, NPR is National Public Radio. And unless they're doing one of their seemingly unending pledge drives, the people at NPR routinely present some of the best journalism in the country. Recently, "This American Life," one of the most popular NPR shows, ran a story called The Giant Pool of Money. I recommend that you check it out; You can listen to it online at NPR's Web site.

Alex Blumberg, a producer of "This American Life," was frustrated that no one ever really explained how the mortgage crisis happened. So he created an amazingly informative, and entertaining, one-hour show for his radio program. The show not only gives a terrific primer on the mortgage meltdown, it does it in a way that resonates: It focuses on real people, and the impact the mortgage and housing crashes have had on them.

It is compelling radio. You'll learn about people like Clarence Nathan. He worked three part-time jobs and earned a total of $45,000 a year. Yet a bank gave him a mortgage loan of $540,000. According to the story, the bank never even checked Nathan's income.

This happened all the time, of course, and is one of the main reasons that the mortgage industry is dealing with a record number of delinquencies and housing foreclosures today.

Be sure to check out the NPR show. It takes just one hour, but after those 60 minutes, you'll understand exactly how the mortgage industry got into its current mess.