If This American Life explained the financial crisis in an hour so that four million people improved on a written test on the subject, it's clear you can explain complicated material from near-scratch.

That's an inspiring goal, but it might be worth pointing out that the This American Life episode was extraordinary-- when I heard it, it seemed immediately obvious that this was the most impressively clear and efficient hour I'd heard in the course of a lot of years of listening to NPR.

I'm not saying it's so magical that it can't be equaled, I'm saying that it might be worth studying.