Listening

Radio listeners who had flocked to the all-holiday music format on KOST-FM (103.5) during the Christmas season just as quickly retreated to their regular stations once the last "Jingle Bells" and "Little Drummer Boy" had been played. That meant a return to the ratings pinnacle in January for pop station KIIS-FM (102.7), according to figures released by the Arbitron ratings service. KIIS, mirroring the Top-40 hits on its playlist, was the most popular station in the Los Angeles-Orange County market for most of 2012, until KOST began its annual holiday music festival in mid-November.

WASHINGTON - When President Obama implored Congress on Tuesday to take up the thorny issue of gun violence, he did so in the name of Nathaniel Pendleton Sr. and Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton, whose 15-year-old daughter, Hadiya, was killed just two weeks ago in Chicago. "They deserve a vote," he said in an escalating refrain echoed by legislators gathered for his State of the Union address. He recited other individuals and communities shattered by shootings, such as Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn.

In an interview with Katie Couric on Thursday, a few voicemails that Manti Te'o's "girlfriend" left him were played on the air. The voice of Kekua reportedly belongs to Ronaiah Tuiasosopo , who apparently disguised his voice. After the first message was played, Te'o said: "It sounds like a girl, doesn't it?" "It does," Couric said. Tuiasosopo apparently masterminded the hoax against Te'o by creating a fake online profile for a made-up woman named Kekua. Tuiasosopo then apparently talked to Te'o over the phone while pretending to be Kekua.

Selena Gomez appears to be coping with her possibly final Justin Bieber breakup rather publicly, crooning a cover of Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River" on Saturday at an acoustic concert in New York to benefit UNICEF. "I've kind of been through a lot these past couple of months, and it's been really interesting and fun at the same time - and weird and sad, but cool," Gomez said before launching into the J.T. tune, People reported. (For those unfamiliar with the song, which Gomez switched up to suit a lady singer, the chorus goes, "You told me you loved me / Why did you leave me, all alone / Now you tell me you need me / When you call me, on the phone / Boy I refuse, you must have me confused / With some other girl / Your bridges were burned, and now it's your turn / To cry, cry me a river.)

Wonder what a walrus sounds like underwater? Or what sounds a West European hedgehog makes? Or an ostrich chick while still inside its shell? The world's largest and oldest archive of nature's sounds is now accessible online, a digital treasure chest of bird songs and mammal calls familiar and exotic. It took the Cornell Lab of Ornithology a dozen years to fully digitize its Macaulay Library audio archives, which date back to 1929. The archive, which also includes videos, contains recordings of 9,000 species.

Shaq was wearing a Dodgers sweatshirt at the Clippers game, enough blue cloth there to double as a Dodger Stadium infield tarp, and he was shaking hands with Manager Don Mattingly . "That's a billboard on him," said Mattingly, who apparently didn't want anyone to know where he worked. A Clippers PR guy advised Mattingly not to get too close to Shaq in a picture that was being taken, lest he come off looking like a bobblehead doll by way of comparison. So much for the highlight of Saturday's Clippers game in Staples Center, although I did have the chance to chat with one of my favorite athletes, Lamar Odom . But first, encouraging news about the Lakers, and something that should make fans a little more forgiving when it comes to their poor team.

Dec. 21 marks end of the world, according to some interpretations of the Mayan calendar. Doomsday preppers may be stock-piling gas masks and Velveeta, but what about some tunes to go along with that paranoia? A playlist for the End Times from the Pop & Hiss crew: Skeeter Davis, "The End of the World" Yes, we know it's technically a song about how the world is actually not ending, despite the doom feelings after a breakup. A Mayan apocalypse might finally make us feel justified for acting as if it's all going to hell every time we're dumped.

Frank Pastore, 55, who died Monday from injuries suffered one month earlier when a car swerved into his motorcycle on the 210 Freeway in Duarte, discussed the possibility of being killed in a motorcycle crash the day it happened. Pastore, a former pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds and Minnesota Twins, hosted a talk show on KKLA-FM in Glendale every Monday through Friday until the day of his accident. On the day of his accident, Pastore brought up the fact that he might very well be killed in a motorcycle accident.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Eric Bledsoe is constantly being told to slow down some. The Clippers' third-year point guard has been instructed to stay in control and think the game through a little bit more. Fortunately for the Clippers, these reminders have begun to sink in. "My decision-making has gotten better," Bledsoe said. "You can tell that I haven't really turned the ball over like I usually have. I'm trying not to get out of control, not going too fast. Now I'm fast and in control.

When inspired - which, when he began to play a raga, was often - Ravi Shankar could make you think he had mastered the secret of creation. The famed Indian musician, who died Tuesday at age 92, was not a doer but a maker. His sitar seemed no ordinary musical instrument causing the air to vibrate but a musical 3-D printer producing notes that were more like elementary particles, with mass and electric charge and all those funny properties physicists call up , down , strange , charm , bottom and top . But Shankar's particles also had the one scientists don't talk about: soul . In classical Indian music, a raga begins with the choice of a scale.