A month or two ago, I received an email from The Economist informing me that they’d started to offer a weekly audio version of their magazine to subscribers. I signed up, forgot about it for a while, then began receiving email from them telling me that this week’s audio edition was available for download.
Last week, I gave it a try and wasn’t disappointed. Their audio downloads are spoken word-for-word versions of each issue. Since my car can play mp3 CDs, I now have a great system for keeping up with a great magazine I never had enough time to read each week: I download each issue, copy each one over to a CD-RW disc, and listen to it to and from my drive to work each day. There are usually 70+ chapters, which pretty much fits into a week’s worth of commute. Each week, I overwrite the previous edition for the next week’s drive. (Supposedly, each CD-RW these days can be erased and rewritten 1000 times.)
At $8.99 for a 10-pack of CD-RWs at Target, this turns out to be a pretty cheap way to stay informed.
Truth be told, prior to using the audio edition, I don’t think I’d ever actually read every single article each week in that magazine. Now, no more.
In a way, I find listening to the politics and regional news a bit like reading a geeky version of tabloid magazines. What worldwide leaders are abusing power? Who tried to do what this week? I’d never noticed the dry humor in these articles as much when I was reading them, which I guess is a compliment to the readers. That they can make articles about governments, politics, and even economics worth listening to is saying a lot.
If I want to delve into an article, I can always turn back to the written word, but I think that keeping abreast of current events this way will go a long way toward keeping me an informed citizen of what’s going on outside my own country, something I’ve been trying to work on for a while.
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Tomi
This is great. I subscribe to the Economist magazine, but I feel like I never get around to reading it. I listen to stuff on my computer all day, but I had no idea The Economist offered this service. I’m excited to go download the content now.
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