The Economist has long been your Podthinker’s news source of choice, not just because it’s actually well-written, nor because its covers are often hilarious, nor because of its dedication to internationalism, though any one of those qualities would constitute more than enough to recommend it. No, what’s particularly, especially, near-uniquely choice about it is its sheer variety. Between no other pair of glossy covers does one discover nearly as much different stuff as is to be found between The Economists‘. Perhaps not everything inside will be grippingly fascinating to everyone, sure, but it’s well-nigh guaranteed that something will be. Top that, Readers’ Digest.
It’s a pleasure to report that The Economist‘s podcast [iTunes link] upholds the very same ethos of subject diversification. That’s not so say that the show is dissolutely all over the place, anchored as it is by a few recurring segments. The most common and straightforward of these is “From the Paper”, a selection of articles from the week’s audio edition: leaders, financial stories, book reviews, the paper’s world-famous obituaries, that sort of thing. Other episodes offer more focused content, such as interviews with the likes of U.K. shadow schools secretary Michael Gove [] and geek-stuff publisher Tim O’Reilly [], fireside chats (now on hiatus) between editors Christopher Lockwood and Adrian Woolridge and reports from The Economist‘s many, many correspondents on such handy topics as how to get around and do business in Thailand. (Turns out you shouldn’t bow. Just shake hands.)
As a longtime Economist reader, your Podthinker can’t help but be delighted at hearing the paper’s distinctive, plummy house style read out loud, especially by actual Englishmen (and sometimes Englishwomen). Non-Economist-readers’ mileage may vary, but the information provided is still pretty darn solid. It helps if you care as much about the United States’ financial bailout plans as El Salvador’s presidential election as the G20 summit as what Togo’s finance minister happens to think about cloud computing. If you don’t, you’ll still find one out of four or five episodes fascinating; if you do, welcome to paradise.
For a publication so slick, proper and professional, though, its podcast can be surprisingly rough-edged. There aren’t many major problems, but the devil, as always, is in the details: choppy editing, sometimes iffy sound quality, hiss from the voice that’s coming in over Skype. (C’mon, even GarageBand can attenuate that!) But, for fellow Economist addicts out there, this sort of thing can be overlooked with time. The fact of the matter is that this podcast taps the same source of information as does the newspaper, magazine, newsmagazine — whatever you want to call it — without which we can barely endure seven measly days in a row unless we’re prepared to suffer irritability, violent tremors and — probably — a spastic colon. Perhaps we should simply be grateful that they don’t charge for it. After all, where else can one learn if and when Indonesia is at a crossroads?
Vital stats:
Format: news variety
Duration: 5m-30m
Frequency: not quite daily
Archive available on iTunes: last 20
[Podthinker Colin Marshall knows how best to store his current issue of The Economist: in his back pocket, vertically folded once. If you know a better way, tell him at colinjmarshall at gmail. Discuss Podthoughts on the forum here or submit your own podcast for the next by-Max-Funsters column here.]