“I used to read The Economist…” April 6, 2008
Posted by James Webster in : media , add a comment“Now I just listen to The Economist podcast.” (with apologies to Larry Ellison).
To be honest I have not been able to get into the habit of reading The Economist every week and these days I only seem to pick up a copy if I am flying or catching a train somewhere. However I have been a subscriber to The Economist’s podcast feed for quite a while now. The ‘From the Paper’ podcast summarises a few of the key articles in the edition of the paper for the coming week. The Economist’s podcast range has since been expanded to include: ‘The World Next Week’ (produced jointly with the Council on Foreign Relations), analysing the coming week’s events in international politics; ‘Democracy in America’, looking at the 2008 race for the American presidency; and ‘Certain ideas of Europe’, which considers the latest developments in pan-European relations. It’s like getting my own weekly briefing from my personal foreign affairs adviser!
A couple of times recently the regular guy who reads ‘From the Paper’ must have been ill or on holiday and a substitute voice has been used. But those voices are just plain wrong! ‘Theatre of the mind’ has worked its magic to the extent that the internal voice I hear when I do happen to read The Economist newspaper is the same as that of the clipped, slightly aristocratic-sounding person behind ‘From the Paper’.
Once again, get The Economist podcasts here.
Via a colleague; Gresham College “is an independently funded educational institution” in London. Past lectures can be viewed online.