I was admittedly skeptical of The Economist's podcast when I first downloaded it. First and foremost, I'm partial to Marketplace podcasts.

More importantly, I'm not a huge fan of The Economist print edition. Save the occasional awesome article, The Economist kind of makes me want to gouge my eyes out with an ice pick. Despite the depth and quality of The Economist's objective content, its advocacy journalism is really annoying sometimes. It's pretty similar to Fox News' reporting style in many ways.

On top of that, they refuse to print the authors of articles, claiming:

"It is written anonymously, because it is a paper whose collective voice and personality matter more than the identities of individual journalists."

Any paper will get its character from the content of articles with or without the authors' names printed. But when the authors are printed, someone can be held accountable!

So, you can see why I didn't have high hopes for the podcast. But -- I actually ended up really liking it. They basically take their best articles/opinions and condense them down to a seven minute podcast each week. It's great because all I have to endure is seven minutes of the haughty Economist attitude to get much of the depth of their objective reporting. Granted, they certainly can't cram everything into seven minutes, but they do make mention of the other articles not on the podcast. If one of them really piques my interest, like "In Praise of Mess", I go grab it online.

So, if you're looking for a way to stomach The Economist, definitely check out this podcast.