See if you can tune in the signal…
Lately, I’ve heard it said a couple of times on NYT Audio that their content — or some of their content — is free to nonsubscribers.
It might just be the blogs, like “Matter of Opinion,” and “The Ezra Klein Show.” I’m wondering whether it might also apply to the newspaper’s other content (like The Daily and Headlines), and to some of the stuff they carry from other publications, such as The New Yorker.
This matters to me because so much of what I read and hear — and would like to share with you, so we can have a fully informed conversation about the things I’m thinking about. Which is, you know, what a blog is about — unless I just cut off comments and write a “personal journal” that I simply allow others to read. Or not. Which I’ve thought about.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that I include quotes to an extent that some might say goes beyond Fair Use (I would not say that, but we all have our own views, don’t we?), too often the conversations don’t go any deeper than the headlines, which means they don’t go beyond the usual conversations people have about politics or culture or anything in this social media age. And every statement is drawn directly from the current talking points from the two sides — the only two sides too many people perceive.
And if we don’t get beyond that, there’s little point to blogging.
So… let’s see if this works. Here are links to some recent items from NYT Audio. I initially tried to give you something from each category — blogs, opinion and news content from the paper (some read by the writers, some by ersatz voices), and some from other sources.
I’ve also tried to share a variety of topics. But after the first two or three, I ran into a bit of a challenge. Read on:
- David Brooks: Maybe Bernie Sanders Is Right
- The Daily: An Immigration System Most Americans Never Wanted
- NYT: What Does College Football Have to Do with College Football? My answer, of course, is “nothing.” But you might enjoy listening.
OK, that was more complicated than I thought. I couldn’t even find links to most of the dozen or so items I wanted you to listen to. And I’m pretty sure that the last of those three goes to the text content, not the audio. NYT Audio doesn’t give, on the app, direct URLs to specific content. So I was trying to grab those from the browser on my Mac. And even then, I couldn’t find links to outside content that appears on the app, such as The New Yorker and Foreign Policy.
Bottom line: You may have to download the app onto your phone or other device. It’s obvious they want everyone to do that. It’s worth the effort if they give you free access, because there’s good stuff there on a wide ranged of topics and interests. Here’s where you download it.
You would be rewarded by being able to listen to some of these other pieces I was originally going to link to here:
- Carlos Lozada: Stop Pretending Trump is not Who We Are
- The New Yorker: The Improbably Rise of JD Vance
- The Culture Desk: Why Was 1999 the Best Movie Year (No, that’s not a typo; the second 9 wasn’t supposed to be a 3. But as silly as the proposition sounds, it’s an interesting listen while walking.)
- NYT Interview: Al Pacino is Still Going Big
- Foreign Policy: What a U.K. Labour Win Means for the Global Left
- Hard Fork: Apple Joins the A.I. Party, Elon’s Wild Week and HatGPT
- The Daily: A Conversation with President Zelensky
Or maybe you’d be thus rewarded. I can’t tell from my end, since they recognized me as a subscriber. But still, if you have any success with anything I’ve offered above, please let me know. I’d really like this blog to feature deeper and more intelligent discussions about … whatever the subject at hand might be… than are likely to be fueled by free media…
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