My new hobby: The Economist Podcast

I have long felt myself too old to use an Ipod. I owned a shuffle and then a 2nd generation mini, but I had hardly used them after the first few weeks of acquiring. Supposedly, the two-hour daily bus commute in weekdays is a perfect timing for plugging up the earbuds , as many others do -- but I always had a hard time finding a tune so good that I cannot resist the temptation to listen to even with a kinkling-kukling noisy background. Besides, what else could be better than a mindful emptiness -- good for some healthy daydreaming, maybe -- before or after a long day of brain stretching?

Things seemed to change recently after I discovered the Economist Podcast. The weekly journal is claimed to be the best by many "intellectual" readers -- economists, politicians, business analysts, or other individuals with an "upscale" taste of reading -- to quote a famous New-Oriental English instructor in China. Well, I don't know about that. But the Podcast is indeed pretty good -- the free audio files comes almost daily and I alway carry a full load of them with me on the go.