May 15, 2017

Audm

For the past several months, I’ve been complementing my podcast regimen with narrated long-form journalism via an excellent new service called Audm.

I first discovered Audm when I was trying to understand what was going on with the Republican party last year and discovered two stories by Alec MacGillis of ProPublica, which Audm recorded and made freely available on SoundCloud.

One of my favorite aspects of this service is its curation: it’s not really “Netflix for narrated long-form journalism”, which might prove a bit overwhelming for me. Instead, it gives me a weekly selection of a few hand-picked stories from a variety of sources. Some of them I’ve known about and respected for some time, like ProPublica and The Atlantic, while others like The Bitter Southerner and Outside Magazine are welcome new discoveries.

The range of issues covered is also something I look forward to. I’m particularly interested in understanding perspectives that are vastly different from my own, and I’ve found that Audm’s selection is especially suited to this. Through it, I’ve gained some insight into the minds of Brexit leavers, women who voted for Trump, and Krispy Kreme aficionados.

So, this is one of the few startups I truly hope sticks around–because until I started listening to them, I actually didn’t read much long-form journalism. In that sense, the service has given me experiences I otherwise wouldn’t have had, and for that I am grateful.

© Atul Varma 2021