The Economist is the most efficient way to keep up with the world and – more importantly – an endless source of good puns.
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Allow me to make an uncontroversial statement with a lot of unnecessary caps: I AM A HUGE FAN OF THE ECONOMIST!
Huge!
And I’m not a fan in the douchey “Hey I ‘read’ The Economist on the stationary bike so everyone thinks I’m learned” kind of way.
But more the “Arnold Schwarzenegger bro-shake with Carl Weathers in Predator” kind of way.
For real, though, here is my reaction every week when I receive the newest digital edition of the weekly in The Economist App. 1
I know not everyone (Eg. Ben Shapiro, Elon Musk) shares my feelings on The Economist.
So, to take on the “fair and balanced” mantle that Fox News has now abandoned, here are some notable drawbacks of this 176yr old weekly publication:
- It’s wordy AF, with each issue clocking in at ~100 pages @ font 9 = 50,000k words (equivalent to a short novel).
- A lot of douchebags on hotel gym stationary bikes read it. 2
- It’s British.
- The publication can never stop f**king reminding us it was founded in opposition to the trade restrictionist Corn Laws of the 1840s.
- And – THIS IS A BIGGIE!!! – it originally supported the Iraq War.
But, devil’s advocate aside, let me list 5 reasons why The Economist is indispensable.
1. Curator-In-Chief
There’s too much got dang content in this world.
I only caught up with Billions last week. And my super shredded friend just recommended the Ben Greenfield podcast, which is like 100hrs of audio I need to power through!
Media options are infinite.
As Tech writer Ben Thompson puts it, “in a digital economy, limitless supply means that users gain value from discovery and curation.”
When it comes to “keeping up with the news”, you can’t do much better curating than the The Economist. The magazine’s breadth of coverage means you’ll have a worldwide smattering of what’s important across politics, business, finance, culture, media and Britain (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). 3
If you lean on The Economist for your information consumption, you can partially avoid the outrages of the 24hr news cycle. This alone might be worth the subscription (as long as you do, in fact, stay away from daily print). 4
Even if the coverage keeps you wanting, Game Theory suggests you should read it anyways. Since The Economist is read by other time-strapped “decision makers”, the subject matter serves as a quasi-shared knowledge base.
Or as some dude on Quora (cynically) puts it: “Welcome to The Economist: a consensus publication on things most people don’t understand that is great because everyone thinks it’s great.“
Social proof at its finest!
2. Serious Hype-Men
Speaking of social proof, The Economist is not shy about plugging the fact that “those in the know” read it. This truism can best be relayed by reviewing two famous ad campaigns the magazine has run.
The schtick of these seemingly banal ads is to put the viewer in the position of the putz sitting in coach next to Kissinger or the younger putz standing in the elevator next to Schmidt and to ask: “if you had 10 seconds with one of the 25 most powerful people in the world, what would you talk about?”
Clearly, if you want to have conversational ammo, you better read The Economist.
While I appreciate the psychology behind these ad campaigns, I can tell you right now I wouldn’t need The Economist to strike up a conversation with either Kissinger or Schmidt.
Here is how I would smoothly navigate these hypothetical scenarios.
Scenario 1 (Sitting in coach on an airplane):
Me: Holy sh*t, you’re Henry f*cking Kissinger!
Henry f*cking Kissinger: That eeeeez correct.
Me: So, Vietnam eh?
Scenario 2 (Standing in an elevator):
Me: Holy sh*t, you’re Eric F*cking Schmidt!
Eric F*cking Schmidt: Totally.
Me: So, Vietnam eh?
3. Best-In-Class Puns
To be sure, staying informed about the world in an efficient manner and being able to chit chat with Davos royalty are both vital life skills.
However, where The Economist really brings the pain is with its bounty of incredible puns.
In fact, The Economist still holds the title for my personal favorite pun of all time.
The pun comes from an article about companies that lend money for people that need to pay sperm banks for fertility services.
The article’s subtitle (in red below) reads – cue laughter – “Seed Capital”. 5
SEED CAPITAL!!!!!!!!!!
C’mon! That is incredible.
If you don’t appreciate how amazing this is, please read the following exchange:
You: Eh, not funny.
Me: It’s an article about the sperm bank business!
You: Yeah, I get that, it’s still not funny.
Me: Dude, are we looking at the same thing? The header says “seed capital”.
You: Yes, I get that. The article is talking about the business of sperm banks. “Seed capital” is just a form of early investment for these businesses.
Me: Idiot! Just focus on the word “seed”.
You: Nah..still nothing.
Me: It’s a PUN! Seed like sperm or little swimming dudes trying to fertilize ova.
You: Puns are for kids.
Me: I hate you.
There are dozens of solid puns in each issues and – as the tweet below shows – The Economist is not afraid to let you know why the pun is such a glorious art form:
4. One Voice
As a true outlier in this age of nauseous self-promotion, The Economist‘s writers are all anonymous.
In this article, The Economist explains why it has adopted this philosophy:
Historically, many publications printed articles without bylines or under pseudonyms—a subject worthy of a forthcoming explainer of its own—to give individual writers the freedom to assume different voices and to enable early newspapers to give the impression that their editorial teams were larger than they really were. The first few issues of The Economist were, in fact, written almost entirely by James Wilson, the founding editor, though he wrote in the first-person plural.
But having started off as a way for one person to give the impression of being many, anonymity has since come to serve the opposite function at The Economist: it allows many writers to speak with a collective voice. Leaders are discussed and debated each week in meetings that are open to all members of the editorial staff. Journalists often co-operate on articles. And some articles are heavily edited. Accordingly, articles are often the work of The Economist’s hive mind, rather than of a single author. The main reason for anonymity, however, is a belief that what is written is more important than who writes it. In the words of Geoffrey Crowther, our editor from 1938 to 1956, anonymity keeps the editor “not the master but the servant of something far greater than himself…it gives to the paper an astonishing momentum of thought and principle.”
While an article’s authorship is anonymous, veteran readers of The Economist will be familiar with the publication’s various editorial columns within different sections of the magazine (eg. Lexington in the USA section).
The writers of these editorial sections stay constant week-to-week.
Per The Economist, here is a “fun-fact” rundown of the etymology behind these names:
- Bagehot (in UK section): Walter Bagehot was a UK politician and edited The Economist from 1861-1877).
- Lexington (in USA section): Name of the town where the first battle of the American Revolution took place.
- Banyan (in Asia section): A type of tree under which Gujarati merchants conduct business.
- Schumpeter (in Business section): The Austrian economist of “Creative Destruction” fame.
- Buttonwood (in Finance section): The tree on Wall Street under which the establishment of the New York Stock Exchange was signed in 1792.
5. Convinced Me That Its OK To Have “Dildo” In The Title Of An Article
I previously wrote a blog titled Chekhov’s Dildo: aka A Brief Fling With Hollywood.
Initially, I was hesitant to include the word “dildo” in the title. But, as I was drafting the blog post, this Economist article popped up with the subtitle “Dildo for president”.
Apparently, a group of brilliant Indonesian millennials created a fake presidential ticket for the 2019 Indonesian general election.
The name of the fake candidates on the ticket are NurhaDI and ALDO; if you take the last few letters of their names (in bold), you get – drumroll please – DILDO. 6
The Economist ran with the gag and I was inspired!
With the granting of this editorial license, I happily put “dildo” in the title of my blog post.
As if the editorial license wasn’t enough of a win, The Economist later printed a pun-laden letter from another reader on the aforementioned Indonesian election article.
The letter is a freakin’ work of art.
A Political Aid
I was intrigued to learn of a fake presidential ticket known as “Dildo” spreading across Indonesian social media (“Dildo for president”, March 30th). Staying firm whatever the situation? Seeking only to please with nothing expected in return? Can’t see many British politicians earning such a complimentary nickname any time soon. The whole country remains unsatisfied.
DAVID WATKINS
Bournemouth
A political aid!!
Staying firm!!!
Remains unsatisfied!!!!
Very very punny stuff.