Updates

They’re short weekly audio briefings about what’s happening in a particular country. Each one is about ten minutes, in English, and focuses on the handful of things that seem important or people are talking about rather than trying to cover every piece of news, or the most important internationally.

Right now, Argentina, Georgia, and Spain. We used to produce Updates for many more places, but these were the most popular and the ones we decided to keep while we rethink what we actually want the project to become, in case you have any ideas.

Anybody who’s curious, but especially people with some connection to the country: migrants, expats, students, travelers, people with family or friends there, or people who simply want to understand somewhere better without spending hours following its news. Which in English is very difficult without a serious time commitment.

They’re deliberately small and selective. We’re not trying to replace newspapers or give you breaking news. We’re trying to give you enough context each week that you gradually understand the place better, including perspectives that English-language international coverage often misses. It doesn’t make much sense to listen once although you can of course. But listen six weeks in a row and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what’s going there.

Because listening isn’t the same as community. We had listeners, but we never really figured out how to help those people find one another or do anything together. That’s important to us, so rather than just chasing audience numbers, we scaled back.

We’re not completely sure, which is actually the interesting part. We’d love to find a simple way for regular listeners to connect, talk, or form little communities around these places. If you’ve got an idea, particularly if you listen regularly, we’re all ears.