Curio - Trusted News Companion

Revising review after recent update: The recent update completely changes how to read the news but not in a good way. The ai chat function forces you to ask a question before getting article recommendations which disrupts the browse-the-slow-news vibe I went to Curio for in the first place. Maybe I’m using it wrong but this pivot makes them a totally different app to what I signed up for. Why not just add the ai feature rather than replacing the tried and tested browsing view? Or use your app Rio as the ai chat and keep Curio as it was. Previous review: My eternal struggle to balance staying well read is an ongoing journey... podcasts are good but it's hit & miss, then Blinkist but 15 mins on a book is not deep enough, I sometimes buy a newspaper but the quality is variable and the time investment high. Anyway, tried Curio for a week after being incessantly targeted on insta and I am loving it. Basically they select top articles from a range of publications and read them out. It gives you a variety of writing styles, subjects and political balance. It's not just the news but slower journalism too. I'd recommend it. Sex, money, mental health, war, peace, plants, gender identity etc. For example I enjoyed an article today on desire. Def worth the trial and just signed up for a subscription

If you listen to audiobooks, you know that narrators sometimes fail to give voice to the characters. In curio it feels like the narrators have no idea what they are talking about and place emphasis in a way that feels totally untethered to the significant facts in the articles. That aside, the articles themselves are often extremely anecdotal opinion pieces. They’re basically pieces where the author is just trying to sound smart without doing serious research. A lot of men are featured disproportionately to women, and there is a shortage of black and brown voices. Instead of making listeners smarter, curio makes listeners more pedantic. So far, non of the news “curators” are really optimizing for quality, they are optimizing for ideas that validate perspectives of the target audience. I give three stars because it is fundamentally a good idea and a good platform with decent execution, it just needs to make more of an effort to pick serious journalism from a more diverse set of voices (and not just some “star” authors and publications) with more facts and less speculation.

Just signed up and am loving this app except for one thing: the readers never read the titles of the articles(!). There’s an intro to each article, but surprisingly enough no mention of the article’s title. It’s like jumping into bed with someone without first getting their name. The title is indeed in the app itself or on my device, but I use the playlist/auto play function and can’t be bothered to look at my phone or iPad to find the new title every time an article changes, especially when driving or on my bike or walking the dog. Skipping the titles of songs would be fine, but not the title of written works/articles. Please read the titles of the articles and I will give 5 stars! Until then, I will try to get past having this huge chunk of context missing. I’ll try to remember the title of this app when recommending it. ;)