Quite by accident, I just learned that my ability to process news stories that I find crampingly dull, but which I feel it's important to read and absorb, is greatly enhanced when the story is "read" aloud in my head by a particularly frosty female BBC news announcer. I just got through a real tumbleweed of a piece about California's recent budget stalemate that, prior to introducing this narrator, I'd never've been able to finish. I call her Miranda. Thank you, Miranda, for this unexpected boost.