“The Editor” is a podcast that truly captures the attention of the listener because it is full of action and a fascinating story about a man who went to prison for warehouse breaking and entering. The man’s name is Robin Woods and the crime that sent him to prison was committed in 1988 in Cumberland Maryland. He was sent to Maryland Correctional Institute after someone turned him in. It was his second time in this prison which he said was one of the worst prisons that he had been too.

The inmates were unhappy with how they were being treated and caused a riot that Robin assisted in. The inmates were beaten because of this and more time was added onto Robin’s sentence. Since Robin was going to be there for so long he decided he would take out a book from the prison library to read. The issue was Robin never finished high school and could barely read forty percent of each page. He soon became dedicated to reading and looked up words he didn’t know in dictionaries.

After a while of teaching himself how to read he became the go to with the inmates if they needed help reading legal documents. His time soon was devoted to reading an encyclopedia that he got and one day he found an error in an entry. He sent a letter to Mark Stevens the editor of Merriam Webster’s encyclopedias and got a positive response back. Soon Robin and Mark emailed frequently with mistakes Robin found in the encyclopedias.

Eventually Robin was going to be moved to a new prison, but they wouldn’t allow him to bring his collection of books with him. He went on a hunger strike and lost a lot of weight. He told this to Mark and Mark sent a letter to the prison telling them how cruel this was to Robin and how helpful Mark had been with the encyclopedias. The prison guard was surprised by this information and told Robin that if he did not get in trouble for a year he would be released four years early and they restored his book collection.

After Robin got out of prison he and Mark stayed in touch and Mark assisted him with living costs. Robin and Mark finally met and during this Robin’s house was broken into and stolen from. This made Robin feel like it was life showing him what it felt like to be stolen from.

I have listened to a few podcasts in my life for classes, but the difference about “The Editor” is that I actively took notes throughout it. I had never used this strategy when listening and it helped me stay more focused. I often have trouble just listening to things because I am a visual learner but writing notes down and being able to look at those helped me with being able to focus on what was happening and retain the information more.