Sources of Intelligent Audio for Commute?

confusus writes "Trapped in the daily routine of commuting for 1-2 hours every day, I started to ponder different ways of recycling commute-time waste. I tried listening to the radio, but 9.9/10, it ends up being just 'duh-whatever.' Then, I tried listening to audio books: it is really hard to find audio books that are tailored toward nerds. Thus I decided to find audio of interesting/geeky/nerdy/sciency interviews, talks, lectures. What would be the websites which provide such content?" I'd really like to find more informative downloadable audio content, too. Perhaps informed commentary and self-guided tours of historical and other sites, like national parks and significant buildings in the U.S. and elsewhere, basically self-guided audio walking (or driving) tours. Can anyone recommend a source?

podcasts

[fishdan]

Here's everything you need to know about podcasting [wired.com]

Here's a good source of podcasts [ipodder.org]

If you look around [google.com], you'll find plenty of what interests you available as a podcast. Should you not find what you're looking for, with any luck we'll see YOUR podcast up there soon too.

GNU Lectures

[lunk]

There are lots of informative and geeky lectures available at:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/audio/audio.html [gnu.org]

WebTalk Radio?

[drewzhrodague]

Perhaps Web Talk Radio [webtalkradio.com] might be a good answer? I'm biased 'cause I did a segment with them, tho.

Public Radio International's lineup of shows

[The I Shing]

Check out the offerings distributed by Public Radio International [pri.org]. The archives of many of their shows are available to listen to for free. Specifically, check out This American Life [thislife.org], To the Best of Our Knowledge [ttbook.org], and Sound & Spirit [wgbh.org]. If you're able to record these shows from the archives (using some sort of scheduled stream-ripper like iRecordMusic or WireTap Pro), or purchase them (through Audible or ITMS), they can make an hour-long commute feel like mere minutes.

And for your Monday morning commute, make sure you've got the latest installment of Wait Wait -- Don't Tell Me! [npr.org], the NPR news quiz.

IT Conversations

[daviddisco]

http://www.itconversations.com/ [itconversations.com]

LUG Radio

[elleomea]

LUG Radio [lugradio.org]

A Short History of Nearly Everything

[almeida]

A couple Christmases ago, I gave my brother the audio version of A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I think it's around six hours long. At the time, he had a four hour daily commute, so he breezed through it pretty quickly, but he seemed to enjoy it. Amazon has it for under twenty bucks. Might be worth a shot.

Wall Street Journal Audio Link

[jsimon12]

http://mobile.wsj.com/mp3/ [wsj.com]

Well, in the UK...

[Anonymous Coward]

BBC Radio 4 [bbc.co.uk] is pretty much my staple diet of commute audio. Most days it's the Today Programme [bbc.co.uk], intelligent, topical, and responsible for breaking a lot of big stories, such as the David Kelly Iraq WMD story.

The last edition is always posted online at the above address as a 'Listen Again' stream - worth checking out.

CBC "Ideas"

[gvc]

CBC has a number of interesting shows. I particularly like "Ideas", which you can get on cassette or just record live from the internet. http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/

CBC also has "Quirks and Quarks" which covers interesting topics and has interesting guests, but the commentary is a bit juvenile.

I really like "As it happens" but I'm not sure how good that would be recorded - they phone people who are in the day's news.

IT Conversations and Podcasts

[billnapier]

Check out the content available from IT Conversations [itconversations.com]. Lots of geeky stuff from lots of geeky people (People like Cory Doctorow, Steve Wozniak, Bruce Schneier, etc.).

You may also want to try listening to podcasts. Check out ipodder.org [ipodder.org] to see a directory of them. There is more than enough content there to keep you occupied on a daily basis. Oh, I guess I'm also assuming you can listen to MP3 in your car...

SICP Lectures

[bwalling]

I downloaded MIT's Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) lectures from here [mit.edu], and converted the audio portion to MP3 so I could play it on my iPod. Outside of that suggestion, I have the same question as you. I recently cancelled an Audible subscription because I had run out of books I was interested in hearing. The local library seems to have mostly fiction in audiobook.

NPR / PBS / Audible

[UnderAttack]

Back when I had a long commute (1hr +), I listened to NPR/PBS. Great program. I did use Audible.com quite a bit back then as well. Too bad they don't support Linux :-/. Had to drop them as I got rid of Windows.

Quirks and Quarks rocks.

[Stoutlimb]

http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/quirks/ [radio.cbc.ca]

This Canadian radio show has been running weekly since at least 1988, and covers a broad range of science news. I find they rarely dumb down their news, and often they will cover obscure and very interesting areas of research that you just won't hear about anywhere else in the news.

The website supports podcasting, realaudio, and you can download every weekly episode since 1988 right from their website. Pretty cool when you think about it.

This is definately superior news for the science nerd.

Re:podcasts

[Jeff DeMaagd]

There is some good talk radio, but just like everything else, 90% of it is crap.

The Inside Mac show podcast is pretty good. I like the Leo Laporte podcast. The NASA Scitech podcast is interesting, but new issues come out rarely. Sexgeeks is pretty interesting.

If anyone was considering getting into making podcasts, for the love of $DEITY, get more than one person and have civil discussions. The podcasts where only one person talks are lamer than the ones with discussions. Get a good sound capture device, decent mics and such.

Also, avoid the politics and religion if you are too easily riled up, even more so if you like to label people that disagree with you. I turn off the stuff where they say "oh those $PERJORATIVE, they are trying to do $BAD_THING".

The wonders of the BBC

[jabuzz]

As probably the largest producer of English language spoken word material in the world, you could try looking at the BBC material.

On a factual note there is "This Sceptred Isle" series, a 2000 year history of the British Isles that is about 44 hours to start off with. They have plenty of other stuff as well.

On a SciFi note they have HitchHickers Guide to the Galaxy, Doctor Who, Earth Search and a whole pile more as radio plays. As Fantasy they have the excellant Lord of the Rings dramatization, and a complete canon of Sherlock Holmes among others.
They also do a good range of comedy, though much of this does have a U.K. slant.

Outside the BBC there is a whole series of lectures by Feynman if that takes your fancy, try Amazon. If you are into Terry Pratchett, then try ISIS audio books for unabridged audio books of his Discworld novels.

Fortunately for me I live in the U.K. and I get much of this stuff piped directly into my house via digital radio straight onto my hard disk in MP2 format via the wonders of BBC7 :-)

democracynow.org

[michaelmalak]

Democracy Now! [democracynow.org] makes its entire shows available in MP3 and OGG. It's about the most informative show out there. It's liberal-libertarian and is regrettably pro-choice, but mostly deals with issues about oppressed people from around the world. Domestic issues are generally limited to libertarian issues such as privacy, analysis of the mainstream media, etc., and to liberal issues such as race relations.

You're kidding, right?

[prgrmr]

Then, I tried listening to audio books: it is really hard to find audio books that are tailored toward nerds

How hard did you look?

All of Tom Clancy, Tolkien, Douglas Adams are available on tape and CD, as well as more Star Trek and Star Wars shite that you'd ever want to know about in your life.

Maybe start with Spock vs. Q

My 2 cents

[Bootard]

I say check out the Feynman Lectures on cd. I only listened to the first couple, but they seemed to be worthwhile. Maybe someone who has a little better experience with them can give some more information. Defenitly high on the nerd factor though. The other thing I would recommend is language tapes. Pimsleur are the ones I have experience with and they are really good. Kind of expensive, but it's defenitly some good stuff to fill up the noodle with on your way to work.

Fifth HOPE

[darkfnord23]

The Fifth HOPE conference had some great lectures. Here's a link [2600.com].

Two Bits

[BrynM]

IT Conversations [itconversations.com]
Talking History [talkinghistory.org]
These two have kept my train ride going for a while ;)

NPR!

[mary_will_grow]

NPR.org makes _tons_ of audio content available online.

From Grand Master Flash to Donald Knuth...

Re:Public Radio International's lineup of shows

[Anonymous Coward]

A few other NPR shows:

Science Friday [sciencefriday.com]

Speaking of Faith [publicradio.org]

To the Best of Our Knowledge [wpr.org]

The World [theworld.org]

And the most popular hour on public radio:
Car Talk [cartalk.com]

Re:podcasts - what they are...

[djhalon]

Podcasting is made up of two parts. Part one is the show itself. This show is recorded in MP3 format and then posted on a site. This site then has an RSS feed that points to the MP3 file and has details about the current show. The second part is the client app. Some of the current apps are ipodder, ipodderX, doppler, jpodder, etc.

The client users makes the app subscribe to the RSS feed. The client app then checks the subscribed feeds on a regular basis and then if the RSS changes it will automatically download the new show. The client user can then setup the app to create a playlist and then import it into iTunes or onto your iPod (or any MP3 player).

Because the show is just an MP3 you don't have to get the client, you can just download the MP3 from the podcast site and listen to it or burn it if you want to.

Since this post does seem like a opp to pimp podcasting, I have to pimp mine...

http://www.fakescience.com/labreport.htm [fakescience.com]

The Lab Report covers the new digital music industry and highlights new underground and unsigned music. This week we have Rick Carr, formely of NPR, and he is talking about his new show TechnoPop and also about Sandy Pearlman's $0.05 song economy. Check it out!

-halon-

2600

[NitsujTPU]

It's going to sound lame, but you can get some reasonably good audio from 2600.

2600 [2600.com]

Or Sun has their Java evangelists create real audio lectures.

Also, I purchased Verbal Advantage

Verbal Advantage [verbaladvantage.com]

When going through DC I listen to C-SPAN Radio, or whenever available.

C-SPAN Radio [c-span.org]

When available, I listen to NPR.

NPR [npr.org]

If it's the wee hours, I listen to Coast to Coast AM

Coast to Coast AM [coasttocoastam.com]

I also like Neil Boortz.

I also purchased "Word Smart" and "Grammar Smart" on Amazon.com, which are published by the Princeton Review.

Doing the same thing ...

[Titusdot Groan]

I have the following on my ipod for commuting, all are really good listening (I won't list the ones that don't work in audio -- trust me -- there's a lot). The following I've listened to multiple times:

• Lord of the Rings (the unabridged Rob Inglis reading, 49.5 hours)
• The Hobbit (unabridged Rob Inglis again, 11 hours)
• The Entire Harry Potter series (read by Jim Dale, works REALLY well in audio format, 8.5 hours up to 26.5 hours)
• Foundation (didn't realize how conversation oriented these books were until I heard them)
• Ender's Game (pretty clear that OSC is a playwright)

The following are worth listening to at least once:

• Dumas (The Three Muskateers, Count of Monte Cristo)
• LeGuin (The Earth Sea Trilogy)

I got a one year membership at a "Books on Tape" rental store, currently I'm going through the classics. The old heroic novels (The Three Muskateers) are amazing on tape.

One thing that's interesting -- I find books I've already read to be especially good; there's a whole different feel to the story when read by a good character actor.

Re:podcasts

[barnaclebarnes]

Exactly...So here a couple that I like:

• Lug radio [lugradio.org]. This is good linux news mixed with humor. Some good interviews and views.
• It Conversations [itconversations.com]. Just started listening to these a couple of days ago. Seems like good interviews with high profile people.
• On The Media [onthemedia.org]Well I can't get NPR in New Zealand so I download OTM which is pretty good commment on the media industry.

Noam Chomsky and other political tirades...

[inmate]

if you enjoy the occasional feeling of indignation (hell, this is slashdot after all!!), you might want to get some of chomsky's speeches.

all are available on the web:
http://www.chomsky.info/audionvideo.htm [chomsky.info]
http://www.zmag.org/chomskyaudio.htm [zmag.org]

zmag has further links to similiar audio files.

enjoy!

Re:A Short History of Nearly Everything

[DisKurzion]

I can vouch for Bill Bryson's books. While not strictly geeky, they are witty and often informative.

I'm currently reading "Notes from a Big Country," and it is quite an interesting perspective on the differences between the US and the world (at least the UK).

Richard Feynman - Deifnitely worth your time

[timcrews]

Richard Feynman, prominent physicist, Nobel laureate, and general renaissance man, was also a prolific and entertaining author, and many of his books are available as unabridged audio books. I find it hard to imagine that any geek would not find these interesting, insightful, and humorous (+5 on all scales, of course!)

Audible.com has them.

"The Pleasure of Finding Things Out"

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

"What Do You Care What Other People Think?"

Already asked...

[kabrakan]

I already asked this sort of question [slashdot.org], albeit I wanted something to listen to while i'm AT work.. Lots of good replies though, a lot of good conversations to get into and pass the time.

Re:Public Radio International's lineup of shows

[maird]

Add to that the BBC [bbc.co.uk] (along with NPR, a member of PRI). All of the BBC radio stations have content available for 'Net re-broadcast (I believe you have to record them while playing as well). Radio 4 has excellent speech content with some fine comedy alongside in-depth art, science, current affairs and analysis (e.g. political interviews with members of both sides of an issue in the same studio at the same time).

Some of the BBC music stations are pretty good too. Many of them are segmented by market the way that US radio is but none of them have the sort of motivations that make much of the US radio I have heard just crap (IMO). Long live NPR!

Information about audiobooks

[Anonymous Coward]

Website and magazine with searchable archive of reveiws of audiobooks. Other audiobook info as well. www.audiofilemagazine.com

Podcast of Harry Shearer's "LeShow"

[Beebos]

Harry Shearer, of Spinal Tap, Simpsons, and A Mighty Wind fame has a great a hour long radio show that is part sketch comedy, part social commentary, and part eclectic music. Harry does hilarious parodies of the usual suspects, O.J., political figures, journalists, etc. He has also introduced me to a lot of great music I wouldn't have heard otherwise. Some of the show can be an aquired taste, e.g, reading from trade magazines or the L.A. real estate transactions. Do your self a favor and go through the archives and lsiten to anything about O.J. Simpson phone calls. For more info check out;

http://www.kcrw.org
http://www.harryshearer.com /

Re:Public Radio International's lineup of shows

[interiot]

Also, don't forget PublicRadioFan.com [publicradiofan.com], which lists a HUGE number of NPR streams available on the internet, searchable by program, time, and stream-type, making it easy to find the perfect stream to rip).

Re:Richard Feynman - Deifnitely worth your time

[eh2o]

the feynman lectures on physics (recorded from his lectures at caltech) are excellent; and a good way to learn something.

Re:podcasts

[rah1420]

I know this may be a dumb answer, but let's start with:

Move closer to work, objections to:
* Cost of living is higher closer to work.
* Economic conditions preclude selling your house and getting something equivalent (related to number 1.)
* Kids in school, other ties to the area.

Now, working closer to home, objections to:
* These jobs are goin', boys, and they ain't comin' back (apologies to The Boss.) There is simply none of what you do that's close by.
* Nothing that would pay the equivalent amount close by.
* Difficult/impossible to be retrained in what IS close by, if you even entertained such an idea.

In short, you were either trolling, or you should have been able to guess the answers.
I know all of these from experience. I used to commute an hour and a half until I was lucky enough to get a job in the next town. I had a blissful commute of 10-12 miles for 3.5 years and then the economy turned sour, businesses shed their workforce, and here I am; with a newly-built house, three kids in the school system, and no reasonable job prospects nearby. I have a 1:10 commute now with no signs that it's going to change for the forseeable future.

Cest la vie.

Re:Richard Feynman - Deifnitely worth your time

[Stanza]

I listened to Six Easy Pieces on audio while driving. They were great.

I listened to Six Not So Easy Pieces on audio while driving. I found that I could not follow the physics and drive at the same time. I wouldn't recommend these for driving. For home they're great, though.

Just get Sirius

[disc-chord]

You could do all that manually, but I would recommend getting Sirius instead. You get NPR Talk, NPR Now, PRI, BBC, etc... etc... etc... Really great unbiased intelligent talk.

Howard Stern!

[tilleyrw]

For all those just returning to the program, Howard Stern was proclaimed King of All Media.

Re:podcasts

[thakadu]

Just put a bunch of wgets in your crontab to pull the excellent content from Radio Netherlands here: http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/listenonline/weeklyarchi ve [www2.rnw.nl]

Re:podcasts - what they are...

[jdray]

Try this: While moderating, select Insightful, Infomative or Interesting from the pulldown for a message. Then, without clicking out of the moderation dropdown box, spin the scrollwheel on your mouse to continue reading down the page. Once you've scrolled through all the moderation selections, inadvertently selecting the highest-ordered one alphabetically, the browser starts scrolling down the page. It seems to you that the imperfect browser or mouse driver just didn't pick up on the first bit of your scroll, but it caught it eventually and you kept reading merrily along, the whole time not realizing that you've just sent a perfectly good post on its way to oblivion.

Or, it could just be someone's poor opinion of the author's comment. It's really hard to tell from my house.

H2G2

[jonasj]

Are the original Hitch Hiker's Guide episodes available from bbc.co.uk? I haven't been able to find them there.

They're available from http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-browse?sh=1&butto n=Browse&dir=%2Fpub%2F.arch-download%2Fhhgttg&sort =type [nmsu.edu] anyway, in case anyone wants them.

Festival and guttenburg

[donscarletti]

I like to take project guttenburg [gutenberg.org] books then feed them through festival [ed.ac.uk]. The voice is slow and awkward, but it is still very clear, and you can listen to just about anything for free.

Re:podcasts

[frantzdb]

The Santa Monica NPR affiliate, KCRW, does podcasts of their in-house news and information shows [kcrw.org].

The "tape" part of books-on-tape

[ziegast]

One expensive route is going to the local book store and just getting your items on tape. you've probably gone you yor local books store and have been frustrated by either the selection or price.

I've found that my local public library has a great selection of fiction, and it's virtually free. Recently I listened to a Clive Cussler book. It's just a little geeky with some action, adventure and women thrown in. Dune audio books will get you all the way across the country. I just enjoyed Dune House Atreides (which was 6 tapes)! I had much fun with the very large selection of Star Wars audio books (not the real episodes, but all of the in-between stories). If you ever fdo buy an audio book, don't let it sit in a box somewhere. Donate it to your local library so that others can enjoy it!

A good source for digital content may be Audible.com [audible.com]. For example, I just noticed they have all of the books from my favorite Ender Wiggins series by Orson Scott Card [audible.com]. If they have all of those books on MP3, I can imagine what else they'd have. For a tech geek, try a one-year subscription to "Technology Review"! You'd download them to your PC and then transfer them to your MP3 player or iPod or whatever and broadcast to your stereo as long as the batteries last (buy rechargable batteries!).

Some (like me) haven't made the bold leap into the 21st century and still have a stereo/tape player as their primary audio device in their car. I recently found a PC-to-tape [overclockercafe.com] device being advertised and reviewed. It looks great, but I don't have such a disposable income that'd warrant such luxury. I'll probably jury-rig some software to connect a cheap wireless Linux PC around my house to my stereo and record that way.

-ez

Re:A Short History of Nearly Everything

[loraksus]

Agreed. This audio book is very good.
I ripped it to MP3. 500 minutes (a tad over 8 hours)
Good for long trips, although there is a lot of information in it. Can't say that your eyes won't gloss over after an hour or two.

Re:Public Radio International's lineup of shows

[raddan]

In the NPR vein, I highly recommend On Point [onpointradio.org] with Tom Ashbrook. I listen to it most nights. Unfortunately, downloads are limited to streams (unless you have a stream ripper), but I sometimes just set my computer to record off the air. It's a great way to spend a couple of hours. Even with topics that I am not particularly interested in, I feel like I've spent the time well.

Convert to mp3

[Linuxathome]

If you use linux, you can download the streams with the commandline program curl:

curl URLofRMfile.rm -O

Then you can convert the rm file to mp3 with mplayer and lame [linuxathome.com]:

mplayer infile.wma/ra/rm -ao pcm -aofile outfile.wav

lame -f outfile.wav mp3outfile.mp3

You don't need curl to get the rm file if you don't want it. You could always play the rm stream straight with "mplayer URLofRMfile -ao pcm -aofile outfile.wav". With linux, you can also automate the whole thing with a simple bash script if you wanted (and then insert it as a cron job for full automation); then with the script, wait until a new show comes on and play.

This and a number of other tips can be found on my blog.

interesting audio

[lapilot]

Did you think of going to http://coasttocoastam.com andbecoming a streamLink member. You could then download the latest program (mp3) anddump them on your iPod. I do as it is good for trips, or your daily commute. They have some excellent scientists. Including my favorite Michio Kaku. Worth a try....

Re:Public Radio International's lineup of shows

[R.Caley]

Fighting Talk [...] so popular, it's uniquely available as an MP3

Pedant mode on:

Actually, it's not unique, nor is it down to popularity. The main problem with having things available for download, as opposed to replay, is the performing rights.

The BBC have been trialing MP3 download for some programs, picked for easy rights issues. I think the first was In Our Time, which is just some people talking about an issue which is usually complex enough to make re-listening worthwhile, all except Melvyn Bragg are authors or accademics and so not uptight about broadcast rights (its free advertising to them), and Bragg was enthusiastic about the project (probably because he likes himself so much he thinks we should all hear him more often, even if he doesn't get more money for it).

Fighting Talk has some of the same advantages (pundits, not performers), though I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to keep some has-beens and journoes wibbling on about this week's trivia about kids games.

Re:Public Radio International's lineup of shows

[XScB]

It's not at all unique in being the only BBC radio content available as an MP3.

In Our Time [bbc.co.uk] is also available as an MP3. Bits of the recent Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series as well as a whole selection of other Radio 4 programmes were also available for download as MP3.

Audible.com

[mikehunt]

Note that if you get these audio books from audible.com, you will be lumbered with yet another pathetic DRM system. Derrick Story on O'Reilly already found out how restrictive it was
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/user/view/wlg/2522 [oreillynet.com]

Audio books rock

[Adam Wiggins]

I've always hated every moment spent in the car - I see it as completely wasted time and energy. Recently I started listening to audio books and it completely changed my attitude. Now I actually look forward to getting into the car, much as I look forward to resuming reading whatever paper books I am reading.

There is plenty of great stuff on audio cd, but my two main sources have been Simply Audio Books [simplyaudiobooks.com] (a sort of netflix for audio books) and Great Courses [teach12.com].

Simplyaudiobooks has a lot of fiction (including the first volume of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, if you can believe that) as well as semi-pop science books like Hawking's the Universe in a Nutshell. You can also get this stuff on Amazon if you prefer to buy.

The Great Courses are basically a bunch of recorded colledge lectures, but (unlike my actual colledge experience) they are mostly pretty interesting. Topics include science, history, math, economics, biographies, and philosophy.

Re:H2G2

[jabuzz]

Of course they are, however you have to either pay for them on a CD or wait till they play them on either Radio4 or BBC7 again. You can even buy them as a single CD ready encoded in MP3 format. The site you list above is of course totally illegal.

For legal BBC material see http://www.bbcworldwide.com/ [bbcworldwide.com]

In Our Time

[rleyton]

Faced with frequent flights down from Glasgow to London, I've been listening to BBC radio (In Our Time PodCast [bbc.co.uk]) and audio books (so far Dirk Gently). Certainly beats looking out the window and sternly avoiding making eye contact with my adjacent passengers.

Get OpenBook 7.1

[Nalyd]

This software is targeted to the blind, but would work pretty well for anyone who wants to listen to web pages, newspapers, books etc. on the go. Essentially, you scan your document, or copy and paste it into OpenBook, then save as mp3. It is really simple and pretty quick. It can have a number of different voices, and you can control how fast it speaks, the pitch, etc.

Check out the product at http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/softw are_open.asp/ [freedomscientific.com]

The Teaching Company

[Hamlet D'Arcy]

The Teaching Company [http://www.teach12.com] offers a wide variety of college lectures on CD. They are expensive but worth every penny... I just got through listening to a 48 CD lecture and was left wanting more.

NASA Science

[Shezi]

Just fresh out of the NASA news: NASA science podcasts: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/21mar_podc ast.htm?list68870 [nasa.gov]