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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?
Here's a good source of podcasts
If you look around, 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.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
There are lots of informative and geeky lectures available at:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/audio/audio.html
http://tf2.digitaljedi.com
Perhaps Web Talk Radio might be a good answer? I'm biased 'cause I did a segment with them, tho.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Check out the offerings distributed by Public Radio International. The archives of many of their shows are available to listen to for free. Specifically, check out This American Life , To the Best of Our Knowledge , and Sound & Spirit . 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! , the NPR news quiz.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
http://www.itconversations.com/
LUG Radio
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.
http://mobile.wsj.com/mp3/
BBC Radio 4 is pretty much my staple diet of commute audio. Most days it's the Today Programme, 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 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.
Check out the content available from IT Conversations. 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 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...
I downloaded MIT's Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) lectures from here, 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.
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.
---- join dshield.org Distributed Intrusion Detec
http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/quirks/
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.
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
Democracy Now! 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.
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
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.
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The Fifth HOPE conference had some great lectures. Here's a link.
IT Conversations ;)
Talking History
These two have kept my train ride going for a while
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
NPR.org makes _tons_ of audio content available online.
From Grand Master Flash to Donald Knuth...
Why stick up for big business?
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
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-
It's going to sound lame, but you can get some reasonably good audio from 2600.
2600
Or Sun has their Java evangelists create real audio lectures.
Also, I purchased Verbal Advantage
Verbal Advantage
When going through DC I listen to C-SPAN Radio, or whenever available.
C-SPAN Radio
When available, I listen to NPR.
NPR
If it's the wee hours, I listen to Coast to Coast AM
Coast to Coast AM
I also like Neil Boortz.
I also purchased "Word Smart" and "Grammar Smart" on Amazon.com, which are published by the Princeton Review.
- 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.
all are available on the web:
http://www.chomsky.info/audionvideo.htm
http://www.zmag.org/chomskyaudio.htm
zmag has further links to similiar audio files.
enjoy!
--- blackironprison, where ignorance is bliss....
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?"
I already asked this sort of question, 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.
Slartibartfast:"Is that your robot?"
Marvin:"No, I'm mine."
Website and magazine with searchable archive of reveiws of audiobooks. Other audiobook info as well. www.audiofilemagazine.com
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;
m /
http://www.kcrw.org
http://www.harryshearer.co
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.
For all those just returning to the program, Howard Stern was proclaimed King of All Media.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
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.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Are the original Hitch Hiker's Guide episodes available from bbc.co.uk? I haven't been able to find them there.
o n=Browse&dir=%2Fpub%2F.arch-download%2Fhhgttg&sort =type anyway, in case anyone wants them.
They're available from http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-browse?sh=1&butt
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
I like to take project guttenburg books then feed them through festival. The voice is slow and awkward, but it is still very clear, and you can listen to just about anything for free.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
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. For example, I just noticed they have all of the books from my favorite Ender Wiggins series by Orson Scott Card. 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 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
This and a number of other tips can be found on my blog.
Linux at home
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....
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
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 (a sort of netflix for audio books) and Great Courses.
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.
Faced with frequent flights down from Glasgow to London, I've been listening to BBC radio (In Our Time PodCast) and audio books (so far Dirk Gently). Certainly beats looking out the window and sternly avoiding making eye contact with my adjacent passengers.
ooooooh! What does this button do? - DeeDee, Dexters Lab.
Check out the product at http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/softw are_open.asp/
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. -Rich
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.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Just fresh out of the NASA news: NASA science podcasts: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/21mar_podc ast.htm?list68870
From Wordnet (r) 2.0: hacker n 1: someone who plays golf