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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
Then relive the glory on your way to work
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
There are lots of informative and geeky lectures available at:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/audio/audio.html
http://tf2.digitaljedi.com
I found that getting the audio files of the Wall Street Journal and listening to them on the way to work was a very good way to keep abreast of the latest developments in the world. Sure it is dry and not nerdy, but if you work in corporate America it pays to be informed.
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://mobile.wsj.com/mp3/
Seriously... I see way too many people that are doing who-knows-what behind the wheel, with visible evidence of the impact it has on the amount of attention they're paying to traffic. Weaving all over a lane, tailgating, running traffic lights, etcetera.
I want my in-car entertainment to be duh-whatever. If it's something that makes you think, then it's reducing the bandwidth you have to be putting towards the road.
Less is more.
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.
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...
Put a laptop with wireless Internet access in your car, hook it to your stereo, and install some software that speaks the text of websites. Then point your browser to Slashdot commentary.
You'll be laughing so hard that you'll drive into a telephone pole, and you won't have to worry about commuting for a while.
The coolest voice ever.
As a bonus, you can even get it in Ogg.
yo.
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
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...)
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-
If you are into space related science you may wish to listen to MP3s of the SETI Radio Network broadcasts. The topics are generally much broader than just SETI and the interviews with scientists and researchers are actually pretty good. They only produce an hour a week, but it will at least cover one of your commutes to work.
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?"
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.