The aver­age Amer­i­can spends a good 100 min­utes per day com­mut­ing to and from work. (More on that here.) That amounts to about 433 hours per year! Now imag­ine using that time to learn some­thing new — to read a great book, to take a class from a top uni­ver­si­ty, to learn a new lan­guage. To make a sharp­er you. Below, we high­light our free audio resources that will max­i­mize your dri­ve time. Before get­ting start­ed, make sure you have a big mp3 play­er and a way to lis­ten to your mp3 play­er over your car speak­ers. Unless you com­mute by sub­way or bus, using ear­buds is gen­er­al­ly unsafe, and often ille­gal.

Free Resources:

Free Audio Books: What bet­ter way to spend your dri­ve time than lis­ten­ing to some of the great­est books ever writ­ten? This page con­tains a vast num­ber of free audio books, includ­ing works by Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and many more. You can down­load these clas­sic books straight to your mp3 play­er, then lis­ten as you dri­ve.

Free Cours­es: This list brings togeth­er over 275 free cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, UC Berke­ley, Oxford and beyond. These full-fledged cours­es range across all dis­ci­plines. As you dri­ve, you can immerse your­self in free cours­es in his­to­ry, physics, phi­los­o­phy, psy­chol­o­gy and beyond. All of these cours­es are avail­able in audio.

Free Lan­guage Lessons: Per­haps learn­ing a new lan­guage is high on your per­son­al check list. Well, here is a great way to do it. Take your pick of 37 lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Eng­lish, Russ­ian, Dutch, even Finnish and Esperan­to. These lessons are all free and ready for your dri­ve. You’ll start speak­ing that new lan­guage in no time.

Ideas & Cul­ture Pro­grams: In this audio col­lec­tion, we have gath­ered some of the most intel­lec­tu­al­ly stim­u­lat­ing pro­grams, cov­er­ing the worlds of thought, film, music, books, etc. These pro­grams will keep you think­ing and cul­tur­al­ly up-to-date. Most pro­grams fea­ture new dai­ly episodes.

Sci­ence Pod­casts: Maybe you’re already steeped in the lib­er­al arts and want to get more com­fort­able with the world of sci­ence. Here’s a good place to start. This page includes a long list of enter­tain­ing sci­ence pro­grams. Neu­ro­science, astron­o­my, med­i­cine, Ein­stein, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic. They’re all here, wait­ing for you.

Open Cul­ture iPhone App: A lit­tle some­thing spe­cial for iPhone users. When you down­load our free iPhone app, you can take with you, wher­ev­er you go, the items list­ed above. Just con­nect to Wi-Fi (Apple says so), down­load as many audio files as you want, then take them on the road, and you’re good to go.

Paid Resources: We love all things free. You know that. But some­times paid resources deliv­er the goods. Here are two paid resources that I fre­quent­ly end up using dur­ing my trav­els.

Audible.com: If you’re into con­tem­po­rary books, then give Audi­ble a vis­it. They have the widest col­lec­tion of new books on the mar­ket, and they make it easy to down­load books to your mp3 play­er. In fact, they sup­port iPod, iPhone, Black­ber­ry and 500 oth­er devices. Books can be bought a la carte, or through an annu­al sub­scrip­tion. If you start a free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load a free audio book of your choice. At the end of the free tri­al, you can decide whether to stick with the sub­scrip­tion plan or not. Regard­less of your deci­sion, you can keep the free audio book. It’s a no risk way of try­ing out Audi­ble’s ser­vice.

This post was inspired by Life­hack­er’s piece from ear­li­er today: Top 10 Tips and Tools for Com­muters.

Here’s one of the first videos to emerge from this week­end’s indie TED con­fer­ence in New York City. More videos will even­tu­al­ly be post­ed on the TEDxTalks YouTube Chan­nel, which we’re adding to our Smart YouTube col­lec­tion. In case you’re not famil­iar with him, Lawrence Lessig, a Har­vard law pro­fes­sor, has been a dri­ving force behind the “free cul­ture” move­ment and Cre­ative Com­mons. This talks offers a quick intro­duc­tion to his think­ing … and his dis­tinc­tive (and always engag­ing) man­ner of pre­sen­ta­tion.

This morn­ing, a New York Times edi­to­r­i­al is help­ing get the word out. Deep think­ing is alive and well on the web:

There is a lot of talk about how the Inter­net is dri­ving cul­ture ever low­er, but it also makes a wealth of seri­ous think­ing avail­able. From the com­fort of home, one can down­load free audio books by authors like Jane Austen and Joseph Con­rad and free pod­casts of uni­ver­si­ty lec­tures (openculture.com has an assort­ment of both).

The rest of the piece right­ly focus­es on a BBC pod­cast called In Our Time (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). It’s list­ed in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion, along with many oth­er thought­ful pro­grams that make mean­ing­ful sub­jects rel­e­vant to a broad­er, glob­al audi­ence. (For some­thing sim­i­lar in video, see our col­lec­tions of Intel­li­gent Video Sites and Smart YouTube Chan­nels.)

Yes, intel­li­gent media does­n’t dom­i­nate the web. But, it’s flour­ish­ing in the nich­es and crevices, and we want to bring it to the sur­face. Per­haps you’ll want to join us? If you’re inter­est­ed in con­tribut­ing to Open Cul­ture, we’re always look­ing for your sug­ges­tions. I have put togeth­er a page that out­lines our edi­to­r­i­al approach. Take a look, and if you find great pieces of intel­li­gent media while surf­ing the web, please send them our way. We thank you in advance.