Here’s anoth­er exam­ple of pod­casts that bring the past back to life. Thanks to Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, you can lis­ten to audio record­ings of twen­ty mod­ern Amer­i­can pres­i­dents (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), start­ing with Grover Cleve­land (1892) and end­ing with GWB. The record­ings most­ly tak­en from inau­gu­ra­tion address­es and State of the Union speech­es include some good his­tor­i­cal finds. Here you get Ted­dy Roo­sevelt blast­ing the elite’s sub­ver­sion of the pop­u­lar will, FDR speak­ing of an endur­ing democ­ra­cy, Har­ry Tru­man call­ing for a last­ing peace after World War II, JFK out­lin­ing the US response to the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, and Bill Clin­ton tout­ing the longest peace­time eco­nom­ic expan­sion in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

For more archives of pres­i­den­tial speech­es, here are a few oth­er col­lec­tions worth check­ing out:

FDR: A Pres­i­den­cy Revealed (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Pre­sent­ed by the His­to­ry Chan­nel, this col­lec­tion fea­tures some of FDR’s famous speech­es, includ­ing his Fire Side Chats and his first inau­gur­al address. (“There is noth­ing to fear but fear itself.”)

Pres­i­den­tial Archives Uncov­ered (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Pro­duced by the Pres­i­den­tial Libraries of the Nation­al Archives, this col­lec­tion presents clips of pres­i­dents’ seri­ous pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions as well as their per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions with fam­i­ly mem­bers. Includes talks by Pres­i­dents Hoover, Roo­sevelt, Tru­man, Eisen­how­er, Kennedy, John­son, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Rea­gan, Bush, and Clin­ton.

Tru­man Library Pod­casts (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Among these record­ings you will notably find a lengthy talk by David McCul­lough, Tru­man’s Pulitzer Priz­ing Win­ning biog­ra­ph­er.

The Speech­es of John F. Kennedy (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) A new but still small col­lec­tion. Looks poised to grow, how­ev­er.

In 2004, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against Amer­i­ca imag­ined an alter­na­tive Amer­i­can his­to­ry. The year is 1940, and Charles Lind­bergh, an Amer­i­can hero and Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er, beats FDR in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and takes Amer­i­ca down the path toward fas­cism, import­ing to the US the worst that Europe has to offer.

An implau­si­ble his­tor­i­cal sce­nario? Not entire­ly, not accord­ing to this BBC inves­tiga­tive report (lis­ten here with Real Play­er). In 1933, when Amer­i­ca was mired deeply in the Great Depres­sion, Franklin D. Roo­sevelt came into office and launched fed­er­al poli­cies to revive the econ­o­my. Many now remem­ber well his New Deal poli­cies. But, there were some at the time — par­tic­u­lar­ly well-heeled lead­ers in the Amer­i­can busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty — who adamant­ly opposed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment involv­ing itself in the pri­vate sec­tor. Based on research in the nation­al archives, the BBC inves­ti­ga­tion sug­gests that titans of the indus­tri­al and finan­cial world, includ­ing Prescott Bush (the grand­fa­ther of our sit­ting pres­i­dent), were linked to, if not direct­ly back­ing, a plot that would have Maj.-Gen. Smed­ley But­ler, a high­ly dec­o­rat­ed Marine, lead a 500,000 pri­vate army and push Roo­sevelt out of pow­er. It was a move tak­en straight from Hitler’s and Mus­solin­i’s play­book. To get more on the coup and how it played out, give the 30-minute inves­tiga­tive report a lis­ten.

For many life­long learn­ers, The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny is a bless­ing. Since 1990, the com­pa­ny has record­ed uni­ver­si­ty cours­es taught by lead­ing pro­fes­sors and made them avail­able to con­sumers. The cours­es, which tend to be bread-and-but­ter in a good way, range in price depend­ing on the media for­mat you choose. If you buy cours­es on sale (they always run sales), and if you buy the cheap­er MP3 ver­sions (as opposed to the more expen­sive DVDs and audio CDs), you can get a lot of val­ue for your mon­ey. For exam­ple, 24 excel­lent lec­tures on Ancient Greece will run you $34.95, which is not too shab­by.

Now how does all of this tie into what we do here at Open Cul­ture? Here’s how: The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny has post­ed a free 45-minute lec­ture on Mar­tin Luther King, “Stride Toward Free­dom,” which is part of a larg­er course called “Free­dom: Phi­los­o­phy of Lib­er­a­tion.” You can access the lec­ture in dif­fer­ent audio for­mats here, and you’ll get a sense of what The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny is all about.

Caveat: The free offer­ing was sup­posed to have expired on Feb­ru­ary 28. So it may go away soon.